Moving to blogs.hydrussoftware.com

I've been spending some time over the last few months getting up to speed on Community Server, and with its blogging capabilites, we at Hydrus Software thought it best to move our blogs onto an in-house CS installation. So, all of my future blogging activities will be conducted on John's (new) Brain Dump. I hope to see you all there.

(By the way, I was able to update my CSS vs. table layout challenge, in case anyone wants to play with that further.)

Rapid-Fire Highlights of SD West 2007

I returned from a full week of SD West on Saturday, and it was a fantastic experience!  While I don't have time to dive into all of the details of the trip, I do want to get the highlights out of the way:

1. Juval Lowy and WCF: I spent the first full day of the conference listening to Juval Lowy discuss Windows Communication Foundation in the .NET Framework 3.0.  His explanation of all that you can do with WCF was worth the whole price of the conference!  His high-level look at the benefits of service orientation was compelling, and the followign discussions of each facet of WCF gave me a solid picture of each piece of the service framework.  And his Dirty Harry impression during the WCF Operations and Calls talk was hilarious!
2. O/R Mapping: Scott Ambler gave a talk on object/relational mapping that I thought was very good.  He focused on the divide between developers and database professionals, and he stressed that DBA's need to adopt development methods that the software people have been using for some time now.  Since I live as both a developer and DBA, I got some good ideas about how to merge the two disciplines.  I also thought it was very interesting that Microsoft has built many of the "agile database techniques" that Scott recommends into Visual Studio Team System.  (Much of the material from Scott's talk can be found here.)
3. LINQ: While there wasn't as much LINQ at the conference as I would have liked, I did get to see Rocky Lhotka show off the fundamentals of LINQ to SQL, and he briefly discussed LINQ to Entities, or the ADO.NET Entity Framework.  In light of my interest in O/R mapping, the entity framework really caught my attention, and I've been experimenting with it ever since I've returned home from Santa Clara.
4. Food and Fun: If you're ever in the San Jose area, check out El Camino Mongolian BBQ.  I went there with Jeff, and then went back later in the week with Eric Sink and the guys from SourceGear.  (Don't fill your bowl all the way the first time; leave room for more iterations.  You need to practice "agile barbequeing"!)  Being from Columbus, I got to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes advance in the tournament with some folks from Seapine Software.  And finally, I got to go on a whirlwind tour of San Fransisco.

Understanding ADO.NET Orcas

If you're like me and enjoy diving into a technology before reading the manual, then you may have experienced confusion when working with the version of ADO.NET Orcas (formerly ADO.NET vNext).

I've been playing with the March CTP of Orcas for a couple of days now, and I finally believe that I have the different ADO.NET features sorted out.  I was planning to write my own post to summarize the different new query technologies that are provided, until I found Julie Lerman's entry on the same topic.  I may add details later, but her post is a great place to start.

Sorting out LINQ and Entity Framework for Data Access

Code Formatter for Windows Live Writer

Here's a handy tool for all of you code-slinging bloggers out there. Steve Dunn has created a Code Formatter for Windows Live Writer, which allows you to paste formatted code directly into your blog posts. It supports C#, XML, and other languages, and should make your blogging experience far easier. Check it out.

Thanks to Roy Osherove for pointing this out!

Database Vulnerabilities: SQL Server 2005 vs. Oracle

I'm not usually one to grab the coattails of other bloggers, but this post is worth mentioning. It indicates that SQL Server 2005 has not had a single disclosed vulnerability in its first year of release, which is an impressive feat. Heck, I've found vulnerabilities and errors in software I've released in the first ten minutes.

SQL Server 2005 - 1 Year And Not Yet Counting...