Category: Geeky/Programming

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Geeky/Programming

MSDN Event : SQL Server "Yukon" 2005

The next version of SQL Server is going to be released in 2005. We saw a preview of the IDE and some features that will be available.

One major point is that the IDE is integrated into one program (SQL Workbench) instead of two in SQL Server 2000 (Query Analyzer and Enterprise Manager). The new IDE looks slick and updated from the visual point of view. It also looks like it will make things easier, instead of having multiple places to update things, it is all in once place.

Another new thing with SQL Server 2005 is the way it works with XML. XML is a native data type in 2005, and also there are new commands to query the XML field, which look really cool if you want to stream XML into SQL Server

The last thing that we saw was the integration of the CLR into SQL Server 2005. You can created stored procedures, functions, triggers, and user data types in Visual Studio 2005 and then integrate them into SQL Server, which is really cool! Finally all the things that were really tough in T-SQL you can now do in VB.net or C#.

SQL Server “Yukon” 2005

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Geeky/Programming

MSDN Event: Visual Studio "Whidbey" 2005

We got to preview Whidbey, which is slated for release in 2005. We went over some of the cool new features. For one thing, it loads faster than VS.NET 2003. Some highlights:

1) IDE Interface: The design is little nicer, and when you move a “docked” box, it is translucent and there are some options that come up for docking, which looks nice. It also doesn’t load every toolbar by default, so that is why it loads faster. They want to streamline development for a developers own needs.

2) Form Layout: Some cool things with the form layout, like auto-rulers that line up buttons, labels, textboxes etc. This will make it easier and faster to design a good looking form.

3) “My” Object: VB.NET will introduce the My object. This is pretty much a shortcut for useful namespaces that already exist, like event log, computer information, network functions. This will be nice, because unless you know or stumble upon a namespace, you end up writing custom code to do something that could be done in one line. An example is “pinging” an computer. To do this, you usually have to have a separate assembly or class with like hundreds of lines of code. With the My object you can ping a computer in one line of code!

4) Code Snippets: Many common coding snippets are set up so you can insert them into your program and change a few minor things to get it to work, for example, reading a text file, or writing to a database.

5) Refactoring: This is the process of procedurealizing code. The example they gave was taking over someone else’s program, and you discover it is all one big function. Refactoring allows you make procedures easily and it takes care of the details for you. I don’t see using this that much, but when it does get used, it would be a HUGE timesaver.

6) Line Revision Marks: This looks cool because it shows on the sidebar colors for different states of code revision. Like things that have been saved are green, and things that have been changed are yellow, so you can see what you have changed exactly before you save it.
7) Edit and Continue: In Visual Basic 6.0, you could put in a line break, and then when the program hit that point it would pause, and you could edit some code, and start the execution again from the same spot. In VB.NET 2002, 2003, they took this feature out. Developers must have complained and they added it back in. This is a huge timesaver, especially if it takes 20 minutes to get to a certain point in the execution of a program. Currently you have to wait 20 minutes, make one change, and then re-run the program for 20 minutes to see if it worked.

Visual Studio “Whidbey”

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Geeky/Programming

MSDN Event : Application Code Blocks

Application Code Blocks are little “parts” of programs that Microsoft has created that you can install, and then include the assemblies in your program. The code has been tested and was created with best practices in mind.

We went over:
1) Configuration Management Block : Allows you to set up app.config files easily and encrypt and sign them. This is really cool so you can have settings in a file for your program and keep them secure, while not having tons of code to manage

2) Application Updater Block : Have you ever ran an application that popped up with a box that said there was a new version and that you could click yes to update it? This code block makes this about 100 times easier. You can include the code block, and set up a manifest on a web server, and your program will auto update!

Microsoft Application Code Blocks

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Geeky/Programming

MSDN Event : SQL Server Reporting Services

SQL Server Reporting Services is sort of an add on to Microsoft SQL Server. It allows you to develop reports within Visual Studio (or any other editor that can create report definition language files (RDL))
and then the reporting services talk to IIS with web services to publish reports. You can also set up subscriptions to reports, etc.

At first glance it looks like a panacea for anyone who has ever had to write reports. It allows you to go through some wizards, and create some very complex reports, and then publish them in html, xls, xml, pdf, text, etc. This is all great, but where it starts to break down is with the security.

If your organization is set up in a perfect world (which I am sure it isn’t) then reporting services will probably work for you. The main way to set up security is with NT authentication, and that just doesn’t work for some organizations. Also, parameters are passed through the querystring, so they are easily manipulated, so you can’t force a report to be ran the exact way you want to.

