June 2005 - Posts
...Someday, you will almost certainly be right.
Here is an amazing transcript of Steve Job's commencement speech from June 12th of this year.
As a 7 year liver cancer survivor, and one year out from a Whipple procedure designed to prevent the type of pancreatic cancer Steve feared but did not have (he had a much more curable version), I must say Steve has it right...
Bob Beauchemin is this week's Database Geek of the Week. Bob is an author and a teacher, as well as a consultant when time allows. His most recent book is A First Look at SQL Server 2005 for Developers. From the interview...
Doug: Your most recent book, A First Look at SQL Server 2005 for Developers, was based on an early version of SQL Server 2005. I have written books about beta software, and it is a very difficult process. How did you find it?
Bob: It’s time-consuming because things are constantly being revised, breaking your code samples. And we wrote a lot of code samples, many of them using .NET Reflector or the like for documentation. We actually rewrote the book at least four times before publication. And we’re writing a revision to it for SQL Server 2005 RTM. My first book, Essential ADO.NET, was similar; I handed it in the day .NET 1.0 shipped.
A busy day, with a second article up on the Web (also in print in the July 2005 Dr. Dobb's Journal). This one is on the Web here, though it requires a CMP Developers Network membership to read the full article.
This article covers ASP.NET Configuration. While the Web.Config is a convenient place in some respects for placing configuration information, there are problems. When you change the Web.Config, the applicaiton restarts. And of course, you need to remember not to copy the Web.Config from staging to production, presuming there are different configuration settings in each. This article explains how to create a class that works around these and other potential problems.
Rebecca Riordan is clearly a database geek. She has written a number of books, including Seeing Data, a book that explains how to present data to users in the most effective way. She is this week's Database Geek of the Week!
I initially "met" Rebecca when I had a question about a particular example in one of her earlier book. She gratiously answered my question, and then asked about some other issues that had been reported to her by a reader of her book, who was having a problem with an example. The example in question worked perfectly for me, and I told her so. As someone who has also written a book or two, I felt her pain over dealing with feedback on a book. Her concern to try and get to the bottom of the reported problem caused my eyebrows to be raised every time I subsequently saw one of her books.
One thing about her books: Rebecca is not shy about using her sense of humor. Sometimes reading about databases can be a little dry, but that is a flaw I have not seen in Rebecca's writing. For instance, from the interview:
Doug: When you program in .NET, do you favor VB.NET, C# or some other language?
Rebecca: VB.Net, absolutely. I have to build samples in C# for my books, but frankly, I’d rather go to the dentist.
I first met Don Demsak at one of the many User Group meetings that he is involved with (or perhaps it was a Geek Dinner - my memory for those sort of details is quite bad). Don is a fixture at such meetings, as well as Code Camps up and down the East Coast. Don is also an XML Insider and Microsoft MVP in XML.
Don is the Database Geek of the Week this week!
I have not really internalized XML, though I do use XML in many of my applications (Web Services for sure, but also as a way to persist information the application requires). Here is one question and answer about learning XML from my interview:
Doug: XML and the associated technologies are deceptively simple. One of the benefits of XML is that anyone can look at the XML file and understand what’s in there. To use XML as a developer, however, you need to learn a little more. Can you think of a good way for a developer new to XML to become comfortable with it?
Don: The most important thing to remember when working with XML is that it is not based on procedural programming techniques, which is part of the reason it is so simple and intuitive. So I tell people to forget most of the programming they learned and start with a fresh outlook. I say most of the programming because SQL is very similar to XML in that it is a declarative language. Another important thing to remember is that XML is just data, just like any other piece of data you will find in a database. XML is not a version of an object, and treating it as such will only cause you problems. Think of XML as a message and it will make things easier.
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