Soma announced this morning that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP 1 is now ready and can be downloaded . This includes several updates, includes support for SQL Server 2008, and has a few new products including the Entity Framework, LINQ to Entities and ADO.NET Data Services (aka Astoria). ScottGu...

I've had some requests lately to write some articles that work with LINQ to SQL. I've ben focusing on the Entity Framework a lot due to its vast nature and that fact that its still relatively unknown to many people. So I am going to work on a LINQ to SQL project that ties into a multi tier model...

I write this post with a mix of excitement and sadness. The exciting part is that I am helping form a new developer community site at http://www.TheRuntime.com . The sad part is that I will no longer be blogging at Codebetter. When Codebetter was first formed, myself and several other bloggers from DotNetJunkies...

My October 2007 Data Points column has been posted to the MSDN Magazine web site . This edition is titled "SQL Server Common Table Expressions". In this article I focus on using CTEs to address common development scenarios. - describing how CTEs work - scenarios they can be used to address...

I will be kicking off my move to South Florida in a few weeks with a 1 day event for the “Practically Done” event series. On Wednesday August 1 st and on Saturday August 4 th I will be presenting “Data Access Done Right”, a full day event in Orlando. Register here for Wednesday, August 1 st – 9am to...

My June 2007 Data Points column has been posted to the MSDN Magazine web site . This edition is titled "SQL Server Management Objects" . Here is an excerpt from the article: "Not only must database developers query and manipulate data, but they must also perform administrative tasks on...

My April 2007 Data Points column has been posted to the MSDN Magazine web site . This edition is titled "Disabling Constraints and Triggers" .

Sahil just posted a nice little primer for getting started with the FOR XML clause in sql 2005 . Good start, however I feel like he missed a technique. One of my major gripes with working with FOR XML is when you have to join more than 2 tables in your query. FOR XML AUTO tends to create a child node...

If you watch the ADO.NET team’s blog then you may have seen the post from today from Zlatko Michailov (Program Manager, ADO.NET). Here are the highlights from his post : In this Entity SQL (eSQL) post he discusses: what Entity SQL is a brief example of how to use it to retrieve a hierarchical set...

Ready to pull my hair out over this one. Decided to use System.Transactions in my latest project, so being I'm doing my development on my local machine with a dev SQL Server 2005 install on a 2k3 machine I need to turn on MSDTC stuff... So running the code that uses system.transactions on the server...