Rxa2005's Blog

Dealing with Nulls in Oracle

rxa2005 — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:42:37 +0000

I’m currently working on a Cyber Security project and I forgot one major concept when working with queries and that is that a query will return only items that are in common. Duh! Right? What happened was that I was looking for data that was missing such as a “null” in a table. However, since I was only looking for data between tables, I missed out on some data that was not common between the two tables. The answer was to add the simple (+) operator to my query such as:

Select * from bubba, joe where bubba.stuff (+) = joe.stuff

The returned dataset will show nulls where bubba.stuff doesn’t show up in joe.stuff.

This might seem trivial, but at the time it was a real revelation.

Diaries of a Developer using Adobe FLEX 3.0 – Part 1

rxa2005 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:26:00 +0000

This is the first installment of a four part series to go over basic Adobe Flex 3.0 functionality.
I started on a new project at work which uses Flex along with JAVA and some OLAP sprinkled in for good measure. I haven’t worked with FLEX or RIA (Rich Internet Applications) because I’ve been involved with developing standard corporate websites that had little or no “bells or whistles.” It appears that Macromedia first came on the scene with RIAs in March of 2002. I must admit, I was a bit taken a back by how simple it is to write a powerful FLEX application. I believe that FLEX takes internet applications to a whole new level. Microsoft tried to move into this direction with .NET and now I believe they are pushing Silverlight. I haven’t yet gotten into Silverlight but I may want to dabble in it a bit at a later time. For right now, Adobe Flex is on the radar screen.
What I like most about Flex is how the developer gets to push out code that is more in line with traditional desktop applications. The end user experience is not hampered by clumsy or clunky page refreshes. The other feature I like is the ability to offer real-time feedback and validation to the user, triggered by user events which is similar to JAVASCRIPT but more in line with how .NET handles user events. Again, the only difference here is that the annoying page refresh is gone. Only the control gets painted and it looks and acts like a windows control.
So there you have it. My first look at Flex. I even hooked up with google maps and made a quick app that locates my house.

The multiple personalities of ASP.NET

rxa2005 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:45:50 +0000

Why is it that Microsoft just can’t stay committed to a developers harmony. I’ve had to work with ASP.NET – no, not the 3.5 version, the “classic” version. When you pick up an ASP 2.0 book, you’ll find out that the “classic” way of doing ASP pages is out dated. Can you believe that? And then you really need to check out the “new” features of what is available in C# and VB. Oh, my… Talk about JAVA envy. Finally, with the release of VS 2008, the compiler at least can publish code that is backward compatible. I haven’t actually used that feature yet, but I hear it’s not a bad feature.

My RANT for today….