admin

Being something of a Luddite, I have yet to get my head fully around the cloud business model: is it simply a hyped technology or is this the future of computing? Call me an old cynic but it seems that it is more to do with a push to a licensing revenue model than meeting an actual business demand. The major software vendors have been fully aware for over a decade that there comes a limit to what a customer is willing to pay for upgrades that don’t really give them anything they need.

It’s certainly an interesting time. But does it make sense to be making the shift to cloud based computing? Mobile applications syncing to remote location are hardly new wiz-bang technology. High availability and auto-failover I can understand but scalability is perhaps a little harder…

Azure is a relatively recent entry into the cloud offerings, and as such there are no doubt a few fine details to work out. According to recent information, SQL Azure is not yet ready for:

• Large OLTP/DSS systems
• Tier 1, mission critical apps

Now while there is obviously something to be said for getting into a new market by starting small, one would have thought that the businesses that would most benefit from the cloud’s economy of scale and find it a cost effective, and therefore attractive, proposition would be precisely those with large OLTP systems.

On a side note, I also can’t help notice that the current price of data transfer is 3 times more expensive in Australasia/Asia (this will hopefully change?):

Data transfers = 0.15 out / GB – (0.45 out / GB in Asia)*

So I guess I’m waiting for someone to show me the light and help me grok the cloud. Anyone?

At last week’s Perth .NET User Group meeting Dave and Michael demonstrated some of the new features present in Visual Studio 2010. One of the things Michael talked about was the T4 template support.

If you are interested in the T4 code generation capabilities, you might be interested in the T4 Toolbox up on codeplex:

T4 Toolbox is a set of ready-to-use code generators and T4 extensions for Visual Studio. Quickly build powerful C# or VB templates that generate multiple output files or simply use existing templates for LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework and more.

A few days ago, Microsoft officials went to press saying that 90 million copies of Windows 7 have been sold to date. That’s a huge result! But not all together surprising, as Windows 7 is so much more pleasant to interact with than Vista [makes you wonder why no-one in charge could spot that Vista was so lacklustre!].

I’ve recently been playing with the speech recognition functionality built in Windows 7 (all versions). Despite owning only a fairly cheap headset, the results are very impressive. I’m not sure I could use it every day (although I did use it to write this), but it makes a welcome break from the mouse and keyboard. If you had a RSI or similar injury, then it might make using the computer considerably easier.

Join us at the Perth .NET User Group Thurs, March 4th where Michael Minutillo and Dave Gardner will present a session on many of the new features in Visual Studio 2010, due to be released in April with a host of new and enhanced functionality. The improvements range from minor tweaks to major new features. In this hands-on session they will demonstrate the new code editor, better multi-monitor support, IntelliSense improvements, new debugging tools, ASP.NET v4 and Web deployment enhancements, and built-in support for MEF, T4 support, and MVC2

• TOPIC:   What’s New in Visual Studio 2010
• DATE:    Thursday, March 4th, 5:30pm – 7:00pm
• VENUE:  Excom, Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth
• COST:    Free. All welcome

This session coincides with the recent RC release of Visual Studio 2010 and also the forthcoming release of Dave, Michael and Nick’s VS2010 book.

I didn’t buy this book the day it came out because despite the fact that all 53 of the contributors are SQL Server MVPs (indeed some of the the world’s leading experts and practitioners), I wondered if the fact that there were so many authors, it might mean the chapters would be just ‘sound bites’ with only a moderate amount of interesting content.

I could not have been more wrong! In fact, it is the complete opposite. Over the last 4 weeks, I’ve learnt something significant and useful each time I’ve picked this book up, either directly about SQL Server or one of the associated technologies. I challenge you to pick this book up, open it at random and read a couple of pages, and not learn something useful.

The blurb states “This is no ordinary SQL Server book” and it’s not.  There are insights and practical know-how that are the result of years of real-world experience working with SQL Server.

The book is divided into 5 sections, broadly divided into the 5 job roles based around SQL Server:

1. Database Design and Architecture
2. Database Development
3. Database Administration
4. Performance Tuning and Optimisation
5. BI Development

The 59 chapters cover material for newcomers and pros, developers and DBAs alike, including some of the new features of SQL Server 2008.

Purchasing the hard copy book, also gets you bonus access to a free pdf version of the book. [The authors of this book have donated 100% of their royalties to support War Child International]

An excellent book, and I’m glad I bought it. Highly recommended.

I blogged about Mladen Prajdic’s SSMS Tool Pack a year ago, but I thought I would mention it again as it is so useful and perhaps not as well known as it should be. It has been upgraded, with the current version at 1.7, and contains features including:

It works with the Full and Express versions of SQL Server Management Studio 2005 and 2008.

More details here.

Apologies to anyone who has ever left comments on my blog; I have not deleted them! The free Haloscan service I’ve used since I started this blog shutdown a few days ago, and there was no obvious way to export/import the old comments.

Just announced on Soma’s blog:

Today, we are making available the Release Candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 to all MSDN subscribers.  The RC will be made available to the world on Wednesday, February 10th. The RC includes a go-live license for people who want to deploy in their production environment.