Mike Taulty's Blog
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May 2005 - Mike Taulty's Blog

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  • SQL Server 2005: Unification of the Data Access Model

    In the earlier builds of SQL Server 2005 you had to write your ADO.NET data access code slightly differently depending upon whether you were expecting the code to eventually run inside or outside of the database. We had namespaces such as System.Data.SqlClient and System.Data.SqlServer and you used the right one in each place. By the time of the latest Community Technical Preview the data access model has been "unified" in the sense that you work one way regardless. This means that a bunch of my "Nugget" videos over here are now out of date in the way they go about a few things - should really get updated. There's an excellent article over here on MSDN that talks about the unified programming model and what you can do with it; http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/DataAccess/Whidbey/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/mandataaccess.asp
  • Free Refactoring Tool for VB.NET in 2005

    The link is up here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/refactor/ I've yet to have a play with it…
  • Just a bunch of links

    Just some Avalon/Indigo links… Ian Griffiths has built a nice magnifying glass application for Avalon here: http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/2005/05/29/magnify David Chappell has updated his excellent Indigo introductory document here; http://www.davidchappell.com/IntroducingIndigo_v2.pdf
  • Open Generics in .NET 2.0

    Interesting post over here http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2005/05/open_generic_ty.html - not something I'd seen.
  • Tom's Hardware on P4 versus Pentium M

    Tom's hardware has a great article comparing Pentium M performance against Pentium 4 performance. It's a long article. The conclusion is here; http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/pentium4-21.html The article's called "Kill the Pentium 4" - you can imagine what the conclusion is based on that :-)
  • Good article on web service access to SQL 2005

    I was reading this article up here http://msdn.microsoft.com/sql/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/soapscenarios.asp about using SOAP to access SQL Server 2005 natively. It prompted me to write a little bit of code to build a "Query Analyzer" with Windows Forms 2.0 (it's not quite the full Query Analyzer in that I only spent 5 mins on it) but this one sends it requests to SQL Server over SOAP. To do this I first created a SOAP endpoint like this; use northwind go sp_reserve_http_namespace N'http://localhost:80/sqlAccess' create endpoint SqlAccess state = started as HTTP ( path = '/sqlAccess', authentication = ( integrated ), ports = ( clear ), site = 'localhost', clear_port = 80, compression = disabled ) for soap ( namespace = 'urn:sqlAccess-com', batches = enabled, wsdl = default, database = 'Northwind', schema = standard, login_type = WINDOWS ) Notice that this is using Windows Integrated authentication for HTTP (rather than, say, Basic authentication over SSL) and it's using Windows logon into Northwind...
  • MSDN Article on WS-Security Interop

    There's a nice article up here http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/WSSInteropJWSDP15.asp on how to get WSE2.0 WS-Security and Sun's Java WSDP 1.5 to interop using WS-Security to secure SOAP messages with X509 certificates. I didn't read the whole article in depth but I skimmed it pausing more on the Java side as I'm not familiar with that. What I did do (and what I liked about it) was that as I was skimming I was trying to spot any "Now…here's the ugly, hacky bit you need to make it really work". I didn't spot anything like that in there. That's why I like it :-)
  • "Longhorn" and .NET

    I find this story on the Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/26/dotnet_longhorn/ a bit puzzling. The quote that's puzzling me is this; "Mary Jo Foley reports that only some parts of Longhorn will be based on .NET 2.0, rather than the entire OS, as originally intended" I went to PDC '03 and I didn't come away with the impression that anybody was going to try and rewrite the 10's of millions of lines of code of Windows NT in .NET. My impression was that the primary API for the platform was moving from the unmanaged world (Win32 ---> Win64) to the managed world (Win32 ---> WinFX). Clearly, software projects have plans that change (as with WinFS) but when I look at "Indigo" and "Avalon" I see that here's 2 new big bits of platform which are .NET code only. That lines up for me from the expectation that was set at PDC '03.
  • SQL CLR and SQL XML Guidance for SQL 2005

    I got prompted to follow up what we're saying at the UK Roadshows around use of XML in SQL 2005 and use of CLR in SQL 2005. There's some excellent documents on this posted on the MSDN site; On XML: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/sql25xmlbp.asp On CLR: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/sqlclrguidance.asp (scan down to the bottom of that article for UDT advice).
  • Indigo and Avalon: Beta 1 Release Candidate

    There's an updated version of the WinFX bits compatible with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. They're here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B789BC8D-4F25-4823-B6AA-C5EDF432D0C1&displaylang=en This is called a "Beta 1 Release Candidate" - sounds like a contradiction in terms to me but I interpret it as "Not quite beta 1 but getting there" :-)
  • Fresh back from the MSDN Roadshow in Birmingham

    I've just got back from the 2-day MSDN Roadshow in Birmingham which seemed to go pretty well (I enjoyed it, anyway :-)). There's 2 more locations on the Roadshow tour over the next 2 weeks - Harrogate next week and London the week after. I'm doing a few bits at the Roadshow. I'm doing some smaller sessions around debugging of applications which I've mostly scoped down to make it achievable by focusing on what you can do in Visual Studio (2005) and what you can do with managed code. I'm also doing SQL sessions around the integration of the Common Language Runtime and the new XML features from a developer perspective. You can grab the basic information from this site: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/resources/techroadshow/default.mspx If you're looking for the slide-decks that were used at the event then they're also up there hanging off this link; http://www.microsoft.com/uk/resources/techroadshow/postevents/developer-track/default.mspx If you attend then don't forget to say "hello" and let us know if there are things...
  • Another Channel 9 video

    2 great channel 9 videos come along on the same day for me - I don't normally watch them. This one is Karsten Januszewski presenting on Avalon. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=62621#62621
  • Channel 9 Video on XML Editing Features in Visual Studio 2005

    I caught this Channel 9 video on the new features for the XML editor in Visual Studio 2005. I'd seen some of these before but there were a couple in there that were new to me and it's all very nice stuff. The link's here http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=64642#64642 . Worth watching - it also runs through the XSLT debugging feature.
  • CLR Hosting Book

    Whilst out on my holidays, I've been reading a great book on hosting the version 2.0 Common Language Runtime. From experience, people hosting the runtime themselves is fairly rare but, nonetheless, you can still learn a whole lot about how the CLR works from a book like this.
  • Indigo: Serialization

    I've been spending a little time with Indigo over the last week or so (not nearly enough, of course) and I've got a slightly better picture of how the "main" features of Security, Reliability, Transactions fit together although there's probably a good few months more of learning to do. One of the first things I've been playing with is the new Data Contract which is part of defining your service contract. I wrote a big long blog posting about the XmlSerializer, SoapFormatter, BinaryFormatter and the new XmlFormatter but I've thrown it away :-) What I'm left with posting here is this excellent blog posting over on Vipul Modi's blog site; http://blogs.msdn.com/vipulmodi/archive/2005/03/22/400703.aspx If I read Vipul's post correctly it gives a matrix as to when you'd go with Data Contract versus Xml Serialization (Indigo can do both and more); Data Contract Xml Serialization Service for down-level clients? X Client for down-level services? X Have existing WSDL or XSD? X Otherwise X
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