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February 3, 2010 >>

What's New at Experts Exchange
Features, Geniuses and Kudos

Editors' Choice Article
Detecting missing fields in SQL

Mission To Haiti
lherrou files a first-hand report

Time Enough For ... Design
It's not just a job; it's life

Tip From the Mods
Avoiding the Flame Wars

More News and Notes
Okay, THAT'S over... now what?

Nata's Corner
The DMV, teenagers and YouTube

New Certificates
New certificate holders, through January 30

What's New at Experts Exchange

Haiti relief: As we noted last issue, Experts Exchange staffers Mary Ciesinski and Megan Farrell took the lead in the company's efforts to provide relief following the earthquake in Haiti. In addition to the Donate to Haiti link, the two organized a luncheon locally that raised $2,273, and the amount was matched by Experts Exchange bringing the total to over $4,500. At left, staff members Jen Wagner and Natalie Kuhn help out.

Designated Expert/Neglected Questions: Experts Exchange has completed a five-phase upgrade to the Designated Expert and Neglected Questions systems. The upgrades include connecting the toolkit the Moderators use to the systems built by EE that allow the Mods to request additional attention from the DEs for questions that have gone without comments. Among the changes are:

• Email notifications when an Expert qualifies to become a Designated Expert (Guru status in a zone, or over 300,000 points overall) or when a Zone Advisor or Moderator sets an Expert's status to be a Designated Expert.
• Experts who have DE status can add or remove zones to the list for which they are eligible to receive bonus points and alerts.
• The points for answering Neglected Questions have been increased.
• Designated Experts who earn 15,000 points in a zone are automatically added as DEs for that zone, but can opt out of the zone by editing their profiles.

Special note should be made of the efforts of engineers Justin White and Mark Olsen, Mary Ciesinski, and members angelIII, ModernMatt, RQuadling and GhostMod, who made it all come together.

Register a Friend for FREE!: Have a friend who knows a thing or two about technology? Have them register as an Expert at Experts Exchange for FREE! Just send them this link: http://www.experts-exchange.com/becomeAnExpert.jsp.

How it works:

• New Experts can answer questions and write articles to unlock premium features such as asking questions and searching the knowledgebase
• To unlock these features and become a Qualified Expert, new Experts must earn 10,000 points (about 7 questions)
• fter that, they'll need to earn just 3,000 points each month to keep free membership and access to premium features

Share this link with your friends and colleagues! http://www.experts-exchange.com/becomeAnExpert.jsp

New Geniuses: Two members of Experts Exchange have earned first Genius certificates in the past couple of weeks. RQuadling earned his first, in the PHP Scripting zone; and mwvisa1 earned his first, in SQL Server 2005.

Milestones:

• zorvek has earned 11,000,000 points in the Excel zone; rorya has earned 9,000,000 points in the same zone.
• aneeshattingal has earned over 3,000,000 points in each of two zones.
• Ray_Paseur has earned 5,000,000 points in his Experts Exchange career.

Kudos: M_SOLAIMAN had an issue with calculating time -- in and of itself not a huge problem -- but the matter was complicated by his use of the Arabic version of Microsoft Access. He got some help from four of EE's best: matthewspatrick, GRayL, harfang and GrahamMandeno. His closing comment: "It was wonderful discussion and EE is real business partner I can trust. Thank you all very much."

A problem with PaintShop Pro loading slowly was giving trial member brian1970 fits until ashraf882 (who has only been a member for a month) offered a simple solution. "I have spend days on this problem over the past 12 months!!! Sorted out just over a hour on Experts Exchange!!!"

Tolomir was able to assist choy77 figure out how to add an image to Thunderbird emails: "This has got to be the only place on the web to get this particular problem sorted out and it must be a global problem!! Thanks again Tolomir."

We also want to pass along our contratulations to one of Microsoft's newest MVPs: mark_wills. Nice work, Mark!

Mea culpa: In our last issue, we noted that one of EE's top Experts had earned 11,000,000 points in his career, but inadvertently listed him as being leew; it was in fact zorvek.

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Tips From the Moderators

This issue's Tip comes from WhackAMod.

It's going to happen sooner or later. You're merrily reading the questions in which you have participated and there it is. A great big pile of gently steaming nonsense, donated by one of your fellow Experts. The advice is not merely wrong, it's BAD and in some cases even potentially dangerous. What do you do? What's the best course of action? Do you:

a) Ignore it and keep posting as if nothing had happened?
b) Crack your knuckles, sling back the rest of your triple mochachino and get ready to write the flame of your life?
c) Stop Monitoring the question and go hide under your bed until the fallout is over?
d) None of the above.

