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March 2009 - Posts

• UK Azure Net user group

  As I write I’m on my way home from the inaugural meeting of the UK Azure Net user group at Microsoft’s London offices. Speaker for the evening was Senior Director of Evangelism (or some similar poncy title) for Azure, James Conard, who did a good demo-heavy Read More... Posted 31 March 2009 22:15 by jamie.thomson | 0 Comments Filed under: SDS, SQL Data Services, Azure Services Platform, Live Framework, azure, SQL Azure

• SSIS Nuggets Live

  I made my presenting debut yesterday at the SQL Bits 4 conference in Manchester (Europe’s largest ever SQL Server community event and its FREE) where I presented my "SSIS Nuggets Live” session. I had a few technical issues to begin with that meant Read More... Posted 29 March 2009 16:18 by jamie.thomson | 2 Comments Filed under: SQL Server Integration Services, SSIS, sql bits, ssis nuggets live

• Using return types as parameters in T-SQL

  In SQL 2005 we could write something like this: declare @i int select @i = dbo.udf_MyScalarFunction() exec usp_MyStoredProc @i In SQL 2008 we can write the same functionality more succinctly like this: declare @i int = dbo.udf_MyScalarFunction() exec Read More... Posted 23 March 2009 20:32 by jamie.thomson | 3 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL

• Live fx Helper Class – extra methods : Live Framework

  This is a short post for anyone doing .Net development using the Live Framework . Ben Williams recently posted a blog entry Live fx Helper Class where he made available a class of static methods (most of them extension methods) that are useful when building Read More... Posted 22 March 2009 14:22 by jamie.thomson | 7 Comments

• SQL Mesh March 09 update

  I’m glad to report that, 2 months after I launched it, SQL Server Mesh code repository is still going strong. We’re now approaching 100 members (there were 53 at last count ) with more members and more content being added every day. If you are submitting Read More... Posted 20 March 2009 18:42 by jamie.thomson | 1 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Live Mesh, sqlmesh

• Marking activity feeds as read

  Here at MIX I just listened to a panel discussion called “Standards for aggregating activity feeds and social aggregation services” involving Luke Shephard (from Facebook), Monica Keller (MySpace), John McCrea (Plaxo), Kevin Marks (Google), Marc Canter Read More... Posted 20 March 2009 00:26 by jamie.thomson | 5 Comments

• Gearing up for MIX

  I am writing this blog entry from the Venetian hotel breakfast hall in Las Vegas where I've come to attend the MIX09 conference . "What’s a fella that is into SQL Server and data stuff doing at a web developer conference?” I hear you ask. Well, its Read More... Posted 18 March 2009 15:44 by jamie.thomson | 0 Comments Filed under: SDS, SQL Data Services, Azure Services Platform, mix09, mix, azure

• SQL Data Services and Entity-Attribute-Value models

  I just came across an interview with Senior Product Manager for SQL Data Services (SDS), Niraj Nagrani at http://visualstudiomagazine.com/blogs/weblog.aspx?blog=3577 . The interviewer asked a question that I think could be misconstrued: Are you basically Read More... Posted 12 March 2009 22:10 by jamie.thomson | 2 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, SDS, SQL Data Services, azure, SQL Azure

• Formatting T-SQL

  Simon Sabin just published a blog post Where should the ON clause go? where he explained his penchant for writing ON predicates for JOIN clauses on the same line so he can easily spot them like so: select track, level, title, Name, ss.length   from   Read More... Posted 11 March 2009 22:45 by jamie.thomson | 5 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL

• SDS goes full circle

  When SQL Data Services (SDS) was first announced it was called SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) before they later changed the name. Judging by today’s announcement in blog entry The no spin details on the new SDS features on the SSDS blog they might have Read More... Posted 10 March 2009 22:00 by jamie.thomson | 3 Comments Filed under: Astoria, REST, SDS, SQL Data Services, Azure Services Platform, azure, SQL Azure