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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
6/11/2009 5:55:31 PM
IMHO, I think that SQL Server Developer Edition should have a “switch” to permit developers (ideally on a connection-by-connection basis) to “select” which version of SQL Server is being executed. As most of you know the difference between the versions is all done with mirrors as the bits are the same for the most part. I can’t see that it would be that hard to expose that selection switch so a developer could test his application and the server-side executables on the version of SQL Server he ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
6/10/2009 7:18:37 PM
This has just gone online. While the picture is a bit dated, the subject is not… Here I talk about using RDL and the ReportViewer to build sophisticated applications with far less code. http://www.dnrtv.com/
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
6/10/2009 5:22:30 PM
I wrote a sample application that illustrates how the SQL Compact (what Microsoft calls “Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition”) database used with the Local Data Cache gets out of sync (which I would expect it to) with the host database and how the application can get it back in sync. However, it seems that when they are really out of sync, the only thing to do is to clear out the client database and start over.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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6/2/2009 6:03:17 PM
Peter encouraged me to check out the new Report Builder 2.0. Apparently the folks at Microsoft saw the problems with the “model” approach and created an entirely new Report Design and rendering paradigm for those capable of making their own reports. I’ll be reviewing this new version later this year—hopefully in a SQL Server magazine article.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/29/2009 9:42:13 PM
Peter showed me the new Report Builder in Reporting Services 2008. I agree, it’s far better than the first version. I would like to write a whitepaper on it to reintroduce it to the development community but I have a question.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/26/2009 5:56:09 PM
I installed VS 2010 Beta 1 over the weekend and since it’s now in public beta I’m free to comment on it. To make a long story short, “It’s not done.”
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
4/8/2009 10:35:40 PM
I’m scheduled to give another in a series of webinars on May 13th. This one’s on SQL Server Common Language Runtime (CLR) executables. It’s sponsored by Progressive Management Audio Conferences so you’ll have to pay the fee ($199) to get in. See their website to get access to the feed.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
4/3/2009 8:09:23 PM
While working on a new project to illustrate the performance benefits of using client-side expressions to filter rowsets I came across a few issues that I would like to see Visual Studio’s Business Intelligence toolset address:
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/24/2009 12:53:07 AM
Well, thanks to Dave Sell (etal.) at Microsoft I was able to get the latest service pack for SQL Server 2005 installed. Unfortunately, it took almost a month to get this resolved by some hard-working Microsoft engineers. The error logs were only partially helpful. The web sites we were lead to were not.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/19/2009 6:37:07 PM
I’ve spent the last twenty years or so warning about the problems of SELECT * in queries but Peter Blackburn recently reminded me that a SELECT * in a View is worse. I have an article in the works that explains why in some detail, but I wanted to make developers using Visual Studio or SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) know that if they have a SELECT * imbedded in a View, they won’t find it—at least not with the VS or SSMS Query editor (QE). The problem is, the QE automatically converts any am ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/15/2009 9:04:51 PM
I had a question from our Reporting Services book website that lead me to create a sample application to illustrate how to deal with filter arguments. IMHO, the mechanism used by the Report Designer is still not that great as it requires too much (non-VB-like) type coercion. That is, one constantly has to force the type of the TextBox values as well as the type of the left and right-hand side of expressions to match instead of having the report processor’s RDL interpreter just figure it out. ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/15/2009 4:19:15 PM
I just replaced my copper DSL with FIOS. This meant getting another IP address but it also means I can serve those who want to pull down my content at 5 MBS. Let me know if there are issues.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/12/2009 4:28:36 AM
I’m giving a webinar on SQL Server Stored Procedures Thursday morning (March 12th) at 1 PM Eastern time. This 70-minute session discusses how to write efficient stored procedures and call them from ADO.NET. The materials and précis can be downloaded from here… http://www.pbconferences.com/8Y/9W
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/6/2009 12:23:23 AM
So, I asked Microsoft to explain why the ConnectionString dialog exposed by the SqlClient .NET Data Provider no longer has the Connection Reset key. They say it was removed. Has anyone heard why? IMHO, this exacerbates the problem with the Close method. That is, when you use the SqlConnection.Close method in ADO.NET, the connection state is maintained until the next time the connection is used or it times out (4-8 minutes later). I think this is dumb. Why not release the connection state on clo ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/3/2009 11:06:55 PM
Ideas I think the SQL Server team could use to build some future products. These most have to do with SQL Server Management Studio tools improvements that would be leveraged (in time) into Visual Studio.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/3/2009 5:53:24 PM