Those of you used to my particular brand of humor already know the answer. For the other 99.999% reading this, it's d) None of the above. Whenever a "bad" post pops up in a question, there are several steps you can take. These steps are not mutually exclusive, so feel free to do them all.

1) Notify the Moderators. Click the Request Attention link if available. If not, open a new question in General Community Support and give us a link to the question AND the ID of the bad post.

2) Contact the Zone Advisor(s) for the Zone or Zones where the question appears. A list of current Zone Advisors is located on the help page and every Zone Advisor can be reached by email at their EEUserName@experts-exchange.com. The Zone Advisors are our subject matter experts and they have the both the technical savvy to understand the post and the ability to edit or remove it if needed.

3) POLITELY post a correction IF AND ONLY IF you are absolute certain that you can do it politely and you are correct that the post is bad. We've seen too many flame wars start in questions because Expert A corrected Expert B in a less than respectful manner. We've also see flame wars start because Expert A corrected Expert B but it turned out Expert B was correct all along. Flame wars are bad, people. The Moderators will not be amused and both parties may find their posting privileges suspended.

I hope this helps, but I know most of you have scrolled down to ericpete's latest rant at this point. For those of you who made it this far, you're done now. Thanks for reading and thanks for using Experts Exchange!

Editors' Choice Articles

The following article was designated as Editors' Choice by the Page Editors. For additional information on Articles and making sure your masterpiece is up to EE's publishing standards, check out the Article Guidelines and Article Tips zone.

SQL Server Reporting Services and MDX: Detecting Missing Fields
by ValentinoV:

Mission To Haiti

lherrou is one of the original Zone Advisors at Experts Exchange, and as a member of a search-and-rescue team associated with FEMA, was deployed to Haiti shortly after the earthquakenote that leveled the island nation. His note accompanying this article said that he cannot begin to describe the ten days he spent in Haiti; we consider ourselves honored to be acquainted with him, and salute the heroic measures he and those like him have taken over the past few weeks.

On January 14 at 4:53pm local time, a 7.0 earthquake struck the Republic of Haiti, bringing devastation to the capital of Port-au-Prince. Just after lunch on January 15, I received a text message warning me to get my gear ready and find my passport; I would be responding as member of South Florida Task Force 2, a U.S. Government heavy urban search and rescue team. It took nearly 20 hours to get our full team into Port-au-Prince, and more than two hours to navigate the four miles in survivor-choked streets to get from the airport to the U.S. Embassy, which would be our base of operations for the next ten days.

Much of the first night was spent preparing for operations the following day. As a member of the planning staff, and the designated "technology geek" of the team, I set up a peer-to-peer network comprised of one laptop running XP (which served as the file share), along with another two running Vista and one running Windows 7. This would support our mapping, documentation, and reporting efforts over our stay.

With the help of one of our communications specialists, we were able establish internet access via a satellite phone, which allowed me to log on to Experts Exchange and find the answer to a settings problem that was keeping the three different operating systems from playing nicely with one another. Incidentally, if you ever have to use a sat phone to log in to EE, the mobile version of the site, mobile.e-e.com, is the way to go.

During our time in Port-au-Prince, we conducted search efforts at several locations throughout the city, and heavy rescue operations at two sites, resulting in saving seven people who were trapped in major collapses. Our structural engineers surveyed over 20 hospital buildings, trying to locate and document those few that were still safe for use.

Haiti, despite the already existing poverty, and the destruction brought by the initial quake and multiple aftershocks, is a beautiful country, with people who are generally friendly and social. The earthquake destroyed the majority of the infrastructure of the government and of the capital city, and it will take much effort and a number of years to rebuild. I encourage you to use the Donate to Haiti link on the Experts Exchange site to help in that effort or to Food For The Poor, a non-governmental agency that helps build sustainable food production, not just giving in a way that leaves dependency.

Time Enough For ... Design

An editor by trade, a writer by avocation and an Expert by some cosmic practical joke, ericpete puts together the newsletter for Experts Exchange.

A few weeks after I wrote an article offering some management tips, my buddy Guy sent the link to a 2002 talk given by BMW car designer Chris Bangle that talked about, among other things, the matter of working with design teams -- a notoriously eccentric subset of the employees of not just automobile manufacturing companies, but of any organization that first develops and then sells to others a product.

