Servers for the Information Age

September 30th, 2007

The never-ending need for File Servers in the modern world

Handling the ‘Data on Demand’ needs of a New Generation!
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System Stored Procedures System stored procedures are packaged with SQL Server. Many procedures are used to administer SQL Server, but some are utilities that can be profitablly used by developers. They are global, and can be called from any database application without their fully qualified name. (They are all owned by dbo.) . They are all stored in the Master database, and have the prefix sp_. This is a reason why it is considered unwise to name local stored procedures with the sp_ prefix. They can be read by viewing their properties in the Query Analyzer.

The system-stored procedures are grouped into these categories.

Category Description Active Directory Procedures Used to register instances of SQL Server and SQL Server databases in Microsoft Windows 2000 Active Directory . Catalog Procedures Implements ODBC data dictionary functions and isolates ODBC applications from changes to underlying system tables. Cursor Procedures Implements cursor variable functionality. Database Maintenance Plan Procedures Used to set up core maintenance tasks necessary to ensure database performance. Distributed Queries Procedures Used to implement and manage Distributed Queries. Full-Text Search Procedures Used to implement and query full-text indexes. Log Shipping Procedures Used to configure and manage log shipping. OLE Automation Procedures Allows standard OLE automation objects to be used within a standard Transact-SQL batch. Replication Procedures Used to manage replication. Security Procedures Used to manage security. SQL Mail Procedures Used to perform e-mail operations from within SQL Server. SQL Profiler Procedures Used by SQL Profiler to monitor performance and activity. SQL Server Agent Procedures Used by SQL Server Agent to manage scheduled and event-driven activities. System Procedures Used for general maintenance of SQL Server. Web Assistant Procedures Used by the Web Assistant. XML Procedures Used for Extensible Markup Language (XML) text management. General Extended Procedures Provides an interface from SQL Server to external programs for various maintenance activities.

You can create your own system-stored procedures by following the guidelines outlined above. But, even though it is possible to modify an existing system sproc, it is better to name it with another name than to destroy the system version.

Dynamic Queries are created and executed within a stored procedure, and are built typically by passing in text parameters and creating a text SQL string. Then the string is executed using the form EXEC (@createdstring). Dynamic query plans are not stored in cache, and local variables created in the dynamic query are not available after the query is executed. To save the query plan, instead of the keyword EXEC, use sp_executesql. Also, with sp_executesql local variables can be used both as INPUT and as OUTPUT parameters.

Autoexec procedures, called autostart procedures can be made by invoking the system stored procedure sp_procoption procedurename, startup, true

Extended Store Procedures Extended stored procedures are auxiliary stored procedures created in a DLL using C++. They are prefixed with xp_, and stored in the Master database. When called from an application database, they bust be fully referenced, using the Master..xp_procname form. Before you can invoke it, you must register the DLL with SQL Server using the syntax:

sp_addextendedproc [@functname=] ‘procedure’, [@dllname=] ‘dll’

Resources: Information Getting Started with Sybase

This resource discusses Sybase database management system.

Information: Accessing Stored Procedures

This resource gives insightful information on accessing stored procedures.

Metro NY / NJ SQL Server Consultants We specialize is custom database software. Call us for a free consultation (973) 635 0080 or email us at paladn.com

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September 29th, 2007

The never-ending need for File Servers in the modern world

Handling the ‘Data on Demand’ needs of a New Generation!
-
1) Where can I find a decent Intranet Application? 2) What about a good Groupware application? 3) What about a custom search engine for our intranet pages?

These questions are asked quite frequently in hundreds of forums.

One obvious solution is to approach a software development company and obtain a custom built product. However to take this approach one needs to first know what features and functionality is desired. Then on the other hand in some instances the need does not warrant the cost of commissioning a custom application.

A plethora of free open source web applications exist today. Regardless of the specific circumstances of the need these applications can quite often prove to be a valuable resource.

http://freshmeat.net is one of the best online directories of open source applications. A quick search on freshmeat.net for say “intranet”, “cms” or “groupware” will yield pages of results. Browsing these results any application marked beta, stable or mature is a possible solution. A large majority of the available web applications would also state PHP + MySQL as the platform.

