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Back To Pretending I Know How To Program

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  • R Offline
    R Offline
    Roger Wright
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

    Will Rogers never met me.

    _ R R T W 10 Replies Last reply
    0
    • R Roger Wright

      Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

      Will Rogers never met me.

      _ Offline
      _ Offline
      _Damian S_
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      Roger Wright wrote:

      My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values.

      Good plan... do that. If you want, you can also pre-process the lines and throw out lines that don't match your pattern... either to resolve, or ignore, or whatever...

      Quad skating his way through the world since the early 80's... Booger Mobile - My bright green 1964 Ford Falcon - check out the blog here!! | If you feel generous - make a donation to Camp Quality!!

      1 Reply Last reply
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      • R Roger Wright

        Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

        Will Rogers never met me.

        R Offline
        R Offline
        Rhys Gravell
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        For CSV processing have you looked at Sebastien Lorien's[^] Fast CSV Reader[^]? It works pretty damn well and is a good learning curve...

        Rhys "If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the Universe"

        S 1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • R Rhys Gravell

          For CSV processing have you looked at Sebastien Lorien's[^] Fast CSV Reader[^]? It works pretty damn well and is a good learning curve...

          Rhys "If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the Universe"

          S Offline
          S Offline
          Septimus Hedgehog
          wrote on last edited by
          #4

          I endorse that. Excellent piece of code.

          If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.

          1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • R Roger Wright

            Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

            Will Rogers never met me.

            R Offline
            R Offline
            RichardGrimmer
            wrote on last edited by
            #5

            Roger Wright wrote:

            Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values.

            The Jet Ole Db driver handles most of this for you IIRC - just define a named range in the CSV, and treat it like a table...or have I missed a subtlety?

            C# has already designed away most of the tedium of C++.

            R 1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • R RichardGrimmer

              Roger Wright wrote:

              Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values.

              The Jet Ole Db driver handles most of this for you IIRC - just define a named range in the CSV, and treat it like a table...or have I missed a subtlety?

              C# has already designed away most of the tedium of C++.

              R Offline
              R Offline
              Roger Wright
              wrote on last edited by
              #6

              Hehehe... Two subtleties, actually. Number one is that I don't care to use Access anymore, so I'm targeting SQL Server (Express, of course) this time around. The second is not a subtlety per se, just something I neglected to describe well. The csv files contain several lines of fluff in a format that changes from time to time, such as:

              Date Range = Yesterday (09/01/2010)
              Time Zone = MST
              Sign Convention = GEN + LOAD + OTHER +
              Include Zero = Yes
              Execution Time: 09/02/2010 07:00 CST

              "Zone = RMS / AMPS"

              "Date","Meter","HE1","HE2","HE3","HE4","HE5","HE6","HE7","HE8","HE9","HE10","HE11","HE12","HE13","HE14","HE15","HE16","HE17","HE18","HE19","HE20","HE21","HE22","HE23","HE24","On Peak","Off Peak","Total"

              The data looks like: "09/01/2010","BCI891 Out","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","4.000","4.000","4.000","0.000","4.000","4.000","4.000","4.000","4.000","0.000","4.000","0.000","5.000","0.000","0.000","4.000","0.000","0.000","45.000","0.000","45.000" "","DAD348 Out","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","2.975","3.857","4.284","4.550","4.879","5.103","5.390","5.544","5.712","5.824","5.628","5.502","5.523","5.460","5.033","4.634","4.382","75.264","9.016","84.280" "","NON921A Out","-6.200","-5.800","-5.600","-5.300","-5.400","-5.500","-5.300","-5.800","-6.500","-7.300","-8.000","-9.100","-10.100","-10.900","-11.500","-11.700","-11.900","-11.700","-11.100","-10.700","-10.100","-9.000","-8.100","-7.300","-150.700","-49.200","-199.900" "","TOP928 In","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000","0.000" "","TOP928 Out","7.490","6.940","6.740","6.440","6.430","6.570","6.400","7.070","7.870","8.710","9.650","10.850","12.000","13.020","13.730","14.080","14.120","14.010","13.210","12.670","11.850","10.680","9.620","8.750","179.920","58.980","238.900" "09/01/2010","","1.290","1.140","1.140","1.140","1.030","1.070","5.100","8.245","9.227","5.694","10.200","10.629","11.003","11.510","11.774","8.092","12.044","7.938","12.612","7.493","7.210","10.713","6.154","5.832","149.484","18.796","168.280" The fluff and header stuff at the beginning, along with any blank lines, I discard. I also dump the last data line, since it's just a column total and shouldn't be preserved in the database. So I probably could have described it better, but I wasn't asking a question here, of course. My

              P 1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • R Roger Wright

                Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

                Will Rogers never met me.

