SqlXml Blogs

GROUP BY ALL

vinodkumar — Fri, 09 May 2008 04:48:00 GMT

Did you know such a thing ever existed? Check this post from SQLTeam on the GROUP BY ALL feature here ....(read more)

Build Zune Games Today.. or Maybe Tomorrow

bryantlikes — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:09:48 GMT

The XNA Team announced the CTP of the XNA Game Studio 3.0 today:

Today, we are delivering the first Community Technical Preview (CTP) of XNA Game Studio 3.0, giving you the ability to build games for the entire family of Zune media devices. This feature gives you access to the majority of the XNA framework APIs while retaining a seamless sense of integration with the Zune media experience. In addition, this release now requires either Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher (C# language support must be installed), or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

I downloaded the CTP today thinking I could whip up a quick sample hello world game during my lunch break just for fun. After installing it on one of my virtual machines I realized there was no way for me to get the game (or even test the game since there doesn't appear to be an emulator) to my Zune since there isn't a way to "plug" my Zune into my virtual and according to the FAQ:

Q: Can I transmit the game to another Zune device wirelessly?

A: No, you must deploy the game to your Zune through your device connection on your PC, using XNA Game Studio 3.0 to deploy.

Ok, no problem I thought, I'll just install the VS 2008 C# Express Edition on my host. So after installing that and then installing the CTP it would crash every time I tried to add my Zune to the device center. Then I remembered reading this in the FAQ:

Q: Does the CTP work for 64-bit mode?

A: This CTP doesn't work in 64 bit yet. We plan to support it before RTM.

Hmmmm.. I guess programming Zune games isn't in my near future. If I have time tonight I'll give it a shot on my desktop PC which I haven't moved over to 64-bit yet (mainly because I'm still waiting for a 64-bit client for Home Server).

Dell articles on SQL 2008

vinodkumar — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:05:00 GMT

While browsing I just stumbled upon these articles from Dell. A good read: Deployment Guide SQL 2008 - Whitepaper...(read more)

SQL Server 2008 - Experiences

vinodkumar — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:04:00 GMT

If you are in India and have installed SQL Server 2008 as a POC in your companies doing some sort of migration, upgrade or even evaluating new features like Filestream, XML, Geo Spatial etc - I would like to know more from you. Please drop me a line at - ITPro[at]ExtremeExperts.com. I would also be interested if you have done something specific around Win Server 2008 (Virtualization, NAP or IIS 7) too....(read more)

Longest Certification Title Ever

bryantlikes — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:29:52 GMT

I just recently found out that I passed the WF 3.5 beta exam (well, actually I passed it some time ago but it took Prometric, the world's worst test provider, a while to figure out how to send the score to Microsoft). So here is my new logo:

Since they wrap a lot of the words, you really need to spell it out:

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist - .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Workflow Foundation Applications

I think that is my longest certification title to date. The Windows Mobile 5.0 is a close second.

BTW - I also found out that I didn't pass the WPF or the WCF exams so I'll have to retake the real ones at some point.

Suggest: Want a SQL Server Session?

vinodkumar — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:24:00 GMT

As an Evangelist I get an opportunity to do a variety of sessions for the India sub and I am sure I would have met quite a few of you who read my post via the events channel. As much as I try to keep the sessions content loaded, I would like to take this opportunity to also solicit your views on what will be your top 5 session requests. In otherwords, what would be the sessions that will help YOU in your day-today activities(SQL2005) and help YOU prep-up on future products(SQL2008). What I want from...(read more)

Row Versioning Overheads

vinodkumar — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:02:00 GMT

Sunil takes a shot at explaining the nuances of Row versioning and what are the facts one need to know when working with such data. Catch the same here ....(read more)

Don't Tell Me How To Run My Laptop

bryantlikes — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:51:14 GMT

I went to install Live Mesh on my Windows Server 2008 Laptop just now and got this lovely message:

I had run with UAC enabled for some time but finally got tired of all the flashing and waiting that goes on whenever I start Hyper-V manager, want to change a network setting, or even when I just want to switch power plans. So I was already quite annoyed at UAC and then I read this article.

"The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," said Cross.

