Steps to Allow Access

1. Open the SQL Server Configuration Management application, 1) start SQL Services and set to start automatically, 2) start SQL Browser and set to start automatically; these are not started or set to start automatically when a new AMI instance is launched
2. While in the SQL Server Configuration Management application, go to the node, Network Protocols and find the Dynamic TCP port under the IP ALL section. Make note of the port to be used later.
3. Open the same following ports in the Windows Firewall:
   1. TCP <dynamicport> (from step #2)
   2. UDP <1434> (for the SQL Browser Service)
4. In the EC2 AWS Security Group of the server add the following ports:
   1. TCP <dynamicport> (from step #2)
   2. UDP <1434> (for the SQL Browser Service)
5. Turn off EC2 server hostname naming from the EC2 Administration Services application, rename the server according to your own server naming standards in the Computer | Properties panel, restart the box

Accessing the Server through SSMS

It’s important to note that there are four different ways to access the EC2 AWS SQL Server box from your local machine. To connect to a SQL Server Instance it’s necessary to use the name of the server and the port. If a default instance is setup, then the port, by default is TCP 1433, but this is not the case with EC2 AWS AMI servers.

The standard method to attach to the database server from an application or SSMS is “[<servername>][<ip>][\<instance>][,<port>]”

1. In order to use <servername>, you need to have some form of DNS setup, which is done automatically for an EC2, or you have done through Elastic IPs and your own DNS server (like GoDaddy). If you don’t have DNS, use the <ip> or <elasticip>
2. To access the <instance>, the SQL Browser Service must be started and the UDP 1434 port open in AWS Security Group and the Windows Firewall.

Examples

“aws.dns.server.name” comes from the properties of the EC2 instance properties. “ec2sqlexpress” is an example name of the SQL Server Instance. Using the IP must be the IP as provided through a VPC or the Elastic IP (not part of this tutorial). The port is represented as an example 411xx is not a real number, it must be what you find in the SQL Server Configuration Application.

• Example 1 using DNS and SQL Browser Service: “aws.dns.server.name\ec2sqlexpress”
• Example 2 using DNS and port: “aws.dns.server.name,411xx”
• Example 3 using IP (VPC) or Elastic IP and SQL Browser Service: “50.234.x.x\ec2sqlexpress”
• Example 4 using IP (VPC) or Elastic IP and port: “50.234.x.x,411xx”

Other Considerations

There have been some statements that SQL Server can’t run on a micro. Well, that can be true for the big SQL editions like Standard or Enterprise, and my considerations would be 2048 (my recommendation) to start.

As for another topic, I’m always pinning my CPU’s and my RAM at certain values.

For another topic, I’m always pinning my CPU’s and my RAM at certain values, because all too many times do I find problems with keeping the default installation settings. This is to say that the default installation uses all CPUs and all RAM. I will put turn on CPU affinity and take out 10% of the CPUs, if you have 10 cores, I remove 1 or 2 for the OS and Networking services and other support activities to run. The same goes for RAM.

Zipping capabilities are limited in these free OS versions. For example, it isn’t permitted to set password on the zip file, so make sure you don’t send sensitive information through the internet or to other people. It’s also not permitted to adjust how much compression is applied, or making an EXE version (for decompressing on a system that doesn’t have Zip capabilities). In order to get zipping with passwords and other enhanced features, you will still need to resort to purchasing an application, for the Mac, it can be StuffIt Pro; for Windows, it can be WinZip. There are other free utilities that that offer enhanced features for free, like from 7-Zip or WinRAR.

What is a Zip file?

Zip files are a way to take many files on a disk, bundle them into a single file and apply compression to them to shrink the final resulting files into a smaller result than the sum of the total set of files being package/zipped/compressed. The files are made of the original files represented in a compressed format. Many operating systems have built-in Zipping or compression capabilities now, so you won’t have to buy an application for simple compressing/bundling tasks.

In simple terms, if you have a lot of the same letters and numbers in a document, Zipping the document would count how many duplicates there are, where they are located, and take them how, thus compressing the document. The document is not readable in the compressed format, but it can then be “unzipped” and the document will be reconstructed to it’s original form with all the duplicate letters, numbers, and other characters.

The files that don’t compress well are JPG photo files and other formats that already in a “compressed” format. It does still mean thought that you can “package” or “bundle” your files using Zip even though the compression may not reduce the file size. This is particularly important when you want to send one file to someone. For example, you have 50 new photos you’ve taken of a place you visited, you want to send those to someone, zip them up in to one “zip package” file. This eliminates sending all 50 files. The compression won’t be good, so the file will be large, so watch out for that. But you can still send the single file.

How Do I Zip Files?

This can be accomplished the same way on either Mac or Windows:

1. Pick a set of files, or a folder that contains the files to package/compress
2. On Windows, right-click and “Send To | Compressed (Zipped) Folder”
3. On Mac, right-click or ctrl+left-click and choose “Compress Files”

A single file will be created with all original files packaged and compressed and bundled into it for storage, email delivery, or thumb-drive transport.