                T Offline
                T Offline
                The Nightcoder
                wrote on last edited by
                #7

                I seem not to remember what the rules say about programming ANSWERS to "almost not programming questions"... so... asbestos pants: on I always do that kind of flat file imports in VBScript (*blushes*), scheduled by the OS. Why? Because it takes fifteen minutes to write and I can change it on the fly from Notepad (always available even on a server) when the customer makes unannounced changes to the files. Then, I let a stored procedure dig in - normalizing and "transmogrifying" the data into my own tables. Finally, my app (web or whatever) steps in, doing what it does - normally using C# and either PetaPOCO or a similar thingy I built myself (they both have pros and cons so it depends). In your case: google PetaPOCO. It does what you need in a jiffy, and can do a ton more. From one cs file that you just drop in your project. Entity Framework meets "Biggest Loser"... Optimally you could do what i did in a voluminous case - built a text file DataReader implementation which I fed to the SQL Server Bulk Import classes... whooooosh! asbestos pants: off /Peter

                Peter the small turnip (1) It Has To Work. --RFC 1925[^]

                1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • R Roger Wright

                  Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

                  Will Rogers never met me.

                  W Offline
                  W Offline
                  William Clardy
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #8

                  First, having written a couple of small LOB apps that I got away with naming "[somename] Transmogrifier", it's nice to see someone else use "transmogrify" correctly in a sentence. Second, you might want to look at avoiding the overhead of Visual Studio and recompiling for every change by using Powershell instead -- it read CSV files as datatables, or you can use regular expressions to read the files line by line (been there, done that with my own VB.NET Transmogrifiers).

                  J R 2 Replies Last reply
                  0
                  • R Roger Wright

                    Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

                    Will Rogers never met me.

                    S Offline
                    S Offline
                    Stephen Dycus
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #9

                    "My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less." D: A 12k pay bump? Man, I make 20k less than the low average for entry level programming. And I'm the team Lead! Wish I could do a project for a 12k bump, but it's kinda hard with a startup. XD

                    R 1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • W William Clardy

                      First, having written a couple of small LOB apps that I got away with naming "[somename] Transmogrifier", it's nice to see someone else use "transmogrify" correctly in a sentence. Second, you might want to look at avoiding the overhead of Visual Studio and recompiling for every change by using Powershell instead -- it read CSV files as datatables, or you can use regular expressions to read the files line by line (been there, done that with my own VB.NET Transmogrifiers).

                      J Offline
                      J Offline
                      jack_deth
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #10

                      I'll second the idea of using PowerShell, assuming you are a. on the Windows platform and b. not running Windows XP. I needed to code a similar utility to process a monthly revenue report. Nothing to it ... I am also a faux-grammer :-O .

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • W William Clardy

                        First, having written a couple of small LOB apps that I got away with naming "[somename] Transmogrifier", it's nice to see someone else use "transmogrify" correctly in a sentence. Second, you might want to look at avoiding the overhead of Visual Studio and recompiling for every change by using Powershell instead -- it read CSV files as datatables, or you can use regular expressions to read the files line by line (been there, done that with my own VB.NET Transmogrifiers).

                        R Offline
                        R Offline
                        Roger Wright
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #11

                        Hmmmm.... PowerShell has been around a while, but I have no idea what it does, what it's good for, or where to find out. Maybe it's time to Google for it. :-O

                        Will Rogers never met me.

                        J 1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • S Stephen Dycus

                          "My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less." D: A 12k pay bump? Man, I make 20k less than the low average for entry level programming. And I'm the team Lead! Wish I could do a project for a 12k bump, but it's kinda hard with a startup. XD

                          R Offline
                          R Offline
                          Roger Wright
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #12

                          Well, that's what was promised, though it would have been nice to get to "average" for once. But I'm the one who, in another set of circumstances, pointed out that a small company like ours would not normally have two engineers on the payroll, and our GM is the other engineer. If I stick to my guns asking for market value, I may get it just long enough for them to decide they don't need me at all. Yes, it would be stupid of the Board to act in such a way, as the GM already spends 110% of his available time doing management stuff and politics. But when has an appointed Board ever acted rationally? I'll take what I can get and be happy with it! :-D

                          Will Rogers never met me.

                          D 1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • R Roger Wright

                            Hmmmm.... PowerShell has been around a while, but I have no idea what it does, what it's good for, or where to find out. Maybe it's time to Google for it. :-O

                            Will Rogers never met me.

                            J Offline
                            J Offline
                            jack_deth
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #13

                            It is a great big pile of utility goodness in the form of "cmdlets" with full access to .NET thrown in. It's all good for parsing/transmogrifying data.

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • R Roger Wright

                              Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

                              Will Rogers never met me.

