Jeremy Simmons: The Blog

I have worked on a project that required a random number, which had to be created within a certain range and be unique within the table that it’s going to be stored in.  The uniqueness of the number only needed to apply to numbers that were marked as active within the table.   Someone used a .Net approach whereas I tried using both SQL functions and  procedures both of which worked in the same manner.

The method used within SQL Server would take a guid,(generated by the NewID) then strip out the numbers and this was then used as a starting point. If the number was not free it would then move up one and down one at a time to see if the number was free. This worked fine until the range of numbers free started to become limited. 

The best method which is still within SQL server was to create a table with all the numbers within the range and mark them as free.  Then select the top 1 of all the numbers that are marked as free, this will allow the number to be unique, but order them by using the NewID function which will cause the number to come out in a random order. Then take the number, mark it as in use until it becomes free again.

Via http://blogs.conchango.com/stevewright/archive/2006/09/14/Creating-unique-random-number-generator-for-SQL-Server_2E00_.aspx

More DOS Scripting goodness. This snippet appends some arbitrary location to your PATH variable, so you can call the executables inside of it.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO %PATH% | FIND /I "C:\Folder1\Folder2\Folder with Spaces\bin\Release"
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Folder1\Folder2\Folder with Spaces\bin\Release

That, ladies and gentleman, will save you minutes of grief. Isn't that what it's all about anyway? makes it all worth while.

I've found myself using this pattern alot lately. I figured I'd post it for posterity.

---

@ECHO OFF

SET NOWD=%DATE%
SET mm=%NOWD:~4,2%
SET dd=%NOWD:~7,2%
SET yyyy=%NOWD:~10,4%

:: ECHO mm=%mm%
:: ECHO dd=%dd%
:: ECHO yyyy=%yyyy%

SET NOWT=%TIME%
SET hour=%TIME:~0,2%
SET min=%TIME:~3,2%
SET sec=%TIME:~6,2%
SET ms=%TIME:~9,2%

:: ECHO NOWT=%NOWT%
:: ECHO hour=%hour%
:: ECHO min=%min%
:: ECHO sec=%sec%
:: ECHO ms=%ms%

SET LOGFILENAME=%yyyy%%mm%%dd%_%hour%%min%%sec%%ms%.txt

:: ECHO %LOGFILENAME%

:: make sure to use a double arrow to append, not 'create'

ECHO %DATE% - %TIME% >> %LOGFILENAME%

ECHO Whatever your program should do >> %LOGFILENAME%