Enabling MS SQL Server to run Command Line Applications

For Microsoft SQL Server to be able to run windows command line applications the following query must be run.

USE master

GO

EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1

GO

RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

GO

EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1

GO

RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

GO

EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 0

GO

Jenkins (Hudson) Excluded Regions Example

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2137982/hudson-ci-excluded-regions-cant-filter-folder/9626110#9626110

Headless Jenkins Selenium Node in Ubuntu 10

First make sure your test suite and test files all end in .html. My company wasn't doing this and for whatever reason selenium 2.5 would run the tests fine and then it wouldn't quit the browser.

Second make sure and use a supported browser version. I tried running it using firefox 9 and it wouldnt' run any tests. Installing 3.6.27 worked.

Then I followed these two tutorials

http://www.labelmedia.co.uk/blog/posts/setting-up-selenium-server-on-a-headless-jenkins-ci-build-machine.html

http://blog.martin-lyness.com/archives/installing-xvfb-on-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala

to get around the firefox profile timeout issue I ran

export DISPLAY=:1 firefox http://google.com &

which i got from http://drumcoder.co.uk/blog/2010/nov/23/selenium-headless/

also had to apt-get install libXtst-dev

Hidden Features of SQL Server

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/121243/hidden-features-of-sql-server

mssql php extenstion won't load

There are quite a few reason's the php_mssql.dll extension for PHP may not be loading on your windows server.

For PHP 5.2 anyway I found that both MSVCR71.DLL and ntwdblib.dll needed to be copied to various places.

MSVCR71.DLL needed to be in c:\Windows\System32 as having it in C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322 wasn't good enough.

ntwdblib.dll needed to be both in the PHP directory and c:\Windows\System32

I'd love to know why this is, but for now I'm just happy it's working.

This post helped me out, when google failed me; http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mssql-connect.php#68115 .

Windows Environment Variables Editor

Rapid Environment Editor is a pretty awesome utility that let's you easily edit your windows environment variables. A co-worker of mine passed this around a year or so ago.

Installing PHPUnit for use in Windows NetBeans

I initially used NetBeans Guide to get PHPUnit installed in NetBeans but here is a quick install checklist for use with PHP 5.2. These are mostly workarounds I had to do for 5.2.17, that work as of this post, but may not work in the future.

For details on how to use it see NetBeans Guide.

1. Install NetBeans
2. PHP 5.2 w/ the following extensions
   Curl
   At least one of the PDO extensions
3. Run go-pear.bat located in the PHP directory
4. Run the PEAR_ENV.reg it creates
5. from the cmd line run "pear upgrade pear"
6. Modify pear.bat add a semi-colon to include_path="%PHP_PEAR_INSTALL_DIR%" so that it becomes include_path=";%PHP_PEAR_INSTALL_DIR%" This will prevent you from getting an "Invalid configuration directive" error every time you run pear.
7. run "pear install channel://pear.php.net/Net_URL2-0.3.1"
8. run "pear install channel://pear.php.net/HTTP_Request2-2.0.0RC1"
9. Follow the PHPUnit Install Guide to install PHPUnit

If you get any errors like "Failed to download pear/Net_URL2 within preferred state "stable", latest release is version 0.3.1, stability "beta", use "channel://pear.php.net/Net_URL2-0.3.1" to install" Just run "pear channel://WHATEVER_CHANNEL_IT_TOLD_YOU_TO_USE". In this example you would run "pear install channel://pear.php.net/Net_URL2-0.3.1".

If after following the PHPUnit Install Guide you get the message

No releases available for package "pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit"

try running pear update-channels and then pear clear-cache

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2006626/installing-phpunit-via-pear