Comments

@rdoherty: Awesome. Thanks for the feedback. I'll get started on the tools starting monday.

Roger,

thanks for a great introduction to the new tools. I can't express how thrilled I am to see this release from Microsoft as it promises to finally provide a solid end to end story for database developers in terms of deploying to on premise and SQL Azure.

We are running a team here that produces a software product that is subject to quick release cycles (and subsequent refactorings). We're targetting SQL Server 2008 and SQL Azure and currently rely on writing the per-release upgrade scripts using a combination of VSDBCMD (for automated schema diffs) and hand crafted scripts for e.g. renaming columns or moving data around, prior to executing the beforementioned schema diffs produced by VSDBCMD.

We just started on a new sprint with a user story for improving on quality assurance for upgrade scenarios and automated deployment to SQL Azure. As the person also responsible for the data tier in our software, I can't tell you how happy I am with the release of the new tools. It's going to make a big difference to our team, helping us provide a clear upgrade path with more automation - especially in terms of producing schema diffs for SQL Azure.

I have a few questions:

1. Is there a managed API (like the SQL SMO) that allows us to include dacpac files in our own installer and subsequently deploy (clean install / upgrade) to on premise SQL Server or SQL Azure?
2. The scenario I'm thinking of is having a single SQL Server Data Tools project as part of our solution and using TFS builds output dacpac files for SQL Server or SQL Azure (i.e. targetting the two different environments via configuration and then build the dacpacs).
   Is that possible?

Again, thanks for producing this video. Can't wait to get started.

Using a single resource in multiple variations is also referred to as "single source publishing" in CMS terms. It's a technique that truly eliminates a lot of tedious and error prone work from editors and lets them focus on content authoring.

However, while this library is a step in the right direction, the use of query strings to parameterize the image processing is a feature that's begging to be exploited. Given enough query string variations, the disk runs out of storage and potentially brings down the service.

I'm using another technique to achieve comparable features without potentially having the server run out of disk space because of malicious requests. I'm stacking "stream providers" on top of each other as profiles configured in e.g. an XML document. The profiles contains the configuration details of each "stream provider" and makes itself available as single query string parameter (i.e. "image.jpeg?profile=smallProfile").

While I acknowledge this requires a bit more configuration, it's usually not much of an issue. Once the layout has been approved, all required image translations are basically reproduced as profiles and referenced from the generated markup.

Sounds great with the latest CTP. Another thing: the C# team usually has more than a single feature scoped for a major release of the language, and while the async stuff is definitely a major feature, the community has suggested numerous other features.

Are we going to see other features in the next major version of C#? Come on .. spill the beans

Great video - as always!

 

I've been following the CTPs and am looking forward to pushing esp. the caching part of App Fabric to our architecture this summer when the RTM is released. It's been a pleasure to work with the team on the API and meeting up with MK et all at PDC last year was also a really positive experience.

 

Looking forward to more videos and talks on AppFabric.

I attended this pre-conference workshop, hoping that I would see "demonstrations of code quality best practices that have been proven to work on a variety of projects", but unfortunately, the workshop didn't touch on this subject at all.

 

In fact, most of the stuff presented was focused on how to drag stuff around and irrelevant stuff such as coloring of visuals in UML diagrams, and zooming in and out of diagrams (hint: don't read out loud what it says in the new context menus - your audience can read etc.).

 

The first half of the workshop was a complete waste of time, and this is not just my personal oppinion. I heard from several other guests that they found the first half a complete waste of time. The second half picked up the pace, but Todd Girvin kept dragging the level down to level 100, where as Chris Tullier wanted to do level 300 - 400 stuff, being more of a experienced developer.

 

Too bad, I was hoping for more.

PDC is going to be a blast; can't wait to get started on the sessions and meet the other devs in the lounge. Charles, please make sure the big Channel 9 guy is attending the keynotes too, as it was great fun last year. Oh, almost forgot, bring plenty of small Channel 9 guys too for throwing out to the audience.

 

Did I miss something or are there no sessions with Anders Hejlsberg this year?

Sounds interesting, but seriously, did you look at the source code of the "flapjax.js" core file that backs the demos? I am impressed with the efforts put in the framework (and obviously the idea), but the implementation is not impressive. Perhaps I'm biased; I'm using mootools / jQuery and am really impressed with the beauty of these frameworks (both in design, idea and implementation).

I completely agree with the question on covariant return types. When I met Anders at the PDC bookstore I really tried to get the message across and I've been pushing the request for a long time (as have numerous other people in the community).

Charles, while I agree that they are fundamentally the same operating systems there seems to be a big difference in the user experience between Vista and Windows Server 2008; meaning that users on the server operating system find it more stable and responsive. I guess this is because of the different tuning (as you mentioned) and actual components that are loaded in memory - or that Vista is not tuned to the workloads they throw at it.

I run Windows Server 2008 x64 on a box with 8 GB of RAM and am truly enjoying the benefit of more RAM (and it even plays nice with Call of Duty 4). There is no way I'm ever going to install Vista (again) on my box and it's by far the best development setup I've seen (you've got to love the combination of VS 2008 SP1, .NET 3.5 SP1, IIS 7 and SQL Server 2008).

See you at the PDC (wahoo).