Guy sends me stuff knowing that it's likely to provoke some kind of reaction; he first pointed me to a site that should be required reading for any decision maker in any organization of any size. A few people out there have finally figured out what the Cluetrain authors knew in 1999: if you're not talking with your customers, you do so at your own peril.

But it wasn't until I read another item -- an interview with Pixar's Brad Bird --and a subsequent conversation with Guy that I had a bit of an epiphany: that Mr Bangle's comments about car design as art, designers as people who are "all a little bit like Pygmalion -- we are in love with our own creations," and managing design and engineering teams, were just as valid for the relationships between any managers and their subordinates, and with any company and its customers.

"We have a shared center; we have a shared focus. That car stays at the middle of all our relationships."

Everyone has problems; everyone has other priorities that intrude on the worksplace. Life, Mr Lennon noted, is what happens while you're busy making other plans, and almost everyone accepts that. But there is a contract among the members of a team, an agreement that they will all work together to fulfill a certain goal, so it is incumbent that the goal remain the focus.

But that extends to the relationship between a company and its clients as well. Years ago, in a previous career in which I dealt with a lot of engineers and plant operators, my boss -- who had started out selling commercial and industrial plumbing fixtures out of his trunk -- told me that in any successful business relationship, the two parties have to bring 100 per cent to the transaction. "If the customer only has ten per cent of the information he needs, you have to be prepared to bring the other ninety per cent," he said. (I found out, over time, that even mechanical engineers don't really know a lot about the dynamics of mixing chlorine gas and water to disinfect wastewater, but they don't have to; they have people like me to help them.)

That was the gist of what Mr Bangle tried to do with his design team. He sent them out to find out what American consumers wanted as the BMW successor to the SUV, and they went out and asked. What they found turned into six different automobiles.

"I'm in the air without trust. This cannot be. This cannot be that I'm expecting a certain number of sketches, and to me, that's my quantification method for qualifying a team. This cannot be... I can't have a relationship that is based on a premise that is a quantifiable one, based on a dictate premise that says 'I"m a boss, you do what I say', without trust. This can't be."

For the project that was known at BMW as "Deep Blue", Mr Bangle threw out pretty much every rule in the book -- but for most of the time, his expectations were straight out of it. He talked the talk, but when it came down to it, he still had the normal, predictable corporate expectations of sketches and drawings. When he didn't immediately get that from his team, he "went ballistic".

But then he realized that unless he trusted his team to do its job -- coming up with innovative solutions to the question of "what kind of car do Americans want from BMW?" -- they would merely be fulfilling his expectations for X number of sketches, and that wasn't what he wanted, nor was it really what his group of creative people wanted to do.

BMW's relationship with its customers should be no different. Certainly, BMW is all about selling cars; but in doing so, it also wants to create a relationship with the consumer that will compel the buyer to come back again and again. To do that, it's not enough that it builds cars that are pretty, or even that more or less live up to the hype of "the ultimate driving machine."

Bangle noted, "I have to make a bond with my designers when we're creating BMWs. We have to have a shared intimacy, a shared vision. That means we have to work as one family. We have to understand ourselves that way." Perhaps that's a bit much to expect from a German manufacturer and a customer in Lincoln, Nebraska -- but a company's odds of success can only increase if it and its customers have the same idea about what the company should do for the money the customer is willing to pay.

Early in his talk, Bangle substituted the word "design" for "love" in a number of contexts; he finished his talk with a quote from The Little Prince: "Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but looking outward in the same direction." For a design team, that makes perfect sense; Apple wouldn't be Apple were it not for Steve Jobs' ability to communicate his vision to his development teams -- and for Jobs' research teams to accurately gather information that enables Apple's designers and engineers to produce products that people want that also conform to Mr Jobs' vision. Apple has made some mistakes along the way -- the Lisa comes to mind -- but OS X, the iPod and the iPhone aren't among them. Mr Jobs, Apple and its customers are all looking in the same direction.

More News and Notes

Okay, THAT'S over... now what? In case you've been hiding in a cave somewhere for the last month or two, Apple announced what has to be the worst kept secret of the century, its new tablet or slate or whatever device; we don't want to get into any trouble by calling it an iPad -- or a Newton. We're also going to let other sites post the obvious jokes. Nata dropped us a note to remind us that her birthday is in the middle of March; since they won't start shipping for two months, she will have to settle for a card.

