Visual Studio Data : VS DATA General

Visual Studio Data – Related Technologies and Tools

John Chen — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:32:26 GMT

As you may notice the Visual Studio Data (vsdata) blog is evolving. It is great to see more blogs come out from this team (special thanks to our driver PMs: Beth and Yang) and more bloggers, especially developers and testers, contributing to the content. I think this is a great way to communicate with our customers and we do love the feedback.

The team members own a wide range of Visual Studio features mostly around data access technologies. To give you a better idea what these features are, let me list some technologies and tools you can search for that are closely related to us. (Well, this list is what I can think at this moment and not an official list from the team).

Data Sources Window, Data Sources Wizard, Object Data Source, Drag and Drop, Data Binding in Winform/WPF /Silverlight/RIA Service;

ADO.Net, Typed DataSet, Typed DataSet Designer, TableAdapter, Hierarchical Update, N-Tier Design, Linq over Typed DataSet, Entity Framework;

Data Designer Extensibility (DDEX), Server Explorer, Data Explorer, Database Explorer, Connection Dialog, Query Designer, View Designer;

Local Data, Access Database, SQL Server, SQL Server Compact, SQL Server Express, Occasionally Connected Applications, Sync Designer;

WCF, Web Service, ADO.NET Data Service.

The top level MSDN references for accessing data in Visual Studio are here:

VS2010 Beta1 version: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wzabh8c4(VS.100).aspx

VS2008 version http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wzabh8c4.aspx

Well, the team also owns other features like Class Designer, Visual Basic Powerpacks. So don't be surprised if any member has a post on those topics. J

Again, I appreciate any feedback you may have, especially on our blog contents.

Cheers!

Yag moves on and stays at the same time (by yag)

YAG — Fri, 05 May 2006 08:38:00 GMT

As many of you know, after a major release, people at Microsoft tend to look around to see what they’d like to work on next. After working on two releases of Visual Studio and a similar number of releases of Visual FoxPro, I’ve accepted a position in Microsoft.com as an architect focusing on our community products.

I accepted this position because it marries the community issues that I’m so passionate about, with the ability to quickly and immediately touch our customers around the world. In essence, I will be responsible for a multi-release plan developing a platform that includes the following:

a. blogs.msdn.com,

b. forums.microsoft.com,

c. on-line chats,

d. CodeZone search,

e. GotDotNet

f. and others…

We want to turn this into a platform that every division in Microsoft can use to quickly build their own unique community presence and push that presence out to their partners in the community.

Given that this involves architecture, cross-division impact and customer presence, I just couldn’t say no. It’s been an amazing four years here in DevDiv – getting to work on multiple releases of VB, Data Tools and VFP.

In Visual Studio 2005 we made data easier to work with, something we’ll be improving in Orcas. We’ve also got LINQ coming down the pike – deeply integrating querying and data capabilities into VB and C# - something that I think will quickly become a capability that is considered a “must have” for any general purpose programming languages. Now I look forward to helping build tools that make it easier for everyone to work more closely with our customers.

In Visual FoxPro, we’ve revamped the report writer, improved its extensibility and deepened its integration with SQL Server and .NET.

Speaking of Visual FoxPro, the folks at MSCOM have been good enough to let me continue to drive that forward as we work on Sedna. So, I’ll still be the person responsible for VFP, working with Calvin, Milind and the rest of the team. As you can see, I’ll still have one foot in DevDiv. <g> However, I don’t feel right posting to the VS Data blog, so I’ve created a new one here (where I'll be cross-posting this). Come by for more details on the new position, Visual FoxPro, life, the universe and everything. Note that VFP is staying in the Data Team, so Milind (and any others who want to) will continue blogging here. I just think it’s time I get a personal blog – like Ken and Calvin.

One last note to the VS Data team: you all rock – I know you’re working on some amazing things for the future. I look forward to working with it all in my new role.

Global launch events (by yag)

YAG — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 22:21:00 GMT

I'll be in San Francisco at the November 7th launch event for Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Biztalk 2006. If you are there, please stop by and say hello. I'll be hanging out at the Visual Studio area. If you can't make it, we'll be having global launch events over the next few months. You can find the list and register at www.microsoft.com/launchtour2005/.

Some LINQ related videos on Channel 9 (by yag)

YAG — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 08:43:00 GMT

Some say that seeing is believing. There are three videos on Channel 9 that discuss LINQ.

Anders Hejlsberg and Dan Fernandez discuss LINQ and C#.

Paul Vick and Amanda Silver discuss the future of VB.