Better organization of objects like Stored Procedures, Views, Tables into logical (user-defined) groups: Accounting, Finance, Inventory, Personnel. Some SPs or objects might be in more than one group. This is a more complex task. While NorthWind has relatively few objects, even Adventureworks (AW) has almost too many tables and objects to manage graphically without some degree of organization. AW deals with this to some extent by clever object naming, but this only applies to tables. When a ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/3/2009 5:44:18 PM
During the MVP Summit I had an opportunity to interact with members of the SQL Client team (in the SQL Server group). While I can’t talk about their future plans, I can talk about the suggestions I made:
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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3/3/2009 5:07:52 AM
Okay, I lied, here are several more items for future versions of Visual Studio. The problems I outline here (and elsewhere) might have been mentioned before, but finding the right team at Microsoft to take ownership of these issues is a challenge. We’re constantly told by one team or another that some other sub-section of the “Visual Basic” team handles this issue or that.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/1/2009 4:57:18 AM
I’m giving a talk at the MVP Summit in Seattle on Sunday afternoon. The session focuses on the premise that it’s easier to create user interface (UI) that includes formatting, aggregates, graphics and the rest with a report (or several). I’ve provided some of the technical details here.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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2/24/2009 12:20:29 AM
No, the folks that built the Data Source configuration wizard that generates TableAdapter classes did not see fit to include the ability to set the CommandTimeout property for the numerous SELECT and DML Command objects they build for you. To address this issue you’ll need to implement a Partial Class to create your own properties.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/23/2009 6:01:49 PM
Bill Ramos announced in his blog that there is a new version of the (required) tool to manage SQL Server databases. It’s free and ready to be downloaded. Check out the Microsoft Download site. Technorati Tags: SQL Server , SQL Server Management Studio , Express Edition
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/20/2009 6:28:54 PM
Being a realistic guy, and based on past experience, I guess I need to put my sights on versions much further ahead to get anything incorporated into Visual Studio. Assuming Microsoft is still in business and Visual Studio still exists in 5 years, here is a clarification of a feature I’ve been asking for since VS 2000.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/19/2009 11:37:43 PM
A developer on the public newsgroups asked an interesting question that I thought would have a fairly easy answer. Well, it turned out to be easy once Pablo Castro provided a hint.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/18/2009 5:13:28 AM
Another developer asked how to import CSV files using INSERT statements. Instead of simply saying “Go get a copy of the book” (again), I decided to provide the example from the book’s DVD. SqlBulkCopy leverages the considerable work the SQL Server team has done to make importing data fast (really fast). Consider that none of the data access interfaces are designed to do bulk imports—except DBLib. That is, until ADO.NET 2.5 when the SqlBulkCopy API was added to the .NET SqlClient namespace t ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/18/2009 4:07:33 AM
Early in March the MVPs are holding their annual summit on the Redmond campus. They want us to provide questions to be posed to the Microsoft managers who want to hear what the developer community thinks. Please feel free to comment. I’ll pass on your comments to the folks on the hill. What progress has been made to better communicate between the various divisions at Microsoft? Case in point (one of many): The new Local Data Cache has two separate mechanisms to create and initialize ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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2/17/2009 7:43:55 PM
Despite the fact that you’ve used the encryption option on your SQL Compact database, if you don’t hide the password, it’s really easy to figure it out. I suggest you (at least) use an obfuscator or better yet, your own (private) technique to hide the value. Consider that there are ways to “reflect” the underlying source of .NET programs because they are stored as CLR intermediate language on your client’s system. Technorati Tags: SQL Server Compact Edition , Security , ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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2/17/2009 5:38:38 PM
Perhaps the SQL Browser service can tell you why. Try running the sqlbrowser with the -c option and examine the results. sqlbrowser -c SQLBrowser: starting up in console mode. SQLBrowser: starting up SSRP redirection service SQLBrowser: failed starting SSRP redirection service -- shutting down In this customer’s case they had not opened the firewall to SQL Server Management Studio. Technorati Tags: SQL Server , SQL Browser , conn ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/13/2009 5:54:08 PM
Rich Byham (MSFT) answered a developer’s question about slow response when a database is hosted on a remote system. One possibility: Perhaps your SQL Server Native Client on the XP computer is attempting to connect via named pipes. Named pipes is not enabled on the client. After 85 seconds the connection attempt times out. Then it tries the next protocol such as TCP. It connects right away and returns results. Or the other way around trying TCP first and then named ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/10/2009 7:14:40 PM
