A Trigger is a Stored Procedure executed upon the modification to a database table. Triggers can be set to occur on INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE of a table row, and can even be set to happen before or after the change occurs. Upon a change to a table that has a trigger the body of…
Understanding DB Views : Advantages vs Disadvantages
December 17, 2009
A VIEW is a virtual table in a database whose contents is defined by a query. To the end user the view functions and seems like an actual table with defined columns and rows of data. However these rows and columns are visible by the query results of the view. For most practical purposes views…
Bitmap size limits in Flash
December 10, 2009
Today I came across a perplexing issue when working on applying a BlurFilter to a Movie Clip in a Flash Application. When working with a large container object for a scrolling gallery I found that the BlurFilter I was trying to apply was not being rendered. After some testing and research it appears that Bitmaps…
Release 0.4 of PHP Wrapper Library for Harvest API
December 10, 2009
Release 0.4 is now available of the Harvest API PHP Wrapper Library. This update to the library supports both the Time Tracking and Extended REST APIs, in addition to bug fixes and additional documentation. To stay up-to-date with all the changes visit the main library page available here.
Database Design: Normalized vs Denormalized Tables
December 10, 2009
When designing the Database Tables for an application there are many factors that come into play. Often one issue that seems to crop up is the use of denormalized vs normalized tables for representing data. Below is a brief overview of what normalized and denormalized tables are. As for which one to use in your…
TweenLite: How to Tween an Animation by use of frames and frameLabels
December 10, 2009
When working with tweens in Flash we often create custom time-line based animations for various elements of the project. These time-line animations can sometimes need to be played in reverse by the frame count and not by a time duration. If one utilizes the TweenLite or TweenMax Tweening Framework this task can easily be completed…
Optimizing T-SQL by use of SHOWPLAN to tune SQL Queries
December 7, 2009
When writing SQL queries we often measure the performance of the query or procedure by the amount of time it takes to complete. Often I found myself saying that if it completes in a couple seconds then it is good. Lately however I have found myself more concerned with the IO count then with the…
Release 1.0 of YahooFinance – PHP Library
December 3, 2009
YahooFinanceAPI is an open source php library for interacting with the Yahoo Finance Stock API. For those of you unfamiliar with Yahoo’s Stock API please review my previous post Yahoo Finance Stock API. This library contains an easy interface for obtaining information on one or more stocks. For a quick demo of the library feel…
What is the main difference between MIT and GPL licenses?
December 1, 2009
When writing applications, libraries, or other source code we often want some control over how it is used by the community. Licenses allow us developers to protect our rights to the source code while defining the terms in which others may utilize it. Two of the most common licenses used in open source software are…
Release 0.3: PHP Wrapper Library for Harvest API
November 23, 2009
New Version Released!! Get it here. Version 0.3 is available. I’ve been making enhancements since the initial release of the PHP Wrapper Library for the Harvest API. This 0.3 version of the wrapper library contains full implementation of the Extended REST API minus the receipt images. In addition there are 2 new utility classes that…