When uninstalling a program in Windows, it is normal to expect that all related services of that program will also automatically removed. If somehow your services is not automatically removed, you could manually remove it using the following method

1. Remove the entry in the registry
   Click Start – Run – type Regedit, press Enter. Then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
   Find the name of the service, then delete that folder.
2. Using command line
   click Start – Run – type Cmd, press Enter. use the following command:
   SC delete <service name>
   (You might need to enclose the service name with quotes if it contains spaces)

A few months ago my colleague asked me to try out TOra (Toolkit for Oracle). I downloaded the latest stable version of TOra (2.0), and get it installed in my PC.

But somehow I could’t get it to connect to our Oracle test DB. I tried all combinations of the connection settings, but I always get either of these error messages whenever I press the connect button:

• ORA-06401: NETCMN: Invalid driver designator
• ORA-12560: TNS: protocol adapter error

Desperate for guidance, I lurked at TOra’s community forum looking for one. I found a number of questions from people who apparently have the same problem as mine. I tried the tips given there, but I still unable to get TOra connected.

I stopped my experiment with TOra because my colleague suggested us to settle with Oracle’s SQL Developer instead. I noticed that SQL Developer is a Java-based Windows application, so I already anticipated that it is going to be much slower than native Windows application.

So after months of occasionally frustrated by SQL Developer’s slowness and memory-hogging, I return back to trying to get TOra connected. Hoping that my fortune is improved this time. And it does improved 😀

I installed TOra (the latest stable version is still 2.0) and then visited TOra’s community forum for clues. Then I found out someone mentioned that TOra 2.0 was build based on Oracle Instant Client 10. Hmm.. I am still using Oracle 9.2 Instant Client. This could be the main cause why TOra unable to connect.

So I downloaded Oracle’s Instant Client v. 10.2 and extracted its content to my TOra installation folder. Then I tried the following settings:

Voila!!! It works!!!

Update:

Unfortunately, I am still unable to use TNS record to get TOra connected. I’ll update again once I have success getting TOra connected using TNS records.

To make TOra able to use TNS, please set the following Environment Variables:

• TNS_ADMIN. Value: fullpath of TNSNames.ORA’s directory
• ORACLE_HOME. Value: fullpath of Oracle’s installation directory

Once you’ve done above steps, a new connection provider [Oracle (TNS)] will be available.

A colleague asked for my help yesterday. He wants to have a chart that consists of bar chart and smooth-line chart. Since I don’t rate my MS Excel skill highly, I told him to give me some time to do simulation (read: Trial-and-Error)

Assume we have the following data:

Below is the final result that he wanted:

To do that, first we need to plot the data as XY (Scatter) – Smooth Line chart. I assume you know how to plot chart with data series. By now, we should have this:

Select one of the series that you want to change into bar chart. You can do that by clicked the series’ line in the chart, or open the chart toolbar.

It’s a simple trick that I only know about it yesterday :D. I hope you will find it useful.