jQuery to ship with ASP.NET MVC and Visual Studio!

jQuery to ship with ASP.NET MVC and Visual Studio! (intellisense FTW)

Microsoft is looking to make jQuery part of their official development platform. Their JavaScript offering today includes the ASP.NET Ajax Framework and they’re looking to expand it with the use of jQuery. This means that jQuery will be distributed with Visual Studio (which will include jQuery intellisense, snippets, examples, and documentation).

Additionally Microsoft will be developing additional controls, or widgets, to run on top of jQuery that will be easily deployable within your .NET applications. jQuery helpers will also be included in the server-side portion of .NET development (in addition to the existing helpers) providing complementary functions to existing ASP.NET AJAX capabilities.

http://jquery.com/blog/2008/09/28/jquery-microsoft-nokia/
and here
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/jQueryToShipWithASPNETMVCAndVisualStudio.aspx

Interview With Louis Davidson Author of Pro SQL Server 2008 Relational Database Design and Implementation

I interviewed Louis Davidson in 2005 about the 2005 edition of his book. I did another one today about Pro SQL Server 2008 Relational Database Design and Implementation. You can check out the interview at the link below, you will enjoy it


Interview With Louis Davidson Author of Pro SQL Server 2008 Relational Database Design and Implementation

And remember if you have any SQL Server related questions, you can ask them in the SQL Server Programming Forum

Microsoft F#, September 2008 Community Technology Preview Available For Download

Microsoft F#, September 2008 Community Technology Preview Available For Download

The F# September 2008 CTP provides all the tools and resources needed to develop applications with the F# programming language.

F# is a functional programming language for the .NET Framework. It combines the succinct, expressive and compositional style of functional programming with the runtime, libraries, interoperability, and object model of .NET.

F# is well suited to a spectrum of development tasks - from interactive, explorative scripting to component and large-scale software development. The CTP release of F# provides further support for explorative development using F#, as well as improved Visual Studio integration to enable large-scale, tool-based software development.

Download the F# CTP here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61ad6924-93ad-48dc-8c67-60f7e7803d3c&displaylang=en

ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 Released

ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 Released


This ASP.NET MVC CodePlex Preview 5 is an interim release that contains some new features and some feature improvements for which the ASP.NET MVC team would like to receive feedback from the community

Get it here: http://www.codeplex.com/aspnet/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16775

Microsoft launches Windows 7 blog

Microsoft launches Windows 7 blog :

Welcome to our first post on a new blog from Microsoft—the Engineering Windows 7 blog, or E7 for short. E7 is hosted by the two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky. Jon and Steven, along with members of the engineering team will post, comment, and participate in this blog.

Beginning with this post together we are going to start looking forward towards the “Windows 7” project. We know there are tons of questions about the specifics of the project and strong desire to know what’s in store for the next major release of Windows. Believe us, we are just as excited to start talking about the release. Over the past 18 months since Windows Vista’s broad availability, the team has been hard at work creating the next Windows product.

The audience of enthusiasts, bloggers, and those that are the most passionate about Windows represent the folks we are dedicating this blog to. With this blog we’re opening up a two-way discussion about how we are making Windows 7. Windows has all the challenges of every large scale software project—picking features, designing them, developing them, and delivering them with high quality. Windows has an added challenge of doing so for an extraordinarily diverse set of customers. As a team and as individuals on the team we continue to be humbled by this responsibility.

Read the rest of the post and subscribe here: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Available For Download

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=fbee1648-7106-44a7-9649-6d9f6d58056e&displayLang=en

Here is the link to the 831MB ISO
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=27673C47-B3B5-4C67-BD99-84E525B5CE61&displaylang=en


Finally, Now I can also install SQL Server 2008 :-)

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Coming August 11th, SQL Server 2008 is RTM

SQL Server 2008 was released today, here is the press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-06SQLServer2008PR.mspx

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 will be released August 11th

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR July CTP Released

Microsoft® Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR July CTP is available for download

In addition to providing support for SQL Server 2008 database projects, this release incorporates many previously released Power Tools as well as several new features. The new features include distinct Build and Deploy phases, Static Code Analysis and improved integration with SQL CLR projects.

