Author Archives: Robert S. Robbins

Yesterday I received my Pennsylvania College of Technology transcript which I obtained in case any prospective employers want documentation of my academic record. My grade point averages by semester were 3.82, 3.90, 3.93, and 3.95 for the Fall of 1985 … Continue reading →

Today I wrote a script to generate the SQL for a stored procedure based on an Access database table design. Creating a stored procedure is a tedious chore that usually requires a lot of copy and paste of the field … Continue reading →

Cascading Style Sheets have been giving me some problems lately because our web designer is encouraging us to use CSS to position web page elements rather than tables. I was given a design that used a lot of heights specified … Continue reading →

Today I used the SQLDataReader of the SQLClient namespace to create a new Merchant Tools page for StoreFront 6.0. A client wanted to know how many customers were getting the weekly mailings and I was suprised to learn that StoreFront … Continue reading →

Today I managed to convert some of my ASP.NET sample code written in VB.NET into Eiffel. There are a few problems with using Eiffel for ASP.NET for web applications. First, it takes a ridiculously long time to compile, even longer … Continue reading →

I was offered another job developing web applications using ASP.NET but the language requirement was for C Sharp instead of Visual Basic. I don’t think this was a good job offer because it came from an employment agency. I have … Continue reading →

Today I used AJAX, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, for the first time in a web application project. I just modified my AJAX example code slightly for an Active Server Pages script with data coming from a SQL Server database. I … Continue reading →

I’m not recommending Web Position Gold as a SEO tool anymore. I think businesses are wasting their time using that software. I’m tired of wasting my time setting up submission missions, generating ranking reports, and running the page critic. It … Continue reading →

I manage the Froogle product feed for http://www.caraccessories.com. I have to upload a CSV file every month to keep their products in the Froogle product search engine. None of our clients at work are using Froogle product feeds. We don’t … Continue reading →

Today I had to create some web forms to submit XML requests to the Army and Air Force Exchange Service web service for authorizing Military Star Card payments. They did not create their web service properly. My web forms had … Continue reading →

Yesterday I received the book Software Development Using Eiffel by Richard Wiener in the mail. This book was published in 1995 but the code looks more compatible with Eiffel Studio than the other book I am reading Object-Oriented Software Engineering … Continue reading →

It should be easy for a good writer to find work because the Internet has made written content extremely valuable. The search engines love good content as anyone who reads Search Engine Optimization articles knows. Their advice to e-commerce sites … Continue reading →

Last night I added a new web page to my web site to demonstrate Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, otherwise known as AJAX. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is JavaScript on the client which uses an ActiveXObject, Microsoft.XMLHTTP, to request a XML … Continue reading →

Today I used Microsoft Application Center Test to stress test a web application. The Microsoft Application Center Test is an obscure Microsoft tool that is only available in the Enterprise Edition of Visual Studio.NET 2003. It is designed to stress … Continue reading →

Today I replaced some database code in Storefront 5.0 with some stored procedures. The Storefront code was creating a recordset just to add a new record. I suspect it was selecting all the records, 9889 records in this case, and … Continue reading →

Last night I had to play around with some C and Visual C#.NET console applications for a job interview tomorrow. This morning I documented some MySQL administration tasks because I installed phpList on the Car Accessories web site http://www.caraccessories.com and … Continue reading →

Yesterday I wrote my first useful program in Eiffel! It is a file processing utility program that examines web pages in a directory and generates a report on which web pages are missing a style sheet. I’ve been adding a … Continue reading →

I continue to make excellent progress in learning the Eiffel programming language. However I am running into a lot of minor technical gotchas that require good problem solving skills in order to proceed. I am delighted that Eiffel is so … Continue reading →

I worked all night on learning Eiffel. I am making excellent progress. So far I have learned how to do some simple file processing. I’ve also learned a bit of the language syntax. Ordinarily I would have quickly given up … Continue reading →

Last night I downloaded and installed Eiffle Studio 5.7 and wrote my first Hello World program in Eiffle. After careful consideration, I have decided to concentrate on developing my expertise using this programming language. It is a losing proposition to … Continue reading →