Paul Vick and Erik Meijer discuss dynamic programming.

Anonymous Comments Accepted Again (by John Koziol)

vsdata — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 02:20:00 GMT

For a while there, the bog wasn't accepting anonymous comments, that is, you had to register as a user at blogs.msdn.com. This has been changed and you can comment with or without an account.

Creating Tablet PC applications in VB (by yag)

vsdata — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 16:38:00 GMT

One of the things I showed when I was in India was various ways of ink-enabling your applications using VB.NET 2003. Now there's a new site, www.vbink.com, that focuses on just that. Pretty cool. (via Julia)

Dataworks team blog (by yag)

vsdata — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 20:31:00 GMT

One of the teams we work really closely with is Dataworks - they're the ones behind ADO.NET. They just started a team blog. First post is by their PUM, Alyssa. Welcome!

XML Visualizer for VS2003 (by yag)

vsdata — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 00:52:00 GMT

One of my favorite features coming in VS2005 is debugger visualizers. They allow you to easily add a type-specific form based visualization while debugging. Beth points to the XML Visualizer on GotDotNet. It lets you look at your dataset in a number of ways - the data, the XML, the schema. Pretty cool.

I can't wait to see what comes when writing tools like these get even easier in VS2005.

Rob Copeland is blogging! (by yag)

vsdata — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 02:07:00 GMT

Rob Copeland, Product Unit Manager for RAD Tools (that's VB, .NET Client aka Winforms and VS Data) has joined the blogosphere. In his first post, he discusses the VB6 support policy and where he'd like to go with his blog.

Please go and make him feel welcome... <g>

Update: D'oh! I forgot to add the link to his entry. ;)

Update 2: Rob's blog is now open for business.

New SQL Server Editions (by yag)

vsdata — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 01:27:00 GMT

I'm a few days late posting this, but I wanted to point y'all to Tom's article on the new set of SKUs for SQL Server - including the new Workgroup Edition which is even available now for SQL Server 2000.

Here's a picture of the SQL Server 2005 packaging and pricing:

It doesn't include the Developer Edition which will still be available.

I loved this VB6/VB.NET article (by yag)

vsdata — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 20:14:00 GMT

Although it was written as a response to an article by Richard Grimes, I like this blog entry because of how it describes the movement and *feeling* of going from VB6 to VB.NET. Scott captures it really well - probably because he's working in both at the moment.

Update: Noticed a number of other blog entries on the topic

Jay Roxe points to Dan Fernandez as well.
Paul Vick has his own comments on the topic, and also points to Paul Kimmel's article.

Exploring VB .Net from a VFP Perspective (Part III) (by John Koziol)

vsdata — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 19:17:00 GMT

Sometimes I feel like I'm repeating what others have already written about .Net from the VFP perspective. To those authors who have written extensively on the subject, notably Kevin McNeish, Cathi Gero, and Les Pinter, I apologize for any overlap. Hint to readers: While I can't endorse third-party products, do an author search on any of the above in Amazon for recommended further reading.

Onward!

A core difference between .Net and VFP is that it's possible to hide the code implementation of some objects in metadata, for example, when you create a form in the Form Designer. In fact, it's pretty easy to put together a complete application without ever writing a single DEFINE CLASS or CREATEOBJECT("Form"). This is because VFP can interpret the metadata (.SCX/.SCT for Forms) directly.

Not the case with .Net. First off, there are two types of forms in .Net - WinForms and WebForms. Were not going to address WebForms at this time; WinForms are pretty much the same as VFP Forms. And WinForms are constructed purely by code which is intepreted into a visual representation in the IDE.

Go into .Net and start a New Project. Choose Visual Basic projects from the dialog, and choose Windows Application from Templates. Don't worry for now what the name and solution location are for now. Click OK.

You'll be looking at a WinForm. In the upper right, click on the Toolbox button (usually on the upper right), which uses the same icon as the Designer Toolbox in VFP. The list of stuff you can add to the form should appear on the left, by default. Choose "Button" and drop a Button on the center-bottom of the Form.

Pretty similar to the VFP experience, eh?

On the upper right should be the Solution Explorer; if not, you can choose Solution Explorer from the View menu. The Solution is probably named WindowsApplication1. Note that the Solution is kind of a placeholder for what the final output will be: an EXE or DLL or whatever. Beneath that will be the Project, also named WindowsApplication1 which is almost exactly analogous to a VFP Project.

Beneath that will be a folder-looking icon with the title References.