After reading that I decided that I would turn UAC off, and wow what a difference. Everything was faster. I would click the Hyper-V manager and it would actually open instead of wait, wait, flash, hit ok, wait, flash, wait, wait, open. I could change my power plan just by clicking on the power icon in my tray. It was almost as if I was using Windows Server 2008 as it was designed.

So now I've been a happy non-UAC user for a few weeks and was excited to install Live Mesh but no. Microsoft has decided for me that I can't use it unless I turn on UAC. This is just as bad as when I try to install the Windows Live applications and get this message:

This message is a bunch of BS because if I extract out of actual MSI packages, every single one of the applications will run just fine on my Windows Server 2008 machine (or Windows Server 2003 for that matter), but someone has tried to decide for me where I can run it.

Hey Live Team, just tell me what you support and don't support, but don't make me hack your installers just because you don't like what or how I'm running my machine.

SQL 2008 Whitepapers

vinodkumar — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:58:00 GMT

Ravi does a really good work in consolidating the whitepapers on SQL Server 2008 topics ....(read more)

How it works section

vinodkumar — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:55:00 GMT

Catch some really cool posts by the PSS support engineers on various SQL Server topics. These are HOW TO topics , crip yet lots of internal behaviours explained....(read more)

Windows XP SP3 - Update

vinodkumar — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:37:00 GMT

Yup, you read it right. XP SP3 is RTMed to the OEM and Enterprise customer. Read the thread here . Interestingly as much as people are thinking on Vista deployment people are asking whether Windows XP Professional with SP3 is good enough that they can forgo deploying the Windows Vista operating system. The debate can go on and on - but here is a quick whitepaper that outlines some of the differences between these two....(read more)

IIS Memory Management

vinodkumar — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:45:00 GMT

Here are a couple of posts on IIS Memory Management by Siva. Some really good detailing mentioned here and here ....(read more)

IIS7 - Performance Analysis Reports

vinodkumar — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:32:00 GMT

Here is a post that outlines with simple steps to attack your web server behaviour on IIS7 using the out-of-box reports. Read the post here ....(read more)

Riding for a Cause (or two)

bryantlikes — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:28:42 GMT

Back in January I posted my goals for the year of exercising, regular blogging, and better time management. I was doing pretty good on the first two until I was staffed on an out-of-town project which made exercising more difficult and took all my time for blogging.

For time management I started using ClearContext based on the recommendation of Lamont Harrington. Now my inbox is usually empty except for when I occasionally get behind. So that goal has been pretty much realized, but I'm sure I will learn more as the year goes on.

In order to get back on track for exercising I've signed up for two cycling events going on this year:

SoCal Tour de Cure - June 14th
Bike MS: Southern California Ride - Sept. 20-21

For the Tour de Cure I'm doing the 65 mile ride and for the Bike MS I'm doing the 175 mile ride. Should be a lot of fun plus it will help a worthy cause. Speaking of which, if you'd like to make a tax deductible contribution to either one on my behalf I'd really appreciate it.

For this ride I'm attempting to raise $1000. If you're interested in donating you can sponsor me here. During both of my wife's pregnancies she contracted gestational diabetes. The nice thing about gestational diabetes is that once you give birth it usually goes away. However, sometimes it can "stick" and then you will have the real thing. My wife had to modify her diet and check her blood sugars after each meal.

The other contact I've had with diabetes, which I'm sure most of my readers share, is through Scott Hanselman. Scott has been very vocal about his diabetes even to the point of twittering all his diabetic activity for a day. He usually participates in the diabetes walk (last year he raised over $20k through his team) which is one of the ways I came in contact with the ADA.

So if you want to donate to a good cause, you can do so here.

For the MS ride I'm also attempting to raise $1000. For this ride you can sponsor me here. Thankfully this one hasn't really crossed my path nor anyone in my family. However, it is definitely a worthy cause as well.

I hope you will consider sponsoring me for one or both rides. I'll keep this post updated with my progress and will probably do another post for the MS ride when it gets closer.

