Jackie Goldstein's Weblog

There is a newly published article on the VS 2005 TableAdapter up on MSDN - TableAdapters in Visual Studio 2005.  This is a great companion/drill down article to my MSDN article New DataSet Features in Visual Studio 2005  - and if you listened to my latest .NET Rocks interview, you'd know that the TableAdapter is my favorite new data access object [ed. note - what a geek!]

If you couldn't make it to the PDC (or even if you did) you can download the session slides from here.

Don't worry if you seem to be unrecognized - just keep going....

Bill Vaughn points out that we should normally NOT be using @@Identity to fetch the last-set identity value with SQL Server.  This is definitely an important, and often misunderstood (and misused) point.

I want to note that the code generated (for typed DataSets) by the latest builds of VS 2005 (post Beta2) are now generating code with SCOPE_IDENTITY() rather than @@Identity.

I have always been a very big fan and proponent of MSDE and now SQL Server 2005 Express - it is a great way to start building production quality applications, without having to shell out alot of money for a full version of SQL Server (until you really need it).  It also means that you can avoid of the pain of starting your app with Access, because it is free, and then having to rewrite large parts of it when it is successfull and you need to upgrade to SQL Server.

With SQL Server Express, we are seeing more and more limitations being removed or relaxed and more and more features being added:
(1) Back at TechEd, Paul Flessner announced that (a version of ) SQL  Server Reporting Services would be available for SQL Express.   
(2) Last week on my .NET Rocks appearance, I was able to announce that Full Text search would be available for SQL Express.
(3) Yesterday at the PDC,  Paul Flessner announced that the current (and frankly, rather useless) Express Manager would be replaced by a scaled-down version of SQL Server Management Studio (the SQL Server 2005 replacement for Enterprise Manager).

While SQL Server 2005 Express will be fully functional at the November launch, the addional features/tools will be made available sometime after that date.

With Microsoft's new approach of "openness", publicly releasing frequent technology previews, betas, and interim builds (CTPs - Community Technology Previews), it takes alot of time (and dis space!) to keep abreast of it all.   In fact, everyone should really evaluate if and when it makes sense to stay on the "bleeding edge".

Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch recently did a nice piece that explores this issue - and my 2 cents was quoted as well.   

How do you feel and manager all of these non-production releases ?  Leave me a comment telling me how.

Brad McCabe has made available all of the contents of this great VB Resource CD.  It is an interesting combination of content on VB Past, Present, and Future - it includes basic VB.NET content, VB 2005 content, content on migrating from VB6 to VB.NET, and also some of the presentations on the future of VB from the PDC.

No sooner than we have a release candidate build of Visual Basic 2005, we start getting lots of details on the next version of Visual Basic ( ver. 9 / "Orcas").   The epicenter of this new information is here, from where you can click to additional articles and blog entries from the VB Dev Team, including these from Amanda , Paul, and Yag
But be sure to first get the "big picture" from this VB9 Overview article.

There is alot of information on the new LINQ (Language Integrated Query) technology - integrated querying for objects, databases and XML.  This is probably because it is the most radical and innovative language enhancement.   Some of the stuff is just obviously cool, and some of it may require some time to "sink in" - I was fortunate enough to have particiapted in a SDR a few months ago, so I am well along the "grokking" path :-)Download the LINQ trial bits  (they run on top of the VS 2005 RC that was released to MSDN earlier this week) and check it out !

Last week I had another fun appearance on the .NET Rocks show.  I really enjoy recording the show with Carl and Richard - even though it is from 1:00 - 2:30 AM for me !

You can download the audio files for this show here.  We talked about ADO.NET 2.0, the VS 2005 Data design time tools (at least a few of them), and some of the work I am doing for the SQL Express team.  Take the files with you to the gym or listen to them on your commute to work, and let me know what you think.  

Then go and download some of the previous shows - each show is enterntaining, enlightening, has at least a few "golden nuggets"

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/beta2/beta2rtmchanges/default.aspx

You can download a more detailed document of changes from this page as well.

You can watch the BillG PDC keynote today (8:30 AM PST) over here.

You can watch a more informal chat that Robert Scoble  has with BillG on Channel 9.