by Derek Du

Recently, we were asked to improve the performance of some SQL queries that run for 15 seconds and 30 seconds. At first, we were not sure whether the performance could be improved, given that there were about 80 million data pieces in the database. I have to admit that SQL Server is really powerful as eventually we reduced the time to 2 seconds and 6 seconds!

During the proces...

Yes, we’ve all been using spreadsheets for years (some of us, for decades now…) for simple what-if scenarios, for profit/loss statements, for reconciling bank statements, even for complex risk-analyses.
While some industry pundits are extoling the virtues of a “spreadsheet-free&rdquo...

by Derek Du

If a WebAPI service takes a long time to complete, the caller -- the client side -- may timeout waiting for a response. There are several options to solve this issue, you can increase the timeout limit on the client side and web server side, or use a more persistent connection method like WebSocket and SignalR.

I propose a different way to avoid the timeout issue that all...

by Jacky Xu

Recently, our Intacct projects keep getting the error “The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel” when the program request posts to Intacct web site. So, I searched for the solution from the website. Some blogs said, “Many companies have disabled SSLv3.” and “TLS is the standard protocol in .NET for a few years and SSLv3 is just us...

by Derek Du

Displaying error message is one of the most basic functions of an application, but it also can be overlooked easily because we often focus on the core functions of the application. There are many ways to present error messages, but in my opinion there are basically three objectives we want to achieve with error message and as long as the design can fulfill those, it is a ...

by Jacky Xu

Before a new version of SQL server is released, we always implement data paging through the transact-SQL function “ROW_NUMBER” and it always needs a nested SQL script. Microsoft released new scripts “OFFSET” and “FETCH” for data paging functions. Here are two sample queries for different SQL server version paging function.

First, we query all dat...

by Derek Du

Flexibility has a real cost

 
It is common for people to ask UI designers to design a system as flexible as possible. People believe that it is always better for something to be flexible. They think the more flexible the system is, the better the overall experience of the system. However, this is not always true. When we say this design is more flexible than the other one, we ar...

by Derek Du

Today, I tried to run a previous WCF project and it refused to work. The error message was: OperationContext.Current is null. The project uses a third-party written WCF custom encoder that enables SOAP with Attachment, so it made that much harder to debug the issue. After struggling with it the whole day, I was surprised to find that the issue was becaus...

by Emma Tsai

Recently, I worked on an interesting integration project between doc-link and Sage 300 ERP. doc-link is a document management and workflow solution the client uses to address their paper intensive process for Accounts Payable. After we reviewed their business process and identified the gap, we proposed an integration solution that imports voucher data from doc-link into Sage 300 ERP...

by Derek Du

I wrote an article on the same topic but with version 4.5.1 soapUI back in 2013. To post JSON with an 4.5.1 version soapUI, you almost have to trick the application by explicitly typing in the media type "application/json," and there are also a few settings that don’t make sense. I always forget the steps and have to go back to check my blog post.

Since then, I tried newer v...