Packt celebrates International Day Against DRM

Packt Publishing firmly believes that you should be able to read and interact with your content when you want, where you want, and how you want – to that end they have been advocates of DRM-free content since their very first eBook was published back in 2004.

To show their continuing support for Day AgainstDRM, Packt Publishing is offering all its DRM-free content at $10 for 24 hours only on May 6^th – that’s all 2000+ eBooks and Videos at www.packtpub.com. 

“Our top priority at Packt has always been to meet the evolving needs of developers in the most practical way possible, while at the same time protecting the hard work of our authors. DRM-free content continues to be instrumental in making that happen, providing the flexibility and freedom that is essential for an efficient and enhanced learning experience. That’s why we’ve been DRM-free from the beginning – we’ll never put limits on the innovation of our users.”  

– Dave Maclean, Managing Director

Advocates of Day Against DRM are invited to spread the word and celebrate on May 6^th by exploring the full range of DRM-free content at www.packtpub.com, where all eBooks and Videos will be $10 for 24 hours.

Review for ''Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python''

I recommend this book to all those interested in getting a startup with background in understanding Geospatial Analysis.There are few simple Python examples also that says how Python can be used.I think this is a tutorial-style book that helps you how to use Python in geospatial analysis, from a basic start to a quite advanced and complicated level.

read more here : http://www.packtpub.com/learning-geospatial-analysis-with-python/book

Packt's Celebrates Their 2000th Title With an Exclusive Offer

Packt Publishing celebrates their 2000th title with an exclusive offer - We've got IT covered!

Known for their extensive range of pragmatic IT ebooks, Packt Publishing are celebrating their 2000th book title `Learning Dart’– they want their customers to celebrate too.

To mark this milestone Packt Publishing will launch a ‘Buy One Get One Free’ offer across all eBooks on March 18th – for a limited period only. 

`Learning Dart’ was selected as a title and published by Packt earlier this year. As a project that aims to revolutionise a language as crucial as JavaScript, Dart is a great example of an emerging technology which aims to support the community and their requirement for constant improvement. The content itself explains how to develop apps using Dart and HTML5 in a model-driven and fast-paced approach, enabling developers to build more complex and high-performing web apps.

David Maclean, Managing Director explains `It’s not by chance that this book is our 2000th title. Our customers and community drive demand and it is our job to ensure that whatever they’re working on, Packt provides practical help and support.

At Packt we understand that sometimes our customers want to learn a new programming language pretty much from scratch, with little knowledge of similar language concepts. Other times our customers know a related language fairly well and therefore want a fast-paced primer that brings them up to a competent professional level quickly.

That’s what makes Packt different: all our books are specifically commissioned by category experts, based on intensive research of the technology and the key tasks.’

Since 2004, Packt Publishing has been providing practical IT-related information that enables everyone to learn and develop their IT knowledge, from novice to expert.  

Packt is one of the most prolific and fast-growing tech book publishers in the world. Originally focused on open source software, Packt contributes back into the community paying a royalty on relevant books directly to open source projects. These projects have received over $400,000 as part of Packt’s Open Source Royalty Scheme to date.

Their books focus on practicality, recognising that readers are ultimately concerned with getting the job done. Packt’s digitally-focused business model allows them to quickly publish up-to-date books in very specific areas across a range of key categories – web development, game development, big data, application development, and more. Their commitment to providing a comprehensive range of titles has seen Packt publish 1054% more titles in 2013 than in 2006.

Erol Staveley, Publisher, says `Recent research shows that 88% of our customers are very satisfied with the service knowing that we offer a wide breadth of titles in a timely manner, and owing to the quality of service that they receive 94% of customers are willing to recommend Packt to friends and family. It’s great that we’ve hit such a significant milestone, and we want to continue delivering this fantastic content to our customers.’

