In-Depth

Connect to SQL Server Instances

SQL Live! speaker Bill Vaughn guides you through the maze of issues you''ll face as you connect to, manage, and monitor SQL Server instances.

Watch the video of the session! (1 hour, 10 minutes, Windows Media format)

Using a series of demos drawn from his latest book, Bill guides you through the maze of issues you'll face as you connect to, manage, and monitor SQL Server instances—including the new SQL Express instance. He shows the new utilities and code used to configure SQL Server 2005, including demonstrations of code used to create the new SqlConnectionStringBuilder. You'll learn how to discover data source instances as well as start, stop, pause, and continue them, and how to configure, manage, and monitor the connection pool using new 2.0 Framework classes.

You'll see how to capture and display real-time operational statistics including data from the new performance counters. Using the new ADO.NET 2.0 async functions, Bill also shows how to fetch data and still retain control of the form thread to display status—for both the execute and fetch phases of the query.

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • Microsoft Agent Framework Makeover: Claws, Loops and Harnesses

    Microsoft's newly released Agent Framework Harness packages the loops, planning, memory, context management and safety controls that developers previously had to assemble around AI models themselves.

  • Visual Studio 2026 Gives Copilot Built-In Skills -- and Makes Them Prove Their Worth

    Microsoft is moving Agent Skills beyond bring-your-own instructions by shipping expert-authored workflows with the IDE, while keeping them off by default until testing shows their benefits justify the additional token use.

  • Copilot AI Billing Shock Met with Meters, Caps and Token-Saving Tools

    GitHub is layering spending limits, expanded credit allowances and increasingly granular usage reporting onto Copilot, while Microsoft is reworking Visual Studio and VS Code to expose -- and reduce -- the cost of agentic development.

  • The AI-Powered Software Development Lifecycle

    René van Osnabrugge makes the case that AI's biggest opportunity in software development is not faster coding -- it's reducing the friction everywhere else in the SDLC.

Subscribe on YouTube