Database Edition no longer requires a Design Database. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to install an instance of SQL Express or SQL Server prior to using Database Edition.

Download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

44 Amazing Silverlight 2.0 Screencasts

Mike Taulty recently uploaded and amazing collection of Silverlight 2.0 screencasts on how Silverlight works, controls, File IO, networking, UI design, data-binding, interacting with HTML pages, and more. If you want to learn about Silverlight, this set of screencasts should definitely help!

1. Silverlight - Hello World
2. Silverlight - Anatomy of an Application
3. Silverlight - The VS Environment
4. Silverlight - Content Controls
5. Silverlight - Built-In Controls
6. Silverlight - Width, Height, Margins, Padding, Alignment
7. Silverlight - Using a GridSplitter
8. Silverlight - Grid Layout
9. Silverlight - StackPanel Layout
10. Silverlight - Canvas Layout
11. Silverlight - Databinding UI to .NET Classes
12. Silverlight - Simple Styles
13. Silverlight - Custom Types in XAML
14. Silverlight - Binding with Conversion
15. Silverlight - List Based Data Binding
16. Silverlight - Simple User Control
17. Silverlight - Templating a Button
18. Silverlight - Resources from XAP/DLL/Site Of Origin
19. Silverlight - Animations & Storyboards
20. Silverlight - Uploads with WebClient
21. Silverlight - Downloads with WebClient
22. Silverlight - Calling HTTPS Web Services
23. Silverlight - Calling Web Services
24. Silverlight - Making Cross Domain Requests
25. Silverlight - Using HttpWebRequest
26. Silverlight - File Dialogs and User Files
27. Silverlight - Using Sockets
28. Silverlight - Using Isolated Storage
29. Silverlight - .NET Code Modifying HTML
30. Silverlight - Using Isolated Storage Quotas
31. Silverlight - Calling JavaScript from .NET
32. Silverlight - Evaluating JavaScript from .NET Code
33. Silverlight - Handling HTML Events in .NET Code
34. Silverlight - Handling .NET Events in JavaScript
35. Silverlight - Calling .NET from JavaScript
36. Silverlight - Displaying a Custom Splash Screen
37. Silverlight - Passing Parameters from your Web Page
38. Silverlight - Loading Media at Runtime
39. Silverlight - Dynamically Loading Assemblies/Code
40. Silverlight - Reading/Writing XML
41. Silverlight - Multiple Threads with BackgroundWorker
42. Silverlight - Insert/Update/Delete with the DataGrid
43. Silverlight - Getting Started with the DataGrid
44. Silverlight - Embedding Custom Fonts

Get it all here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Mike-Taulty-44-Silverlight-20-Screencasts/

Awesome Collection Of ASP.NET Hacks, Tips and Tricks

We added a bunch of ASP.NET Hacks, Tips and Tricks , below is the full list

Applications

* ASP.NET: Environment Details
* ASP.NET: Encrypt your applications settings
* ASP.NET: Launch an external application
* ASP.NET: Display Version Information

Caching

* ASP.NET: Clear all Cached objects
* ASP.NET: Data Caching

Controls

* ASP.NET: Access Master Page controls from the Content Page
* ASP.NET: Maintain an entered password in a TextBox
* ASP.NET: Apply a Please Wait message to a Button
* ASP.NET: Clear all TextBox values
* ASP.NET: Creating an accessible label
* ASP.NET: Add dynamic controls with events
* ASP.NET: Get a list of all selected items in a CheckBoxList
* ASP.NET: Find which control caused a postback
* ASP.NET: Limit selections for the Calendar
* ASP.NET: Add a confirmation popup to a Button
* ASP.NET: Insert a ListItem into a DropDownList
* ASP.NET: Add paging to a repeater
* ASP.NET: Append client side functions with Attributes.Add
* ASP.NET: Add a total row to a GridView
* ASP.NET: How to export a GridView to Excel
* ASP.NET: Render a control to a string