Here are some of the best titles across Packt's main categories - but Buy One, Get One Free will apply across all 2000 titles:

·         Web Development

·         Big Data & Cloud

·         Game Development

·         App Development

$5 eBook Bonanza

 Packt eBooks $5 Offer

Packt Publishing just told me about their Christmas offer, get eBooks for $5.From December 19th, customers will be able to get any eBook or Video from Packt for just $5. This offer covers a myriad of titles in the 1700+ range where customers will be able to grab as many as they like until January 3rd 2014 – more information is available at http://bit.ly/1jdCr2W

Job failed with 'QUOTED_IDENTIFIER, ARITHABORT' in SQL server 2000

Recently I faced issue in SQL server 2000. The Database maintenance plan was in place on weekly basis which were doing Update Statistics on the specified database. The Update Statistics job was failing everyday. When I checked the history of the job I found below error:

[Microsoft SQL-DMO (ODBC SQLState: 42000)] Error 1934: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]UPDATE STATISTICS failed because the following SET options have incorrect settings: 'QUOTED_IDENTIFIER, ARITHABORT'.

The solution is to add a parameter in the Job:

-SupportComputedColumn: This parameter is the new feature that was introduced in SQL server 2000 Service pack4(SP4).

Add this parameter in the Job like below and excute the job, it will successfully execute.

EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_sqlmaint N'-PlanID <GUID> -Rpt "Location of the output file" -WriteHistory  -UpdOptiStats 10 -SupportComputedColumn'

The description for Event ID '1073741877' in Source 'SQLAgent$Name' cannot be found.The following information is part of the event:'[sqagtres] LooksAlive request.

Recently I applied service pack 2 in one of the cluster environment which is SQL server 2008 R2. After applying SP2, few information logs was generating on 2008 SQL Servers which was related to SQL Agent service, these logs were filling up in system application event logs in all the SQL Server nodes.

I was getting below information message in application log:

Message

The description for Event ID '1073741877' in Source 'SQLAgent$Name' cannot be found.  The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display the message, or you may not have permission to access them.  The following information is part of the event:'[sqagtres] LooksAlive request.

'

Message

The description for Event ID '1073741877' in Source 'SQLAgent$Name' cannot be found.  The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display the message, or you may not have permission to access them.  The following information is part of the event:'[sqagtres] CheckServiceAlive: returning TRUE (success).

As per Microsoft articles:

The issue occurs because of a code defect in the Sqagtres.dll SQL Server Agent resource file. The information that is mentioned in the "Symptoms" section should not be logged.

The resolution for this bug has been fixed in Cumulative update 3. So if anyone is getting this informational message in application log, apply Cumulative update 3 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2754552).

For more information you can visit to Microsoft link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2718920

How to apply SQL service pack or CU in SQL server 2005 Cluster

Here I will explain how to apply Service pack or CU in SQL server 2005 cluster.
Lets assume there are two nodes with Active/Active and SQL is rnning on both the nodes
Follow below steps to apply service pack or CU.

      1. Make sure media is available in C drive on both nodes .

      2. Make sure all SQL instances are running on the same node. If it is Active/Active node, failover instance       from one Active node (B) to other Active node (A) to make other node as passive (B).

      3. After failover validate all SQL instances are up and running

      4. Pause passive node (B) in cluster admin.

      5. First apply Service pack/CU on active node (A). Since the passive node (B) is paused, the installer won’t be able to do anything on the passive node.  

      6. Double click on media and follow steps on active node (A)

   

  Note: If you want to apply Service pack or CU only for specific instance, then select only that instance otherwise select all instance to apply patch.

      7. Once the installation is finished, and if it asks for Server reboot

      8.  Resume passive node (B) in cluster admin.

      9.     Fail over all the instances from Active node (A) to passive node (B).

     10. Now Active (A) becomes passive and Passive (B) becomes Active

     11. Reboot passive node (A).

     12.  Now We need to apply patch on current Active node (B)

     13.  Pause Passive node (A) in cluster admin

     14. Double click on media and follow steps on active node (B)

     15. Now the patching is completed on Active node (B).

     16. If reboot is required, then resume Passive node (A) then fail backup all instances from Active node (B) to          Passive node (A).

     17. Now reboot passive node (B).

     18. Once the passive node comes up, connect all SQL instances and verify the SQL Services are DBs and  also check version of all SQL instances.

     19. Now fail back all SQL resources to its intended nodes