Great Saying…

“What is that?” – a nice heart-touching video

A few days ago, I got a mail from a group Feed-Your-Head. It contained a link to a video. I watched the video and it touched my heart. I am embedding the video below. Give your 5 minutes to view it. I am sure you will love it. The video shows what our parents do for us. But at their older age, their questions annoy us. I cannot describe the thought better than the video. Watch it… let me know how you felt.

When sending an email…

For many purpose we have to send emails. Sometime we send mails to our friends, relatives or different groups or mailing lists, sometimes we send official mails to our colleagues, superiors or clients. Some mails contain attachments, references, email addresses or web site links. It is easy to forget an attachment or put a broken link. I myself has faced these things. After following some precautions I have overcome these mistakes. Here I am writing down those rules for anyone who is also facing these issues. Follow the following steps after email writing has been completed.

• Check the From Address - I use Gmail as my personal and official email client. If you are a Gmail user, you may know that Gmail provides a facility to use other email addresses from one account. If you have added multiple accounts then you will get a drop down box to select from which account you want to send the email. Also, in case of desktop clients like Microsoft Outlook Express if you have multiple accounts then the same problem may arise. So, I will suggest you to confirm from which address you are sending the mail.
• Check To Address, CC Address, BCC Address - Before you hit the send button, check the addresses to which you are sending mail. Also check the CC and BCC addresses are in place (if required). This is a common mistake.
• Check the Subject line – Make sure the subject line is related to the mail content.
• Check Mail Content – Look for spelling mistakes and correct them if any. Check all the references are correct and the links (if any) are not broken. Check your signature is as intended. 
• Check Attachments - If you have mentioned any attachment in your mail or if the mail requires any attachment then make sure you have attached them accordingly. This is also a common mistake that we forget to attach required documents.

When you will start following these rules, you may find them time consuming. But if you start practicing them time will be reduced. And the most important thing, you will forget to make mistakes .

I hope this post will help you reduce the rate of mistakes you make when sending emails. If you have any other idea you may share it with us.

A great saying…

Reverse engineering MySQL database with Microsoft Visio

Sometimes we need to reverse engineer our database. Microsoft Visio has an option for reverse engineering. But by default it does not support MySQL or in other words you cannot reverse engineer a MySQL database. I have faced this problem and got the solution and sharing here with you.

The steps involved in this process are described below:

1. Download the latest MySQL ODBC connector from MySQL site. You may find it here http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc/5.1.html.
2. After downloading install the connector.
3. Now open Microsoft Visio and open Database Model Diagram template (you may find it under Software and Database group).
4. From Database menu click on Reverse Engineer. You will see the Reverse Engineer wizard.
5. Click on the New button.
6. Select System Data Source.
7. Click Next.
8. Select MySQL ODBC driver from the list.
9. Click Next and then Finish. MySQL Connector/ODBC Data Source Configuration window will open.
10. Give a name to the datasouce, database server host, user name, password and select the database you want to reverse engineer. Remember, the list of database will be shown if you have provided correct information.
11. Click on Ok. Now you will find the data source in Data Source list.
12. Select the newly created data source and click Next. The regular wizard for reverse engineering will start.

Great Saying by Bonnie Blair