How to kill off the Camtasia 2021 Launcher Pop Up

Camtasia is one of my favourite products. I use it regularly. I've been so excited to start to get to use Camtasia 2021 that was released just recently. It's a nice step up from an already great product.

But what I didn't like after upgrading, is that every time I started Camtasia, instead of the "normal" editing screen, I got a cutesy little popup that asked me what I wanted to do with the product today.

I'm not a fan of the popup; I'd rather the product just opened into a blank new project like it used to. The popup really just slows me down.

So I asked the TechSmith people on Twitter and they came to my rescue!

Here's the registry key that you need to modify to make this go away:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio\21.0\Camtasia Studio\21.0\ShowLauncherAtStartup

If that's a 1, then you get the launcher. If you change it to a zero, it's gone.

Hope that helps someone.

SQL: Password complexity rules for Azure SQL

Azure SQL (both Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance) both have different password complexity rules to SQL Server. I was reading an email discussion list and a poster asked where he could find the list of password complexity rules for Azure SQL. I said I'd never seen a list.

Well it turns out that there is a list, but not where you might have thought to look. They're spelled out in this article:

Identify the right Azure SQL Database SKU for your on-premises database (Data Migration Assistant) – SQL Server | Microsoft Docs

To avoid you reading the whole article, at the time of writing, these were the rules for Azure SQL Database:

  • Your password must be at least 8 characters in length and no more than 128 characters in length.
  • Your password must contain characters from three of the following categories – English uppercase letters, English lowercase letters, numbers (0-9), and non-alphanumeric characters (!, $, #, %, etc.).
  • Your password cannot contain all or part of the login name. (Part of a login name is defined as three or more consecutive alphanumeric characters.)

Slightly more confusing is that the article says it's talking about the server admin password, but it also appears that this same list of restrictions applies to all logon/user passwords as well.

Azure SQL Managed Instance is exactly the same except it requires the password to be at least 16 characters in length.

I hope that helps someone, including myself when I next go looking for this.

 

SQL: Try the new Cascadia Code as a font in SSMS

The good news is that Visual Studio 2022 has been announced, and if you haven't read the announcements, the big deal is that it's finally a 64 bit tool. You can still build 32 bit apps with it, but the tool is now 64 bit. I hope SQL Server Management Server (SSMS) will also follow it to 64 bit but that's not likely to be known as yet.

However, one interesting part of the announcement is a new font designed to be used for development. It's called Cascadia Code. And even though Visual Studio 2022 isn't available yet, the font is. I've been trying it in SSMS and quite like it. Previously I was using Consolas.

Installing Cascadia Code

It's easy to install. Here are the steps:

  • Download the latest release from here: https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/releases
  • Unzip the downloaded file and from the ttf folder (presuming you're running Windows), copy the files CascadiaCode.ttf, CascadiaCodePL.ttf, CascadiaMono.ttf, and CascadiaMonoPL.ttf.
  • Right click each one and click Install for all users.

Using Cascadia Code in SSMS

Using the fonts in SSMS is easy. From the Tools menu, click Options.

From the Environment section, click Fonts and Colors.

Now the fonts will be available in the drop-down list for Font.

You'll then see a list similar to what's in the main image above. Note that fonts that are shown bold are fonts with fixed spacing (i.e. not proportional fonts), and that's usually what I want when doing development.

 

 

SQL Day 2021 is on, and I'd love to see you in my Power BI pre-con

One of my favourite conferences each year is SQL Day. It's run by an enthusiastic group from Poland, and when I've attended in person, I loved it. This year it's virtual, and the upside of that, is you can attend from anywhere.

As part of the conference, I'm running a pre-con workshop. It's a low cost one day course on How I Implement Power BI in Enterprises. You'll find info on it here. The course is running on Poland time, but it looks to me like the times will suit a pretty wide variety of people, including from here in Australia.

More info here:

I'd love to see you there.

 

Learning Mandarin: Measure words for parts of the body

I've made a few posts lately about measure words. In the first post, I discussed measure words for people, and in a later post, I discussed measure words for animals. Today, I want to round this out with measure words for different parts of the body.

Again, it's possible with many of these to just use the standard measure word 个 (Gè) but you'll sound a lot better if you use the appropriate specific measure words.

个 (Gè) can be used for noses though. 一个鼻子 (Yí ge bí zi) is "a nose".

I mentioned last time that 条 (Tiáo) is one of my favourite measure words. It's used for most long skinny things. And it's also used for parts of the body where that applies.

一条腿 (Yì tiáo tuǐ) is "a leg".

Another measure word that's used for thin things (or even pipes), is 根 (Gēn). No surprise that it can be used for fingers and hair.

一根手指 (Yì gēn shǒu zhǐ) is "a finger". 手 (shǒu) is actually the word for hand.

一根头发 (Yì gēn tóu fa) is "a hair". It's similar to English in that 头发 (Tóu fa) on its own means "hair" and can refer to all your hair.

Last time, we saw that 只 (Zhī) could be applied to dogs and birds, but it can also be applied to many parts of the body:

一只胳膊 (Yì zhī gē bo) is "an arm".

一只脚 (Yì zhī jiǎo) is "a foot".

一只手 (Yì zhī shǒu) is "a hand".

张 (Zhāng) is a measure word for flat things. The most common example is a sheet of paper. But it also gets applied to the face, and even the mouth:

一张脸 (Yì zhāng liǎn) is "a face".

一张嘴 (Yì zhāng zuǐ) is "a mouth".