Lisa Feigenbaum says the Visual Studio team at Microsoft is asking for ideas for Visual Studio 2012 (the version after the now cast-in-plaster VS 2010). I did a search against my archive of suggestions I made awhile ago (okay, in 2006) to see which of the issues I raised then have been addressed and which make sense to be addressed in some future version. Ideally, Lisa will respond to say “Oh, sure. Those have all (or mostly) been addressed in the 2010 version.” but I’m an optimist. Here’s t ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/5/2009 11:50:42 PM
So, I've been lurking on the public newsgroups and noticed several authors and author wnanabes asking questions about what makes technical books sell. Some report sales in the 500-1000 range while others sell in the tens of thousands. I began musing on how to get one's book to sell more copies--enough to make it worthwhile. Perhaps these tips might help: Write your book so it's not dependant on a specific product version. This makes your book more useful over the years as specific produc ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
2/5/2009 7:28:12 PM
Patrick, I could not agree more with your editorial this month. Based on what I hear when I leave my cave is that Microsoft just doesn’t get it. Because of politics (no, not the Bush/Obama kind) and an old-school marketing and sales plan, Microsoft has also forced its own development teams to pump out new versions of SQL Server and other serious platform engines on a ever-shortening cycle. The same is true for Visual Studio and the languages teams whose development cycles seem to be totally con ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
1/30/2009 11:21:23 PM
If you’re using the Visual Studio 2008 (SP1) Data Source Wizard or Local Data Cache wizard and you get a message like this: Synchronizing the database failed with the message: 'Unable to initialize the client database, because the schema for table ...[list of tables]... could not be retrieved by the Getschema() method of DvServerSyncProvider. Be sure to check the compatibility level of the targeted database to make sure it’s set to SQL Server 100 (2008). This should have been tested b ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
12/1/2008 1:21:08 AM
Having seen the litany of non-answers (and random guesses) on the SqlClient.SQLException: "A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.)" I decided to figure this out for myself. No, it has nothing to do with named pipes or TCP/IP protocols or using wireless connections or VPNs--it has to do with the SQL Server in ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
11/20/2008 3:42:35 AM
Here at PASS I found a great opportunity to lobby for a few features in Reporting Services--mostly with the Report Designer BI tool. I also talked to the PMs handling the ReportViewer control--you know, the one that won't be able to manage 2nd generation RDL (the RDL generated by the new VS2008 SP1 BI tools) until 2010. They tell me that the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" so if you want the ReportViewer control to be fully functional I suggest you vote on the Connect bug I created ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
11/11/2008 6:29:26 PM
Technorati Tags: SQL Server , Report Viewer , Reporting Services , Visual Studio , Microsoft , Developer Connections In case no one noticed, I’m a fan of the ReportViewer control. While it’s not free like SQL Express (you have to actually pay for one of the non-Express versions of Visual Studio to get it), it does give developers a way to design, tune, test and deploy reports along with their applications—either ASP.NET or Windows Forms—without Reporting Services. And no, the control is no ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
10/22/2008 10:13:19 PM
Folks, we're at that rare point in time when the developer community can have some modicum of influence on how the next version of Visual Studio will work. I highly encourage everyone to get active and start pinging the development teams with your issues, bugs, wish-lists and gripes. No, you don't need to be negative, as VS has come a long way over the last decade but there are still many issues that are left unresolved over several versions so we (all) need to be persistent and vocal. I have o ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
10/20/2008 6:52:24 PM
For some reason, I have been unable to create new SSMS 2008 projects or open existing projects without getting a "Class Not Registered" exception or simply an empty project/solution window. I did see a response from a fellow MVP that suggested I need to apply SQL Server 2008 Customer Update 1 (CU1) but not before I had attempted to "repair" my existing installation. Unfortunately, this triggered a number of other issues as discussed below: SQL Server 2008 Setup (don ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
10/15/2008 11:38:06 PM
This short entry is simply a discussion of what happens when you attach a populated database to a different SQL Server. I do this all the time when I build demo systems or move test databases into production. Consider that all of the objects in a database have a name and (more importantly) a digital ID--an number that uniquely identifies it from the others. When you create a database it gets a name and a object ID. While simplified, this basically means that when you create a new Login, it ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
10/11/2008 7:50:03 PM
INETA sent me to Tulsa Oklahoma this week for the Tulsa Techfest. My experiences with the newly renovated Crown Plaza hotel notwithstanding, it was a nice trip. It seems that the hotel decided to put me on the newly renovated top floor--where the thermostats were miss-wired--all they cold do is cool... and cool...and cool. I sat through Brad McGehee's SQL DBA talks and learned (or was reminded of) a few tip that I thought I would share. Some of these tips are pretty obvious but it seems not ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/13/2008 3:34:00 AM
I tried to perform this fairly simple (sounding) operation this afternoon and here it is after dinner and I'm just now done. The problem is, that until you find the right web site with the right example you'll get errors like "Cannot find Installable ISAM" or "Invalid file format" or other red-herring errors that just waste your time. Here is an example I'm building for my new ADO.NET 3.5 "What's New For SQL Server Developers" session to be given for the fi ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/27/2008 6:26:49 PM
