Data Access blog : ADO

Quick update re: Data Access blog.

alexbarn — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:57:00 GMT

We're putting this blog (Data Access blog) into suspended animation. That doesn't mean we will stop blogging about ADO.NET and data access stuff, or that we'll take down published posts or comments here - it's just means we'll carry on blogging about ADO.NET (current and future releases including info on ADO.NET Entity Framework, EDM, LINQ to Entities, etc) at our shiny new ADO.NET blog and blog about other data access technology related posts at our other team blogs (see below).

If you are subscribed to this blog's feed (there are quite a few of you!), please update you reader / aggregator so it points to the new ADO.NET blog's RSS feed or Atom feed. We can't automagically redirect you, so sorry for the hassle here.

Comments on this blogs.msdn/com/dataaccess blog will be closed, but we have re-published this blog's June and July posts over to the new blog, so you can comment there if you like.

In case you are wondering, here's run down of the various blogs run by the Data Programmability teams:

The Data Programmability team blog (more about data access in general, rather than about a specific technology)
SQL Protocols team blog (discussions related to Microsoft's SQL Server Protocols - Netlibs, TDS and (new for SQL 2005) SOAP. Topics include connections and SQL connectivity)
XML team blog (covers XQuery, XPath, SQLXML, XML Editor, XSLT, XSD, XLinq (LINQ to XML) and more XML goodness)
ADO.NET team blog (ADO.NET and System.Data namepace, posts on current and future releases including info on ADO.NET Entity Framework, EDM, LINQ to Entities, etc)

Also, check out the MSDN Data Access and MSDN XML Developer Centers.

Hope to see you there!

Developers! - Express contest - win $10K

alexbarn — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 21:45:00 GMT

A new worldwide contest for developers has been launched by the folks at Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express.

Here's how it goes: you think of something cool using Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express. It could be desktop app, a web app, a mobile app, whatever. Then you submit your cool idea here.

Once the finalists are picked, then you build. The top prize is $10,000 (USD) in cash, another winner will win $1,000 in cash, and all 12 finalists who complete their project will receive $250 in Amazon gift certificates.

There are three judges. Microsoft's Robert Scoble, MAKE's Philip Torrone and a 'Mystery Judge'.

Here's the contest site....good luck!

10 Mistakes Developers Make With Databases

alexbarn — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 02:01:00 GMT

A new article published at Developer.com is worth checking out: Ten of the Biggest Mistakes Developers Make With Databases.