MSDN SQL Server 2008 Wiki

The Volunteer Moderators and Answerers who support the Microsoft MSDN SQL Server Forums have created a new wiki to present Solutions to Common T-SQL Problems at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SQLExamples.

TreeSize Free

Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough. TreeSize Free tells you where precious space has gone to.
TreeSize Free can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders. You can expand this folder in Explorer-like style and you will see the size of every subfolder. Scanning is done in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize Free is working. The Explorer context menu is supported within TreeSize, as well as the usual drag & drop operations.

You can Download TreeSize Free from here. TreeSize Free is freeware for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7.  Users of Windows 9x/ME can download the last compatible version TreeSize Free V2.1.

Supported Operating systems

• Windows 7 (32 Bit / 64 Bit)
• Windows Vista (32 Bit / 64 Bit)
• Windows XP (32 Bit / 64 Bit)
• Windows 2000
• Windows Server 2008 (32 Bit / 64 Bit)
• Windows Server 2003 (32 Bit / 64 Bit)

Utility: 7-Zip Format

7-Zip is the new archive format, providing high compression ratio. 7-Zip is open source software. Most of the source code is under the GNU LGPL license. The unRAR code is under a mixed license: GNU LGPL + unRAR restrictions. Check license information here: 7-Zip license.

Main Features of 7z format:

• High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
• Supported formats:
• Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
• Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
• Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format
• Integration with Windows Shell
• Powerful File Manager
• Powerful command line version
• Plugin for FAR Manager
• Localizations for 74 languages

I personally like it very much. Its really helpful for me. Hope you all like this. You can Download 7-Zip for Windows.

Execute Stored Procedure with Output Parameters?

SQL Server stored procedure that you can call is one that returns one or more OUT parameters, which are parameters that the stored procedure uses to return data back to the calling application. Here is the sample procedure which i am using with output parameters.

CREATE PROCEDURE GetEmployeeRoles

   @employeeID INT,

   @Roles VARCHAR(200) OUTPUT

AS

BEGIN

   SELECT @Roles = Roles 

   FROM HumanResources.Employee 

   WHERE EmployeeID = @employeeID

END

For testing this using SQL Query Analyzer or Editor you can use below code  to see the results.

DECLARE @roles VARCHAR(200)

EXECUTE GetEmployeeRoles 6,@roles OUTPUT

SELECT @roles as EmployeeRoles

Hope this helps!

Picasa 3.6 features

Picasa 3.6 has improved name tags, a feature based on the same technology that powers name tags on Picasa Web Albums. With name tags, you can organize your photos based on what matters most: the people in them. In this new version, you can also upload photos to your friends' collaborative albums, more easily geotag photos using Google Maps, and import photos from your camera and upload them to Picasa Web Albums in one step. Get started by downloading Picasa at http://picasa.google.com