When reading values from a SqlDataReader in .NET null SQL values will cause the reader to error. I used to have an explicit null check around each column, however as this involved quite a bit of code duplication I had a look for something better and found this Stack Overflow Read more
I recently migrated this blog over to WordPress from BlogEngine.NET as BlogEngine.NET seems to have been abandoned. In the process of setting up WordPress I discovered that the backend database is MySQL, as I mostly work with Microsoft SQL Server and a SQL database on Azure is cheaper than than Read more
The script tasks in SSIS can be a bit limited in what they allow you to do as NuGet packages can’t be used and not all class libraries seem to be available. Given that, below is my code for calling an external API and logging it’s results to a SQL Read more
While trying to convert some integers to hex values in SQL I found a few options that worked on ints and bigints but nothing that worked on anything larger and as I was needing to convert some integers of datatype decimal(20) I created the below function which is based on Read more
Adding logging to a .NET Core console application In .NET Core projects logging is managed via dependency injection. Whilst this works fine for ASP.NET projects where this is all automatically created upon starting a new project in Startup.cs, in console applications it takes a bit of configuration to get it up and Read more
UPDATE: It appears that there’s now a “Worker Service” template available (thanks Hobby Developer) which scaffolds Dependency Injection, configuration and logging for you. If you wnat a long running service then that’s probably the best option but if you want an intermitantly triggered executable that does a defined task and Read more
I’m currently revising for the 70-473 exam on designing and implementing cloud data platform solutions, as there doesn’t yet seem to be any books available for it I’ve decided to collect some links to content here. There’s also a Microsoft video that provides a quick overview of the topics covered Read more
Recently I’ve been trying to create a test Android app using Xamarin that uses push and in-app messaging provided by Urban Airship. Although I figured this would be pretty simple it turned out to be more trickey than I first thought, probably due to both my own lack of skill Read more
I recently wanted to create a nested doughnut (or donut?) chart to help me to visualize what I was spending per resource group as I was getting close to hitting the monthly limit of free money in my MSDN account. After a bit of Googling it appears that there isn’t Read more
I’ve recently been working on a project to display Azure billing information in an internal dashboard and to send out alerts if the billing exceeds a certain amount. The first problem I had with this was that although there’s GitHub projects for getting the rate card and billing information they’re Read more