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Tip Bank

Ensure Foolproof Data Entry Times

Asking users to enter time values can often lead to problems formatting what the user enters. I use this piece of code to create a drop-down list of hours, minutes,

Use Custom Form Properties

You can easily find out whether your user clicked on OK or on Cancel on a modal dialog. This example also prevents the user from unloading the form, and thereby

Keep Your Clustered Index’s Weight Down

In SQL Server 7, a significant change was made to the way nonclustered indexes work when a clustered index exists on a table. In version 6.5, the nonclustered index used

Prevent Browsers From Caching ASP Pages

Whenever you are programming in Active Server Pages, make sure that your browser is set to check for a new page every time. Otherwise, you may not see your latest

Stream Unique Identifiers

While attempting to deserialize (or unmarshal) a serialized object instance, you may generate an exception with a message similar to: java.rmi.UnmarshalException: Error unmarshaling return; nested exception is: java.io.InvalidClassException: RMIParm; Local

What’s in Name Mangling?

Name mangling, (the more politically correct term is name-decoration, although it is rarely used) is a method used by a C++ compiler to generate unique names for identifiers in a

Do You Know What Your Identity Is?

Everyone by now is familiar with how to create auto increment keys in SQL Server–just define an integer column with identity (start,increment) and you are set. To create a new

Primary Key Should Not be Clustered

By default, when you define a primary key in the create table statement, it uses a clustered index. However, a clustered key is best used to support queries that return

Debug Problems in Your GridBagLayout Code

The GridBagLayout is a flexible layout manager, but is also notoriously difficult to use. Some of the most common and difficult to debug problems occur when the amount of space