Oh well I need to have some Linux Server and it’s way too hard is a common reaction. Fortunately this is not entirely true. If you wanted to host a large scale production site then the chances are that a custom Linux server may well be a requirement. However just evaluating on your own PC, or setting up a solution on your LAN for anywhere between 1 to 100 users can be easily realized without custom Linux servers.

The solution is in another open source free product known as WAMP server. The acronym stands for Windows Apache MySQL PHP server. WAMP is extremely simple to install and a good platform for either evaluating PHP + MYSQL applications or operating the same for up to a few hundred users.

Visit http://www.wampserver.com Or http://www.wampserver.com/en/ for the English version First it is important to note that most open source PHP + MySQL applications will not run correctly on the latest versions of PHP and MySQL. For this reason instead of the downloading the latest version of WAMP server click on “downloads” from the left menu and then click on “older versions at sourceforge” This will take you to https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=116092 scroll down and select “WAMP5 1.4.3″. Download the WAMP5_1.4.3.exe file and install it on your computer with default options.

Once installed and started a new icon will appear in the icon tray near the date/time on your task bar. Left click on this icon to activate it’s menu which allows you to restart or edit the configuration files.

Changing the web server port if necessary.

One common reason for wanting to edit configuration file is in case you already have a web server running on the same computer. In this case you would need to change the port address used by apache to something other than 80. In this case 8080 would probably be a good alternative choice.

——-Changing the web server port address Begin———– Click on the WAMP server icon and from the menu under “config files” select “httpd.conf”. A long text file will open up in notepad. In this file scroll down to the line that reads “Port 80″ and change this to read “Port 8080″, Save the file and close notepad. Once again click on the wamp server icon and select restart all services. One more change needs to be made before we are done. In Windows Explorer find the location where WAMP server was installed which is by Default “C:\Wamp”. Next goto the subfolder named “www“. Inside here you will see another subfolder named “phpmyadmin”. We are looking for a file named “config.inc.php”. In a default installation this file will be at “C:\Wamp\www\phpmyadmin\config.inc.php“. Open this file in wordpad and find the line that reads $cfg[’PmaAbsoluteUri’] = ‘localhost/phpmyadmin/’; Change this line to read: $cfg[’PmaAbsoluteUri’] = ‘localhost:8080/phpmyadmin/’; ——-Changing the web server port address End———–

Now open a web browser and access http://localhost . Or if you changed the port address to 8080 then goto http://localhost:8080/ You should be greeted by the WAMP welcome page. For each application that you wish to install create a new folder inside the “www” subfolder of where WAMP was installed. Lets assume that WAMP was installed at “C:\Wamp”.

Let say for example you wanted to install Mambo (www.mamboserver.com) 1) You would download the .zip or .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 file and uncompress it using winzip or winrar into “c:\Wamp\www\mambo“. 2) You would access the wamp welcome page http://localhost/ or http://localhost:8080/ and access phpmyadmin. In here you would create a new database for mambo. 3) You would then access the wamp welcome page http://localhost/ or http://localhost:8080/ and from the list at the bottom of the page you would click on Mambo 4) You would then be greeted by the mambo installer which is a simple 5 step process. (the default username for MySQL is root and the password is blank as in an empty string)

Let say for example you wanted to install oscommerce You would download the .zip or .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 file and uncompress it using winzip or winrar into “c:\Wamp\www\oscommerce“. 5) You would access the wamp welcome page http://localhost/ or http://localhost:8080/ and access phpmyadmin. In here you would create a new database for oscommerce. 6) You would then access the wamp welcome page http://localhost/ or http://localhost:8080/ and from the list at the bottom of the page you would click on Mambo 7) You would then be greeted by the oscommerce installer which is a simple process. (the default username for MySQL is root and the password is blank as in an empty string)

And so on and so forth.

Any PHP + MySQL web application which does not provide an automated installer is most likely not a very mature application.

Good luck

About the author:

TCWicks Is a software developer / systems analyst with over 10 years experience across many sub fields in Information Technology. He currently offers Web Design and Development Services through Zap Strategy

September 28th, 2007