Human Computation - Outsourcing complex problems to Human

Computer technology has become more and more powerful over the last few decades. Yet still there’s a clear margin - actually a gap - between Computers’ (artificial) decision making ability when compared with human intellect. 

Filling out this gap is one of the most important problems that needs to be addressed, because this digitalizing world requires devices and applications that human can use more comfortably and effectively. Truth is, to make the human feels comfortable, the ‘dumb’ devices or applications should anticipate what he requires and consider his preferences. Therefore, artificial decision making algorithms should at least resemble (if not match up with) human intelligence.

Microsoft Virtual Academy - Free Learning Resources for Cloud

If you are an IT professional who daily interact with the technology, no need to tell how hard it is to keep up with the continually evolving technologies and practices. Often that is the toughest part in leading a career in IT.

There are always new emerging concepts and technological breakthroughs, so in order to keep yourself up in the top; you always have to engage in learning.

If you haven’t known yet – Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) is one of the best and freely available learning experience focused on cloud based Microsoft Technologies. It allows you to learn several cloud related technologies including Windows Azure, BI, Public/Private Cloud… and more.

SQL Query Result into Comma Separated List

During my work I had encountered a situation where I need to get a comma separated list as an output from the values in a SQL query result. To elaborate it more, my query returns set of records (multiple records which match a certain criteria) as its result. Then there’s a column which I need to take as a comma separated value set.

Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 : Introduction

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 is a flexible business application development tool that can be used with Visual Studio 2010 IDE. It gives you a simplified development environment which give the capability to create CRUD based business applications within few minutes.

Typical business application manage data through user interfaces, provide search facilities and provide data validations. Usually, if you want to create a business applications you have to develop the user interfaces, write codes for interactions with data sources, along with the most critical business logic. But with Visual Studio LightSwitch, you can omit the first two and concentrate only about the business logic.

The Story Never Ends ! [UCSC Batch 6]

End of a journey. But still couldn’t believe it! Though this wasn't un-expected, I never anticipated that reaching the end of my undergraduate life would make me this much emotional. Even though we (me and my batch mates - UCSC 6th batch, 2007/2008 intake) are not graduated yet, yesterday was the final remarkable day at university for most of us except our friends who’ll be continuing with their specialization on the fourth year.

Logins, Users and Guest users in MSSQL

Recently I was working with some database restoring and configuring stuff. And I was getting errors due to the conflicts on database users, server logins and their permissions.

In the ideal scenario, there should be a 'login' in the database server, and a corresponding 'user' for the database. Sometimes people get confused with the difference of these two. But they are for two entirely different purposes.

What are MDF, NDF and LDF ?

If you have experience with SQL Server, you may have heard the terms MDF, NDF and LDF already. Those are the commonly used file name extensions in SQL Server for specify the Primary Data files, Secondary data files and Log files respectively.

In SQL Server, data and log information are never stored in the same file. Furthermore, those individual files (primary data, secondary data and log) are used by only one server. However, below is a brief description about the three file types in SQL Server.

Touring Google Earth

It has been a long time since my last post. I was busy with exams, projects and of-course with my first job! Few months back, me and few of my colleagues were working on a project. This was an essential part of our academic curriculum, and luckily, the selection of the topic and the scope was in our purview. So, we decided that we'll jump into virtual tour using currently available web resources and try out ways to provide better user experience in GIS.