Banner ads are common on any commercial site these days. But most of them use mechanisms like Server Push, Serve-side objects, or even services of third parties to rotate the

In Java, the reading and writing of 32-bit or smaller quantities are guaranteed to be atomic. By atomic we mean each action takes place in one step and cannot be

Once you’ve established a connection to Microsoft Excel using OLE DB, you’re not out of the woods. You still have to define a Named Range in Excel; then you can

If you need to run a complicated query that returns a large recordset, ADO 2.1 gives you the best of both worlds. Sometimes you just need to put a recordset

If you find yourself repeating the same Execute method in different parts of your code when clearing tables, use this method instead to automate the process. When you already have

These days, most Web developers are discouraged from using frames (with good reason). However, users still like the functionality they provide. FRAME and IFRAME are handy scrolling containers, but you

SafeRef returns a reference to the context wrapper instead of a reference to the object itself. You should never pass a direct reference of a Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) object

While using OLE DB Provider for Jet to manage Access databases through ADO from VB, follow this tip to help you access a query defined in your database. If the

RDO does not have a FindFirst or Seek method, and as a programmer, you sometimes need to quickly move to a particular record. I had a user who wanted to

You may want to make sure that a client visiting your site cannot cache a particular Web page. However, setting the Response.Expires=0 does not always prevent a browser from caching

It’s easy to add scripting functionality to your VB project, especially if you have been developing through classes all along. The more classes you program, the more objects you can

Microsoft documentation says you can connect to Excel 97 or Excel 2000 using the Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB 4.0 provider. If you use the Microsoft ADO Data Control, however, you will have problems.

Question: How do I convert the Unix epoch time into a readable date/time format? Answer: Informix doesn’t have a built-in function that I know of for this. However, a function

Question: How do I change the name of a database? Answer: From another database, maybe sysmaster, type: RENAME DATABASE oldname TO newname.

You can search a file in all the subdirectories of a given drive in VB using a recursive routine based on the Dir$ function, the FileSystemObject component, or the FindFirstFile/FindNextFile

In a previous Tip of the Day I wrote, I advocated object creations using the tag for efficient server resource use. Another benefit of this approach is that, for the

Editor’s Note: This tip is an update to a previous Tip of the Day. Jai Bardhan claims to have a “better solution” for counting records in a recordset. It is

You can use the Visual Basic split function to convert a comma-separated string to an array. The function allows you to send a string as an IN parameter of a

Prompt is a dynamic property that OLE DB providers can use to allow the user to input customized initialization information, typically through a dialog box. The OLE DB provider may

Question: I am trying to support an application that needs to support DAO 3.51 and 3.6.How do I insert a project reference like this as a conditional compiler option? Answer:

Question: How do I use a CommandButton to link Forms? Answer: The Show method of a form can be used to show a second form from within another.

Question: I have form that has a command button on it, and when it’s clicked, it opens another form. I want to be able to set some values on the

Question: Is there a WAP SDK emulator available for the Mac platform? Answer: In a perfect WORE (Write Once, Run Everywhere) world, the Java-based emulators should run on Macintosh. I’m

Question: How do I create a simple WML application with JSP and Beans? Answer: Be sure to set your content output type appropriately and just have it generate the WML.

Question: Can you put a variable within quotations?For example: Shell “Explorer.exe (?var)” Answer: You have to concatenate the two strings together. If your variable is named var, you would call

Question: My SQL statement at the moment is: SELECT * FROM NewsItemsHow do I sort the dates in descending order? Answer: Use the ORDER BY clause to sort the results

Question: Is it possible in VB 6.0 to include pieces of code through an include- or importstatement like the C #include-preprocessor command or the Cobol copy-statement? Answer: You can add

Question: What can I use in SQL that does the same thing that IIF(test,TruePart,FalsePart) does in Access? Answer: You can achieve the same result using the aggregate function COUNT and

Question: How can do I write a query to retrieve a string with a specific number of characters from a field? For example, the “firstname” field has a name that

Question: I am building an e-commerce site with SQL as the database. When an order is placed, how do I have the database set the HandlingCharge column to 5 if