Yeah yeah, I know...

Euricom is now part of Dimension Data. Didata is a South-African company that specializes mainly in networking. Since they want to build a development network in Europe they chose Euricom to try and build it. Going from 24 people to 9624 in just a day, how is that for growth :)

http://www.didata.be

Hi,

Long time ago :( I've been really busy the past month.

Let's see what happened lately:

- SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 was released which is pretty cool. The new DTS is quite amazing, snapshot isolation level and obviously a lot more.

- Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 was release with .NET Framework 2.0. Notice that if you want to install both products (SQL & VS) on the same computer that you have to install SQL first as the .NET framework in the VS package is not compatible with the one included with SQL Server.

Some interesting links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/Internals.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/BedrockAspNet.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/sql/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/DtSfSs05DF.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/sql/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/sql_ovyukondev.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/sql/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/sqlsvcbroker.asp

Visual Studio .NET 2005 Beta 1 is out!
Downloaded and installed it on my virtual machine this Saturday. Unfortunately I didn't get to the fun part of using it :( Hopefully this week will change that!

SQL Server 2005 Beta 1 is due this summer, that's at least what I hear. I've been reading about the new DTS and I got to tell you, it looks simply amazing!!! I can't wait for the first Beta to come out tbh.

Someone told me yesterday that people are born as a DBA. DBA's seem to be a special "kind". I can't evaluate this as I'm a DBA myself but I sure like it. And from the reactions I get from time to time I guess it takes a special "mind" to like databases.

TechEd this week in Amsterdam.
Unfortunately I can't make it :( Since some colleagues are already going someone has to be the sad lonely boy.

Be sure to check out the FalconStor people. It is a personal friend of mine, they have some pretty impressive software for storage hardware.

Hi,

Back from Spain already :( We had a nice little team building/course with Euricom in Cadiz which was really nice. We learned to work with the Euricom GUI Framework and Server Framework which are really great (Euricom). Apart from that we had some discussions about various aspects of development in .NET and presentations about Workflow management with Exchange, Sharepoint, Connecting to Java WebServices with .NET, ...

Obviously we did a little p-a-r-t-y-i-n-g while we were there :) I can assure you that the "Feria" of Chiclana is superb and I recommend it to everyone :D Came back with an enormous wishlist of Spanish music... Unfortunately I have no titles whatsoever which makes my quest quite difficult.

I'd like to thank my employer for this really awesome week and I'm looking forward to next year!

Still a lot of work here.

In other news:
Nobody used SET XACT_ABORT ON for the scripts we generate here. It seemed to be a bad idea to me so I started implementing this. Before if one little mistake was made in the errorhandling the transaction would commit giving us corrupted data. The test data had to be restored and well you know how it goes :)

This guy is running a nice experiment. For once someone WANTS you to spam... enjoy!!!
Spam spam spam

I've been playing around with transactions today. Not that it's the first time I've used them but I ran into some nasty nested ones. Oh, the horror of it all :(

I've been trying to change the IMPLICIT_TRANSACTIONS setting ON to prevent developers from calling stored procedures outside a transaction. The problem I'm having is that no error or warning is returned when the stored procedure gets called outside a transaction. If anyone knows a good way to solve this let me know mail me

*EDIT*
I think I found a solution.
Checking for the number of transactions active in the stored procedure should do the trick. The transaction count is 0 if no BEGIN TRANSACTION has been executed. Adding the following code to the start of my stored procedure will probably do the trick. If anyone has a better idea or a good reason why this solution isn't a good one, please feel free to mail me

IF @@TRANCOUNT = 0
RETURN

All is well that ends well :)

Signed my contract today!!! The most transaction intensive database in Europe and I'll be working on it :D

/me is happy

Luck is not on my side :(
The project got postponed. However I am still on the list of people that will be contacted when the project kicks off.

In the meanwhile my contract here has been prolonged and AFAIK there are at least 3 or 4 people here that have work for me when the current job is finished.

Life isn't too bad after all :)

I got contacted by Euricom again. Aparently they need people for the biggest Microsoft Development project in Belgium. I hope I get selected for this opportunity. They still think I don't have enough experience in that type of function but maybe they are willing to take a chance on me.

Cross your fingers and pray for me guys ;-)

A nice posting about "free software" in an ideal world. The writer makes some pretty good point imho.
See for yourself.

"The only thing that's free is the sun!"

Talking about free software, MyIE2 is a great interface that installs on top of Internet Explorer. It has a built-in popup-blocker and many cool features like tabbed interface, aliases, mouse gestures, ...). Check it out and donate some money to the poor guy ;)

File upload with .NET, you know you want to :)

File Upload

Another great link for the real freaks out there. Various chats about development topics with the real experts, check it out!

MSDN Chats

Ever thought of using MSDE for your Web Application?

MSDE in Web Applications

Offline ability for your SmartClient applications

Really Smart

Are stored procedures right for you? I personally always use stored procedures in my programs, but to give you a more credible point of view check the following link ;)

Find Out if Stored Procedures Are Right For You

Cache invalidation in the next ASP.NET Whidbey. When using cache one of the obvious invalidations is a change in the database. Not querying the database on every request can make a huge performance difference. Until now you have to make custom procedures that weren't always as simple as they should be. In Whidbey they thought of it, SQL Cache Invalidation! In combination with SQL Server Yukon this is an extremely easy-to-use yet powerful feature.

ASP.NET Whidbey Caching improvements

I don't know about you guys but I can hardly wait for the .NET Whidbey and SQL Server Yukon release! That probably makes me a nerd though :-D

With the upcoming SP2 for Windows XP this article may be of use:
Windows XP SP2 - Enable remote debugging

For the MSDE users out there: Web Data Administrator (requires .NET Framework)

Again, long time ago :(

The people @ Euricom were looking for someone with more management experience :-( Too bad but it's what I suspected in the first place. I received a lot of default replies from other companies. "No job openings at the moment" :x

I found a new job or at least for a while. A week before my contract ended I got contacted by HP, a company I already worked for some time ago. They needed someone for SQL development. An "Asset Management" database has to be created and with the help of feeders from the client, HP Lease and the Altiris (SMS-like application) database we should be able to get a great deal of information about the complete lifecycle of the computers. It's supposed to be a 2 month contract but from the looks of it I don't think it can be done in 2 months. The information flow is slow at the moment and the client is known to change his decisions quite regularly.


Let's rock :)

Something you all oughta know but read it anyway ;)
Logging on as SA. It Never Fails

Hi,

I'm sorry it's been so quiet on my weblog :x I'm looking for a new job and it really takes up a lot of time.

Applied for a job with a very interesting company on Tuesday: Euricom.
They specialize in .NET development in Belgium and are claimed to be one of the most advanced companies on .NET here. Fingers crossed!

Read a nice article on Data Access: Tips for successful Data Access. I've also been reading about Indigo, the new hype in the crazy .NET world. Understanding Indigo