Advanced Level 2014 ICT Results - Amazed

Friend of mine ( Fuzuly) was called by an English medium advanced level accounts teacher asking if he knows an ICT teacher. I was sitting next to my friend and suddenly he asked if I have any idea of teaching ICT.  Let me think about it I told. After some thinking, I told my friend 'ok I will do this' and asked him to give my words to accounts teacher.

This is how my ICT teaching started back in early June 2014 for 4 girls from Good Shepherd Convent - Colombo 13. There were only 3 months left for the examination.

The students were very afraid of some lessons like python, database management system, karnough maps to name a few and they had no teacher to turn to. As a computer science graduate from the University of Colombo, I agreed to make these things comfortable for them. Finally they became competent on the subjects I touched. They were a very obedient and smart set of students and also my first batch of students.

They sat for the exams and got results on 27th of December 2014.
This 3 months effort plus their commitment gave in one "B" for one of the students. The rest got "C" grade each. Even surprising they got the Best grade for ICT, out of the 3 main subjects each person took.

Remember this is only 3 months effort. I wish this could be 4 "A"s for the 4 students for ICT subject provided that they learnt from me the whole ICT Syllabus for Advanced Level.

However I am very happy about the results and so do my students. I have high hopes in them and wish them all the success in their future endeavors.

I have started Teaching ICT in Hambantota for students of Zahira National School in my leisure time. I'm Thankful for my partners Fuzuly and Naseeh for providing full support for this effort although I am not in the office at Dehiwala, working remotely most of the time from Hambantota.

"Geniuz Institute of Technology" my educational initiative rolling out on 1st January 2015 in Hambantota.


- Shiham Samsudeen,

How to find disk space used by the SQL Server Database

• Find out database size as a whole and also the data file and log file space usage

EXEC sp_helpdb @dbname= 'StairWay3'

• Find space used by each table

SELECT 

    t.NAME AS TableName,

    s.Name AS SchemaName,

    p.rows AS RowCounts,

    SUM(a.total_pages) * 8 AS TotalSpaceKB, 

    SUM(a.used_pages) * 8 AS UsedSpaceKB, 

    (SUM(a.total_pages) - SUM(a.used_pages)) * 8 AS UnusedSpaceKB

FROM 

    sys.tables t

INNER JOIN      

    sys.indexes i ON t.OBJECT_ID = i.object_id

INNER JOIN 

    sys.partitions p ON i.object_id = p.OBJECT_ID AND i.index_id = p.index_id

INNER JOIN 

    sys.allocation_units a ON p.partition_id = a.container_id

LEFT OUTER JOIN 

    sys.schemas s ON t.schema_id = s.schema_id

WHERE 

    t.NAME NOT LIKE 'dt%' 

    AND t.is_ms_shipped = 0

    AND i.OBJECT_ID > 255 

GROUP BY 

    t.Name, s.Name, p.Rows

ORDER BY 

    t.Name

Piracy and Unconventional Wisdom

This is something i came across today. It was a real informer.

"As software developers, piracy is something that affects us all. You might not see it directly if you work for a large company but you still have an interest in who is using your company's software. If you work for a small company or are a solo developer, piracy hits a lot closer to home. 

Both large and small companies usually offer "knee jerk" reactions. Such reactions are despite conventional wisdom and are generally incorrect. "

This article is a little one year old. But it has a lot to offer for the knowledge workers. Read the complete article here :

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/7312/Piracy-and-Unconventional-Wisdom

Display buzy icon during windows client web service call .Net 4.5

Think of a situation where you encounter delay when performing remote service calls from your thick client. For example a windows forms application calling a long running process. Your user might have no clue of what is going on with their application. So it is very important at-least to let the user know something is going behind the scenes. One option is to use a busy cursor when performing a service call and hide when the service call is done. As a developer this can be achieved in several ways. But we need to look into the best possible option to fulfill this requirement in a generalized way.

Since this requirement is common and we will have to duplicate code in each place where the application calls a service, there is an elegant common solution to this. 

Whenever we need to intercept service calls to and from client and the server, .Net framework has provided necessary tools with extension points to tap into the service call and perform actions.

Take a look at Message Inspectors at MSDN


http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa717047(v=vs.110).aspx


We can use the BeforeSendRequest method to display the buzy cursor and AfterReceiveReply to hide the wait cursor