It’s well known that comparing variables of DateTime data type, whether in .NET or in SQL, is not the fastest operation… So, if you have a table with EffectiveDate and ExpirationDate columns, and you need to get only rows where EffectiveDate >= Now...

A lot of good discussions have been held over the last several years on the remoting size of a dataset. Significant improvements have been made in ADO.NET 2.0 to reduce the remoting footprint of a dataset by using binary serialization. But is the dataset...

I’ve been “under the weather” for the last week or so, and ran out of prepared appdev SYSK items, so this one is a filler… The expression "to get fired" comes from centuries ago. When clans wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing...

Did you know you can modify what gets saved before building? Go to Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> Build and Run settings. The first combo box is ”Before building”, which has the following options: - Save all changes (default...

The official recommendation is relatively well known by now, and is stated below: Transact-SQL is best for situations in which the code will primarily perform data access with little or no procedural logic. Programming languages that are compatible...

Want to know who the users that are connected and how many sessions do each of them have? Then use the new sys.dm_exec_sessions view: SELECT login_name, count(session_id) as session_count FROM sys.dm_exec_sessions GROUP BY login_name Want to know who...

My tests show that the answer is Yes… See it for yourself. Create a windows app in VS 2003, add one text box and one button to a form and put the following code behind the button click: // A bunch of bytes represented by their code string[] input...

Did you know that full trust assemblies now satisfy any code access security demands? In the .NET Framework 2.0, any fully trusted assembly will satisfy any demand, including a link demand for an identity permission, such as a System.Security.Permissions...

The other day, I listened to a "Windows Presentation Foundation Under the Hood" talk by Leonardo Blanco and Mike Hillberg. Below are the notes from it, excluding Q&A session. Components that make up the platform: 1. Element System - the most visible...

The next version of OS (Vista) will have state-of-the-art speech technology built right in. WinFX will have a powerful API for enabling your users to speak to your apps and your apps to speak to your users. At the last PDC (2005), Phillip Schmid, Robert...

Vista brings to the enterprise much more than just enhanced security. Amongst many features I personally look forward too, are -- much better monitoring, new diagnostic tools and far fewer reboots. Here are some others… Vista will also introduce a...

If you miss the old VB 6.0 (and prior) feature of being able to create a project and not save it to the disk (e.g. a short lived test project you plan to run once and then destroy), the read on… In VS.NET it’s called Zero-Impact Projects, and it allows...

The other day, I was asked the following question “Does the SqlBulkCopy update records if they already exist or must it be used only for INSERTS only?” So, I thought others might benefit from knowing the answer… SqlBulkCopy is nothing more than a more...

Those of you who follow my blog know that I almost never write on topics outside of appdev… But this one, by George Carlin, is just too good to keep it to myself. 1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors...

Many teams agree on the maximum line length that should not be exceeded for code readability. Usually, it’s either 80 or 120 characters long. The question is, how do you conform to this rule? Some of you may know this trick, but for those who don’t...

In case you didn’t know, there are a couple of very cool SQL stored process that allow you to execute a T-SQL statement for each table and for each database. They are sp_MSforeachdb and sp_MSforeachtable. For example, executing sp_msforeachtable 'sp_spaceused...

Ok, it’s time to lighten up a bit… and then to think a bit on not such a light topic. Check out this humorous and, at the same time, thought provoking piece on frameworks by Benji Smith at http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431...

If you have a narrow table, e.g. just the following columns -- GroupId, DataId, DataValue (frequently used to store facts, e.g. questions and answers) – but you want to get all data ids and values for a given group id as one row , try the SQL below: ...

In SQL, you can now use quotename instead of ‘’’’… So, if you need to pass O’Brian as the last name, you no longer have to replace it with double apostrophes to make it O’’Brian – just use the new quotename(@lastname, ‘’’’) in your queries. This function...

Since I’m still meeting developers that are not quite sure of the differences between the two, and the choice that’s right for them, I decided to blog on the topic… Just so we are all on the same page, you need to call Close or Dispose methods to release...