If you’re with an organization that requires you to document everything that you do (and if you’re not required to, there’s something wrong!), you’ll no doubt have to document any

You may find that you need to encrypt some sections of configuration files (such as Web.config) to protect sensitive information. Yet you may also need to decrypt that information to

Sometimes, you may need to perform conditional logic based on whether a field does or does not exist in a recordset. To check for the existence of a field, simply

The next time you come across a situation where two Integers defined with equal values fail an equivalency (==) test, remember this tip. Suppose you have two integers defined as

It’s best not to return null from a method that returns an array type. Always returning an array, even if the array has zero length, greatly improves the generality of

This query returns a list of all the user-defined functions in a SQL Server database. In a T-SQL Window, write this query, substituting the appropriate database name for the db_name

The String.Split method has few limitations. For example, it does not support splits on duplicate delimiters such as double pipe (||) characters, double tildes (~~), or double colons (::). The

You can select which column to sort a SELECT statement by at runtime, using just one parameter. To do this, declare one parameter and use it with a CASE command.

Type conversions are more error-prone than most code, so it’s useful to have ways to convert types in ways you know will work. The CanConvert method in this tip checks

First, launch Eclipse with increased memory options, which you can do as follows (increase these values as needed, but don’t exceed your available memory): eclipse.exe -vmargs -Xmx512M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M Sometimes, the

You can find out which session is causing blocking problems using this SQL command: SELECT blocking_session, sid, serial#, wait_class, seconds_in_wait FROM v$session WHERE blocking_session IS NOT NULLORDER BY blocking_session;

Using the following code snippet you can run any application (such as Word, Excel, etc.) or open any file whose extension is associated with an application, such as .doc, .txt,

The simple way to convert Hashtable keys or values into an ArrayList is to use a constructor that takes a list of values. The Hashtable.Keys and Hashtable.Values properties both return

It can be annoying to open the IDE every time you need to build a .NET solution or project. Fortunately, .NET ships with a command-line utility called devenv.exe that you

Follow these steps: Open the Registry editor. Find the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTAllFilesystemObjectsshellexContextMenuHandlers. Right-click on that item and select New ? Key from the context menu to create a new key. Name