Year of IT

As you might already know, in Switzerland, we're holding the Year of IT, with an IT-fair Informatica 08 held by major Swiss IT players like Google, Credit Suisse and others.

This is really cool and for me as an IT guy, being really glad that I chose to work in IT (there ARE a lot of downsides too, but you often get to see many interesting things thanks to IT), but it seems that the whole event has been set up mainly to attract to IT people and give them the impression of being a particularly good employer.

And particularly now, one major bank that co-sponsored this whole event dictates (again) freelancer salaries by advising all agencies that bring in IT-freelancers. The company requires those agencies to reduce agreed hourly rate by about 8%. This after this bank has, together with another major bank, dictated hour-salaries in the past. Even worse, currently employed freelancers were forced to accept a lower salary or leave with short notice.

In this sense, I say thanks to that company for organizing such an Event that should improve the reputation of IT (it's being thought as boring, corny and stressful). But to me this company rather seems to piggyback, hoping to attract some more of those rare IT people ( I wonder how they communicate those even lower salaries to them..) Are they really that rude ? (erm, yes, they are.. that's how things work). It's just always again difficult to see such little morale and ethics.

Anyway, I've worked 14 months for that company, and ever since try to avoid them (successfully so far :-) )

Good IT-Year !!
Denis

inMind GmbH - officially founded

There it is:
inMind GmbH

After another twenty days wait for officials to confirm, inMind has been founded ! Let's see how the future develops - surely joinup.ch is now backed by a company to avoid legal problems. So all future plans are possible :-)

Another step in an eventful life !
Keep watching :-) and use joinup.ch
Thanks !
Denis

Founding a company

Finally it has happened ! On June 4, 2008, I and my business partner when it comes to joinup.ch founded the company under which name our web application will operate. This is a very important moment for me, as it is a clear step forward and besides - offers yet again new possibilities ! Let's hope that all goes well, and for a start, that the founding papers find their snail mail way :-)

SQL Server: Temporarily disable constraints for data Load

for data loads that replace referenced data by new data (that validates against constraints of course), you can quickly disable constraints checking like this:


http://www.sqljunkies.com/WebLog/roman/archive/2005/01/30/7037.aspx

DataSet Enforce Constraints - Detailed error messages (quick post)

Did you ever set EnforceConstraints to true and encountered an exception and tried to find out which constraint exactly failed ?

Dave has written a small function that simply but cleverly iterates over all tables/columns in case of an exception and displays the exact locations constraints couldn't be enforced:



If you prefer C#:

/// Safely tries to enable constraints, and if not possible returns detailed error
public static void TryEnforceConstraints(DataSet ds)
{
try
{
ds.EnforceConstraints = true;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Debug.WriteLine("DataSet errors: " + ds.DataSetName);
foreach (DataTable table in ds.Tables)
{
DataRow[] ErrorRows = table.GetErrors();
foreach (DataRow row in ErrorRows)
{
Debug.WriteLine("Table: " + table.TableName);
Debug.WriteLine(" Row Error: " + row.RowError);
DataColumn[] ErrorColumns = row.GetColumnsInError();

foreach (DataColumn column in ErrorColumns)
{
Debug.WriteLine("Column: " + column.ColumnName);
Debug.WriteLine(" Error: " + row.GetColumnError(column));
}
}
}
}



}


Not advanced magic here, but practical coding help :-) Happy Coding !

CSS tips - the whole collection

I haven't been liking CSS but it's something inavoidable (and once - after years- I got my head round it, actually even useful and maintainable ! ;-) )

Just a short one: find the cooles tips about CSS here:
http://pooliestudios.com/projects/iconize/

2008 - this is IT!

I was looking forward to this year - PDC is taking place, which is clearly a spot/moment where each IT worker, or at least each .net / MS afficiando, can enjoy the fact that she's working in IT. It's definitely one of the many highlights that you only get to see when you are working in Software Development / Architecture or something similar.

In general, what i find very very cool about working in IT is that there is a lot of responsibility that waits to be taken over - and usually even a beginner willing to accept responsibilities is getting those. So the possibilities to develop personal skills are almost endless.
Also, rather quickly, IT enables workers to see more places, in more detail, and in a number of locations one doesn't usually get to see so quickly.
Reflecting back on my almost eight years of IT work results in huge amount of incredible memories, in a number of locations and/or companies all over this world. Also, I've met colleagues from several cultures, giving me an insight into work-procedures and lifestyles I'd hardly get to know, had I not a Job as a (C#) Software Developer.

Then, one could ask, why does IT have such a bad reputation - and why, besides all those benefits, are there so many young 'work forces' that don't want to bother with IT ?

Let me speculate about some of those reasons - in one of my next post, which is hopefully to come soon. (there's plenty in my mind, but I haven't enough time to finish this post then..)