Knowledge Sharing

I am getting some rest right now battling a sinus infection, but there are others hard at work, so let me share with you, because it doesn't have to come from me. And this may be the shortest blog post, but still offering up a great deal of content. Check out Chris Bogan's List of Interesting Blogs. You can find out more of what Chris has to say on twitter at  http://twitter.com/chrisbrogan.

I can share more with you if you enjoy content of online professionals that are not part of the social network, but in a more work related area of which I call the professional network or #ProNetwork as I call it on twitter.

What do you think?

Write XML in MS Access 2010 Using VBA

There is an XML theme for everything that I am writing and this post is no different, except this time, I want to meet you, so I am going to give you the opportunity to meet me. While you're waiting, you can try a game below or just wait for my twitter/LinkedIn notifcation. You can go right to my twitter page by clicking on my name right below the sympathy donation button.

Instead of a cartoon before the show, I will use video games. The channel that I will be broadcasting on is just below the games.

webdevnetwork on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Preparing to go live now.

Create XML in VBA

'Author: Chris Sergent


'Date Created: November 27, 2010

'Purpose: To provide a basic example on how to create an XML document with VBA in MS Access.



Private Sub btnCreateXml_Click()

'Open the vbSkeleton.xml document if it exists and replace all contents. If

'the file does not exsist create it.

Open "c:\Templates\vbaSkeleton.xml" For Output As 1

'Declares the document as an XML document. This element is required at the top of the XML document.

'The declaration is required and must go at the top and only needs to be referenced at the top of the

'document. After the root element, XML documents require beginning and ending elements.

'That is to say that if we have an element or a tag such as , it must have a corresponding

'tag of even if there is no content.

Print #1, "

Print #1, ""

Print #1, ""

'An XML document requires one and only one root or parent node is allowed and it must be empty.

'spatialDeveloperKnowledge is our parent node.

Print #1, ""

'Although this is like a parent node, you could add an attribute to the Developer node such as id.

'I don't recommend it. We'll use XPATH to navigate the XML DOM in later examples.

'There are no rules for this data, but that will be taken care of in a future XSD example.

Print #1, vbTab & ""

Print #1, vbTab & ""

'Set the focus on the txtFirstName control to obtain information for writing

txtFirstName.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtFirstName.Text & ""



'Set the focus on the txtLastName control to obtain information for writing

txtLastName.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtLastName.Text & " "



'Set the focus on the txtCity control to write the city data to file

txtCity.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & ""

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtCity.Text & " "



'Set the focus on the txtState control to write the name of the state

txtState.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtState.Text & " "



'Set the focus on the txtCountry control to write out the name of the country

txtCountry.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtCountry.Text & " "



Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & ""

'Set the focus on txtX1 to obtain the X coordinate

txtX1.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtX1.Text & ""



'Set the focus on txtY1 to obtain the Y coordinate

txtY1.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtY1.Text & ""



'Add measuring value

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & ""

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "NA"



'Add elevation coordinate

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & ""

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "0"





'Set the focus on the txtSkills control to write out the list of skills the developer has

txtSkills.SetFocus

'I added this with an array of skills, because I want to see, not just a developer meetup;

'but a meetup mashup. A developer that limits their access to knowledge, limits their potential

'to provide a solutions and skill dilutes the potential skills in creativity and problem solving.

'Even for the most skilled, a novice can still teach the elite in our field how to communicate with a

'novice. Knowing how to apply what you have learned is not as important as being able to enable others

'with the knowledge and the ability to apply it without help.

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtSkills.Text & " "



Print #1, vbTab & ""

Print #1, ""

'Closes file. If you don't do this, you might receive a message that this file is in use. Don't leave it out.

'If you open a file in code; close a file in code. The same thing holds true with database connections.