It’s difficult to start a business and the tools to use in your profession are required to be effective and useful. Well, that effort just got a ton easier in the programming industry. There are some “hoops” to pass through and some fees that can be assessed if you exit the program early, but they are significantly less than the upfront costs to get started. A similar program was introduced last year Dreamspark and enhanced this year to offer High School students with a free programming software bundle. It used to only be fore College students. Now, that same concept has been extended and is introduced to small business and noobies that want to start programming. I wish I had this opportunity when I was first starting out. I bought Visual Basic 1.0 Standard at my University at the whopping student discount price of $500.00, upfront.

Get on board with this and make a name for yourself. It’s definitely worth it. The worst of it is, if you exit the program and pay a measly $100.00. That’s small potatoes compared to the $1000.00 price tag for the bundle just to get the software. It’s almost like a try before you buy shareware program, but you’re actually encouraged to develop production software. What do you have to lose, $100.00, but you have everything else to gain. WebsiteSpark may be your ticket to the big leagues and eventually a big fat check.

So some of the conditions are:

• Pay $100 to exit the participating program
• Membership can also last no more than three years, after which time Microsoft, of course, hopes you sign on as a Network Partner.
• You must roll-out a new application or website within 6 months of joining.
• If you hit the big times, the ride is over; but you may not care since would be living the fat life.

The sweet spot just hit by offering this now not to just College students, but now High School students. In the grades from 9 through 12. The “very small” catch is that the students must go through a few “small” hoops to get it.  I would highly advise that anyone in school from grade 9 to college look into this … it’s great. The students in High School will need to have the assistance of a school representative to make the requests, download the keys, and download the software for the student, but that’s a small price to pay for the really small price to start getting into programming.

Just in case you installed Joomla with the default “jos_” table prefix, here are the instructions to change the prefix to something else to improve security. Notice:  follow the instructions as they’re listed and it will minimize downtime since youre website is running. Here at SnapJag Creative Designs we want our instructions are such that you can feel assured that you are able to perform the steps with accuracy, efficiency, and with as little impact as possible to your operations.

It is highly recommended that you perform these steps at a low-peak time. But make sure you are awake enough to follow the instructions if you’re doing it at night. =) Note: This method does not ask you to remove the tables first, so don’t delete the old “jos_” tables until the end. This is to help make sure you have a backup in place and that the old structure is still ready in case anything goes wrong.

1. Kick people out: make sure no one is doing administration or management in the Joomla back-end.
2. Login to phpMyAdmin.
3. Click on the Export link, leaving all options as they are; specifically for:
   1. Export: SQL
   2. SQL options: SQL Export compatibility = None
   3. SQL options: Structure (Add AUTO_INCREMENT, Enclose table and field names with backquotes)
   4. SQL options: Data (Complete inserts, Extended inserts, Max Length: 50000, Use hexadecimal for binary fields, Export type: INSERT)
   5. Save to file: not on, you will use the query box to copy and paste the values to disk. If you have large content then use the method to capture to the server and retrieve the data.
4. Click the Go link, this export may take a few minutes depending on the size of your content.
5. Open your favorite editor (like UltraEdit), copy the content from the query box and paste it to a new text window in the text editor.
6. Save the file as a new name to make a backup of the old data.
7. Save the file again as a new name to make a copy of the new data.
8. Do a search and replace for “jos_” and replace with the four character prefix of your choice. If you are using UltraEdit, choose to see a line listing of all results and scan them to make sure replacements didn’t happen with any other data than that of table name references.
9. Comment out with dashes (‘–’) the statement ‘Create Database…’ if it exists in the script so that an attempt to create the database doesn’t occur. This will cause an error, no damage, just an error and you’ll have to do this step and run it again if you don’t.
10. Click on the SQL Query Window link to bring up a new SQL query window. You can’t do this next step in the same window as the query box output.
11. Copy the text from the text editor and paste them into the SQL Query Window where it says “Run SQL query/queries on server localhost:”
12. Click the Go button to begin the script to create the new tables.
13. Wait for the response from the server in the browser window behind the SQL Query Window. Address any issues if you need to.
14. If the response is not an error. Close the SQL Query Window show the phpMyAdmin home window.
15. It’s possible the left side of the browser will say “No Tables Found”. Don’t worry, press F5 to refresh the window, and you’ll see all the new tables.
16. Open your Joomla! back-end, go to Site | Global Configuration | Server
17. Change the Database Settings | Database Prefix to your new prefix and click Save
18. You may now be required to sign-in again. You will now be connected to your new tables.
19. One more step is to delete the old ‘jos_’ tables. Go back to the phpMyAdmin window
20. Click the Databases link, then the database where the tables exist
21. Select all the ‘jos_’ tables, be careful to not select any new tables.
22. At the bottom of the list, click the combo box “With Selected” and click Drop. This will build a script to remove the selected tables, confirm they are only the ‘jos_’ tables, and click Go.
23. Wait for a ‘Executed Successfully’ statement and then
24. Close the myPHPAdmin window
25. For one final test, back in Joomla! logout and log back in and create some articles or do normal things to test the functionality.
26. Also, confirm in the Site | Global Configuration | Server screen that the Database Prefix is set accordingly.

