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MSN Messenger runs on SQL Server Backend

Damian Maclennan — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:28:00 GMT

Just saw this over on Robert Scoble's blog.

MSN Messenger is now running on a SQL Server backend. That's way cool.

If that isn't a good advertisement for SQL Server's scalability I don't know what is.

Update : Not / Now....whatever :)

More comment spam

Damian Maclennan — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 00:39:00 GMT

I just got a few comment spams in my blog. This is fairly common so I usually don’t mind so much.

Except these ones were from ApexSQL Software, formally Lockwood Tech.

Pretty poor form guys, you know SQLTeam sells advertising if you want to announce a new product.

SQL Injection used to create trigger

Damian Maclennan — Thu, 06 May 2004 06:11:00 GMT

Jon Galloway blogs about a website hack. A clever use of SQL Injection that will really make the site owners look bad.

Stored Procedure FUD

Damian Maclennan — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:50:00 GMT

I was just chatting to a friend of mine who runs an online business, he was asking me about stored procs because he had been told by two people (including someone who works at the hosting company) that stored procs don't scale!

Apparrently, you can't use them in a cluster or any sort of balanced environment.

Now, obviously this is total BS, has anyone come across this sort of FUD before ? I'd love to know the origin of this.

QuickCode.Net

Damian Maclennan — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 12:49:00 GMT

I was listening to the Brian Noyes episode of DotNetRocks today and one of his recommended essential tools was QuickCode.Net, a Visual Studio addin for code expansion.

Essentially, this works like a macro that pastes in simple code templates based on a pattern. Make sense ? No, I didn't think so.

One of the default templates looks for a pattern like prop [datatype] [propertyname] and expands it to a public property.

If I type :

prop int foo

and hit Alt + Q, it automagically turns it into :

        /// <summary>
        /// Property Foo (int)
        /// </summary>
        public int Foo
        {
                get
                {
                        return this.foo;
                }
                set
                {
                        this.foo = value;
                }
        }

Another one is :

Class Yak

Turns into :

        /// <summary>
        /// Class Yak
        /// </summary>
        public class Yak
        {
                /// <summary>
                /// Default constructor
                /// </summary>
                public Yak()
                {
                        // TODO: insert constructor code here
                }
        }

Of course, my favourite code generation tool of all time CodeSmith does this and more, but it involves switching focus to a CodeSmith window, possibly loading a new template and running it. QuickCode does shorter, more commonly typed snippets with only a few keystrokes. At the grand total price of $30 a licence, a tool like this will pay for itself in no time at all. Awesome.

I have to agree with all the testimonials on their website, this thing rocks.

SQL Server Web Administrator

Damian Maclennan — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 22:17:00 GMT

Microsoft have released the SQL Server Web Data Administrator. A web intrerface to managing your datbases, users, stored procedures and for running ad-hoc queries.

via Mike Gunderloy

Google service once again ruined by bloggers

Damian Maclennan — Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:29:00 GMT

Google has come under fire over the past year for allowing it's prized search results to become "polluted" by weblogs and webloggers. The latest venture by the search giant, a "social networking" site named Orkut looks like suffering the same fate. "The site started nicely, we had a great natural progression but we have become overrun by bloggers who can't keep secrets" said an Orkut insider who declined to be named. "Someone invited a character named Scoble or something and it's all gone to hell in a handbasket" he says.

</Tongue>

New MVP and RD announcements

Damian Maclennan — Sat, 24 Jan 2004 11:25:00 GMT

It's the time of year that Microsoft start announcing the new MVPs. The big news around here is that Graz is finally an MVP. Graz started and built SQLTeam back in 2000 and the site and forums have helped out thousands of SQL Server developers since then, as well as becoming a second home for a bunch of us.

The other bit of news I just heard is that a friend of mine, Benjamin Mitchell has been named a Regional Director in the U.K. Benjamin and I worked together at a company during the dying days of the dotcom era in Sydney. He is based in London now and doing all sorts of good things with Web Services and other fun.

Congrats Graz and Benjamin!

Blog Comment Spam

Damian Maclennan — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 14:45:00 GMT

It seems the comment spambots have figured out .Text. I've had three spams today left in my comments.

Updated Version

Damian Maclennan — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 05:51:00 GMT

Actually, there is an updated version that supports categories.

When Graz gets around to updating Weblogs.Sqlteam.com to .Text 0.95 we can take advantage of that...hint hint....

New Newsgator .Text Plugin

Damian Maclennan — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 05:44:00 GMT

Mark told me about a new .Text posting plugin for Newsgator.

If you can read this, it works!.

Using CLR to call an encryption routine in Yukon

Damian Maclennan — Sun, 21 Dec 2003 13:21:00 GMT

Good article here. I'm posting here as a bookmark for myself, but also so you should check it if you haven't already.

Area man blames tools for own lack of knowledge.

Damian Maclennan — Sun, 21 Dec 2003 12:24:00 GMT

Sounds like a headline from The Onion doesn't it ?

Something I've mentioned once or twice is my annoyance at people who use the GUI tools that Microsoft supply as an excuse to not know what is actually going along behind the scenes. Then when they hit the brick wall they were heading for by not understanding their toolkit, they rant and rave about how Microsoft is crap, or SQL Server is crap, or HTML is crap, or whatever it is they don't get.

This is a perfect example.

SQL Server "Yukon" and the CLR

Damian Maclennan — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 23:17:00 GMT

Mike Gunderloy wrote an excellent article introducing the use of CLR code to manipulate data in Yukon.

If you are wondering what .NET stored procs are going to look like, check this article out.

don't log on as sa, dummy

Damian Maclennan — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 23:29:00 GMT

Phil Scott gives an excellent rundown on why your application shouldn't use the SA account to log in with.

This link might serve you well as a handy page slap next time you see "sa" in a connection string.

Not only that, but very cool use of a Spinal Tap reference in the blog. Way to go Phil!