Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Oh my! Today I found something really useful, something that I've seen for FireFox, but never so far for Internet Explorer. We are currently creating AJAX applications and we usually need some tools in order to see how is a given page rendered, how it will look like on 800 x 600 resolution, validate CSS and HTML, etc. As I pointed out, so far only the FF developers could benefit of such toolbox, but not anymore!

I tried Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar which is all this about. Among its features you will find:
-- Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS Web feed links.
-- Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
-- Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
-- Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
-- Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.

Currently, it is in Beta 2 and is free. You can download it from here. Enjoy!

MSDN Webcast: What I Wish Developers Knew About Writing Queries in SQL Server 2005

MSDN Webcast: What I Wish Developers Knew About Writing Queries in SQL Server 2005 (Level 200) (link)

This webcast is really a masterpiece - that's all I can say about it. It really gives you a very good understanding how to diagnose and tune up your applications using SQL to manage their data. I also share the view of the author that there are many software developers that don't have this specific knowledge about writing effective SQL queries, probably because they haven't experienced performance hits. So far, I have projects behind my back where we had to squeeze out every possible second out, because of huge data load and requirement for good performance. I really know what SQL Server Profiler can do, and I really love it!

So this Web cast will give you a really very good idea and real demonstration how you should diagnose and tune your SQL queries so that you have optimal database performance. Highly recommend it!

SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 integration - good demos

Today I ended up on these very cool demos. I usually like a lot that kind of quick HOWTOs, which are straight to the point and give you a good overview of the possibilities that bring you a given technology piece. Well, the demos I found today are really like that - most of them are like 5 to 7 minutes long, but give you a clear view of how to do the things. Nevertheless, I bet that you won't become a MSSQL 2005 guru after going thru all of them, but they will give you a good foundation what to expect from the collaboration between Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (from developer's perspective).

Anyhow, here is a link where you can view or download the content for offline browsing - SQL Server 2005 Developer Productivity Guided Tour [link].

Here is a quick overview of what this tour includes:

1. Web Application and SQL Server Database Creation (4 min. 34 sec.)
- Creating a New Web Application
- Adding a SQL Server Database
- Inspecting the SQL Server Database
2. Database Schema Creation and Data Input (6 min. 52 sec.)
- Creating Tables With the Database Diagram Designer
- Modifying Tables with the Table Explorer
- Populating the Tables with Test Data
3. Data Access via Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions (7 min. 49 sec.)
- Creating a Stored Procedure
- Creating a User-Defined Function
4. Data Access and Data Binding in Web Applications (5 min. 41 sec.)
- Adding a New Form to a Web Application
5. Web Application Debugging (6 min. 23 sec.)

Mr. Eric Rudder live!

Eric Rudder - the VP of Development & Platform group from Microsoft is here in Sofia right now. I was lucky one to be able to participate in a live meeting with him in the office of Microsoft Bulgaria. We had a very open conversation and discussion over what's been around and what's hot in Microsoft world. We touched base on WCF, because one of its PM leads were there two - I was very nicely surprised to know that he is Bulgarian - I am so proud, because the guy really looked very knowledge :-). To me this was very interesting conversation, because as I already told you my master thesis was about distributed transactions and more specifically WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-Coordination, which are supported by WCF. I shoot couple of questions at the PM live and we decided to continue our conversation off-topic with the details I was particularly interested. I wanted to know more about the types of distributed transactions WCF supports. The theory defined many different types, but among them the most important ones are the flat and nested/hierachical transactions. Another one was about WS-BusinessActivity. It is interesting to know whether this specification will be implemented as part of WCF or will be in WF. I was told that WS-BA is not of topmost priority right now, because they are putting more effort into making WCF and WF collaborate together. Will see!
Eric Rudder is for sure a very versatile person. I personally like the fact that he has developer background but he also has very strong business feeling for sure. It was really great to see how passionate he is about software and technology! Obviously he has a very versatile knowledge and look in software industry. For example, we talked about SAP technology and how it compares to Microsoft technology stack. I actually pose him the question - "How would you convince me to use Microsoft technologies instead of SAP?". This was a tricky one :) . But he managed to explain us the pros and cons of both solutions and how Microsoft think can position itself thru the verticals as opposed to SAP. It is well-known that SAP has relatively high pricing especially for SMBs, where Microsoft is mainly targeted. However, I believe that with WF, WCF and the whole SOA paradigm in hands, Microsoft may provide to its clients very customizable and highly scalable business solutions based on Microsoft servers like BizTalk, SharePoint, SQL Server, etc. I believe that Microsoft .NET 3.0 could bring all that and thus be a potential rival to SAP.

Atlas June CTP released

Today I saw that there is a new release of the famous AJAX library for ASP.NET 2.0 - namely Microsoft Atlas. I've used it in 3 projects so far and I haven't been disappointed. Now, as I can see from the release notes (here) the UpdatePanels are now truly *dynamic* - that is they can be added dynamically to page at runtime. Another change is in the Drag & drop functionality. I will give it a try these days. You can download this release from the Atlas web site (link).

Another thing worth mentioning related to Microsoft Atlas is the Microsoft Atlas Control Toolkit (check it out here). It gives you a bunch of free Web controls and components, which seamlessly integrate with ASP.NET 2.0 page model and brings valuable add-ons to your web applications. There is a very good article about this toolkit at ScottGu's blog(link).