Overall, reporting services is pretty cool, but I just don’t think I would use it in what I do. If I was making an application for one organization where every user had the same level of rights/viewabilty, then I think it would work well.

I also saw a presentation on reporting servers at the SQL Users Group in the Twin Cities a few months back where they went into more detail then the MSDN event, and I still came to the same conclusion. I just don’t think it would work for me, but It is still a cool product, that will (hopefully) squash Crystal Reports 😉

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

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Geeky/Programming

MSDN Event

Today, I attending an MSDN event in town. We went over four topics:

1) SQL Server Reporting Services

2) Application Code Blocks

3) Visual Studio “Whidbey” 2005

4) SQL Server “Yukon” 2005

I gained some good knowledge from this event, and in the next four posts, I will go in depth on each topic.

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Geeky/Programming

Winamp Turns Five

Wow, just surfing around, and I see that Winamp 5 is out. It has been our for a couple months, but damn, I remember when it was like winamp 1.2, winamp .08 beta. It sure has come a long way, it used to be the bomb, when all there was to play mp3 was “winplay” (and wow did it suck). I converted to Microsoft’s Windows Media Player a couple years ago, because I like the library management better, and the auto id3 tag updates, etc. I think I was in a phase where I was trying to get as much as I could on my PC without installing any 3rd party appz.

Anyway, winamp turned 5, which is cool, it is still a stellar app, just not totally what I am looking for. Actually, I installed WMP 10 Beta the other day, and I think it is really cool, more integration with Napster (even though I don’t use it that much).

After a little more investigation, Winamp skipped from version 3 to 5, and the also are charging 15 bux for the “pro” version, that allows you to burn cd’s, etc.

For now, I think I will stick with WMP 😉

Winamp

Windows Media Player

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Geeky/Programming

Floppy Drives

WTF is with new computers not having floppy drives? What a pain in the a$$ to try to get something of a floppy disk. I have some old files on two floppies, that I would like to get to, but I have two laptops in my apt, and neither have a floppy drive. I mean, once I can get to the data, I will burn it on CD, but I mean, come on! Maybe I should invent a little device that you put a floppy in and it puts it on memory disk or CD for you, so you don’t need a computer, and then you don’t need a floppy drive in your computer either.

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Geeky/Programming

Rebirth of Internet Explorer?

The buzz is that the IE development team is coming out of retirement. On Channel9 for MSDN developers, there is a thread started for ideas, etc, from a development and user point of view.

It is about time IE is back in idea mode, there are tons of things that could get added.

IE Feedback Fest

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Geeky/Programming

Email Limits

Well, there is Google’s Gmail (1 GB), and then this week Yahoo decided to say..”Hey wait, instead of 4 MB, lets give our users 100 MB”…Now MSN is going to up the ante, but they haven’t said how much yet. BTW, all three of these are “free” web based email clients. You could always pay Yahoo or MSN for more space, but who wants to do that. Maybe people should just clean out their email boxes? Or maybe archive it off to CD? 10 years from now, no one is going to look at their email they got about “10% off at Best Buy” or “New Polos at the Gap.com”. Anyways, I say store as little as possible online in your email box, because sooner or later the email server that you go through (Yahoo, MSN, Google, etc) will just start snooping and sending you ad’s related to your email. If you want to have a big email box, buy a Win2K3 server and install Exchange 2003 Enterprise, register your domain, and away you go, practically unlimited email size. Below is part of the article from betanews.com, I haven’t put a link because I think their site is off and on anyways.

from betanews:
Redmond executives have been mulling over how to respond to the storage frenzy, and are set to unveil a plan that will go into effect in July.Although still in beta testing, the launch of Google’s free Gmail service heated up the competition by offering customers a whopping 1GB of e-mail storage. Yahoo! fired back this week by boosting customer inboxes to 100MB and unveiling an updated user interface, which Microsoft called “quite good.”

“We have been intentionally quiet over this period, as we formulated our plans, and waited to see the Yahoo response, feeling it would be best to see how strong Yahoo’s counter would be before going public with our own,” Blake Irving, corporate vice president of MSN’s Communication Services group, told employees.

Microsoft hopes that by giving customers enough space, it can move the media focus away from storage as a key selling point and reduce the emerging threat posed by media darling Google.

“We are going to respond in a big way and will eliminate email storage as an issue for our users,” said Irving.

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Geeky/Programming

The API War

I stumbled across a very, very good article by Joel Spolsky on Microsoft and the “API War”. It discusses how Microsoft is not focused on developers as much as they say they are, and they aren’t focused on the desktop, even though they say they are. Very good reading.

How Microsoft Lost the API War