Marius Lardizabal – IT Consulting

Contrary to popular belief ASP or should I say Classic ASP is still pretty much alive.

Why, you ask?

The answer is simple, most companies work with the unofficial mantra “if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it”. A lot of them may have even started their online presence using Classic ASP. So for them they may have already invested so much.

Even if ASP.Net is much faster and more efficient, the cost of migrating and acquiring sufficient hardware to make it at par may often be unjustifiable. I personally know one big automaker that is still using Windows 2000 and ASP as their backened. You’d think given their financial muscle they’d grab anything fancy everytime it becomes available.

I know some of the hitech junkies out there would beg to differ but think about it, a lot of these companies are not software makers, so it should be obvious that their main focus is on their core products and/or services.

So remember, before you look down on Classic ASP thinking it is obsolete, think again. You’d be shocked to know that there is a significant number of companies out there that still use it. And if you play your cards right you may be able to tap onto that niche market since most IT folks prefer brand new hitech stuff most of the time.

As a web developer I often encounter the need to page results for better UI experience.

Normally with an SQL ANSI 92 compliant database engine all you had to do was specify how many rows you wanted returned and how many rows to skip, something like:

SELECT First 10 Skip 10 *
FROM table1
ORDER BY Column1

Which translates to skip 10 rows and then return next 10 rows.

Unfortunately, there was no such thing in MS SQL Server. So after two hours of searching I encountered function called Row_Number.

As per the SQL Book online, the Row_Number() function returns the sequential number of a row within a partition of a result set, starting at 1 for the first row in each partition.

Anyhow, here is how the new query looked like:

SELECT *
FROM  (
   SELECT Row_Number() OVER(ORDER BY Column1) AS Row,
       *
   FROM table1
) WHERE Row Between 10 AND 20
ORDER BY Column1

The SQL was longer but it had same desired effect. Anyhow it’s getting late, hope I was of help.

For so long I wanted to have a website where I could publish my thoughts about my field of work. As well as provide some insight for existing clients as well as prospective clients about what I’m doing and where I am involved as far as IT is concerned.

Don’t get me wrong, as a bonified geek I had my own website since 1998. Back then mixing personal stuff with business was kinda cool, I mean it made the site complete, ok to be honest there wasn’t anything exciting with my personal life until late 2001 so having the techie stuff mixed in was somewhat a blessing hehehe.

As I followed my career path to the four continents, my network grew. Work related stuff kinda overshadowed my personal life. I mean me and Maan were far far away, the only way our friends and family could read about us was through our website. But since it was cluttered with endless IT jargon it was a pain for the normal folks to read.

Well, finally with the grace of God, I am now able to separate my business stuff from my personal ones.

Welcome to my business site. I am looking forward in working with you.