When I got started with SQL Server (when Microsoft first picked it up), I had worked on several database systems and even written a couple. However, I had little formal "relational" theory education--not until I took an Extended Relational Analysis (ERA) course which helped make the job of designing efficient databases a lot easier. Frankly, I don't remember where this course was given or who gave it but it sure looks like the course being offered by Relational Systems Corporation ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/20/2008 10:56:56 PM
The title says it all. Just experimented with this and it seems the Visual Studio (Server Explorer) Team has relented to let the SQL Server 2K8 SSMS team use this (IMHO) very useful tool. ;) I also like the way that when you request to execute a SP, SSMS scripts a routine to call it. Nice touch.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/20/2008 12:27:31 AM
Having been part of a marketing organization within Microsoft and other companies, I can understand why some folks feel it's important to show the Rolls Royce product in its best light. However, when I see how SQL Server Enterprise is being marketed , I'm dismayed. Consider that while Microsoft makes a bundle on SQL Server Enterprise Gold Trim Edition (a much as $25,000), they make quite a bit (if not more) on Workgroup and Standard (about $4000-$5000). And yes, even the free editions (Express ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/19/2008 10:30:12 PM
Paul Randall and Kimberly Tripp came to the Redmond .NET User Group last night and gave an animated talk on indexing--a subject that both of them know cold. I thought I would share a few tidbits that struck me as important. Consider that Kimberly and Paul are SQL Server experts and don't always worry about "developer" issues. When asked what they thought of the Entity Framework their reaction was... less than enthusiastic. If you ever get a chance to listen to this married couple spea ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/15/2008 7:38:21 PM
I've just discovered the Rosetta Stone for the AdventureWorks sample databases that you can install to demo or test SQL Server. It was created by Pikauba Software Solutions for SQL Server 2005, but I expect that many of the details are going to be similar for 2008. See this .
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/15/2008 3:10:26 AM
I was wrong. Actually, I was mislead and believed what I was told about Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and SQL Server 2008 (Katmai) RTM. Apparently, the Katmai report processor was not incorporated into the ReportViewer (or as they now call it the "MicrosoftReportViewer") control during SP1. While it might look like Microsoft had upgraded the ReportViewer (it has the new "Tablix" control and other Reporting Services 2008 features), the RDL generated by the newly released Katmai RDL ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/14/2008 12:02:17 AM
Be sure to start SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Configuration Manager and check out the new default virtual directory name. Notice that the team has finally changed the name to be IIS standard notation. No longer will you see MyServer$MyInstance as the VD name. Now it's MyServer_MyInstance. More tips to follow... When you open an existing RDL report, you'll find that Visual Studio's BI tools convert it automatically to the new "Tablix" control. Unfortunately, each c ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/13/2008 10:54:23 PM
I needed to install the latest AdventureWorks database(s) on my systems here and I found the instructions less than helpful. I finally got them installed and wrote a white paper on how to do it--screen shots, figures, tables and all. See it posted on Developer.Com Technorati Tags: AdventureWorks , SQL Server 2008 .
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/13/2008 9:05:23 PM
Technorati Tags: CLR , Visual Studio SP1 , SQL Server 2008 After having installed Visual Studio SP1 and SQL Server 2008, I wanted to make sure my existing CLR demos worked. I have a number of unique examples (that are included in my latest book) that illustrate basic to complex functions, stored procedures, aggregates and user-defined types--all implemented in CLR (Visual Basic.NET) languages. So, I attached my existing Biblio example database to the new SQL Server 2008 instance and ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/21/2007 2:04:22 AM
I just started working with Orcas Beta 2 again after a long hiatus so I am finding new issues all the time. There are so many UI issues I’ve mentioned over the years that are still not addressed. Off the top of my head these include (but are not limited to):
• Auto “imports” for object references as is done in C#.
• Extensible New constructors for those cases where the new constructor does not include the right set of options. These extensions should have a mechanism to be automatically lo ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/21/2007 2:01:51 AM
By default, the TableAdapter/Data Source drag-and-drop paradigm generates some fairly clumsy code to bind rowsets to the UI. As it is, the wizards (more like Dark Lords) encourage developers to select all columns from a base table with no WHERE clause. The developers is given no opportunity to do anything to limit the rows returned—not until they manually reconfigure the queries or use SPs using the TableAdapter designer. The wizards repeat the same table-based query for each table selected in ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
6/2/2007 8:03:04 PM
One of the "inside" aliases that I monitor posed the question: What should a (very) introductory Visual Basic .NET course (for college students) contain? At least one response went into some detail that (IMHO) missed what students getting started as programmers really need to know.
