Issue: 2005 - January/February

Rod Paddock January February 2005 Editorial Article

Jonathan Goodyear (the Angry Coder) January/Febuary 2005

All developers always welcome new controls and components.When a big new development tool ships (say, one as big as Visual Studio 2005) many developers look at what's missing in the toolbox even before they take a thoughtful look at what's in. Frankly, the toolbox for Windows Forms applications was already pretty rich in Visual Studio .NET 2003, but it will be even richer when the next version ships. In this article, I'll take you on a whistle-stop tour of the new contro...ls slated for Windows Forms 2.0 to make writing code more productive and pleasant than ever.See More

SQL Server 2005 or "Yukon" is going to be a major SQL Server update containing updates to nearly every facet of the program, including T-SQL.In this article I am going to explore some of the new T-SQL features, commands, and capabilities in SQL Server 2005. Because covering everything new in T-SQL would require an entire chapter in a book, I am going to cover some of the more useful and mainstream enhancements.

Have you ever wanted to use a strongly-typed collection to bind your data presentation controls to, only to find that you have very limited sorting capabilities, if any at all?If you are trying to stick to good object-oriented design and shrink the amount of data that you keep in memory, transfer from your data source, or serialize to clients, you likely have run into this situation because you are using strongly-typed collections of your domain objects. So what do you d...o if you need to sort those collections for presentation or faster searching?See More

In addition to the transaction-based SNAPSHOT isolation level, SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 also introduces a statement-level variation of the READ COMMITTED isolation level called READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT.Part I of this article (see "Snapshot Isolation in SQL Server 2005," July/August, Volume 5, Issue 4) described the transaction-based SNAPSHOT isolation level. At the time Part I was written, just prior to the release of Beta 2, only the SNAPSHOT isolation level was fully docu...mented. With the release of SQL Server 2005 Beta 2, a fuller explanation of a second type of SNAPSHOT isolation behavior has come to light.See More

I'll show you how to build tools to address common reporting requirements for your business using Crystal Reports with .NET.I'll also show you how you can use graphics and multiple levels of detail to summarize large amounts of information and efficiently present it to business users and decision makers. Users of your company data will be the first to determine that an otherwise quality software solution is incomplete if it fails to present data in a way they can easily ...interpret. Although Crystal Reports provides many outstanding capabilities to help build and deliver sophisticated presentation output, I'll present a proven collection of reusable practices and methodologies that you can apply across most reporting projects to add that extra sparkle to your solutions.See More

It's a small world.For the price of a nice pair of shoes, you can get on a plane, have dinner, watch a movie, sleep a few hours, and wake up on another continent. Your software can travel even more easily. When it gets there, will it be ready to go to work?

Carl Franklin - Jan/Feb 05 .NET Rocks Column

Doc Detective Column Jan/Feb 05

Ken Getz Jan/Feb 05 Finalize Column