Level: Beginning Readability:  Layout:  Examples:  Language:  OOP:     Database:  Windows Forms:  ASP.NET:  This book is designed for the entry level developer.  It is well laid out and follows a logical progression that gives a quick overview of VB.NET. It covers the important concept, but avoids including so much detail that would confuse an entry level developer. In my opinion, this is one of the best VB.NET books when it comes to getting an entry level developer up and running quickly with VB.NET. I really like the way each chapter is laid out.  At the end of each chapter, there is a summary of the important concepts, a list of terms, the objectives of the ...

ASP.Net was a radical change from its predecessor Active Server Pages (ASP) that represented an easy way to write dynamic pages prior to July 2000 when we saw the first introduction of Microsoft’s new .NET framework.  ASP was a great tool, but it was not an enterprise tool and it required the developer to write the code to handle just about everything.  ASP.Net was an incredible upgrade from a scripted non enterprise level programming tool to an object oriented enterprise level framework that made the life of web developers much easier by shielding the developer from the low level tasks of dealing with HTTP requests.  With ASP.Net came a powerful toolset that provided an event driven model of development (even if it was only an illusion) and a truly powerful framework of reusable objects that made web development very similar to the rapid application development environments that existed in the Windows development world. So, with all the features provided in ASP.Net 1. ...

I wrote a previous article that touched on some of the highlights of the new features of ASP.Net 2.0.  One of the features I mentioned is the new Membership API that Microsoft provided based on developer feedback.  Forms authentication and the new login controls provide an easy way to provide a login form and authenticate users before allowing them access to the secured areas of your web site, but this is only half the battle.  You also have to develop an administration piece that allows you to create and maintain user credentials.  This type of feature is typically needed over and over again in all the web applications that you develop and the work required to do this is tedious and redundant.  The Membership API provides the tools to alleviate the need to re-write the same code over and over again for each project.  Let’s dive in and take a closer look. First, we will look at some of the features that the Membership API provides us.  Here is an overview of the var ...

SQL Server 2005 is loaded with new features and enhancements, and when I was asked to pick one of these new features and write an article about it, I thought it would be easy!  There is an abundance of new features to choose from, this making the decision more difficult than I would have liked.  For example, I really like the new T-SQL enhancements such as Common Table Expressions (CTE) and recursive queries, PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators, Query Notifications, and DDL Triggers.  In fact, my next article could possibly be on CTE’s since they have come in handy many times lately. After some thought, however, two topics stood out that as a SQL/.NET developer made the decision much easier.  Those two topics are: The new XML data type The integration of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) Today’s column is on topic number two which has caused quite a stir within the SQL Server community.  I’m not a DBA by any stretch of the imagination but there are many DBA ...

There is a plethora of new T-SQL features and enhancements in SQL Server 2005 and you could probably write a small book talking about all of them.  However, this article will focus on one of them, specifically, Common Table Expressions because personally they have come in handy on many occasions. I have used a few of the other new features and enhancements and if you have not had a chance to delve into any of them, I would highly recommend familiarizing yourself with some of them, such as the new xml data type, improved error handling, query and event notifications, new DDL (Data Definition Language) triggers, ranking functions, TOP operator enhancements, the PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators, and the new APPLY operator.  There are a few others and they all add tremendous value to T-SQL developers. This article will introduce common table expressions and go as in-depth as space will allow, showing how CTE’s can be used to improve TSQL’s capabilities and how they can help better y ...

SQL Server 2005 is awesome.  If you are using SQL Server 2005 and don’t know how cool a product it is, you need to dig deeper.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times it has saved my rear end and made my life much easier.  A task that seemed overwhelming in SQL Server 2000 is barely a drop of sweat in SQL Server 2005.  I can probably write a whole series of articles on the cool things I keep finding.  In fact, I probably will. One of the first great new features, for example, are CTE’s (Common Table Expressions) which have made coding in T-SQL a shear delight.  They make for clean, easy-to-read T-SQL without the overhead of creating and populating temporary tables.  CTE’s automatically do that for you. When I first got my hands on SQL Server 2005 I did a lot of reading about the new T-SQL enhancements that were made, and there were quite a few.  I had done some reading about the PIVOT and UNPIVOT ...

There is a plethora of new T-SQL features and enhancements in SQL Server 2005 and you could probably write a small book talking about all of them.  However, this article will focus on one of them, specifically, Common Table Expressions because personally they have come in handy on many occasions. I have used a few of the other new features and enhancements and if you have not had a chance to delve into any of them, I would highly recommend familiarizing yourself with some of them, such as the new xml data type, improved error handling, query and event notifications, new DDL (Data Definition Language) triggers, ranking functions, TOP operator enhancements, the PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators, and the new APPLY operator.  There are a few others and they all add tremendous value to T-SQL developers. This article will introduce common table expressions and go as in-depth as space will allow, showing how CTE’s can be used to improve TSQL’s capabilities and how they can help better y ...

One of the things I have been working with lately is the XML data type in SQL Server 2005.  I am a fan of XML, and I love working with SQL Server.  When the two “officially” came together in SQL Server 2005 I could not have been happier. The project I am working on didn’t put the xml data type to use immediately.  I am a firm believer in the concept of not using something just because it is cool (although I do love to play with all the new cool technologies coming out).  However, it recently became readily apparent that the mechanism we had in place would not fill the requirements of what we were trying to accomplish, and the xml data type seemed to be the answer. The problem we were running into is the size of a string parameter we were passing to a number of stored procedures, which in turn are the data source for some reports.  This string parameter contained a comma separated list of employees that were selected from a list via th ...

SOA.  Service-Oriented Architecture.  This buzzword has been around for quite a while now and in the last year and a half or so Microsoft has taken quite a step into anchoring themselves into the SOA soil.  It wasn’t too long ago that they announced that they were working on something really cool called “Indigo” and that it would be the latest thing that should be added to the Service-Oriented application utility belt. The more developers read about “Indigo” they realized that it wasn’t anything to sneeze at.  They read about a fusion of current distributed-system technologies and ease of deployment.  They read about increased productivity and, lo and behold, a single programming model.  So, we (I am including myself in this “we” and “they”) began to ask “What is Indigo?”. Let’s Review Through the years, developers have had a plethora of technology choices to choose fr ...

I have stated in previous columns that, while I do like to play with new technology, I usually don’t put it into production just because it is the latest and greatest, unless there is a need.  Such was the case with SQL Server 2005.  Back when SQL Server 2005 was in beta 2, my group started quite a large project using SQL Server 2000 and went with that for quite a while.  But a number of issues arose pertaining to the complexity of some of the reports needed in this application.  Still not thinking about SQL Server 2005, we trudged ahead with trusty SQL Server 2000.  As the beta 2 cycle was nearing its end, a co-worker and I were complaining about some of the heinous T-SQL we were writing in many of our stored procedures to meet the requirements of some of the complex reports.  As we were talking one day we wondered if SQL Server 2005 provided a better way to do some of the things we were doing in SQL Server 2000.  We started looking ...