Comments on "Efficiently Uploading Large Files via Streaming" article on 15Seconds.com

In an article Efficiently Uploading Large Files via Streaming, published on 15seconds the author tries to give a solution for uploading huge files to ASP.NET applications.
The problem according to the author is:

When uploading a file to a web server, the upload process generally requires the incoming file to be stored in memory until the upload is complete. If an uploaded file is larger than the available memory, memory usage in general and performance in particular will suffer.

And the suggested solution was to read the uploaded data directly from PostedFile.InputStream as small chunks and store them in a database.

I believe the author has totally missed the point in this article.

First: Huge uploaded files are not kept in memory, they are buffered to the hard disk. at least this is true in ASP.NET 2.0 as stated in the msdn:

Files are uploaded in MIME multipart/form-data format. By default, all requests, including form fields and uploaded files, larger than 256 KB are buffered to disk, rather than held in server memory.

Second: The solution claims that reading the file from the InputStream will be a streaming solution that avoid caching the whole file on the server, which is again not true. The ASP.NET code is called after the whole request has already been submitted to the server.

I wished to clarify this by commenting on the article or by sending to the author, but unfortunately, the site does not allow this :( .

How granting execute permission on stored procedures made easier in SQL Server 2005

In SQL Server 2000, a common problem was faced by developers who design their data access to depend on stored procedures, SQL server had db_datareader and db_datareader roles. But no such db_executer role.
This caused trouble as the user used to execute stored procedure had to be granted execute permission on every stored procedure in the database. This can be automated using scripts that grant execute permissions to the required user. But imagine how much time you'll spend debugging your application after creating a new procedure just to discover that you forgot to run the script.
Another easy and dirty way was to add the user used by the application to the db_owner group and make all procedures owned by the dbo. No need to talk about why this is bad.

In SQL Server 2005, the concept of permissions, securables and schemas ,were introduced.
now you can have it all done using one statement. Assuming you have a user test and a schema named HR, test can have execute permissions on all stored procedures belong to HR schema:

GRANT EXECUTE on SCHEMA::HR to test

Now if you (as dbo) create a procedure like:
CREATE proc HR.GetAccData
as
Select * from dbo.acc
GO

The used test will have execute permission on the HR.GetAccData procedure.

Moving a form without a title bar

How to make a form without a title bar movable?

This is a common request in programming forums, and here is a simple solution that depends on handling mouse down and mouse move events:


public partial class Form1 : Form
{
int m_PrevX;
int m_PrevY;

public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

private void Form1_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Button != MouseButtons.Left)
return;

Left = Left + (e.X - m_PrevX);
Top = Top + (e.Y - m_PrevY);

}

private void Form1_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if(e.Button!=MouseButtons.Left)
return;

m_PrevX = e.X;
m_PrevY = e.Y;
}

MS SQL Server Views: Order By

If you create a view in SQL Server 2005 management studio and add an order by clause, run the query, the order by seems to take effect.
But when you reference the view in a simple query (with no order by) you find that the returned results are not as expected, records are not ordered..
check the definition of the created view :

sp_helptext view_name

you find that the management studio added a TOP clause to the view.
reviewing SQL Server Books Online:

SQL Server 2000:

The query defining the view cannot include the ORDER BY, COMPUTE, or COMPUTE BY clauses or the INTO keyword.

SQL Server 2005:

The SELECT clauses in a view definition cannot include the following:
.
.
An ORDER BY clause, unless there is also a TOP clause in the select list of the SELECT statement

This makes extreme sense to me, as views represent logical tables, so just like tables, the order in which you get data should not be assumed, unless explicitly requested using an order by in the query.

Posting dynamic data to a popup page

It's a common need to pass some JavaScript dynamically formatted data to a pop up page, this can be easy as you just need to append data to the URL of the pop up and open it using window.open() or simply by setting the src property of an anchor element, this is a get request.

But if the data is too big to be put in the query string (2kb+), or if you want to make it harder for the user to see and modify the passed parameters, you'll need to post this data.

this JavaScript function makes the job, I post the string ("real long data").

function PostToPopup()
{
window.open("about:blank","popup",null,null);

var hdn= document.createElement("Input");
hdn.type="hidden";
hdn.name="popupdata";

var frm= document.createElement("Form");

frm.target="popup";
frm.method="POST";
frm.action="popup.aspx";

document.body.appendChild(frm);
frm.appendChild(hdn);

hdn.value="real long data";

frm.submit();
}

You can read this value in the popup from the request..this is an ASP.NET example:
Response.Write(Request.Form["popupdata"]);

I passed this semester with 3 'A's

I my computer science diploma study at aast (Arab Academy for and technology and maritime transport), I passed the summer semester with grade A for the three courses I studied.
I studied Software Engineering, Database management systems ,and web programming.
The most one that I'm happy with is the web programming course. I made a Java application which is an online image album and editor.
What I liked about this project is that it utilized the client to make all the image effects (using a Java applet). The applet communicates with the server to get the image and to save it by calling a servlet. new thing that I've learned.
I wish to share the code of this project and publish it, maybe as an article.

ctrl+R to refresh SQL Server enterprise manager query results

A small tip that many people don't know..
You can run or refresh SQL Server 2000 enterprise manager query results without clicking the (run) toolbar button using the (ctrl+R) shortcut.