Database

* ASP.NET: Convert a DataSet to a DataView
* ASP.NET: Extract data from a SQLDataSource to a DataTable
* ASP.NET: Insert data into SQL Server
* ASP.NET: Loop through data in a DataTable
* ASP.NET: Loop through data using a DataReader
* ASP.NET: Storing connection strings in the web.config file

Dates

* ASP.NET: Calculate a person's age from their date of birth
* ASP.NET: Calculate the difference between two dates
* ASP.NET: Simple date and time methods

Debugging

* ASP.NET: Enabling page tracing
* ASP.NET: Simple debugging tips

Email

* ASP.NET: Send an email

Encryption

* ASP.NET: Encrypt a string using MD5

Files

* ASP.NET: Files and Path information
* ASP.NET: Rename a directory
* ASP.NET: Reference files with relative paths
* ASP.NET: Read and display a text file

Images

* ASP.NET: How to crop an Image
* ASP.NET: How to save a remote image
* ASP.NET: Drawing images and bar charts with System.Drawing

Javascript

* ASP.NET: Register a javascript function

Objects and Classes

* ASP.NET: Accessing the Response object in a Class
* ASP.NET: An introduction to classes and properties
* ASP.NET: Looping using an Enumerator
* ASP.NET: Use Response.Filter to intercept your HTML
* ASP.NET: Use C Sharp and VB.NET in the same project
* ASP.NET: Using Generics to create a property list

Pages

* ASP.NET: Change the current Master Page
* ASP.NET: Nested Master Pages

Sessions

* ASP.NET: Redirect the page when the session ends

Strings

* ASP.NET: Filter words
* ASP.NET: Remove the last character from a string
* ASP.NET: Reverse a string
* ASP.NET: String Concatenation
* ASP.NET: Strip HTML tags from a string
* ASP.NET: Truncate a string to a set number of whole words

Validation

* ASP.NET: Using Page.IsValid

Visual Studio

* ASP.NET: Changing the default browser
* ASP.NET: Keyboard Shortcuts
* ASP.NET: Using a task list

Web

* ASP.NET: Access the web via a proxy server
* ASP.NET: Convert HTML tables to a DataSet
* ASP.NET: Retrieve data from a web page
* ASP.NET: Create an RSS Feed
* ASP.NET: Custom Error Pages
* ASP.NET: Find out where a visitor came from
* ASP.NET: Using an AppOffline.htm file for updates
* ASP.NET: XHTML Strict Validation

The URL to these hacks is here: http://wiki.lessthandot.com/index.php/ASP.NET_Hacks

Bookmark that URL because we will be adding more hacks, tips and tricks

Interview With SSIS Guru Jamie Thomson

As promised yesterday, here is the link to the interview I did with jamie Thomson: Interview With SSIS Guru Jamie Thomson

I tried to keep it a secret but it is all over the internet: I am a SQL Server MVP

So all over the internet is exaggerated, I became a SQL Server MVP today and was not going to do a blog post about it. However some other people had other ideas

Congratulations, Denis!
SQL Server MVP - Denis Gobo

and even an announcement on lessthandot

My profile is here: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=BCCF7416-DA4E-4D73-83E2-65FD61BAB16D

Stay tuned, I will have an interview with Jamie Thomson tomorrow

Working On SQL Admin Hacks, Tips and Tricks

I haven't posted for a while because I have been working on SQL Admin Hacks, Tips and Tricks lately. it is still a work in progress but below is what is on the wiki currently. It is not yet categorized but we will do that once we get more of these hacks done. To see what it will look like when it is done take a look at the SQL Server Programming Hacks

Can you think of any admin stuff you would like to see? This is what we have right now

