IUpdateable from Eric Nelson (http://ericnelson.wordpress.com)

I have a simple answer "If your developers today use VB or ASP then they should go VB.NET. For everything else goes C#". This is based on the first two years of early adoption work I carried out with UK ISVs - read my short article if you would like to...

Check out http://www.tegels.org/qara/ for a GUI tool for firing queries against the SQL Express Beta - useful while we wait for a later beta containing our own tool (Express Manager)

I have been playing with DTS - and came across "Fuzzy Lookup". This looks to be a very welcome addition when performing ETL - its aim is to clean the data on the way through. It uses "fuzzy logic" to match the source data (misspelt, abbreviated, truncated...

If you are an ISV which today runs against Oracle and so far has resisted producing a version for Microsoft SQL Server then I have some good news. One of the challenges you would face to make your application run well on SQL Server 2000 would be the different...

A colleague just made me aware of this great site - and a neat related add-in for VS.NET. http://www.pinvoke.net has the answer to many of your queries about invoking Win32 apis from managed code and Adam has created a great add-in at http://blogs.msdn...

UK MSDN Flash went out with a great little article by my colleague Tim Sneath - copied here for convenience. I would definitely recommend MSDN Flash to folks - sign up at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/subscriptions/register.asp P.S. Doesn't Tim look...

An area of SQL Server 2005 I have pretty much avoided so far is the enhancements we have made to TSQL. Now - my history is that before joining Microsoft many years back I was a Sybase TSQL developer - so in theory this should be fine. The reality is I...

Several of my ISV have come back to me with queries around the install order of these two betas. The preferred order is to install SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 first which includes a slightly later build (40607.42 vs 40607.16) of the .NET Framework. Then install...

So I will be quiet for a week - and nope - I won't be taking a PC with me (although my excellent gprs enabled pocket pc means work is never quite as far away as it should be!) Thinking of you...

I was looking for some simple DTS examples as I make the transition from SQL 2000 DTS - and came across some nice articles on a site new to me. Check out http://www.sqldts.com/default.aspx?108 for SQL Server 2005 articles... Enjoy

Something that many ISV ask me is how best to take their COM applications forward to .NET. This looks to be a very interesting online chat and one I will be aiming to attend. All the best ----------------------------- Online Chat: Upgrading COM Applications...

Two of my ISVs officially on the beta program asked me the same question end of last week "where is mobile?". In my head I had "SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition beta 1 is aligned with SQL Server 2005 beta 2". However I had not gone looking. So turns...

Hi all, just to let you know I am on limited email/voicemail in the US this week. I am in Seattle to look at corp commissioned SQL Server 2005 training content which will be made available to our UK ISVs through a number of formats in the next 9 months...

I felt this would be relevant for any ISV currently using Visual C++. Enjoy. Online Chat: Visual C++ 2005 Library and Runtime Enhancements The next release of Visual C++ includes many new and enhanced libraries which improve security, support managed...

Been asked a few times - the answer is http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/get/emeaorder/default.aspx (cost £3) Enjoy :-)

In the UK I am technical lead on our activities with UK ISVs around SQL Server 2005 and my colleague Nick Page does the same for VS.NET 2005. We work with a pre-selected set of ISVs - but we each felt it would be beneficial to find space to bring in some...

The problem is simple - you want to read the docs but you don't want to install beta code on your main dev machine just to do so. Well a partial answer is to install the slightly shortened help that came out for the Express edition. Download from http...

For many of my ISV, working great with Service Pack 2 is an important step for this year. I am pleased to say that the Application Compatibility Testing and Migration Guide for Windows XP Service Pack 2 is now live http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...

In my first 2 years working with ISVs who were early adopters of the .NET Framework I think the most common question I was asked in an initial meeting was "which programming language should we use?" So there are many "it depends" but I finally settled...