$sync_link_id = ifx_connect($database, $username, $password);

I got following error:

[SQLSTATE=IX 000 SQLCODE=-25560]

If you check Informix document from IBM, you know Environment variable INFORMIXSERVER must be set. We know how to set up environment variable on Unix and Apache, but the question is how to set it up for IIS?

People may first think this could be environment variable on Windows as well. But this is wrong. Informix client is using Registry KEY on Windows platform. Here is the path on a 64bit machine.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Informix\Environment\

Second, you should have your default server setup under KEY:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Informix\SqlHosts\

At here, you need to provide HOST, PROTOCOL and SERVICE, so php_ifx knows how to connect to your Informix server.

After set them up, PHP should be able to talk to Informix.

In Oracle, we can do this:

SELECT * from
(
SELECT *, ROWNUM as rownumber from Product order by name
)
where rownumber between (PageNbr - 1)*PageSize + 1 and PageNbr*PageSize

As you can see, this query needs to fetch all rows first then narrows down the result. A more efficient query is:

select *
from ( select a.*, rownum rnum
from ( select * from product order by name) a
where rownum <= PageNbr*PageSize)
where rnum >= (PageNbr - 1)*PageSize + 1

Oracle will optimize this query, so it is not as resource intensive as the first one.

In SQL Server 2005, we can do similar query:

WITH Temp AS
(
SELECT row_number() OVER (ORDER BY [name]) AS rowNum, * from Product
)
SELECT * FROM Temp
WHERE rowNum between (@PageNbr - 1) * @PageSize + 1 and @PageNbr * @PageSize
ORDER BY [name]

The query had been optimized in SQL Server as well.

You can sign up here.

He said: “Microsoft used to present ASP.NET Web Forms vs. MVC as a choice between a car and a motorcycle. Both will get you to your job , but some (the majority of the population, I might add) prefer driving a car, while a sizable minority love their motorcycles which give you better gas mileage and independence, but don’t protect you in the rain. To stretch this analogy to its breaking point, let me suggest that ASP.NET AJAX is like riding a bicycle to work (lean and mean, best gas mileage, but it requires you to exercise for your commute and exposes you to the elements like the motorcycle) while Dynamic Data is like taking the bus to work (let metro do the driving for you.)”

You can read his blog entry here:

Essential Visual Studio Tips & Tricks that Every Developer Should Know

Basic Math Errors in JavaScript

JavaScript has a built-in method – toFixed, can be used to fix this issue easily as well.

amount = 103 * 67.12;
result = amount.toFixed(2);

So don’t forget this when you deal with a floating point decimal even for addition or multiplication.

 To solve this issue, you may have to move “Using” statements inside namespace declaration. This is a workaround provided by Microsoft.

LINQ to SQL and Serialization

I believe this is a common issue for LINQ objects and hope this blog can save time for somebody.

10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets

Boost ASP.NET performance with deferred content loading

• MySQL:

To store UTF-8 in a table field, you need to set column’s charset => utf8 and collate => utf8_unicode_ci

• Web Page:

To show foreign language in a web page, the page file has to be saved as encoding UTF-8

• PHP:

The default encoding for PHP 5 is UTF-8, so it supports foreign language. But if you use PHP to retrieve UTF-8 characters from MySQL, you must add mysql_query(‘SET NAMES utf8′); after connecting to MySQL database for setting up the connection encoding.

• RICO:

As for RICO Live gird, Ajax response must start with <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>

• ASP.NET:

First make sure you have following line in you web.config
<globalization requestEncoding=”utf-8″ responseEncoding=”utf-8″ fileEncoding=”utf-8″/>
Second, keep both .aspx and code behind file save as the same encoding UTF-8
If you need to access the UTF-8 characters in MySQL database, be sure to use MySQL Connector/Net 5.0 or up with undocumented setting: charset=utf8 in connection string. We tried ODBC driver for MySQL, it doesn’t work properly with UTF-8.