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                              ENOTTY
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #14

                              Check out http://filehelpers.sourceforge.net/[^]

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                              0
                              • R Roger Wright

                                Well, that's what was promised, though it would have been nice to get to "average" for once. But I'm the one who, in another set of circumstances, pointed out that a small company like ours would not normally have two engineers on the payroll, and our GM is the other engineer. If I stick to my guns asking for market value, I may get it just long enough for them to decide they don't need me at all. Yes, it would be stupid of the Board to act in such a way, as the GM already spends 110% of his available time doing management stuff and politics. But when has an appointed Board ever acted rationally? I'll take what I can get and be happy with it! :-D

                                Will Rogers never met me.

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                                Dr Cowen
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #15

                                I read this one with interest , I have very similar issues with my work. In my case it is machine shop software, and python3, .net & C# for hardware. I think that there have been some really good suggestions here and a lot of empathy for your situation. I was pretty well in the danger zone in my our startup, keeping the machine shop on track and trying to squeeze out any extra time for coding. What saved me was figuring out that the board was responsive to well prepared cases where I broke the coding out into chunks and subcontracted some of them. In my case it supposedly "changed their perception of me from a grease monkey, to a competent manager". I'm still employed in any case and three months ago I was on the fast track to trouble. Anyway I wish you luck. There are lots of ways to solve any problem.

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • R Roger Wright

                                  Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

                                  Will Rogers never met me.

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                                  patbob
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #16

                                  Why not just use an old version of the framework? Unless the point of the project is to learn the new technology, you'd be able to keep making progress on the task itself without having to constantly retrain.

                                  We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • R Roger Wright

                                    Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

                                    Will Rogers never met me.

                                    M Offline
                                    M Offline
                                    Member_5893260
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #17

                                    I love it! That happens to me with C++ -- not to mention the fact that every time I re-encounter it, the platforms, operating systems and general milieu in which I'm programming has changed so radically that it's like starting all over again. I feel your pain...!!

                                    M 1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • R Roger Wright

                                      Oh goody! Tonight I re-opened a project I started years ago, only to discover that I've forgotten more than I ever learned about C# in VS2010. Sheesh! Even though I've never been very good at it, I can't believe how much I've forgotten already; it's only been a couple of years since I tackled this problem... :sigh: Of course, since the last time I opened this project, Microsoft has completely changed ADO.Net, and added a bunch of crap I don't need or want. But it's just possible that my project might benefit from the changes, if only I had unlimited free time to study it and figure out what works. What hasn't changed, apparently, is the fact that it's really hard to create a useful program using technology that is constantly changing when you have about an hour a day to do it. And that only late at night after a long day at work doing something entirely unrelated to programming. My challenge: Produce a monthly energy report that allows us to track the losses in the transmission system and the distribution system for our utility. My payoff: A raise to a salary that is only $12K less than average for an engineer with a third of my experience, instead of $24k less. The problem is that, while we receive monthly reports on what we bought from our suppliers, we have no way to check them. We have meters of our own, but we don't read them on the same schedule as the suppliers. But I do get a daily email with an attached .csv report, by hour, of the energy received by our company, and I can use that to match up the external reports with our internal records. The trouble is that it's a massive effort to do by hand, so I'm trying to automate it. My plan is to read the .csv files, transmogrify them into datatable records, and store them in a SQL Server database for further analysis. Last time I got as far as writing a routine that reads the files, culls out the header and fluff lines using regular expressions, and splits the csv fields into discrete values. Then I bumped into the new ADO.Net stuff and got lost. Since then, ADO has changed yet again, and I'm even more lost and confused than before. Those of you who have helped me in the past, be patient; I've had so little time to devote to programming that virtually everything you've told me in the past is gone. I'll be haunting the forums soon, and asking the same dumb questions again; be patient, please... I'm old and slow, but still trainable. :)

                                      Will Rogers never met me.

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                                      M Offline
                                      Mark Starr
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #18

                                      I guess SQL Express doesn't come with Integration Services (SSIS)? I'm starting to use SSIS for my ETL projects - it's pretty well featured and there's a lit of examples, samples, and help out there.

                                      W 1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • M Mark Starr

                                        I guess SQL Express doesn't come with Integration Services (SSIS)? I'm starting to use SSIS for my ETL projects - it's pretty well featured and there's a lit of examples, samples, and help out there.

                                        W Offline
                                        W Offline
                                        William Clardy
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #19

                                        Personally, I'm heading away from SSIS in favor of Powershell for increased flexibility and vastly increased debugging transparency.

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                                        0
                                        • M Member_5893260

                                          I love it! That happens to me with C++ -- not to mention the fact that every time I re-encounter it, the platforms, operating systems and general milieu in which I'm programming has changed so radically that it's like starting all over again. I feel your pain...!!

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                                          M Offline
                                          mght
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #20

                                          Dan Sutton wrote:

                                          I love it! That happens to me with C++ -- not to mention...

                                          I read that as "That happens to me with C plus plus minus minus". I had a brief near heart attack wondering what horrible new extension the C++ committee was foisting on us this time... :doh:

                                          // ToDo: // Put Signature Here

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