The final measure word that I want to mention here is 双 (Shuāng). It's very close in meaning to the English word "pair", and is used for things like shoes. But some parts of the body are in pairs too:

一双手 (Yì shuāng shǒu] is "a pair of hands"

一双眼睛 (Yì shuāng yǎn jing) is "a pair of eyes"

and there are more things that have pairs as well.

Learning Mandarin

I'll write more soon on the best methods for learning Mandarin. If you want to get a taste for it in the meantime though, my current favorite site is iTalki, and my favorite teacher by far is Amy He. If you decide to try it, click here and it's cheaper for both you and me.

 

 

SQL Interview: #8: Why should you avoid the use of db_datareader and db_datawriter?

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren't trick or gotcha questions, they're just questions designed to scope out a candidate's knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Security
Level: Intro

Question:

Many applications connect to SQL Server databases with users that are members of the db_datareader and/or db_datawriter roles?

Why should you avoid using those roles?

Answer:

db_datareader and db_datawriter are fixed database roles that were provided for convenience. They aren't a good option from a security perspective.

Whenever you add a user (or group) to any fixed role, you are assigning them a collection of permissions. By definition, that list of permissions will need to include at least all the permissions they require.

However, invariably when you use fixed roles, you are also assigning additional permissions or access to objects that aren't required.

A more secure solution is to create a role and grant it only the permissions that are required, and then assign the user (or group) to that new role.

 

SQL Interview #7: Are statement terminators ever required in T-SQL?

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren't trick or gotcha questions, they're just questions designed to scope out a candidate's knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development
Level: Intro

Question:

Many versions of SQL require every SQL statement to be terminated with a semicolon.

Since it was created, T-SQL has listed statement terminators as optional.

Are there any situations where they are required, and not optional?

Answer:

Since SQL Server 2005, some T-SQL statements must be separated from previous statements by a statement terminator.

The statements involved are WITH, SEND, RECEIVE.

In addition, a MERGE statement must have a statement terminator.

Using statement terminators is generally considered good practice, even though many of the Microsoft-supplied tools generate scripts without them.

Ever since SQL Server 2005, the product deprecation list has stated that the optional nature of statement terminators is deprecated. For this reason alone, you should use statement terminators.

But there are other potential issues. Consider this nasty example from fellow MVP Erland Sommarskog:

What is not immediately obvious is that THROW would never be executed. Instead, it would be interpreted as a column alias for ERROR_MESSAGE().

Using semicolons as statement terminators avoids this type of issue.

 

Book Review: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

I get a lot of book recommendations from friends. One that I'd heard about a number of times was Mark Manson's book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life so I thought I'd check it out.

I don't overly love the title. I think having expletives in book titles is a bad omen. For me, they are in the same category as, and are reminiscent of, childhood fart jokes. And the book is full of endless repetition of the same expletives. I can only imagine Manson thought they made for good shock value. For me, they don't.

The premise of the book is pretty straightforward. Manson argues that many aspects of life are pretty messed up and for so many of these aspects, there's nothing you can do about them.

This is not a "think positive" book. The analogy from the publishers is that instead of telling you how to turn lemons into lemonade, he's telling you that you need to learn to stomach lemons. At least then you have a chance to be happy.

Clearly, having bad things happen to you can sometimes produce good lessons, but obviously, too many bad things can't be borne.

What is an interesting discussion in this book, is about how you define happiness. I agree with him that there's little point worrying about things that you can't change. I'm a little more positive than him though, on how many things you can actually change.

Many people seem to go through life with the "if only" syndrome. If only I could get a better job, I'd be happy. If only I could pass this exam, I'd be happy. Often these same people have a very unhappy life in the meantime. A different frame of mind might help there.

The Verdict

I liked a lot of the messaging in this book, once you ignore the expletives designed to slap you in the face.  6 out of 10 for me.

 

 

SQL Interview: #6: Multi-row INSERT operations

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren't trick or gotcha questions, they're just questions designed to scope out a candidate's knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development
Level: Intro

Question:

Look at the following multi-row INSERT statement:

The column CustomerGroupName is defined as NOT NULL so the second row cannot be inserted.

How many rows are inserted by this statement, assuming there are no other errors?

Answer:

INSERT statements are atomic, even for multi-row INSERT statements. Either all the rows are inserted, or none are.

If one row fails (as in this case), no rows are inserted.

 

T-SQL 101: #93 Restarting row numbering by using PARTITION BY

Imagine that I've used ROW_NUMBER to number all the cinemas in my database. I'll get values from 1 to the maximum number of cinemas. But what if I want to number the cinemas within each city? i.e. Aberdeen has three cinemas, so number them 1, 2, and 3. But when we get to the next city, start the numbering again. We can do this by adding PARTITION BY to the OVER clause.

PARTITION BY and OVER can do many, many things and I don't want to get too far into complexity on this in today's post, but I do want to mention that when you have a window function like ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK, and NTILE, instead of just returning one large set of values, you can partition the values by using PARTITION BY.

As another simple example, imagine I need a row number for each order line in an order. I can just partition by the order number.

It's not just row numbering though. With NTILE, I could allocate the results of exams into bands, but partition the entire set by which class the students are in, or by which exam they took.

Partitioning the data into groups can be very useful.

Learning T-SQL

It's worth your while becoming proficient in SQL. If you'd like to learn a lot about T-SQL in a hurry, our Writing T-SQL Queries for SQL Server course is online, on-demand, and low cost.