My answer:
____________________________________________________________________________________________
I might start (a very introductory course) in much the same way as I did when I taught CS101 to college stud ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/25/2007 12:51:00 AM
Managing and Monitoring the Connection Pool
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Wingdings;
panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Tahoma;
panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Trebuchet MS";
panose-1:2 11 6 3 2 2 2 2 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Times;
panose-1:2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.Ms ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
11/11/2006 12:32:25 AM
So, Microsoft has gone and done it. They’ve released RC1 of
their latest reincarnation of SQL Server Mobile/ SqlCE. No , it’s not SQL Server Everywhere as we were first told and how it was
named (and documented in the CTPs); it’s
now (officially) “ Microsoft
SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition ”. And no, they have not agreed on an
official
acronym but I like SqlCE —kinda like the
namespace, so unofficially that’s what I’ll call it until told otherwise. And no, it's not really SQL Serve ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
11/11/2006 12:32:25 AM
So, Microsoft has gone and done it
So, Microsoft has gone and done it. They’ve released RC1 of
their latest reincarnation of SQL Server Mobile/ SqlCE. No , it’s not SQL Server Everywhere as we were first told and how it was
named (and documented in the CTPs); it’s
now (officially) “ Microsoft
SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition ”. And no, they have not agreed on an
official
acronym but I like SqlCE —kinda like the
namespace, so unofficially that’s what I’ll call ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
11/2/2006 11:16:59 PM
November 6th is going to be a big day for me. That’s when my latest Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition) and my first EBook Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition hit the streets. I expect to get my first copy here in Redmond tomorrow (Friday November 3rd). Addison Wesley tells me that the bookstore at the Connections conference in Vegas will have the first copies. They also plan to have copies at TechEd Barcelona that same week and at PASS here in Se ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/25/2006 4:39:33 PM
A recent question on the newsgroups asked about the life-expectancy of DAO and if it makes sense to transition to ADO to access their database.
The problem here is not DAO or even ADO classic (COM-based ADO). The problem here is the JET engine.
When you write an application using JET whether you you Access or VB6 or VB.NET or any other language, you are limited by the capacity and architecture of the shared-file architecture of JET. Your security is limited by JET's inability to be encrypt ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/18/2006 9:41:27 PM
I'll be working with the folks at SetFocus to present an 8-hour seminar on ADO.NET 2.0 Architecture and Best Practices. It's one of the " The Guy Who Wrote the Book " series. Basically, the attendees can be anywhere on the planet (except parts of Cleveland). They run Polycom's PVX (or somesuch) software on their systems--using a web-cam to show their face to the instructor (me). On my end I see all of the students (limited to about a dozen) so I can see if they have questions or have fallen asl ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/18/2006 12:50:52 AM
Another question came up in the newsgroups today that's been asked (and answered) before so to short-circuit having to repeat myself, here is a blocl of code that can be used to enumerate the providers on a system and the services that the provider can see on the network. In other words, it lists the SQL Server instances on the network and puts the list in a DataGridView.
This code is extracted from an example in my new book Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server due to be on t ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/27/2006 11:26:07 PM
I saw this question on a public newsgroup. It's great fodder for the latest question of the day...
__________________________________________________
> Ok I have a VB.NET 2005 application that is connecting to a SQL 2005
> database. The application itself is going to go out and run SP, Views, etc.
> The users will be able to update records.
>
> My main concern is I do not want the user to be able to go out and Access
> the very same SQL server independent of the VB.NET program. W ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/22/2006 1:12:51 AM
Unfortunately, I think Microsoft has stepped off on the wrong foot as far as the marketing of the SQL Server Everywhere edition. For obvious reasons, I expect they wanted to leverage the popularity and reputation of its deadly serious SQL Server DBMS. This makes sense, but technically, SQL Server Everywhere (SQL Ev) is not SQL Server (like SQL Server Express or the other paid editions). I’m of the opinion that if you name a product, it should bear some resemblance to that product. Each product ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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8/21/2006 3:18:27 AM
A developer asked the newsgroup this week about a problem he was having with the CommandBuilder and its inability to generate SQL to fetch the newly created Identity value post Insert. His suggestion was to run the query, call RefreshSchema and subsequently fetch the new Identity.
My Answer:
Nary a week goes by without a reference to the CommandBuilder. Keep in mind that Mike P at Microsoft renamed this the “CommandDon’tUseBuilder”. This class is called by the DataAdapter and TableAdap ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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8/12/2006 5:52:56 PM
I saw this question in the microsoft.public.vb.database newsgroup this morning and since I wanted to start a “question of the day” series of blog entries, I thought this was as good a candidate as any.
