Must Read Today – New Links (31 July 2007)

[Sorry for absence, just got busy with installation and deployment issues of our software at work in new client site. Will try my best to be punctual now.]

Cartooon
Dilbert
PHD Comics

Programming
Recommended Books on Parallel Programming
Seven Pillars of Pretty Code
Rich Programmer Food
Being a better developer by studying other peoples code

.NET
ASP.NET AJAX in .NET 3.5 and VS 2008
First Look at IronRuby
LINQ to SQL – Series of Articles
Layer Data Access with LINQ to SQL
Nice VS 2008 Code Editing Improvements

Career
Career goals for next 6 months
Why an average career can be a great career

Misc.
Google’s Number One UI Mistake
What do you want to do with your life?
Quotes for Software Engineers
Best Business Novels You Can Read This Summer
Balls and vase problem

Must Read Today – New Links (26 July 2007)

[This blog post thread, appearing daily, will list new exciting/informative/interesting blog posts, articles, thoughts posted over the web.] 

SQL Server
SQL Server 2008 – What ‘new’ to expect?

.NET
AJAX and Web Services
Introducing the Entity Framework and LINQ
Layer Data Access with LINQ to SQL
Microsoft Releases Pre-Alpha IronRuby Including Source

Career
Career Endgame – Where Am I Going? How About You?

Misc.
Nothin but .NET course – Tips and Tricks – Day 1
Better Conversations: Collecting Life Stories
Tip of the Week: Create an Idea Bank

SQL Server 2008 — New and Exciting!

Most exciting part of Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference was first public demonstration of SQL Server 2008.  Yea, yet another thing from Microsoft appearing at mind-boogling pace for us to grok, but enhancements/features promised are quite exciting. Few key points of session were:

1. SQL Server 2008 focus on four areas primarily;

    * Enterprise Data Platform:
    A typical organization uses databases in lot of areas (desktop, analytics, server farm, data warehouse etc.) and usually    different databases are used at different places, depending on performance, cost, scalibility, load requirements.  SQL Server 2008 will target to cater need of all of them to make it being used ubiquitos all over the organisation.

   * Dynamic Development
    This relates to LINQ. EDM (Entity Data Model), originating from Object Spaces idea, is conceptual object oriented schema for developer. Basically it will be XML Mapping File in application, where entity properties and relationships are mapped to database tables and relationships. With ADO.NET 3.5 and an add-in for SQL Server 2008, it will provide framework and its graphical designer. This is certainly very exciting and those who have already fallen in love with LINQ, can’t afford to ignore it.

    * Beyond Relational
    New data types for filestreams and geocoded information system!

2. T-SQL Intellisense and other rich-client side capabilities in Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio.

3. Improved data warehousing, data mining and BI features.

4. T-SQL will have extended date and time data types.

Got any brain cells excited ! do have a look “SQL Server 2008 Product Overview” at white paper here.

Top 10 Hidden Gems in SQL Server 2005

Here.

Worflow Instance ID as Primary Key

Suppose you have a simple Purchase Ordering application, built using Workflow Foundation. Since each PO can have multiple statuses (created, authorized, sent) this problem is best suited to be solved using state-machine workflow. Now each status change of PO can happen in hours/days/months, as PO may get created today, but since manager is off to Hawaii he will only see it after two weeks’ off. This means particular PO’s workflow will get persisted. To have it get back from persistence state, we need to have workflow’s instance ID. I was thinking about adding an additional field in PO table in database, named as ‘POWorkflowID’, until I read this thanks to this post at ‘Coding Horror’. That is, I will not have POId as Primary Key, rather Workflow Instance ID will act as a primary key of my Purchase Order table. Good idea, isn’t it!