A for loop within a for loop in MS-DOShttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/automation/ms-dos/a-for-loop-within-a-for-loop-in-ms-dos.html

03 October 2013 to do this (we're talking technology belonging to the 90s - MS-DOS v6.22). The example wants to loop through a directory and then loop through the line it finds. Why? I use another technology for automation but sometimes the simpler solution is the one...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: MS-DOS
• Language: en-GB

Regular Expressions in SQLhttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/database/regular-expressions-in-sql.html

09 January 2014 'o r a c l e', 1, 1, 'x') Microsoft T-SQL Note the circumflex/hat to negate the expression in the first example, and then the use of NOT LIKE in the second example: SELECT * FROM [STUDENTS] WHERE [S_SURNAME] LIKE '%[^a-zA-Z0-9]%' -- returns all rows...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: Databases
• Language: *

SSRS Border Problemhttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/microsoft/ssrs/ssrs-border-problem.html

20 January 2014 This note corrects the situation at Design time. This is where you are trying to select a cell to have an outline border but then cells around it without a border. You may find that BIDS or Report Builder (however you're building your report) will apply...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: SQL Server Reporting Services
• Language: en-GB

PHP: First name and Initial of Surnamehttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/web-development/php/php-first-name-and-initial-of-surname.html

27 March 2014 A note for myself on some code to convert a string of two names into a string made up of the first name and then using the initial of the second name. -- What I have John Smith Fred.Bloggs -- What I want John S. Fred B. How? So different ways, the first...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: Personal Home Page
• Language: en-GB

SSRS Change Background Color of Imagehttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/microsoft/ssrs/ssrs-change-background-color-of-image.html

08 April 2014 > Image Edit the Image Properties to specify the image to use. The image can be an expression as well (I embed these and then refer to them in the expression by name). For example: =IIF(Fields!SummaryStatus.Value="Success", "status_ok",...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: SQL Server Reporting Services
• Language: en-GB

SSIS: Cannot open Data Flow Task: DTS.Pipeline.2 issuehttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/microsoft/ssis/ssis-cannot-open-data-flow-task-dts-pipeline-2-issue.html

09 June 2014 solutions running against SQL Server 2008 R2. We can use VS2012 for both but this requires upgrading all the packages and then making them suitable for our new SQL Server 2012 instances. How? This applies to a workstation (hopefully you're not doing...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: SQL Server Integration Services
• Language: en-GB

VBScript to retrieve Windows Product Keyhttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/microsoft/windows-os/vbscript-to-retrieve-windows-product-key.html

23 September 2015 24 x = x -1 Loop While x >= 0 i = i -1 KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i -1) Then i = i -1 KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput End If Loop While i >= 0 ConvertToKey = KeyOutput End Function Save the file and...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: Windows OS
• Language: en-GB

Trim values along with the tabhttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/database/mysql/trim-values-along-with-the-tab.html

13 June 2016 trim in MySQL along with getting rid of any leading or trailing tab characters. Why? I use MS Excel for organizing data and then converting to MySQL commands. Unfortunately, the MS Excel software adds tab characters to delimit the columns... How? UPDATE...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: MySQL
• Language: *

MySQL Transactions in PHPhttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/database/mysql/mysql-transactions-in-php.html

14 December 2016 the expected result before committing any changes to the data. This where transactions are useful. We can run the queries, then check if some conditions are met before committing the changes in the data: $mysqli->begin_transaction(); $mysqli->query...

• Type: Article
• Author: Ike Francis
• Category: MySQL
• Language: en-GB

Display a thumbnail of a Google Drive videohttp://mail.joellipman.com/articles/google/display-a-thumbnail-of-a-google-drive-video.html

13 November 2018 part of this is to get the Google Drive File ID (which you need for the below). The image link (src) will be as below but then this is a redirect to the actual thumbnail stored by Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?authuser=0&sz=w320&id=...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: Google
• Language: en-GB

COVID-19: Working from Homehttp://mail.joellipman.com/covid-19-work-from-home.html

05 July 2020 important not to be slouching over the coffee table for hours or days on end. I was waiting to move house during 2020 but then a virus capable of locking down the world manifested itself. I thought this would be temporary but after 4 months of slouching...

• Type: Article
• Author: Joel Lipman
• Category: Articles
• Language: *