Technology
Latest Postings
November 19 2008
I recently came across a problem where I needed to schedule the daily FTP upload of a set of files to one of my client’s FTP servers. I was a bit out of my element and found that locating a solution to this task was surprisingly challenging. I thought I would post the steps here so that someone in a similar situation might benefit from the time I spent in trial and error.
1. My first goal was to make sure I could upload via ftp using the command prompt in Windows XP. I created the following script, ftp_script.txt, which I placed in a scripts folder on the C drive:
open www.yourhostname.com
username
password
put c:\test.txt test.txt
quit
Plug in your corresponding hostname, username, password, and file locations. This script will upload the local copy of test.txt to the server. The above script can be passed into your command line ftp client. Open up your command prompt and type:
ftp -s:path_to_script\scriptfile
Which, in my case, was:
ftp -s:c:\scripts\ftp_script.txt
The “-s” allows you to specify a file name in order to pass your username, password, and put commands to the command line ftp client.
2. If you get Step 1 working, the next step is to create a command file to run the ftp script. The command file is just a text file with a .cmd extension that calls up the command line ftp. In my case, I created ftp.cmd with the contents:
ftp -s:c:\scripts\ftp_script.txt
Test your command file by double clicking it to make sure that it executes the FTP successfully.
3. Finally, create a daily task using the Windows Task Scheduler. Go to Start > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks (in Classic view). Click Add Scheduled Task and when it prompts you for the application, browse to your command file that you created in Step 2. As you finish out the task scheduler, you’ll get to choose how often you want the task to run and at what time.
After you complete these steps, your ftp job should be ready and waiting for its next scheduled execution time. I hope you find this trick as useful as I did!
November 4 2008
Are you trying to kick off a successful project using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007? Do you want to make sure you install and implement it using the industry best practices? Are you migrating from 2003 to 2007?
ISInc can help you kick off a successful implementation with SharePoint with our packaged consulting offerings!
More »
This is exactly the question that I asked Tom Shinder, a Microsoft MVP on the Forefront Security product. He spent some time and came up with this posting for us to help you understand Microsoft’s offering around Forefront.
What is Microsoft Forefront?
Have you heard friends or colleagues mention Microsoft Forefront and wonder what they were talking about? If so, you’re not alone, as Microsoft Forefront is relatively new and just beginning to get real traction in the network security market.
The first thing you need to know is that there is no “Forefront” product. Instead, Forefront is a collection of Microsoft security products. This collection of Forefront security products is referred to as the “Forefront Security Suite”
More »
October 10 2008
One of the interesting issues I have found when building reports in Crystal is the nature of their record selection on blank data. More »
September 17 2008
Running an Enterprise IT Environment has more cost than just the equipment and power that is used. Now we need to keep in mind the entire eco-system to run our infrastructure, from the power each machine uses to the amount of time people need to support it. Running a “Green” IT will not only help the environment, it will often relieve some of the stress on your IT staff.
Here are some steps your IT group can take to make your company more environmentally friendly. More »
September 10 2008
Learning web design can be easy with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, like Dreamweaver or Microsoft’s Expression Web. You create a new document and edit it like a PowerPoint slide or a new file in Microsoft Word. You add text, tables, and pictures. Voila, you have a web page.
More »
April 19 2008
Eclipse is a fantastic IDE for PHP development. The best part is that it is free! It is a Java development environment that can be extended to edit Ruby, Perl, Python, PHP, C++ and many other obscure languages.
I went through a number of hurdles to get my development environment setup, but I came across this posting the other day that highlights all the necessary steps. The article covers SVN, Eclipse, PHP and Mysql installation.
Setup PHP development in Windows
April 11 2008
While working remotely I noticed my bandwidth would drop when I connected to our VPN. It appeared that all internet packets were being routed through our VPN connection. While this normally wouldn’t be a problem, I often found myself downloading large files and my connection performance was limited to the available bandwidth to the VPN connection. That’s when I learned about what a “split tunnel” vpn connection is. I wrote this article to walk you through the process of setting up your VPN to take advantage of this option in Windows Networking. More »
March 18 2008
Information is at the heart of all computer systems. The storage, retrieval and manipulation of information is a core function of virtually all applications whether those applications reside on the desktop, a server, or the web. Most modern applications make use of relational databases (RDBs) to deliver these functions and the computer language that is most often used to with RDBs is SQL (often pronounced as the English word “sequel”). Because of the importance of information management and pervasiveness of RDBs in modern computing a passing familiarity with the SQL language can be a strong benefit to virtually anyone who works with computer technology.
More »
February 22 2008
How many times have you banged your head against the keyboard trying to get a Javascript function to work, only to find out the problem was with your browser? There are a number of tools out there that will make your life easier. This is a list that has helped not only my hairline, but my sanity too! More »