Close #1



'This displays once the click event completes. There is no error checking for this example

'If you receceive an error and, ensure you have a folder named Templates in your root folder or "C:\" drive

'or modify the code to so that there is a folder to write to

MsgBox "vbaSkeleton.xml file has been created.", vbOKOnly, "File Written"





End Sub

 
Sample of the Output Document
 
Sample of a Resume with Inline CSS

Code Conundrum

I have been working on an ArcGIS Server web app. I first attempted to use .Net, but it was a pain to easily add controls. After that I checked out Silverlight, which I like, but I wanted to used xml files for my xaml instead of xaml files and did not like the idea of creating what appeared to be two projects; desktop and web. Next step, I checked out Adobe Flex; but they had their own proprietary pages like Microsoft XAML. So, last stop sent me to a free language; JavaScript. I have used ESRI’s JavaScript API's, but have found documentation to be inconsistent or incomplete for the purpose of learning. What I mean by inconsistent is that variable change; no big deal you say? When you try to integrate several samples and your not sure about the purpose for each item, and have to logically relate the examples to a new definition, it can be difficult and error prone. That didn’t stop me. I started working on JavaScript driven web page and everything went smooth at first. I had a panel that contained navigation, table of contents, overview map, and the map itself all using AJAX and it was an .aspx page; not a JavaScript sample your likely to find on ESRI’s samples at the time of this writing. You could collapse sections of the panel and drag the panel across the screen. It was well formed using XHTML and even used CSS. But then I attempted to add the identify task and here ends my story of creating and begins the story of creativity and problem solving.

This is a short story as it’s in the works. I am re-creating the samples with external CSS for style, external JS for map interaction, XHTML to ensure writing a well-formed web page and writing it in .aspx. But that’s the easy part, I am documenting nearly line of code, tag, or style I create. This is the least enjoyable part of programming, and the greatest necessity. I want to be able to find out what is happening when, why and how, so I am making notes to myself for every piece. Once completed or if I hit another virtual brick wall, I plan on sharing it. So far, this endeavor has gone bumpily smooth; errors along the way, but none at the moment waiting for me at my desk, once I return from lunch.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

Hi, I'm Chris

I have put off posting my first blog for some time, talking about tips and tricks and online social networks, but I want to back up for a moment. Let me take a moment to introduce myself; Hi, I'm Chris. I would like to answer two questions; the first I am frequently asked- "What do you do?" The response to this has always overwhelmed me, as I integrate and automate in an array of applications as this blog continues, you will see that I don't make a list to impress, it's just a list of apps that I have worked in. It would appear to be a difficult task to integrate apps, but thanks to collaboration and online social networks, my abilities to meet such requests are better than ever. The second question is one that I ask myself, how to utilize collaboration to facilitate the optimization of ones own abilities.   So, here I am. Having graduated from high school, which I have to believe, based on my grades, would place me in the rankings near the bottom of my graduating class and nearly failing a computer programming class while there; you might think that college isn't likely, and working/programming even less likely. This might have all come true, except that I had an accidental discovery. It's not the type of discovery that teaches you how to get rich, my discovery was going to be the building blocks that would shape the type of professional I am and has given me the opportunity to do the type of work that I love with the college degree that is in a completely different field, but as I continue to explain in my multi-part intro-blog; as I have told many, in a way I never left my degree program, rather I might have re-defined it's use. Amazingly, part of the process of re-defining the “what kind of professional do I want to be”, gave me the opportunity to meet my wife.   But we will get to that later.   In the late 80's, I thought that I would like programming as I liked video games and gadgets; not a lot of deep thought, but it was high school. So while I was in high school, I took a computer programming class and nearly failed, so I dropped it. After this, I never even considered a possibility of programming or even working with computers as part of my job let alone as a career.   For some time I went on thinking that what I wanted to accomplish would be given to me because I wanted it.   It wouldn't be for nearly another ten years, but in 1995, I was in junior college, I succeeded becaused something I wanted was given to me, ironically for the last time, because something happened, which caused my ethics to completely change.   That one next on; Ethics Evolving