Latest Microsoft Blogs

Over the last few weeks I've been writing a series of blog posts that cover LINQ to SQL. LINQ to SQL is a built-in O/RM (object relational mapper) that ships in the .NET Framework 3.5 release, and which enables you to model relational databases using .NET classes. You can use LINQ expressions to query the database with them, as well as update/insert/delete data. Below are the first seven parts in this series: Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes Part 3: Querying our Database Part 4: Updating our Database Part 5: Binding UI using the ASP:LinqDataSource Control Part 6: Retrieving Data Using Stored Procedures Part 7: Updating our Database using Stored Procedures In my last two posts ( Part 6 and Part 7 ) I...

Over the last few weeks I've been writing a series of blog posts that cover LINQ to SQL. LINQ to SQL is a built-in O/RM (object relational mapper) that ships in the .NET Framework 3.5 release, and which enables you to model relational databases using .NET classes. You can use LINQ expressions to query the database with them, as well as update/insert/delete data. Below are the first five parts of my LINQ to SQL series: Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes Part 3: Querying our Database Part 4: Updating our Database Part 5: Binding UI using the ASP:LinqDataSource Control In these previous LINQ to SQL blog posts I demonstrated how you could use LINQ query expressions to programmatically retrieve data from a...

Probably the biggest programming model improvement being made in .NET 3.5 is the work being done to make querying data a first class programming concept. We call this overall querying programming model "LINQ", which stands for .NET Language Integrated Query . Developers can use LINQ with any data source, and built-in libraries are included with .NET 3.5 that enable LINQ support against Objects, XML, and Databases. Earlier this summer I started writing a multi-part blog series that discusses the built-in LINQ to SQL provider in .NET 3.5. LINQ to SQL is an ORM (object relational mapping) implementation that allows you to model a relational database using .NET classes. You can then query the database using LINQ, as well as update/insert/delete...

Over the last few weeks I've been writing a series of blog posts that cover LINQ to SQL. LINQ to SQL is a built-in O/RM (object relational mapper) that ships in the .NET Framework 3.5 release, and which enables you to easily model relational databases using .NET classes. You can use LINQ expressions to query the database with them, as well as update/insert/delete data. Below are the first four parts of my LINQ to SQL series: Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes Part 3: Querying our Database Part 4: Updating our Database In these previous LINQ to SQL blog posts I focused on how you can programmatically use LINQ to SQL to easily query and update data within a database. In today's blog post I'll cover the...

Over the last few weeks I've been writing a series of blog posts that cover LINQ to SQL. LINQ to SQL is a built-in O/RM (object relational mapper) that ships in the .NET Framework 3.5 release, and which enables you to easily model relational databases using .NET classes. You can use LINQ expressions to query the database with them, as well as update/insert/delete data. Below are the first three parts of my LINQ to SQL series: Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes Part 3: Querying our Database In today's blog post I'll cover how we we can use the data model we created earlier, and use it to update, insert, and delete data. I'll also show how we can cleanly integrate business rules and custom validation logic...

A few months ago I posted about the new SQL Server Database Publishing Hosting Toolkit built and published by the SQL Server team. You can read about what it offers and how to use it in these previous two blog posts of mine: Recipe: Deploying a SQL Database to a Remote Hosting Environment Tip/Trick: How to Upload a .SQL file to a Hoster and Execute it to Deploy a SQL Database The SQL Server Hosting Toolkit is a free download that makes it super easy to create a .SQL script file capable of re-creating your database (including the schema, sprocs, and actual data content). When it is installed you can simply right-click on a database inside Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer and walkthrough a wizard to script it out: You can then FTP this script...

Last week I started the first in a series of blog posts I'll be making that cover some of the new VB and C# language features that are coming as part of the Visual Studio and .NET Framework "Orcas" release later this year. My last blog post covered the new Automatic Properties, Object Initializer and Collection Initializer features . If you haven't read my previous post yet, please read it here . Today's blog post covers a much more significant new feature that is available with both VB and C#: Extension Methods . What are Extension Methods? Extension methods allow developers to add new methods to the public contract of an existing CLR type, without having to sub-class it or recompile the original type. Extension Methods help blend the flexibility...

Today on the www.asp.net site we posted a great new "How Do I?" video series focused on SQL Server 2005 Express (which you can download and use completely for free). The series features 13 professional videos that start at the very beginning and then explore designing tables/schemas, using data types, creating SPROCs, using reporting services and the business intelligence engine, enabling full text search across your data, and more (I'm guessing even most devs with a lot of data experience might learn some new things from the reporting services and full text search videos): You can download or watch the the SQL Training videos online for free here . In case you missed my posts on uploading a SQL Express or SQL Server Database into a remote hosting...

Last month I posted about the new (free) Database Publishing Wizard that is designed to make it much, much easier to upload and deploy SQL Express and SQL Server databases in a web hoster environment. In my first Database Publishing post , I walked through how you can use the Database Publishing Wizard to automatically generate a .SQL installation file that contains the script necessary to recreate your database schema (tables, views, sprocs, triggers, full-text catalogs, etc) and also populate your database with the same table row contents as your original database. This provides a super easy way to put together a .SQL script that entirely automates replicating your database on another server: In my previous post I mentioned how hosters often...

Scenario: You finish building a great ASP.NET application, have everything tested and working right on your local system, are taking full advantage of the new ASP.NET 2.0 Membership, Role and Profile features, and are ready to publish it to a remote hosting environment and share it with the world. Copying the .aspx files and compiled assemblies to the remote system is pretty easy (just FTP or copy them up). The challenge that confronts a lot of developers, though, is how to setup and recreate the database contents - both schema and data - on the remote hosted site. Unfortunately there hasn't historically been a super-easy way to accomplish this. The good news is that this week the SQL Server team published the release candidate of a new SQL...