Back to basics for SQL Server 2008
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Hand feeding Project Watch: Microsoft 2008 When I asked: "How do we convert more than 12,000 location items - by hand?" we had almost completed the process as part of our move to Microsoft's up-coming SQL Server 2008. The question was, in fact, rhetorical. Nevertheless, we received a lot of advice and suggestions from Reg Dev readers. This, for example, from AlanGriffiths:â¦
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Microsoft is taking a new approach to product launches it seems, announcing it would release SQL Server 2008 to manufacturing in the second quarter of 2008, months after the product is supposed to officially "launch" alongside Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 on February 27.
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Sometimes, a technology sounds like a great, simple answer to all of your problems. That, however, was not the experience of this blogger when checking out SQLite on Windows.    My first task at my new job was a simple enough one. All our customers have a review site that has a list of contacts. The file was contacts.html and it was just a static html file.   Since there are already 100s of sites using the static html, I wanted to avoid any kind of complex migration or external database. I decided to give SQLite a try since the db files are so portable. Each site would have it's own database with a single contacts table. Simple right? Let me go over all the problems I ran into.    He starts off with the fact that SQLite 3 doesn't work with PHP (different client drivers in PHP) and that PHP doesn't like SQLite 2 all that much either. His third and final experience? That SQLite isn't the brightest when it comes to working with directory permissions.
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(InfoWorld) - Looking to assist developers in building business applications, Microsoft published a second beta version of ADO.Net Entity Framework this week and a community technology preview of tools to work with the framework. The goal of the ADO.Net Entity Framework is to eliminate the impedance mismatch between data models and languages, saving developers from having to deal with these. An example of such a mismatch is objects and relational stores. Automation of complex processes is critical to the framework. "Today, when a developer builds an application, they have to write code that fills in the gaps between the way the data is stored in however many databases they interact with and the way they want to manipulate the data in their application," said Britt Johnston, product manager for data programmability tools at Microsoft. "Generally, what they do is create an object model that they write their code against." Developers might write an application that manipulates a CRM system with data for customers stored in 12 different tables, said Johnston. "With the Entity Framework, you can automate the process essentially of bringing all that data together and presenting it to the developer as a single entity so they can interact with it at a higher level of abstraction," Johnston said. Key new features in the framework beta release include events to customize code generation; complex programming types and entity key serialization. A key is a unique identifier for an entity, such as a customer ID. Metadata annotations and better support for LINQ (Language Integrated Query) also are included. LINQ features extensions to the .Net Framework to encompass language-integrated data query, set, and transform operations. Developers can access the framework on Microsoft's Web site. ADO.Net Entity Framework is due for general release as part of .Net Framework 3.5 in early-2008. Most would get it as part of an operating system update. The ADO.Net Entity Framework Tools Community Technology Preview for August features an early version of the ADO.Net Entity Designer, enabling users to visually design model and mappings using the Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 release. The tools preview is accessible on Microsoft's download page with the tools to be part of Visual Studio 2008. With the framework, developers could focus on the needs of an application instead of the complexities of bridging disparate data representations. The framework consists of a data model and design-time and run-time services that allow developers to describe application data and interact with it in a conceptual level of abstraction appropriate for business applications, according to the company. This helps isolate the application from underlying logical database schemas.
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Microsoft has long been seen as a vendor of relatively small databases. But now it plans to use SQL Server 2005 to build a 162TB data warehouse for itself and a 270TB one for a foreign government.
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Online Impersonations: No Validation Required &gt;&gt; Advertisement &lt;&lt;  ALERT: "How A Hacker Launches A Blind SQL Injection Attack Step-by-Step"!" - White Paper  Blind SQL Injection can deliver total control of your server to a hacker giving them the ability to read, write and manipulate all data stored in your backend systems! Download this *FREE* white paper from SPI Dynamics for a complete guide to protection! https://download.spidynamics.com/1/ad/bsq.asp?Campaign_ID=701600000004c29
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On the NorthClick blog today, there's a quick little set of hints talking about the creation of a simple ("but solid") newsletter system for your website.   He breaks it down into the individual steps you'll need to follow:  Use a Framwork Queue in the database Use SMTP Check Headers Test it  In the step involving the database, he gives the create script you'll need to get the table set up and working. It's not so much a step-by-step tutorial with all of the needed code as it is a general look at what steps to follow when rolling your own newsletter setup.
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In a bizarre and embarrassing development at the same time, Microsoft's server and tools division found itself announcing a delay for the RTM of SQL Server 2008 of up to six months. Despite that, its launch party will go on.
