Software Business on the Raise in Cleveland
“The software business is picking up regionally across the country”, as noted per CEO of White Peak’s Cleveland database developers partner firm, which has seen software development and consulting requests easily double during the past 3 months in the Cleveland, Ohio region. Requests have been pouring in from small, mid, and large firms alike. The most sought after technology skills have been Access, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and 2005, and .NET recently.
Running LiveCD in VMware
Here is a useful link for those who want to run a Linux LiveCD under VMware Workstation or VMware Player. What’s neat about this hack is it allows you to run the LiveCD without needing to reboot your host OS. [Hats off to Mike for sharing the tip with me.]
Using ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0 on the Same Machine
John Kaster has posted tips on using ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0 on the same machine. It’s a quick read and has references to utilities that will easy the work.
dbGo and Delphi
For years I believed the Professional Edition of Delphi did not provide any database access to SQL Server. I assumed if you wanted db access you would need to import the type library for ADO included in MDAC. But raw COM access to ADO is sometimes a pain (think BSTR and SafeArray). So 15 minutes of googling and reading the BDS help file I discovered a gem called dbGo. From the help file, “The dbGo components provide data access through the ADO framework.” Go figure, or should I say “dbGo figure”? [Geek humor, haha]
One More Rant about SQL Server 2005
Here’s another rant I have about SQL Server 2005.
Limited Scripting in SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2005 has been out for some time now but I have only recently made the move to it. I’ve been in the SQL Server 2000 world because of customers but my customers are finally making the move 2005.
Overall I really like SQL Server 2005 and the new Management Studio is nice. However, I’m really annoyed that the SQL Server 2005 team decided to do away with the database scripting feature found in SQL Server 2000.
In SQL Server 2000, you can script out each database object into individual files. I do this so I can commit the DDL source for each into CVS, or to do revision comparisons, or to do a number of other tasks. But you cannot easily script out each object in a database with SQL Server 2005. Apparently this is a known limitation as seen here.
One option I found is to write a programming using .NET 2.0 and the SQL Management Object (SMO). Unfortunately time is not a luxury I have and I have an immediate need to script out the each object in a database into individual files. So I started down the path of script out each object individual.
Guess what? It has its own set of problems. First starters, there is not an option to generate a script that contains both the DROP and CREATE statements. Instead what I do is generate the CREATE statement to a query window. Next I generate the DROP statement to the clipboard followed by pasting the clipboard content to the query window. Needless to say, this is a painful process, and I have hundreds of database objects to script out.
I can’t believe the model used for generating scripts in previous versions of SQL Server did not make it into SQL Server 2005. I would have expected the same functionality at a minimum, and possibly an improvement on past versions. But I would never have guess it was removed completely.
WS-Workbench Coming Along Nicely
Work on White Peak Software’s next product, WS-Workbench (also called Swirl internally) is coming along nicely as you can see from this screen shot. The first beta should be ready soon. Post a comment or send me an email if you are interested in beta testing WS-Workbench once it is ready.
Too Much Technology to Play With
Some days I find it hard to stay focused. There are many new technologies to play with and I want to spend time with them all. I’m itching to install the latest version of DotNetNuke and see what has changed in the last year. I also want to port a web part I wrote for SharePoint from C# to Delphi and make it a DNN module. There’s also a few Ajax frameworks I want to experiment with, and GData (Google Data API) is something I’m really, really anxious to play with.
The fun doesn’t stop there. Microsoft’s Windows Workflow Foundation and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) are peaking my interest too. /n software isn’t helping my focus problem either by releasing a new workflow and SSIS. Just more fun stuff to play with.
Maybe I need a new White Peak Software company policy allowing 8 hours per week to “technology play time”.
What is Microsoft Re-designed the iPod Packaging?
It might go a little something like this…Microsoft’s Re-designed iPod Packing.
Killington Season Ends May 1st
I was hoping to make one more trip to Killington this season before packing away the snowboard, but it doesn’t look like it going to happen. Killington announced today it will close on May 1st for the 2005-2006 season. Looking at recent pictures I’m surprised they are able to stay open that long but Killington does have its image of staying open longer than any other East Coast resort to keep.
What a crappy season the East Coast had this year. Here’s hoping there will be much more snow next season.