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Moving data? Integrating systems? Right ETL tool is your best friend

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When it comes to exporting data from one application and importing them into another one, many of the old-school .NET coders just jump right into what they know best: code away to map the source and target. Wrong approach! If these data-sets happen to be large, I've seen so many developers just working away nights and weekends as their code moves data on row at a time. Add some business rules and logic in the mix, project becomes a disaster. These days, there are just too many good ETL tools out there. Some are very feature-rich with a ton of out-of-box connectors.  Look for one that fits your budget and meets your need. Don't forget to consider the learning curve needed and the folks you have in your team. I've been using the suite for  Simego for a while for many data migration, integration and automation projects Data Synchronization Studio - XML Files Just an awesome tool that works fast for moving millions of rows of data between systems including ...
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Testing PDF forms with merge code fields - let's just build a tool

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My team has been tasked with a lot of PDF forms that needs to be designed and coded for merge fields. These fields are coming from a very large list with exact names of merged code fields and sample values to go with them. Once they are built, team needs to test form naming of the fields and formatting of values in them. A ton of really boring hours of manual typing and populating values in each field so we test for consistency and formatting before we upload them to the destination web app that uses these. Time for a little automation to help the team. Needed to build a little app that takes Folder containing PDF forms with merge code fields List of Merge Code filed names and sample values As input. Click a button and get these PDF forms populated with applicable sample values and flatten them. Here are the results: Windows Forms app Loop through the directory to find and process all pdf forms Loop through form fields in each PDF.  Log ...
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Small businesses, big problems, easy solutions.

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I recently helped a local non-profit  Al-Salam Foundation with their fundraising efforts .  Al-Salam is a small organization led and managed by a small group of folks. These folks are business owners, physicians and professional in other areas. Running AL-Slam is a part time thing for them with little time to spend and spare. Their focus has been growing the organization in Carmel community through civic engagements. They've had little time to research and implement right techs and tools to enhance and compliment their efforts. Such is the the situation in most small non-profits; especially religious institutions. Two immediate needs jumped out:  1.      Ability to accept credit cards from small donors. o     Onetime donation with ability to receive receipts o     Recurring donations that just works o     Ability to charge credit cards; POS style. 2.      Abi...
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Got a big project? Make a plan and work the plan.

It has been a while since I wrote last time. 2017 is flying off fast. My move to Dominion Dealer Solutions has been a wonderful journey. I have been lucky to be leading a team of veterans and working with few leaders in the automotive industry. They keep teaching me a thing or two every day. With all things coming to my On-boarding and Deployment Services team, some days I am drinking from a fire hose. My most recent project involves Dominion's swapping out an existing partner data feed from one technology stack to another. Data feed is receiving 100's of files every day from the external partner and pushing their contents to multiple internal targets in different formats. Current feed and process works. With upcoming retirement of that feed the partner, we needed to upgrade. Sounds easy, right? Well, let's just say some things went right, some went wrong and some went arguably in-between. In the end, we all are learning a few things as we are nearing the project...
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Dynamics CRM implementation: lessons learnt

2015 has been one heck of year for me personally and professionally. Just finished implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 for a fairly large group of users. This is my second full blown CRM project from inception to implementation. First one was Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 On-Premise. This one is MS Dynamics CRM 2015 Online. Both involved convincing business and IT folks on why choose CRM as the tool to solve the chosen problems. A ton of lessons learnt, as I have done with every project in my professional career. Here's a few in the form of advice. I have put them into 3 main categories: product, process and people. I consider all 3 to be vital for any successful IT project. 1. Product: You can't afford to miss this one You have picked Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 to solve business processes. Smart move! Now, know your product very well as soon as possible. Research, review and decide on all additional tools to go with CRM as well as othe...
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The connection name 'OraAspNetConString' was not found in the applications configuration or the connection string is empty.

Recently, I was getting this error when I was working on a web project I've had in my machine for a while.  Configuration Error Description:  An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately. Parser Error Message:  The connection name 'OraAspNetConString' was not found in the applications configuration or the connection string is empty. Source Error: Line 275: <siteMap> Line 276: <providers> Line 277: <add name="OracleSiteMapProvider" type="Oracle.Web.SiteMap.OracleSiteMapProvider, Oracle.Web, Version=4.112.3.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89b483f429c47342" connectionStringName="OraAspNetConString" applicationName="" securityTrimmingEnabled="true"/> Line 278: </providers> Line 279: </siteMap> Source File:  C:\W...
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Could not load Shockwave Flash

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I have been getting this pesky "Could Not Load Shockwave Flash" message in Google Chrome whenever I visit any site with videos in them. After a bit research and reading about many solutions. It turns out my downloading of PepeflashPlayer.dll (via Chrome update) recently is causing this. So, time to disable the sucker and so I did by  Typing in chrome://plugins in chrome Close dows Chrome and open a new instance of Chrome. message is gone, videos are visible.  .. everything back to the way they were. No more pesky message and inability to see the videos in Chrome.
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