Data, data en nog eens data

Author: tom

  • Bugzilla

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    In the test phase, we would like to create a nice list of encountered bugs. In most situations a project assistant is given the task to maintain this list. All encountered bugs are sent to him. He compiles a list. This list is then maintained to see which bugs are solved and which bugs are…

  • Deferring referential integrity constraints

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    Last week, I gave a course on data warehousing. When I overviewed the theory, I noticed I had to spend some time on “disabling the the referential integrity constraints”. I realised that I had to provide a clear explanation on what is meant by this. The idea is rather straight forward. When we load sverela…

  • Temporary tables in Oracle

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    Oracle has a feature it is possible to create tamporary tables. The idea is that a table can be created, can be populated with data, but these data can only be seen during the session. Other sessions do see the table but they see no rows. Even if someone uses the same userid as the…

  • Creating a cookie

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    Cookies are small items that can be written on the hard disk of a client computer. In Google Chrome, these cookies can be found in a binary file. I found this file in “C:\Users\tmaanen.CORP\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cookies”. These files can be written on request of the webserver. I wrote a small PHP programme that writes these cookies…

  • How to run a SAS job in a batch mode

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    I hope you recognise the situation. You have developed some SAS code (in Enterprise Guide, SAS Base Editor or DI Studio) and you would like to create a batch job from this. Huh? SAS seems to offer you only the possibility to run a job interactively. However, it is possible to run a job in…

  • OLE DB

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    Today, I tried to link a ODBC compliant database to a SAS programme. SAS is a programme, much like Perl, that allows data to be read, transformed and written back to a database. SAS claims that it is able to use OLE DB to hook up to ODBC compliant databases. The idea is that the…

  • The tragedy of not usings dates

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    I now work with a financial institute where they took the decision NOT to use date formats for data-values. This meant that they use 20110310 to indicate the 10th March 2011. It was possible to use a date format but it was decided to use a numerical format. Everything goes at a cost. Likewise, misusing a…

  • Run ODBC

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    In some environments, the possibility to create an ODBC link is prohibited. Due to misunderstood security issues, the creation of an ODBC link is not permitted. But is might be that we have a way out! Try C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe to use the 32 bits version and the 64 bit ODBC drivers via: C:\Windows\System32\odbcad32.exe And there is…

  • Create a surrogate key in Oracle

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    To create a surrogate key in Oracle is not really trivial. The issue, we address works as follows. Assume we have a table with 3 records an four attributes. The first attribute is a name, the second is a surrogate key. Other attributes refer to a user and a datetime stamp. This surrogate key should…

  • send mail via telnet

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    tom
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    I am subscribed to a ADSL provider who also provides Email services. Hence, I could try to send some mail from the command line on my laptop. As a first step, I started a telnet session with the provider: from the command line I gave the command: “telnet mail.wxs.nl 25”. The server responded promptly. As response…