Missed TechEd? Catch Up Like You Were There

The TechEd North America 2012 conference was so chock full of presentations, workshops, labs and informational sessions that many developers who attended probably couldn't cram into their schedule everything in which they were interested.

And if you couldn't attend, you might be feeling some information envy, afraid that you're falling behind the curve in learning the latest and greatest.

But fear not. Microsoft offered a great service by recording the sessions and putting them up online 48 hours later.

Posted by David Ramel on 06/26/20120 comments

SQL Server Data Tools: A Work in Progress

I've been playing around with the new SQL Server Data Tools, and although many have complained about missing features compared to the "Data Dude" Visual Studio projects and other tools that SSDT somewhat replaces, I'm impressed by the way Microsoft has gotten the product out there for review and is improving it with functionality requested by those same users.

SSDT, if you're not familiar with it, is the hodgepodge of improvements to database development in Visual Studio that was formerly known by the codename "Juneau." It comes free with the new SQL Server 2012 and just-released Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate and can be installed from the Web. Even describing SSDT is somewhat complicated, as it consists of so many different "things." For example, besides replacing and improving the Visual Studio for Database Professionals ("Data Dude") product, it's also the new place to find former Visual Studio Business Intelligence Design Studio (BIDS) functionality such as Analysis Services, Reporting Services and Integration Services. It's also kind of a Visual Studio in-house replacement for SQL Server Management Studio so you don't have to keep switching back and forth between the two. It also adds a bunch of new features and improved functionality across many areas. Basically it enhances and simplifies the (admitted by Microsoft) difficult database development experience in Visual Studio.

Posted by David Ramel on 06/05/20121 comments

UPDATE: Getting Visual Studio 2012 and SSDT to Work Together

In the midst of my playing around with the new SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT), the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate came out. So I thought I'd upgrade to the RC. Silly me. One of these days, I'm going to learn to do a little advance research before blindly plunging into these kinds of projects.

I spent hours repairing, removing and re-installing various packages until I seemingly got it to work correctly (except for the SSDT Power Tools' Schema View functionality). Unfortunately, I didn't take notes because I didn't think it was going to be that much of a problem, but it turns out a lot of other people have experienced the exact same issues. A reader on the Visual Studio blog announcing the RC summed it up nicely: "Avoid this for now if you have SSDT installed, you are greeted with a lot of errors both in VS 2012 AND VS 2010 after upgrading."

Posted by David Ramel on 06/05/20121 comments

'Fastest Consistent Database' Claims MVVM Affinity

Here's a new one: The maker of a new high-performance database claims it especially lends itself to development using the popular Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) programming pattern.

The in-memory database comes from Starcounter, a Swedish company that last week announced what it calls the world's "fastest consistent database" thanks to patent-pending technology (VMDBMS) that melds an application virtual machine with a database management system. Starcounter said it avoids fragmentation and keeps data in one place in RAM -- rather than copying it back and forth from disk to RAM and from the database to the application like other systems. This allows the database to reportedly attain speeds 10 times faster than other high-performance systems and 100 times faster than more traditional RDBMSs.

Posted by David Ramel on 05/21/20120 comments

Trying Out the OData/WCF Data Services Upgrades

Microsoft recently updated the Open Data Protocol (OData) and WCF Data Services framework and just last week provided some demo services so data developers can try out the new features.

The WCF Data Services 5.0 release offers libraries for .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 and a slew of new client and server features, including support for actions, vocabularies, geospatial data, serialization/deserialization of OData payloads, "any" and "all" functions in queries and more (including a new JSON format).

Posted by David Ramel on 05/14/20120 comments

Setting Up a Dev Machine

Well, I'm still astonished that I risk trashing my entire system if I try out some evaluation software, as I was told by readers a while back after a nightmarish experience trying to remove the SQL Server 2008 R2 beta and install the free Express version.

Some of the reader comments roasted me for being such a fool, along the lines of this from "Paul":

Posted by David Ramel on 05/01/20124 comments

Visual Studio 11 Beta: Easier Development with LocalDB

Having recently set up an old desktop as a dev machine in order to avoid trashing my main computer with evaluation software (don't get me started), I decided it was time to try out Visual Studio 11 Beta and its new features that promise to ease database development.

SQL Server Data Tools, released with SQL Server 2012 and coming with Visual Studio 11 Beta, are interesting and certainly worth a look soon, but I decided to first check out something a little simpler that also purportedly makes life easier for database developers in the IDE: LocalDB.

Posted by David Ramel on 05/01/20121 comments

More Good News for SQL Server Developers

A recent salary survey indicated that database-related programmers had excellent job security, and now there's more good news about job prospects in the exploding mobile arena and SQL Server usage in general.

First is a report that SQL Server developers are in high demand in the mobile marketplace. SQL Server skills are No. 4 on the list of More

Posted by David Ramel on 04/11/20123 comments

Flipping the Light(Switch) Fantastic in Visual Studio 11

I've heard a lot about the new LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta and how it simplifies data-centric application development, so I thought I'd give it a try.

For those not familiar with LightSwitch, Eric Nelson wrote in an MSDN blog: "LightSwitch is targeted at business developers and power users creating custom LOB applications leveraging data from multiple sources that can be easily deployed to the desktop or cloud."

Posted by David Ramel on 04/03/20128 comments

SQL Server Opens Up to Java

Microsoft yesterday released the final JDBC Driver 4.0 for SQL Server after three community technology previews, continuing the effort to open its technology to better accommodate programmers using PHP, ODBC and even Hadoop, among others.

Posted by David Ramel on 03/07/20120 comments

Entity Framework Developers Clamor for Better SQL Generation

"I have seen simple select statements [in Entity Framework] with 4 or 5 includes result in nearly 5,000 line SQL statements when an equivalent hand-written SQL statement is [about] 15 lines."

So reads the first of 21 comments on Microsoft's "ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF) Feature Suggestions" site, where developers can post, vote and comment on proposed EF enhancements. "Improved SQL Generation" is by far the No. 1 feature suggestion, with some 1,400 votes.

Posted by David Ramel on 02/27/20126 comments

Microsoft Boosts Performance in Entity Framework 5.0

The Microsoft ADO.NET team today announced that the upcoming Entity Framework 5.0 could boost application performance by some 67 percent over EF 4.0.

Reducing data access overhead in the O/RM and other performance tweaks resulted in one internal test that showed "repeat execution time of the same LINQ query has been reduced by around 6x," the team said in a blog post.

Posted by David Ramel on 02/14/20121 comments