Hope this has been thorough and helpful. If you see any problems, errors, or changes that need to be made, please let us know.

• MacPro 2×2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (yes, that’s 8 cores, happy times)
• 8GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
• 1.5 Terabytes of HDD space
• 30 inch HD Cinema Display

About Picasa for Mac

The new Picasa for Mac application has been installed and rearing to go. I am currently moving my photos from my UBUNTU system to the Mac. I will give everyone instructions on how to do this as I couldn’t find concrete information about how to do it. So, in the spirit of the SnapJag support system, you’ll get your answers.

I use Lightroom as my main photo manager and not Picasa, but my wife and kids use it because it has very simple, straight-forward features that match their computer skills. Lightroom is more advanced and requires more skill. It handles my organization, editing, and production requirements much more powerfully than Picasa could. But they aren’t meant to be in competition with each other.

Picasa is meant to be an entry level photo manager providing all the basic features that would be required by light users. Lightroom enhances those light features by 7 fold giving the state of the art workflow processing modules (steps) and fine tuning editing photos, and exceptional export capabilities. Also, the ability to organize photos in folders, categories, and EXIF (embedded photo key information) are provided simply and effortlessly.

Here is the link to download the Picasa for Mac software. It’s appears to be very stable, friendly as usual, and you’ll love the speed and enhancements it provides. If you need help or support with your Mac or Picasa, give us a ring.

Use the link to find the free patch to update your machine and get it working again. In short, this worked!

1. follow the link
2. download the software
3. begin the installation
4. answer the questions to uninstall the old HP Mediacenter software and install the new
5. start the Mediacenter

The disc was recognized and started playing the movie. Finally!

The Long of the Story

I bought the X Men trilogy blu-ray for my wife for Mother’s Day and tried playing it in our HP Pavilion dv7-1273cl laptop. It didn’t work. It initially started when I had previlus model of HP laptop in December of 2008, but the fan failed. I returned it and purchased a more updated model. Now having the fan taken care of the same problem still existed for the DVDs.

But, thanks to this posting on the HPs forums I found the link to take care of it.

Originally, we bought Horton and it didn’t work. I bought Batman, it worked. I now bought X Men and it didn’t work … consistently. Now that I’ve done the patch, all of them, so far, are working.

Hope this helped you out too.

1) Right-click on your Taskbar
2) Click Properties menu item
3) Make the Taskbar tab active
4) Untick the Group similar taskbar buttons

If you have a handy tip that you’d like to share, please forward it to us.

DECLARE @Number1 numeric(14,2)
DECLARE @Number2 numeric(14,2)
DECLARE @Number3 numeric(14,2)
DECLARE @Total numeric(14,2)

-- Step 2: then, add the numbers together traditionally.
SELECT @Total = @Number1 + @Number2 + @Number3
SELECT [Total] = @Total

In a recent project it was necessary to grab a lot of numbers from multiple tables, perform calculations with them, and then return the results. The trick to assign multiple variables at once as indicated above yields the results of the simple trick. Instead of adding all the numbers in separate lines, do it all in one SELECT statement. Fast efficient results.

SELECT @Number1 = 15
, @Number2 = 25
, @Number3 = 50
, @Total = @Number1 + @Number2 + @Number3

SELECT [Total] = @Total

It’s great that I can reference previous variables without having to write individual SELECT or SET statements. Makes for very slick code. Just make sure that if you move the variables around, they stay in the descending order of dependency or your numbers will be off.

There are many situations where you can come out with the same results in a set based query as opposed to using a cursor. Again, not all the time, but yes for the most part. Why is it something that I strongly feel you should avoid. It’s the same reason that temporary tables, a-typical parameters (parameter sniffing), and other performance problem situations should be avoided.

In a nutshell, when cursors are used, the stored procedure must be recompiled every so often and there is a ton of overhead involved with that. So don’t use them at all costs. Cursors are great for needing to identify other fields and data per row. Where a set based query can’t accomplish that. Use them sparingly.

Last Resort
Speaking of cursor overhead, if you have to use a cursor, then make sure you have applied the right attributes by asking yourself these questions.
1) Do you need to performan an update on the cursor data? If not, then add the READONLY attribute.
2) Do you need to traverse backwards on the cursor? If not, then add the FAST_FORWARD attribute.

By adding these attributes, you have greatly reduced the overhead of the cursor and make it a much more streamlined stored procedure. I would advise that you add these as a rule because it’s not very often that you would have to do these tasks.

Another option if you have to use Cursors … do not create or try to use temporary tables within the cursor loop. For the same reasons that you’ll want to minimize using temporary tables only because you must understand that the stored procedure will request a recompile every six (6) updates to a temporary table. That can hurt performance a lot.

Another option is to declare variables outside of the cursor loop and then use them in the loop. This helps with compiling and doing extra DECLARE work. It might be small, but it’s happening.