James Software Development Corner

Toon Boom Animation – Best image type for import with vectorizaztion

From my experience, the best kind of image to import into Toon Boom Animate for vectorization is a PDF file.

Here is my scenario.

I exported an image I drew in Toon Boom Studio and saved it to different images …

Microsoft Visual Studio / Active Reports 6 – How to sort your collections using IComparer

Put this class in your solution. Change ‘[object name of your collection]’ to be the name of your object that defines your collection.

Public Class SimpleComparer
Implements IComparer(Of [object name of your collection])

    Private _propertyToSort As String
    Private _sortOrder As

…

SQL Server – Select column data from multiple rows, and string together in one row and in one column

Let’s say you have 5 rows in a table. Column1 is populated for 4 out of the 5 rows with the following data:

599
abc
xyz
456

The following SQL will provide the results as such:

599, abc, xyz, 456…

Microsoft Office 2010 – Change the NavePaneSearch to the old Find and Replace dialog box (Ctrl-F)

I personally don’t like the new NavPaneSearch.

You can change the behavior of Ctrl-F to bring up the old ‘Find and Replace’ dialog box.

a) In options, click ‘Customize Ribbon’
b) Click the ‘Customize…’ button to the right of label, …

Active Reports 6 – How to display page header information on a subreport within a parent report

You can create a page header for a report, but if that report is used as a sub-report, the page header and page footer of that report does not render. Instead, only the parent report’s page header and page footer …

Active Reports 6 – How to communicate from sub report to parent report

The following illustrates one way to communicate information from a sub report back to its parent or main report. It may not be the cleanest way, but it works.

Let’s say you have a main report, RPT-001.rpx. This report has …

SQL Server – Convert NULL to 0 in Select Statement

The first SELECT statement gives you a value of ‘NULL’.
The second statement gives you a value of ‘0’ because the true value returned is
‘NULL’

SELECT SUM(number_of_whatever) AS CalculatedValue
        FROM some_table
        WHERE some_column = 'some_value'
          AND (some_date_column = '2011-12-01'

…