Good news for independent developers who are using SQL Express as backend database. With SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Express supports databases up to 10 GB. For more information and download, go to product site

Microsoft Press has just released a new free e-book for SQL Server 2008 R2 " Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2" Can be downloaded from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2010/04/14/free-ebook-introducing-microsoft-sql-server...

Microsoft is always advise customers to use the new security features for SQL Logins in SQL Server. As you know SQL Logins are the logins where the login name and password are saved inside SQL Server and SQL Server is responsible for authenticated this...

One of my friends called me for a problem at a customer site. The problem simple is that the customer wanted to move the tempdb in SQL Server 2005 to a new location but because of a typo the new path of the file is pointing to a folder not a file. Something...

As I promised in my last post, here's the MS File Encryption program (MS stands for Mohamed Sharaf not Microsoft of course ;)) based on the MSSecurity Library . The application is pretty simple; you can encrypt a single file or entire folder. The application...

If you have seen my previous post about the class library that I developed to encrypt text or files using symmetric encryption ( Rijndael algorithm ). So you would already know that it was developed using .NET Framework 1.1. I've upgraded the library...

I got a feedback for the Master Pages post asking about mixing master pages with cross post. Here's the scenario. We have a content page that has one textbox and one button, the page code would be like this <% @ Page Language ="VB" MasterPageFile...

If you are building CLR stored procedure and you want this stored procedure to be part of a schema called xyz. When you write the name of the procedure in the SqlProcedure attribute "xyz.myproc" and deploy this procedure, the visual studio deployed it...

As I promised to provide a component to enable you to change the values of the application-scope settings in .NET Framework 2.0, I'm now providing it. It's a very simple dll written by C#, you can find the Source code here . To use this dll you...

This is a quick post for using application or user settings in C# 2.0. I found most of the articles dealing with it in VB which is pretty easy. All you need to access a setting called "ServerName" in Visual Basic is this line My.Settings.ServerName...

When you create new foreign key constraint in SQL Server 2005 and this constraint conflict with the data already exists in the tables, you will get an error message that might be misleading. Let's say that you have 2 tables (depts and employee) and you...

Updating database tables using Management Studio is a the easiest way during the development phase. If you do so, you probably need sometimes to update column to add a null value instead of the current value. To do so you just need to press CTRL+0...

If you are planning to publish your Reporting Services site to the internet then you need to secure the communication between the server and the clients. The industry standard to do so is to buy an SSL certificate from a public certificate authority ...

Internet Explorer 7 is the newest version of Internet Explorer(IE) will be launched on Windows Vista time. It will also be available for XP SP2 and 2003 SP1 users. It has many fancy features like new rendering engine(you will love it especially in LCD...

If you are one of the people who used and enjoyed SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) in SQL 2000 and you wanted to use it in your windows/web applications without the server side components (just like what you are doing with Crystal Reports). So you...

One of the cool security features in ASP.NET 2.0 is the ability to parts of web.config. Web.config encryption uses XML encryption standards at its core. Protected configuration uses a class derived from the abstract class ProtectedConfigurationProvider...

If you are a one who wants to know where's the content that you are reading the in the MSDN library table of contents then you would miss this button in the new Microsoft Document Explorer. Microsoft Document Explorer is the new Microsoft Help system...

I've been invited to test a new product, VistaDB . I found it amazing. It's a tiny database engine with huge benefits. VistaDB engine is only a dll with 32 Kb foot print and it works with almost all development platforms (.NET, COM, Delphi , C/C++...

This time I'm introducing one of the most favorite codes for me. I built this library a year ago while I was working with symmetric encryption. I felt that I need to do it myself instead of using any ready-made components because I either found a very...

If you are deploying your web application and you don't the users to browse your web application until the deployment process finishes or you want to take you web application offline for a while. Just put a file with the name App_offline.htm and write...

ASP.NET 2.0 compilation is much different than ASP.NET 1.x compilation. In ASP.NET 1.x there was two classes for each web form: 1) Code-behind class ---> which is compiled inside the assembly in the bin folder along with all other classes for...

Let’s first discuss the problem. We use Hijri calendar and SQL server uses Gregorian calendar. And SQL server has restriction on the Gregorian dates earlier than 1753. But SQL server saves dates internally in another format (It’s neutral and doesn...

Many of us encountered a lot of problems when installing Microsoft Enterprise Library on production servers, you may face or see error like " System.Security.SecurityException: Requested registry access is not allowed" Simply to deploy your web...

app.config and web.config are very powerfull techniques for managing application settings. For more information about using configuration file please check this article in MSDN But the manipulation of these files has 2 issues 1) There’s no class...

I was working in a small project in which I should deploy the database on the production server with Encrypted Stored Procedures . I had to open each and every stored procedure in the database to add WITH ENCRYPTION keyword to them to be encrypted. I...