Database

Every developer has their favorite tool collection that they must have in order to survive while developing software. The list below is indispensable in my day-to-day activities and that is why I am sharing it with my readers. My list was inspired by Scott Hanselman’s own list of tools that he uses. However I would be really interested to see what Scott’s actual list is since it would be almost impossible to touch each and every tool once a week as he claims. Because many of them serve the same purpose. ...

Recently I change the network name of one of my servers at work, because the box changed its job from a virtual machine server to the database server. Everything was going great until I decided to setup the server for replication and received the following error message. New Publication Wizard SQL Server replication requires the actual server name to make a connection to the server. Connections through a server alias, IP address, or any other alternate name are not supported. Specify the actual server name, ‘old_name’. (Replication.Utilities) OK So with a little hunting and SQL queries I found out that SQL Server doesn’t use the network name, it only excepts that as an alias. My SQL Server instance was still named “old_name”. I found that out by running these two queries: ...

Recently I have been working very hard on getting a new Web 2.0 initiative off the ground. With most new initiatives I like to start out by looking for software development patterns that will help me standardize my structure as well as make the programming experience common for any new members that are brought on the team. However I recently ran in to a structural “pattern” that seems like it is pretty simple and it addresses a common problem in software development. I researched as much as possible on all the common pattern websites that I visit and even went as far as posting on ASP.NET Forums to see if anybody could help me, give it a name. If this “pattern” hasn’t been named yet I am going to be shocked. ...

As I alluded in a post a couple of weeks ago, I have been a bad blogger. And I have neglected my community of readers. However I would like to tell you what I have been doing in the last couple of months while I have been neglecting my blog. I recently got involved in creating a startup as the lead developer for an online classifieds site called Anything For Sale By Owner. From the ground up this was conceived as a middle-ground between craigslist and ebay where every listing would be charged at a static rate of $1.00/month. The $1.00 is a way to week out the crap from craigslist and the death-by-fees from ebay. ...

One of the things I love to learn about is the history of how things come to be. Specifically my interests have always been in the evolutions of religion and the tech world (yeah I know pretty much polar opposites, but that is what I like to learn about). I came across an interesting article in my MSDN subscription that talked about how language features of C# 3.0 came to be. The features I am talking about are: ...

I haven’t even herd of a new version of SQL Server 2008, coming out, but according to this blog the new version has some very interesting and new data types that will come in useful for geography processing. DATE - ANSI-compliant date data type TIME - ANSI-compliant time data type with variable precision DATETIMEOFFSET - timezone aware/preserved datetime DATETIME2 - like DATETIME, but with variable precision and large date range ...

Many developers use a pattern called ORM or Object Relation Mapping to generate data layers for their application. Many other developers choose to create their own data layers by hand. I have done both and I don’t have a preference of one over the other. With an ORM generator you have an easy to maintain data layer for your applications, when you create one by hand you have much more control of the data layer as far as object creation goes. ...

As you may all know I have Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and last post I talked about upgrading to SQL Server 2005 SP2. However while starting my first Database Project I encountered the following error. Microsoft Visual Studio An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified) OK It has basically taken me around 24 hours to finally find a solution. The solution was so simple, but yet totally undocumented on if you encounter this error do this. So I am hoping to at least correct that with this post for all the future Googler’s out there. ...

Microsoft with out much fan far released service pack 2 for SQL Server 2005. There is a whole laundry list of new features and bug fixes listed on MSDN. However one of the biggest features at least for early adopters is the support for Windows Vista both x86 and x64 versions of the operating system. This release brings with it a great new tools for Windows Vista that are not available for previous operating systems. ...