Right after I published the previous post on the spatial data and BLToolkit components I decided to write a follow-up on that post. I wasn’t happy about the way I described the implementation of the new property and field attribute to support the SQL Server UdtTypeName property and spatial data types. I hope I will make it more clear how I accomplished the support for this here. Please read the previous post about this on, .
In previous posts I have described my way to use the new spatial data types that come with SQL Server 2008. As shown in these posts ( and ) there is a little bit of work to make this run smoothly.
The other day I started to search for an alternative way to get rid of the dataset designer and the problems with UDTs (User Defined Types) and I bumped into the BLToolkit. This toolkit is a set of components to use when accessing data from a couple of providers, such as SQL Server. I looked at their tutorial and I liked what I saw. No dataset designer involved, just pure C# code and a couple of configuration settings and the work is done!
I will show how to use the spatial data types with BLToolkit, by presenting an extension of the toolkit to make the data access involving the new types a piece of cake. I have added a new attribute class to the toolkit making this possible.
Earlier I have written about the SQL Server 2008 and its tools and pointed out the best improvements in this new release. After a while I have on several occasions bumped into one very annoying thing, when designing databases using the Management Studio.
Suppose you have created a table using the designer. The table has a column ID, set as primary key, but you forgot to specify this column to be “Identity Specification = Yes”. Open the table in design view and set the ”Identity Specification = Yes” and try to save the changes… In my case it fails every time even though the table is empty and contain no data at all, giving the error message:
“Saving changes is not permitted. The changes you have made…. …. or enabled the option Prevent saving changes that require…“, [Cancel] [Save Text File].
Finally I found the option to be modified!!!
The other day I published a post about the spatial data support in SQL Server 2008 and using the new data types in a .NET application. I decided to write about “the rough way” and promised to publish an article about how to use DataSet designer and TableAdapters… Here it is!
I will try to present an example to accomplish the same result as in .
As I wrote in my post the other day about SQL Server 2008, I would present some examples on how to use some of the new data types supported in SQL Server 2008 when developing .NET applications.
I “googled” the subject and found a couple of blogs about it. I wasn’t able to find anything on MSDN, except on the Forums. The information on the forums was somewhat useful, so I started off…
Sep 152008
Today I downloaded and installed SQL Server 2008, both the Express and Standard Edition. The first thing I noticed was the huge files to be downloaded. The Standard Edition was almost a full DVD, a little bit more than 3 GB, while the Express Edition was about 500 MB.
The install process is a little bit tedious involving two reboots. The first is needed after a hotfix install (Windows installer 4.5) and the other one is needed after the installation completes. This goes for both Standard and Express Edition. When installing the Express Edition you have to separately download and install Windows PowerShell.
This doesn’t sound as a good start for this database engine, but if you survive the installation there are a lot of nice stuff waiting for you…