Virtual TechDays - April 9 & 10th

vinodkumar — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:27:00 GMT

With Windows and Visual Studio writing their track I wanted to talk about our very own wonderful 3 tracks of SQL Server session each having 4 sessions each. The first track is "BI and Admin" track. As much as these both require their very own tracks we already were running high on the number of sessions hence had to combine them together. We have Analysis Services (SSAS) enhancements done by the product team directly streamed for you from Redmond. Dont miss it!!! And with the success that I see from...(read more)

What have I been up to?

srinivassampath — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:17:00 GMT

Well, its tough to answer :-) Been quite busy with my regular work, but have been keeping touch with a few technologies over the last few months. They are: LINQ, SilverLight 2, Eclipse Modeling Framework, Windows Communication Foundation, DSL Toolkit.

That's actually quite a handfull! Will be blogging about some of these soon.

Data Models - Get some good starting points

vinodkumar — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:05:00 GMT

Here is the site ......(read more)

ASP.NET and ADO.NET 3.5 Beta Exams

bryantlikes — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:08:30 GMT

Gerry just posted some information about the new ADO.NET 3.5 Exam and the new ASP.NET 3.5 Exam, but didn't post the dates or the promo codes. I just signed up for both exams via the Prometric site and it appears both exams run from March 15^th – April 4^th. They are free if you use the promotion codes.

Good luck!

Update: Ok I removed the "promotion codes" at Gerry's request below. I'm guessing that Gerry thinks that someone sent me the exam information, however I simply took the promotion codes he posted on his blog for the other 3.5 beta exams which are the exam number plus "B1" and used the new exam numbers plus "B1" to get the new ones. The days are shown on the Prometric site when you register for the exam.

So I believe this is just a misunderstanding since I didn't post any non-public information, but I've removed the codes anyway. However, you can figure them out just like I did by looking at the previous codes. :)

SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta for ADO.Net Entity Framework

vinodkumar — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:17:00 GMT

Check the details for the same here ....(read more)

SQLCAT Toolbox

vinodkumar — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:14:00 GMT

This is cool. We know these have been around for a while. Here is all the tools in one page consolidated. Check it out here ....(read more)

Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008

vinodkumar — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:11:00 GMT

Add-ins to VS 2008 to work for SL 2. Download the same here ....(read more)

IE 8 - Tech Preview

vinodkumar — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:10:00 GMT

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers includes a host of new features, enhancements, and other improvements driven from real world scenarios and customer desires that puts the Web at your service. This document will give you more information and examples on how to create rich user experiences and make sure your websites are ready for Windows Internet Explorer 8. Check it out here ....(read more)

Microsoft Sync Services for ADO.NET

vinodkumar — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:06:00 GMT

Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET v1.0 provides the ability to synchronize data from disparate sources. Rather than simply replicating a database and its schema, the Synchronization Services application programming interface (API) provides a set of components to synchronize data between data services and a local store. Applications are increasingly used on mobile clients, such as laptops and devices that do not have a consistent or reliable network connection to a central server. It...(read more)

Performance Monitoring with SQL 2008

vinodkumar — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:28:00 GMT

Check my blog post on TechNet over Performance Monitoring with SQL Server 2008 here . Feel free to pass your comments....(read more)

Silverlight and WPF/E CS Modules Updated

bryantlikes — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:13:19 GMT

Saw that Jesse Liberty (via WynApse) has a nice post on creating Silverlight streaming applications in minutes:

Three are many details to creating a Silverlight Streaming application, but in this post I'm going to try to boil them down to a recipe for fast success.

For some reason this post inspired me to fix my Silverlight streaming CS module (code) as well as my WPF/E CS Module (code). This means that all my old posts with WPF/E and Streaming Silverlight should now be working again. I'm also going through my code samples to make sure they are working and trying to fix them if they aren't. Below is one of my old WPF/E samples now running as Silverlight.

Click here to view Silverlight

Below is the application that Jesse create's in his demo (can we get some better screen shots in it?) hosted in using my silverlight cs module:

Click here to view Silverlight

Note: This won't work when using a feed reader since the script creates an iframe and I don't believe this is supported in most feed readers. I'll need to add a separate view page like I have for my WPF/E module.

Update: Just updated the update. I added the separate link page for the feed view and created the aspx page for it. Should work now and should display the absolute url.

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