I have just released a new version - 2.6 - of the deployment tool for SQLCLR assemblies. It is a minor release, but it implements some changes that are fundamental for coming versions and also fixes a couple of minor bugs.

The download page for it is here, and if you want general information about what the SqlClr project is, you should go here.

Euan posted late yesterday evening that SQL Server 2008 February CTP (CTP 6) has been released. Grab it from here (one of the pages are dated November 2007, but the link will take you to the correct download).

I’ve had some feed-back about SQLCLRProject (thanks Doug et al!), and based on that fixed some issues.

Read all about it, and get the updates on the download page.

As always, comments and suggestions for improvements are very welcome!!

Niels

Hi everyone, it’s been a while (shame one me!)!!

As some of you may know, back in the days I developed a tool for deploying .NET assemblies to SQL Server 2005 (or, as it was called then, Yukon). Initially it was just a tool used from the command line. As time went by, it evolved into a project named SQLCLRProject, consisting of the command line tool (YukonDeploy), a stand-alone front-end GUI, DeployProperties, and an add-in (with project and item-templates) for Visual Studio, DeployAddIn.

The latest release of SQLCLRProject was back in February 2006 (wow, that was a long time ago ) , and up until a month or so, nothing much was done to it. I used it whenever I did any SQLCLR work and I know other developers were using it as well. Anyway, a while back I started receiving emails from people wondering if I could fix some “undocumented features” and/or implement some new features.

So, I decided to resurrect the project and the last weeks I have been working on fixing the issues and adding some more features. I’m fairly happy with it as it is right now, and today I release version 2.5. The download page for it is here.

So what has been done:

• The project has now it’s own web-pages, so I have a place to point people to when explaining what SQLCLRProject is.
  • main page
  • download page.
• The Visual Studio add-in (and templates) supports both VS 2005 as well as VS 2008
• The VS add-in (as well as the other tools) supports both SQL Server 2005 as well as SQL Server 2008 (Katmai).
• The previous version of the tool allowed you to re-deploy a UDT without manually dropping tables with columns based on the UDT. The tool either dropped the whole table or just the column (based on a configurable setting), before re-deploying. In this version the choice is as before to either to drop the whole table or the column. However if choosing to drop the column:
  • first the table is altered and a new column is added (varchar(max) or varbinary(max) - also based on a configurable setting),
  • then the data from the original column is copied over to the new column
  • finally the original column is dropped.
• In T-SQL we have the notion of procedure parameters with default values. In .NET we don’t have anything similar (well, VB.NET has optional parameters, but that is a compiler hack). The tool now allows you to, by using an attribute, defining parameters in your .NET code that will be created as T-SQL object with default values.
• Fixed a bug where the add-in for VS could not handle project with white spaces in the path.

So, if you are interested, go to here to read more about SQLCLRProject and if you want to download; the download page is here.

Comments etc are always welcome, post a comment here (or on the main page) or drop me an email.

Niels

Well, right after having written my previous post about iPhone, I came across an article in The Times, saying that O2 has supposedly received the rights to sell IPhone in UK.

It will be interesting to see how users in UK will react to the iPhone, seeing that over here (in UK) users are generally more sophisticated and demanding when it comes to cell-phones than in the US.

Hmm, I happen to be an O2 customer, and I love gadgets - so even if I really can’t see the point of the iPhone … you never know

Seeing that I am a Mac switcher, you’d have thought that I’d be over the iPhone like a rash. However, I’m not! I just can’t see the point!! From everything I’ve seen and heard it is a gadget with a beautiful UI, and very limited phone capabilities. It sounds like an iPod (admittedly a wide-screen iPod) with a phone thrown in as an afterthought. Can someone please enlighten me?!!!

I wouldn’t mind though having the iPhone as a (like I mentioned before) wide-screen iPod, without the phone stuff, but including the other features, WiFi, etc, etc. … IF it would have a bigger hard-disk than its paltry 8 gig. Heck, my IPod Nano has 8 gig. Well I can dream, can’t I?!

VMWare released yesterday RC1 of Fusion (their virtualization app for MacIntel’s). I’ve installed it and it looks OK. One major feature is that they now have Unity support for Windows 2003 Server and Vista.

Other new stuff can be found in the release notes here.