The question:
I am having some problems with Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition and databases. I have tried three different pieces of code (one I made that executes an INSERT command on a SQL database, another sample project from Microsoft also using SQL, and finally one from VB 2005 EE ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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8/9/2006 4:41:05 PM
According to this article Microsoft plans to further erode acceptance of Vista by not “supporting” any version of SQL Server other than 2005 SP1. This means existing SQL Server customers running older versions (the vast majority) will have a choice. Upgrade to SQL Server 2005 SKUs and bear the expense to redesign, recode, retest, and redeploy or not move to Vista. This is not that easy (as some might lead you to believe). Take MSDE for example. It supports replication subscriptions—SQL Serve ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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8/8/2006 5:24:31 PM
I met with Microsoft last week over dim sun where we chatted about what’s right and what’s wrong with the documentation and help system. I said that the search engine is just busted. When I ask for an in-context topic I still get flooded with irrelevant topics. If I add more information to narrow the search, it seems to widen the search. I guess I’m just spoiled by Google that seems to get it right far more often.
So, I revert to the index trying to find something that’s close to what I want. ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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8/7/2006 9:58:26 PM
We were conversing this morning about change in developer tools since the demise of VB6 Someone made the point that it's not the intelligence or experience of a developer that makes them sucessful, it's how long can they go before giving up in frustration...
My response was...
____________________
I expect that I’m as frustrated as anyone—perhaps more so. I agree with the assessment, but as I see it, experience can also be a hindrance and further contribute to my frustration. When an ex ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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6/20/2006 6:03:59 PM
SQL Express vs JET vs SQL Everywhere
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h1
{margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in; ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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6/16/2006 9:41:59 PM
In response to a newsgroup question where an ASP developer (who had seen the light) wanted to know if it was still necessary to immediately close connections or if it was okay to keep them open.
________________________________
Unless your server is supporting many hundreds of users or you're under a licensing restriction, you can easily get away with creating and holding connections--lots of them. The disadvantage to this approach is that it ties up some resources on the server to maintain y ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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6/14/2006 2:15:56 PM
Steve Lasker came by and recommended this blog article written by Rob Walters. It includes a number of good tips you'll need when building and deploying SQL Server Databases on client application platforms.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
6/12/2006 3:53:59 PM
I made two mistakes last night. First, I didn’t stand in line to get into the TechEd 2006 (Boston) keynote early enough to get a seat near the aisle. The second mistake was attending in the first place. Earlier in the day we had an MVP meeting where we heard from MVPs that Microsoft’s focus seemed to be toward the “Enterprise” and away from smaller companies. This message was pretty clear in the keynote address. Virtually all of the features demonstrated and “promised” (except Avalon) were clea ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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6/3/2006 6:46:25 PM
It’s become pretty clear that the technical book-writing business is not worth the time and effort—not to mention the years of time that I could have been contributing elsewhere. But is there a better way? This article explores the mechanics of writing technical books and the alternatives.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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6/3/2006 12:04:51 AM
So, they tell me that I'm doing a chalk-talk on the new ReportViewer control in Visual Studio. That's cool as it's one of the most interesting additions to the Visual Studio tools suite. The question is, how the heck and I going to do
an hour-long presentation without a demo, or a projector to show it with? I'm thinking about bringing hand-puppets. Check the schedule for the exact times but I asked for Tuesday or Wednesday morning sometime. I'll probably get 0-dawn 30. I expect that most folks ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
6/1/2006 9:54:42 PM
I get that a lot. Most folks know that I've been
holed up working on the latest Hitchhiker's
Guide . This (7th) edition was not a minor update like several of the
earlier versions--I started from a blank slate over a year and a half ago.
Sure, I couldn't really start building test and example applications until
Whidbey shipped. I think it's a phenomenal waste of time to write
"beta" books that have the shelf life of a roman candle on the 4th of
July.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/31/2006 7:07:22 PM
Day/Time: Wednesday, June 14 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM Room: 157 ABC
Speaker(s): William Vaughn
SQL Express is the version of SQL Server 2005 designed to replace MSDE. In some scenarios, SQL Express is a viable replacement for the JET/Access database engine - it's safer and more reliable. Because SQL Express does not behave like JET in most respects, it can be a challenge for JET developers to understand how to control SQL Express and leverage its power from their applications. This talk discusses t ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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5/31/2006 6:23:10 PM
Yet another question was posted in the public ADO.NET newsgroup and I decided to use this forum to answer this fairly common question: Are Stored Procedures (SPs) faster than ad-hoc queries? One misconception is that SPs are compiled into some binary-like code and simply loaded into memory on each invocation--kinda like a DLL. They aren't. In order to take advantage of the current data "statistics" (how the information is distributed in the tables being referenced), each query is recompiled (to ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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5/31/2006 5:43:24 PM
As I have talked about many times here, in newsgroups and in my sessions, books and articles, IMHO JET /Access is not suitable in a business application . I've detailed the problems that include its physical IO over the network (which makes it prone to data loss), its inability to be backed up while any application is still connected, its need to be periodically compressed, it's lack of scalability (which means you have to start over when the customer outgrows it), it's (very) limited capacity ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/29/2006 10:46:54 PM
Microsoft’s Orcas development team asked for some feedback
on Visual Studio in a recent SDR. Since my opinions are not covered by the NDA,
I’m free to share these ideas with the public. I also submitted a brief summary
of this list to my readers at Processor Magazine
where I encouraged them to provide additional suggestions and feedback.