References refer to DLLs needed by this solution. Since this is a Windows application, .Net already includes critical components of the .Net framework pertaining to UI and system stuff. A rough analogy to the functionality provided by References is akin to VFP class libraries, although, VFP does not require class libraries for basic functionality. Recognition of basic classes, such as Forms and CommandButtons, is built into the VFP runtimes. Not so with .Net. Each DLL listed establishes a namespace, that is, a collection of classes and other stuff.

Next in the Solution Explorer comes AssemblyInfo.vb. In it's simplest form, this is where you can set version information, copyright, et al. Very similar to the options available from the Version button in the VFP Build dialog.

And then, of course, Form1.vb. This is the designer you first saw when you created the new solution. As I mentioned before, unlike VFP which stores Forms and Classes created in the Designers as metadata, .Net interprets code to present the visual representation. So where is that code?

Right-click on the form and choose View Code from the shortcut menu. The screen changes to a code editor with two Comboboxes. These show the object and methods, respectively. By default, these will be set to Form1, and (Declarations). The code will appear to be pretty simple:

Public Class Form1
Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form

+[Windows Form Designer Inherited Code]

End Class

Essentially, you're not seeing much of anything here because we haven't added any code to the Form beyond that added automatically by the Designer, which compacts that code into a region. I'm not going to reproduce it here (at least not now) as it's way, way long but within the Inherited Code region is all the code to create the form, add the button to it, and define some inherited behavior.

If you return to the rightmost combobox above the code window, you can choose other areas of the Form1 code to look at such as New or InitializeComponent. If you choose one of these, the designer code will be expanded as the Windows Form Designer Inherited Code contains that code. Like VFP, if a method has code in it, it will be bolded like New and InitializeComponent.

Notice that Finalize isn't bolded? If you choose that method, the beginning code for that method is added to the code window automatically, as in:

Protected Overrides Sub Finalize()
MyBase.Finalize()
End Sub

So that's the basic IDE and components lesson for today, folks. I know I've probably created more questions than answers but in my next post we'll examine the code the designer created and what some of those weird keywords are ('Friend' ... what the hell is 'Friend'?).

A Very Cool Use for Visual FoxPro (by John Koziol)

vsdata — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 21:30:00 GMT

This is very cool. It's a database of stuff about climbing the Himalayas.

http://www.everestnews.com/stories2005/hawley02022005.htm

Thanks for Steven Black's Wiki for mentioning this.

Stability: VFP8 versus VFP9 (by John Koziol)

vsdata — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 09:53:00 GMT

I've gotten some emails from old friends and VFP developers where the sender is asking me which version is best to upgrade a legacy application. Some folks are worried that the "newness" of VFP9 may make it a less stable upgrade whereas VFP8 has had a service pack and been around a while.

So far, it appears that customer reported bugs for VFP9 are 70% less in the same post-RTM timeframe than VFP8 bugs. And we have had roughly the same amount of beta testers and early adopters between both versions.

The trick is that we had many more tools to ferret out weaknesses in the core code of VFP for the VFP 9 release than ever before. Even with the huge changes to reports and the SQL engine, we had test coverage that could find almost any hole in the application.

To me, clearly, VFP9 is the way to go. I have no reservations in saying that this version of VFP is by far the most stable ever released.

Michel Fournier, VFP MVP, has entered an interesting contest....

vsdata — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:22:00 GMT

Yeah, let's vote for Mike! From the UniversalThread:

--------------------------------------------------------------------

You might know already that Michel Fournier does also some other quite different things besides UT. Last Monday, Michel registered into a contest for the radio station. It was for Valentine's Day in regards to bring out a date and go for the best date. The voting process is similar to the reality shows such as seen on TV. People can vote by e-mail, fax or phone.

Last Friday the radio selected Michel as one of two participants on that contest. This is in Bathurst, New Brunswick and the radio station is MAX 104.9. As selected, they were supposed to bring out a date for the Valentine's Day on Monday night and do something original. The contest was named Red Neck Romeo contest.

The next day, the radio station called Michel's lady so she had to explain how was the date and what she liked. This was taped and will be played back until Friday. Until Friday, you have the chance to vote for Michel.

So, in order to support Michel in this contest in a quest to go for the overall prize, if you have a free minute, you can send an email to maxfm@radioatl.ca and say in it that you would like to vote for Michel Fournier for the Red Neck Romeo Contest.

Let's help Michel win!

Nick Neklioudov
Universal Thread Consultant
Microsoft MVP - Visual FoxPro 2001-2003