My First Half-Marathon ...

After such a hectic practice session; it was an awesome experience to actually run the HALF-MARATHON.  The first thing in mind was to complete the race and had set a target of 2:30:00 for the same.  Was super excited when found out that I actually did complete the race and that too in 2:22:21.  Hopefully this is just the beginning of many more runs to follow.

INFORMATICA

• In Informatica 9.x, if you need the lookup transformation to return multiple values, when creating the looup, you have the option at the bottom of the window that needs to be checked -- "Return All Values on Multiple Match". If not selected, a regular lookup will be created and you would not be able to select the option later on
• In a lookup transformation, if the need be to use the latest value from the lookup table AND if the condition port has >= OR <= comparision, make sure that there is a lookup override which has ORDER by clause with ASCENDING order and in lookup properties select -- "Use Last Value". Do not try Descending order and try to set the property to "Use First Value". Would not work. Informatica defaults the Order By to Ascending in this case.

!!! Chak De INDIA !!!

After around 23 years, India wins a Final in Australia and not only that; this time go on to take the CB Series Cup. An amazing performance from the young and relatively inexperienced Indian team and a bitter farewell to Adam Gilchrist.

F1 ... Here we come !!

After cricket and football (not the local football ... the EPL .. huh) ga ga in India its time for F1 to cash in. Well this was bound to happen sooner than later. After all, we have all money spinners in India now ... :D ...

The richest man in the world, 1st win for India in A1 GP, Spykar take over by Dr. Vijay Mallya (now named as ForceIndia) and now -- Spice Energy from India in a bid to take over the Super Aguri team which is considered as the B team for Team Honda.

Now the deal -- Narain Karthikeyan is to be one of the drivers in team. Should this be acceptable ?? Hmmm ... doesn't Narain have the talent to make into the drivers spot by his own ?? Does he require a company to strike a deal for him ?? Is spice doing a business or what ?? Doesn't it see profit in taking over the car manufacturer alone ?? Why does the company insist on having Narain as their driver ?? and many more questions are being raised about the deal.

One things for sure though, India is making inroads into the F1 circuit which was once seen as a sport for western countries. It would not be a surprise if we would have a F1 race in India within next 2 years now. Go India Go.

HEROES ....

Heroes -- is an American science fiction drama television series created by Tim Kring. It is a serial saga about people all over the world discovering that they have superpowers and trying to deal with how this change affects their lives. As you discover the nature of each hero's powers, the heroes, themselves, are discovering what having superpowers means to them as well as the larger picture of where their superpowers come from. The series is about how these heroes are drawn together by their common interest of evading the series' antagonist who wants to harvest their super-DNA for himself. Their ultimate destiny is nothing less than saving the world!

I just read that when the series premiered in the United States, it was the night's most-watched program among adults aged 18-49, attracting 14.3 million viewers overall and receiving the highest rating for any NBC drama premiere in five years. The first season consists of 23 episodes. season 1 began on 25 September 2006 and aired the last episode on 21 May 2007. It is said that Season 2 will comprise of 24 episodes, 8 of which have already been aired. So Keep Watching !!

Gtalk Tips and Tricks

Here are some of the tips and tricks for all the Gtalk Users:

• 1. How to write a text in BOLD --
• Simply put in an asterisk (*) in front of the text and at the end of the text --
• example : *Hello*
• Same can be expanded to a sentence. Place an asterisk at the start and end of the statement.
• example : *The statement is bold now*
• 2. How to write a text in ITALICS -- This is very similar to the Bold part ... just replace the asterisk with underscore (_)
• example : _Hello_
• example : _The statement is in tialics now_
• -- use combination of both to print text in bold and italic both ..
• 3. Have many accounts and want to login with all of them ... Here's how you can do that --
• go to Start/Run and type --- "path where gtalk is installed" /nomutex
• example : "c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe" /nomutex

Shell Script TIPS ::

--> If you have a file with Header and Trailer records (1st and last records respectively) and want to create a file without the Header and Trailer; can you use the following commands

1. rec_cnt=`cat file_with_hdr_tlr | wc -l`; rec_cnt_head=`expr $rec_cnt - 1`; rec_cnt_tail=`expr $rec_cnt_head - 1`; head -$rec_cnt_head file_with_hdr_tlr | tail -$rec_cnt_tail > file_without_hdr_tlr

2. sed '1d;$d' file_with_hdr_tlr > file_without_hdr_tlr


--> If you have to replace a character which occurs after a specific string pattern and then place the output in a new file

ex:-- 

if you have 

PATTERN_ABC=Y

PATTERN_PQR=N

PATTERN_LMN=N

PATTERN_XYZ=Y

Desired output

PATTERN_ABC=N

PATTERN_PQR=N

PATTERN_LMN=N

PATTERN_XYZ=N

Then use

cat filename  | sed "s/PATTERN_\(.*\)=Y/PATTERN_\1=N/g" > newfilename

-- courtesy my friend Majid


--> To get the decimal points after diving following can be used

1. echo "scale = 2; $var/100" | bc -l 

2. echo a | awk '{b=12345/100;print b}'­   --> [courtesy my colleague Kaushik]

--> If there is a file which is say PIPE delimited and there are fields which are blank i.e. having spaces and you want to replace those spaces with a string; say NULL (helpful when you have to insert the data into a table); use the command: sed "s/| *|/|NULL|/g"
-- courtesy my friend Majid

--> If you are using a file within your script; specify the complete path of the file. This is very important if the script is going to be used in cron.

--> One important command that can be used is 'echo $?' which will return '0' (zero) if the previous command was executed successfully. This can be used in 'if' condition.

--> The 'awk' command comes in very handy within the Shell Scripts.