20 Feb 2020
By Bob Pusateri
The Luhn Algorithm

The Luhn Algorithm

Computing, Powershell
Checksums can be very helpful for validating that data is intact and free from simple mistakes. They are extremely fast to calculate, and computing power has made them all but trivial over the past few decades. Because of this, checksums often hide in plain sight. One of these is the Luhn Checksum, which is produced by the Luhn Algorithm. The Luhn Algorithm was invented by Hans Peter Luhn, a scientist at IBM. It's patent was granted in 1960, but has since expired and it is now in the public domain. The best place where you can find its handiwork? Your…
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12 Feb 2019
By Bob Pusateri
Saving to Excel in Azure Data Studio

Saving to Excel in Azure Data Studio

Azure Data Studio, Tools
Azure Data Studio continues to grow on me. I previously wrote about getting my favorite keyboard shortcuts to work, which made me very happy, but now for a feature I love even more - saving result sets to Excel! Yes, I know, spreadsheets can be evil. They can even be places where good datasets go to die, but it's important to remember that they're a necessary evil. Sometimes you just need a result set in a spreadsheet, whether you want it to be in one or not. In SQL Server Management Studio, there's no single-step way to save a result…
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20 Dec 2018
By Bob Pusateri
Free Microsoft Icons for Blogging and Presentations

Free Microsoft Icons for Blogging and Presentations

Presentations, Tools
When designing presentations or writing blog posts, I try to use good looking images whenever possible. When mentioning Microsoft technologies, quality copies of logos or icons are really nice to have, though not always easy to find. Image searches often provide results, but the legality of using images found via that method is questionable. Thankfully, Microsoft provides a collection of high quality images just for this purpose! Check out the Microsoft Azure, Cloud and Enterprise Symbol / Icon Set! This really is a great collection of symbols and icons, with many available in vector format as SVG. If you're not familiar…
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18 Dec 2018
By Bob Pusateri
Getting SSMS Keyboard Shortcuts in Azure Data Studio

Getting SSMS Keyboard Shortcuts in Azure Data Studio

Azure Data Studio, Tools
Azure Data Studio (formerly Microsoft SQL Operations Studio) is Microsoft's new "cross-platform, lightweight tool for modern database development and operations." It is not a replacement for SQL Server Management Studio (not yet anyway), but I can see it becoming one over time. It is under constant development and improvement, and if you tried it back when it was first released and didn't like it, I urge you to give it another spin. I find myself using it more and more because I really like the feel of it. One thing about Azure Data Studio I'm not too keen about, though,…
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07 Mar 2018
By Bob Pusateri

Spice Up Your Linux Demos With PuTTY’s “Presenter Mode”

Linux, Presentations, Tools
If you've done any amount of work in Linux from Windows, chances are pretty good you've used PuTTY at some point. PuTTY is a free and open-source terminal emulator that supports a variety of protocols, including SSH. I've been using it since college and have always been very happy with it. It's free, it's tiny, and it just works. With the advent of SQL Server 2017 on Linux I find myself using it rather frequently once again, but this time around I'm not just using PuTTY for myself. Now I'm trying to take screenshots of it for slide decks, and…
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