The next release of Visual Studio .NET (that Microsoft has
dubbed “Orcas”) is due out sometime in late 2007. Many folks tell me that
they’re getting m ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/27/2006 6:18:48 PM
Jonathan asked me to post this... I plan to go.
Hi All, we are putting together a gathering of ADO.NET, and data connectivity lumaries for an informal gathering during TechEd 2006. This will be an opportunity for everyone who lives and breaths data connectivity, ADO.NET and who is looking to get a first hand feel of everything on the horizon for ADO.NET, LINQ and .NET and meet some of the key players involved.
The date ? Meet up is on June 13, 2006
The time ? Between 4pm and 6.3 ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/25/2006 10:04:05 PM
Ok, so you heard that it’s possible to use Visual Studio to create a new SQL Server database and add it to your project. As a matter of fact, you can add any number of SQL Server databases to your project and Visual Studio will be happy to comply. How happy you are with debug performance might be another matter but I’m getting ahead of myself. This practice seems to be important enough for Microsoft to include the functionality in the IDE so if
this is something you do or plan to use as an eas ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/25/2006 1:38:44 AM
The latest edition in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series is finally done—at least my part. The book is in edit (and has been for awhile). This means we can expect to see it on shelves in about four months (hopefully less). Clearly, this is not a good way to get current information into your hands. As it is, the book is over 800 (Microsoft Office Word) pages. That means it’ll push 900 pages on the shelf if we keep all of the content. Yes, it will also include a DVD and a slew of examples, sample ... [ read more ]
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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5/25/2006 1:24:12 AM
I’ll be speaking at TechEd 2006 (US) this year in Boston. Sure, I’ll be doing a session—it’s on SQL Server Express Edition that’ll make it clear where it fits and what it replaces. And of course, I’ll be helping those addicted to JET find ways to kick the habit and move to better alternatives—without a 12-step program. I’ll also be talking (briefly) about the newly rebranded SQL Server Everywhere edition. You once knew this edition as SQL Server Mobile and SQL Server CE before that.
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William (Bill) Vaughn
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5/24/2006 8:39:41 PM
I spent the last couple of days in the Visual Basic.NET SDR up on the Microsoft campus. It was an enlightening experience and while much of what we we were told is NDA stuff, I learned quite a bit about Microsoft’s approach to making VB.NET better. They are working hard to bring as many VB6 developers over to .NET as possible. Hopefully, this means VB.NET but I don’t think it makes a snit of difference whether they use VB.NET or C#. Sure, I think VB.NET has (and will continue to have) a lot mor ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
5/7/2006 8:49:00 PM
I've made a decision to stop adding new content to my new book “Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition)”. I finally came to the realization that I can't keep up with Microsoft and their constant churn. No, this does not mean I won't be publishing the book--hardly. It means that I'm going to trim back to 800 or so pages and publish the new stuff as EBook. This more closely follows the pattern used by Microsoft. That is, ship a product and then ship updates fo ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/9/2006 8:27:00 AM
While I was invited to VSLive Orlando and DevTeach Montreal this year, I was forced to turn down these kind invitations. I am taking time off to speak at SQL/Visual Studio Connections in Orlando the week of April 4th. I'll also be passing through the Kansas City .NET user group on the way to give a talk on ADO.NET “Connecting“. I'm also giving a talk at TechEd in Boston and I hope to visit user groups out there if invited.
I'm focusing very heavily on my new ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
3/6/2006 12:08:00 PM
I’ve been focused on SQL CLR executables this month (and last) and hit a wall when trying to pass back a Decimal (or SqlDecimal) from an Accumulator. It seems that we need to set the Precision and Scale of the Return type as the default type is Numeric(18,0) for decimal and NVARCHAR(4000) for strings. This means that if your value is 24353.2343 you'll get back 24353. This might upset some banking applications.
After some research, the help topics said that I needed to use SqlFacet to ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
1/17/2006 1:31:00 PM
Updated: March 7, 2006: Added ASP.NET connecting info.