We have to admit that Doonesbury's take on it (read the whole series) is about the way we feel; for one thing, we had an article about half-written about newspapers and pay walls and such that suffered the ill effects of a power outage, and now we have to factor the Jobs Device into the mix. We presume it will have anti-theft technology, and we would hope that the Pocket First Aid application comes pre-loaded as well.

It was that 17th Dimension of Compatibility: eHarmony settled a lawsuit that had been filed against it by gays.

It's a sunny day in Pleasanton: Oracle president Charles Phillips -- who has been in the news a little more frequently than he probably likes of late -- took over the reins of Sun Microsystems last week. The European Union had expressed fears that Oracle would put MySQL, Sun's open source database, into a dustbin somewhere, but Larry Ellison has said all along that ain't gonna happen. On the other hand, he might buy the Golden State Warriors -- which, given Ellison's track record with acquisitions, would be a good thing.

In requiem: J. D Salinger at age 91. Best known for Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories is much better.

Some people just don't know when to quit: It's hardly a secret that we think the tactics used by the recording industry to protect its big company members are on par with those used by non-existent relatives of Nigerian generals, but there comes a time when most people realize they aren't going to win. Jamie Thomas-Rasset is not one of those people.

The Phantom Menace in an hour: Seven parts and it's hilarious. (Thanks, Kieran!)

The Jason List:

• Reality shows hit a new low -- and I'm sure there are consequences. At least one of these folks won $25,000.
• Truth is stranger than fiction. A prison inmate lost his lawsuit to be allowed to play Dungeons and Dragons. What I wonder is which one the Wisconsin department of corrections would rather deal with: Roving gangs of D&D playing nerds or the Arayan Brotherhood?
• A blogger takes the easy way out. Editor's note: it's still the best... blog post... ever.
• Sorry, but I can't resist: watch out for those who swing from both sides.
• Tip from a professional: wait for it to dry.
• Now you, too, can look like an extra from Blade Runner.
• No, she's not a candidate for becoming a Moderator, and no, this isn't really tech-related. But someone has to acknowledge a woman so hammered that she is convicted on two counts of DUI for one incident.
• Happy birthday, Bubble Wrap. On a related topic, there has to be an exotic dancer (safe for work) out there who uses that name.
• Penguin. New York police. Tennessee. Radiation. Words I never thought I'd ever see used in one news story.

Put it right up there with the WD-40 and duct tape: Apparently, there are lots of uses for Bag Balm. (Thanks, Anita!)

Can anyone tell us how to write Experts-Exchange.com in Arabic? Starting later this year, domain names can be written in the native scripts of Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The bit.ly people must be thrilled.

Signs of the Apocalypse: On the day the iSomething was announced, Apple's stock price dropped until Steve Jobs revealed what it would sell for, at which point they recovered. Also, a crime boss and a drunken teenager on Facebook; lifetime certifications that are good for three years unless you want to pay for the rest of it; and PETA wants a robotic replacement for Groundhog Day (which was yesterday).

Nata's Corner

I moved to California about nine years ago this week, and like all good citizens, I went down to the local DMV office to get a new driver's license (see image at left without the sunglasses). After the wait -- my other half warned me -- I took the test, they took my picture, and off I went. The other day, I got a notice in the mail that says I can renew my license by either sending in a check or going to their website, which is a good thing, because I don't want to think about how long it would take if their computer system crashed.

I spend a little bit of time around junior high school children, and the one thing that stands out about them compared to when I was their age is that they all have some kind of device -- a few years ago, we had to stop on our way to a basketball game so one of the players could run into a store to buy himself a new iPod for his birthday, and I don't think I ever saw him without it after that. Fortunately, in my part of the world, kids still like to talk to each other -- I almost never see them peering at tiny letters with their thumbs frantically pressing keys, and I don't think they're posting too many videos on YouTube either.

Speaking of which, if you've ever come across a YouTube video that you know isn't going to be around long, or you don't want to fill up your bookmarks and you have to do something with that 1TB hard drive you got for Christmas, I came across a neat little site the other day. It's called 3outube.com, and it lets you download either a .mp4 or .flv versions of your favorite videos.

Finally, from the hacking file: Students at a high school in Washington DC hacked the school's network and now everyone is worried that grades have been changed (anyone seen Andy lately?). Four men, including the son of a US Attorney, were arrested for trying to hack the phone of a US Senator. And while not really hacking (you have to forgive the TV news people -- they aren't supposed to know anything, they just LOOK good), a congressional campaign took advantage of some careless web development work to redirect people to their candidate from their rival.

New Certificates