Find Primary Keys and Columns Used in SQL Server
Get The Domain Name Of Your SQL Server Machine With T-SQL
Grant Execute/SELECT Permissions For All User Defined Functions To A User
Grant Execute Permissions For All Stored Procedures To A User
Kill All Active Connections To A Database
SQL Server 2008: When Was The Server Last Started?
Check If Auto Update Statistics Is Enabled By Using DATABASEPROPERTY
Three Way To List All Databases On Your Server
Generate A List Of Object Types By Using OBJECTPROPERTY
How to find all the tables and views in a database
Find Out Server Roles For a SQL Server Login
Which Service Pack Is Installed On My SQL Server
Test SQL Server Login Permissions With SETUSER
Login failed for user 'sa'. Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. SQL 2000
Login failed for user 'sa'. Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection. SQL 2005
Compare Tables With Tablediff
Find All Tables Without Triggers In SQL Server
Find All Tables With Triggers In SQL Server
Create Stored Procedures That Run At SQL Server Startup
Cycle The SQL Server Error Log
How to read sql server error messages
Use OBJECT_DEFINITION To Track SQL Server Stored Procedure Changes
SQL Compare Without The Price Tag
How To Get The Database Name For The Current User Process
How To Find Out Which Columns Have Defaults And What Those Default Values Are
Fixing Cannot add, update, or delete a job that originated from an MSX Server Error after renaming a server

SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 Available To The General Public For Download

SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 has been made available to the general public.

There are 2 versions (and 3 flavors of each) ISO or DVD

Download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=35F53843-03F7-4ED5-8142-24A4C024CA05&displaylang=en

Don't forget to also visit the SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 connect site here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395

Less Than Dot A New community Site Has Been Launched

Myself and a bunch of friends have been working on Less Than Dot for a while now. The site has a forum, blogs and a wiki. More info why we started Less Than Dot and who we are can be found here: http://www.lessthandot.com/aboutus.php

Since I am mostly a SQL guy, I wrote a collection of SQL Server hacks. This collection of SQL hacks is available on the Wiki, right now we have 8 sections and between 70 and 80 hacks. Ideally we will have more hacks and we will also have a SQL admin hacks page in the future.


SQL Server Hacks Sections
* 1 NULLS
* 2 Dates
* 3 Sorting, Limiting Ranking, Transposing and Pivoting
* 4 Handy tricks
* 5 Pitfalls
* 6 Query Optimization
* 7 Undocumented but handy
* 8 Usefull Admin stuff For The Developer


Below are direct links to all the hacks on the wiki, you can also get a list of all the hacks on the wiki itself here: SQL Server Programming Hacks


NULLS

Testing for NULL values
Use COALESCE To Return First Non Null Value
How To Check If Any, ALL Or No Parameters Have A NULL Value
Return first non null value
Return Null If A Value Is A Certain Value
Concatenation with nulls
NOT IN and nulls

Dates

First and last days of month, quarter, week
Epoch date
Get Datetime Without Time
Date Ranges Without Loops (numbers table)
Calculate birthday in years
Formatting Dates
Calling Stored Procedures With Datetime Parameters
Trouble With ISDATE And Converting To SMALLDATETIME

Sorting, Limiting,Ranking, Transposing and Pivoting

Return Top N Rows
Dynamic top
Sorting Numbers Stored In A Varchar Column
How To Use ROW_NUMBER() In A WHERE Clause
Row To Column (PIVOT)
Column To Row (UNPIVOT)
Split A String By Using A Number Table
Concatenate Values From Multiple Rows Into One Column
Concatenate Values From Multiple Rows Into One Column Ordered
Rank
Dense rank
Rownumber
Sort certain values last
Returning The Maximum Value For A Row

Handy tricks

Five ways to return all rows from one table which are not in another table
Order IP Addresses
Data formatting dates
Data formatting SSN
6 Different Ways To Get The Current Identity Value
Use XACT_ABORT to roll back non trapable error transactions
Random Sorting
Sort Values Ascending But NULLS Last
Adding Leading Zeros To Integer Values
How do I format money/decimal data with commas?
Find Out How Many Occurrences Of A Substring Are In A String
Ten SQL Server Functions That You Have Ignored Until Now
Use the *1 trick to do math with two varchar values
Store The Output Of A Stored Procedure In A Table Without Creating A Table
Find all The Rows Where Any Of The Columns Is Null Or Zero Or Both
Three Ways To Display Two Counts From a Table Side By Side
Finding duplicates across columns
Use REPLACE To eliminate unwanted characters