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On his blog today, Lorenzo Alberton Talks about DBMS and the character sets they support and issues a call for help for anyone interested to help them (on the PEAR::MDB2 project) set up proper character set support for each database.    We're working on PEAR::MDB2 charset and collation support. That means that we're in the process of figuring out what's the best way to set the charset in each DBMS, and how to make it portable and consistent through all of them.   I'll try to explain how the various DBMS implement charset settings first, then describe the MDB2 status-quo regarding charset support. Finally, we'd like to get some feedback to implement a better charset support in MDB2.    He lists out the types of character sets - client, connection, database/table/field, and result - explaining each of their roles in the average connection. He then breaks out the different databases into the different settings they support for the different character set types.   The call for help comes in with him asking anyone out there with experience and skill in these areas to get in touch and help out if they can. Contact information is in the post. You can also check out some of Lukas Smith's comments over on his blog too.
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In his new post on PHPEverywhere today, John Lim shares some of the experiences he's had so far in making the move up from PHP 4 to PHP 5 in his applications.   The transition was relatively painless. [...] What's nice about PHP5 is that it caught some errors that have been lingering in our code: PHP5 no longer allows a function to be defined twice, and some basic variable referencing errors that we missed previously.   They made the move to PHP5 for the latest versions of their applications, but have still stuck with the legacy, PHP4 versions for the time being to give customers a buffer period to make the move themselves. He also mentions changes to the way they make Ajax calls. John is a lead developer for both the ADOdb and PHPLens projects.
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In a new blog entry, Michael Kimsal points out a driver that Microsoft has released (during the end of last year) that allows PHP5 applications to connect directly to a SQL Server database.   This isn't replacing freetds any time soon.  I guess I'm still wondering what the market for "PHP apps deployed on Windows talking to SQL Server" really is - most of the shared hosting accounts I've seen, even on Windows, offer MySQL or Access as the database.    He also points out a video that was shot of the development team talking about the driver (here's their blog too).
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The php|architect group has released their December 2007 issue today. Articles featured in this issue include:   Going Native With mysqlnd by Andrey Hristov and Ulf Wendel  Understanding CLI by Dirk Merkel  Web Scraping by Matthew Turland  Product review: SQLyog MySQL GUI-Enterprise Edition by Eddie Peloke    ...and the three usual columns - /etc, Security Corner and exit(0) from Marco Tabini.   You can get more information about this issue and on ordering it (or a year's subscription) from this page on the php|architect website.
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Microsoft has released another interim version of its forthcoming SQL Server 2005 database and has introduced a free management tool.
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Application migration specialist ArtinSoft is planning tools to smooth customers&#39; transition from Oracle to Microsoft Corp&#39;s SQL Server.
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Microsoft said this week that it is now allowing developers to examine source code for .Net Framework libraries as a way to help developers build better software. But developers first will need to upgrade to the newly released Visual Studio 2008 software development platform.Through the .Net Reference Source project, developers will be able to view and debug the source code with the .Net Framework Reference license in a read-only format. Among the software projects covered by the arrangement are: The .Net Base Class Libraries, including System, System.CodeDom and System.ComponentModel; ASP.Net, including System.Web.Extensions; Windows Forms; and Windows Presentation Foundation. Also offered are ADO.Net and XML.The plan first was revealed last October."We think that enabling source code access and debugger integration of the .Net Framework libraries is going to be really valuable for .Net developers," said Scott Guthrie, general manager of the Microsoft developer division, in his blog. "Being able to step through and review the source should provide much better insight into how the .Net Framework libraries are implemented and in turn enable you to build better applications and make even better use of them."Additional framework libraries are to be added in coming weeks and months, including LINQ (Language Integrated Query) and Windows Communication Foundation. Instructions on accessing the code can be found in a blog entry by Shawn Burke, a director in the Microsoft developer division.Access to the code originally was expected to happen by last month. But Microsoft decided to keep taking feedback from developers and postponed the release until this month, a Microsoft representative said. When Microsoft first revealed its code access plans, it was characterized by analyst Greg DeMichillie, of Directions on Microsoft, as not an earth-shattering move now that open source is so prevalent.?Visual Studio 2008 became available at the end of November. Microsoft did not yet have current figures on shipment volumes for the platform this week.
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Andreas Gohr has posted about a script he's created to act as a simple replacement for the PHP/MySQL database tool phpMyAdmin - what he calls MySimple.php.   Kaddi needed to fix something in her employer's database today. Unfortunately she had FTP access only. So the database change had to be made through a PHP script. [...] I looked for a basic MySQL PHP interface but couldn't find one. So I quickly wrote it my self.   He has a screenshot of the app in action included and you can grab the code from his wiki.