In the newsgroups and in my conference sessions, there still seem to be a lot of questions on getting connected. Perhaps this checklist can help. Yes, connecting can be a ... well, problematic. ASP apps also pose additional issues. In order to connect to SQL Server several factors must be in place. Go through this checklist to help get (and stay connected) to an instance of SQL Server.
1) Your app ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
11/20/2005 12:50:00 PM
A few issues have cropped up this week while working on the new book (still in progress):
Why doesn’t the Visual Studio 2005 Query Designer know how to deal with the O’Malley issue when entering values for the query Filter criteria or New Values in Insert and Update query types? This problem has been around for a long time and should have been addressed ages ago. Here’s a quote from my new book (still in progress)
Unfortunately, someone at Microsoft was asleep ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/14/2005 1:50:00 PM
In response to a not-that-uncommon usergroup question:
Ah, I'm not a fan of putting BLOBs in the database--despite that it works better now-a-days. Adding BLOBs can easily fill up one of the smaller footprint DBMS systems like MSDE (2gb) and SQL Express (which can hold 4gb). There are a litany of other issues as well:
Performance. While fetch and retrieval performance has improved, it still takes longer to fetch a BLOB from the database and save it back ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/12/2005 11:32:00 AM
While the publisher (Serge Baranovsky) tells me this site is not live yet, it seems to be another good place to extract VB-specific tips, techniques and comments.
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/10/2005 10:59:00 AM
In response to several recommendations by folks in the newsgroups to use @@Identity to fetch the last-set identity value...
Experts: Please don't suggest @@Identity to anyone without understanding and explaining the implications of this advice. While JET is stuck with @@Identity, it's relatively safe, but the continued use of @@Identity with SQL Server is questionable at best. While there are some special circumstances where SCOPE_IDENTITY() isn't the best approach ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/5/2005 9:08:00 AM
Microsoft (to no one’s surprise) is in a bit of a quandary. While the new kids out there in Redmond want to “improve” the now familiar Windows UI (Start button etal.) the experienced ones don’t dare. How many cars out there have “new and different” user interfaces? Sure, the radio buttons and the non-critical components change from time-to-time, but the wheel, turn-signals, wipers and (most importantly) the brake and accelerator pedals are all mo ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/3/2005 1:26:00 PM
We’ve had another newsgroup developer ask if it makes more sense to convert an existing Visual Basic 6.0 application to Visual Basic .NET or start over “from scratch”. We’re going to get this question more and more over the next decade (or two) as people gradually move to .NET. I think it would be useful to discuss the issues involved. No, I don’t know all the answers as my focus has been on data access interfaces.
As far as the data access layers of your applic ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
9/2/2005 3:17:00 PM
At long last INETA has agreed to add me to their (quite prestigious) list of speakers. This means I’ll be able to visit more user groups all over the country. I look forward to working with INETA and meeting more of the user group members who always provide the warmest hospitality. Just contact INETA if you want to request one of my talks for your user group.
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
8/15/2005 3:44:00 PM
I just spent about 37 hours downloading the August Visual Studio 2005 CTP. It installed quickly and without issue. That’s a big step forward. It has one little, miniscule, tiny, insignificant bug though. The backspace key does not work. That’s not a problem though. I never make typing misteks.
Update:
Ok, I isolated this problem. If I select a word in the code editor and press backspace the word is removed but the backspace key is inop . The other keys work fin ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
7/30/2005 8:33:00 PM
Since the ambient temperature in my non-air-conditioned office here in Redmond tops 90° F on a typical July day, my big copper heat-sync on my P4 3.2 Ghz was not keeping up if I pressed the system hard (as I have been doing quite a bit lately). As the CPU temperature approached 171° F (according to Intel Active Monitor), I decided I needed to do more than add another fan. After a bit of research, I plunged into the world of liquid cooling.
The Thermaltake BigWater unit (CL ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
7/25/2005 7:19:00 PM
Updated: July 26
I'm working with the July CTP this week I've discovered the following:
The Good News:
VS seems to start faster
The System.data (used for SqlClient etc.) and the System.XML DLLs are now in the list of references for a base Windows Forms application (like C# has had for some time).
The “Haunted Keyboard“ bug has been exorcised. It's no longer a problem to pin the tabbed dialogs.
The install seemed to take a lot less time.
I figured out how to setu ... [ read more ]
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William Vaughn via
William (Bill) Vaughn
on
7/25/2005 2:42:00 PM
I was very happy to see that the SQL Server team decided to make Reporting Services available on all SKUs--including the SQL Express version. These two links pretty much tell the whole story.
However, given the state of the current CTPs (June and as late as July), the SQL Server installation scripts that install Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) can’t run on the same system as Visual Studio .NET 20005. Yes, I know, the Framework SQL Server 2005 is using is not the same ... [ read more ]
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