Pitfalls

Update triggers
Integer math
Identity Values And Triggers
Use XACT_STATE() To Check For Doomed Transactions
Three differences between COALESCE and ISNULL
Non deterministic functions and nullif
Subquery typo with using in
ISNUMERIC Trouble
Case Without Else

Query Optimization

Case sensitive search
Functions on left side of the operator
Query Optimizations With Dates
Optimization: Set Nocount On
Don’t use arithmetic operators on a column in the where clause
Don’t use * but list the columns

Undocumented but handy

xp_getnetname
xp_fileexist
xp_dirtree
xp_subdirs
xp_getfiledetails
xp_fixeddrives
Sp_tempdbspace
xp_enumdsn
xp_enumerrorlogs
Some Undocumented DBCC Commands
sp_MSforeachtable
sp_MSforeachDB

Usefull Admin stuff For The Developer

sys.dm_exec_sessions
Find all tables that contain a certain column
Find All Tables Without Triggers In SQL Server
Find all Primary and Foreign Keys In A Database
Find Out If A Table Has An Identity Column
Use the sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats dmv to check if indexes are being used

Hopefully you will like the site and find some good content, if you have a question then don't hesitate to ask it in a forum.

Google Hosts Popular JavaScript Libraries script.aculo.us, Prototype, jQuery, Dojo and more

If you've ever wanted to use a JavaScript library like script.aculo.us, Prototype, jQuery or Dojo, but you couldn't upload its files to a site or you found it difficult to manage all the different versions, Google hosts them for you.

Check it out here: AJAX Libraries API

Now if they also had Ext JS things would be good

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 Released

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 has been released.

Download the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3

Much more(videos, tutorials) here: http://www.asp.net/mvc/

Microsoft Source Analysis for C# Announced By Microsoft

Microsoft Source Analysis for C# has been announced. Here is what I found on the Microsoft site:

This tool is known internally within Microsoft as StyleCop, and has been used for many years now to help teams enforce a common set of best practices for layout, readability, maintainability, and documentation of C# source code.

Source Analysis is similar in many ways to Microsoft Code Analysis (specifically FxCop), but there are some important distinctions. FxCop performs its analysis on compiled binaries, while Source Analysis analyzes the source code directly. For this reason, Code Analysis focuses more on the design of the code, while Source Analysis focuses on layout, readability and documentation. Most of that information is stripped away during the compilation process, and thus cannot be analyzed by FxCop.

The ultimate goal of Source Analysis is to allow you to produce elegant, consistent code that your team members and others who view your code will find highly readable.

More info can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sourceanalysis/

Source Analysis for C# can be downloaded here: https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=sourceanalysis.

LessThanDot - A New IT Community Coming To You June 1st

Some friends and I are launching a new IT Community site. This site will have a forum, blogs and a wiki. The co-founders are experts from many of the top forums around the internet, who also blog on professional blogs, such as http://sqlblog.com/ and http://weblogs.asp.net.. If you're even a semi regular user of places like Tek Tips, Google Groups, Microsoft Forums, Experts Exchange, LinuxQuestions and many others, you are likely to have been helped by one of the 30+ co-founders of LessThanDot - many of whom are top MVP's in their fields.

LessThanDot intends to cover all aspects of IT - from Web Developers to Sys Admins, from Architects to Data Management, IT Professionals (e.g. Project & Service management) to IT Students and Researchers, Desktop Developers to Enterprise Developers. And if it's not there - just ask.

There will be a "blow off some steam" forum where you can read fun stuff, tech rants, a tech news stream and more.

Unlike other fora we will accept questions from students, but instead of giving an answer we will direct you to where the answer can be found. After all you want to do some work yourself.

Right now you can see 3 screen shots here LessThanDot and make sure to come back June 1st.

SQL people that should be followed on twitter

A fellow blogger statisticsio has made a post: SQL people that I follow on twitter
If SQL is your thing I recommend checking out the link and subscribing to some of these people on twitter

And don't forget my Use Twitter To Stay On Top Of The .NET Programming News