SQL string formatting in VBScript

If you’re a software developer, string concatenation is something you do regularly, irrespective of the programming language you use. While languages such as C, C++, Perl and PHP all support the very useful sprintf() function, the VB/VBScript developers have traditionally had to resort to using a combination of single and double quotes, escape characters, text, line continuation characters and ampersands (&) to get the job done.

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Lightweight ADO class

When putting together dynamic web applications in an ASP environment, developers use ADO recordsets for the overwhelming majority of their database interfacing. Although most web applications will involve data entry forms, where the user will insert, update and delete database records, the biggest performance issues are in presenting recordset output to the client browser.

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SQL injection attacks

As Steve Friedl’s excellent article on SQL injection attacks shows, sloppy programming can lead to disasterous consequences for a database-driven website, especially if that database is Microsoft SQL Server.

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MySQL backup

For those of you lucky enough to have Linux shell access here’s a quick tip for backing up and restoring your MySQL database:

Backup:

mysqldump -u username -p --opt databasename | gzip -9 > dumpfilename.sql.gz

Restore:

gunzip dumpfilename.sql.gz
mysql -u username -p databasename < dumpfilename.sql

Where "databasename" is the name of your MySQL database, "dumpfilename" is the name of the backup/restore file and "username" is your MySQL username.