Finally, Happy 4:th of july to you who celebrates that, the rest of us .. (well we can have a drink as well).

I don’t know if you remember (I’m probably showing my age) an old advert for one hamburger chain or another, where the catch-phrase was: “Where’s the Beef”.

Well, that’s how I feel after having briefly sifted through the reports from the Apple WWDC keynote earlier today. It very much looks that my predictions were right from my post a couple of days ago. The “top secret” features that were promised during last year’s keynote was just a cop-out, empty promises. I don’t think that anything that was presented today can be classified as a top secret feature; heck most of it was presented last year anyway.

Don’t get me wrong Leopard looks great, and I certainly want to get my hands on it, but top secret features; no effing way!

It seems that the last couple of days have not been the best for air traveling in USA. Rich posted this piece a couple of days, and I haven’t had the best of luck either:

I am teaching in Boston this week (starting Monday 11:th) , and I thought it would a good idea to fly into New York on Friday to get a couple of days in the Big Apple, and then go up to Boston on train. Well, flying out from London to Detroit (I was flying NWA) was not a problem, the problems started in Detroit.

I passed immigrations, got my bag from the carousel and handed it over to te baggage handlers to route it through to Newark.  When I came into the NWA lounge in Detroit I saw that my flight was delayed an hour - apparently due to bad weather (this was not exactly true as it later turned out). Well an hour is not too bad, however after a while it came up on the boardds that the flight was even more delayed, and looking at the news channels it turned out that FAA had computer problems on the east coast and most east coast airports had major problems.

Anyway, the departure time for my flight came closer so I left the lounge to get something to read and then go to the gate. I bought my book and was supposed to go to the gate and when I looked at the departure boards my flight came up as cancelled, together with quite a few others for the east coast! Bummer!!!

I went back to the lounge and queued up with everyone else that wanted to know what was going on.  When I finally came to the counter they told me that; yes my flight was cancelled and I was being put up in a hotel for the night. I also was told that I had been rebooked the next day. Not so bad apart from the fact that all direct flghts to the New York area was fully booked, so I was booked Detroit - Albany - Newark, arriving in Newark 4 pm! 19 hours later than originally planned!!

Well, nothing much I could do, so I took the shuttle to the hotel and  crashed. As my bags were “deep in the bowels” of Detroit airport, I could not get my toiletries, or any clothes. My bags, they told me, were routed the same route by the way.

Next morning I went back to the airport, and of course my flight to Albany was delayed, not so much that it would affect me connection in Albany. Eventually I arrived in Albany and started to wait for my flight to Newark. Boarding started eventually and I got on-board first. When I and one other person had boarded the stewardess told us we had to un-board as we were not allowed to take off!!! Apparently the airports in the New York area had too many planes coming in, so they refuse arrivals from nearby airports.

We ended up sitting further three hours in Albany, before we were allowed to take off. I eventually arrived in Newark 21 hours after my originally time. Well, at least I was in Newark so I only had to collec my bags and then get a cab into Manhattan. By now you probably have guessed what happens next; yup, the bags were lost! It also seemed that a couple of other passengers that had been routed the same way as me had lost their bags

So I’m writing this in my hotel in New York Sunday morning, and no one has any idea where my  bags are. Last night I went out and got some clothes and some toiletries, so I at least won’t smell when I start the gig tomorrow morning!!

So, this last few days have not been the best to travel in USA.

Next week one of the biggest events for Mac users comes around; the World Wide Developers Conference. As usual for the Mac World a lot of blogs, etc has started speculating what “his greatness” Jobs will reveal.

I guess one thing all agrees on is that it will be a lot of Leopard coverage. However, what it will entail is not that clear. Don’t forget that Steve Jobs at last years WWDC said that Leopard had certain top secrets features that he didn’t want to reveal at that time. Call me a cynical, but I don’t think we’ll see any new features that can be considered top secrets, and Jobs mentioning these “top secrets” was just a cop-out. My personal opinion is that Apple is moving away more and more from the core OS business, just look at the move earlier this year to drop Computers from the name, and that OS development won’t be that important anymore.

Anyway, I certainly hope I’m wrong and that Jobs pulls something really, really cool from his hat. But if he doesn’t, don’t forget I said so :-).

By the way, I really, really want one of the new MacBook Pro’s to replace my MacBook.