Monthly Archives: March 2005

Code Camp III windup

Just Rambling

wowee! what a fun fun weekend. Even with a snowstorm there were a good 300 people at code camp on saturday. More on Sunday. There were even speakers who came from afar – Seattle (Rod Paddock who is speaking at Vermont.NET tonight), Chicago (Raj Das), North Carolina (Rob Zelt and Josh Carlisle), NJ (DonXML).

There were a lot of first time speakers and that went great! Dave Burke gave his presentation on Customizing .Text , which I couldn’t attend as I had a talk at the same time, and really enjoyed presenting. Dave got in a very scary accident on his way down and we were all happy to have him there and well.

Sam Gentile had to deal with my low powered laptop to do his .NET 2.0 demos since he had problems with his machine – but at least it worked!

I had fun with my talks. I did the security fundamentals talk again with a look at wse2.0 and love doing that one! I also got to try out two new talks. What’s new in ADO.NET 2.0 and  C# for VB programmers. They were both fun.

I know that during the ADO.NET talk, there was something I said, “hmmm – will have to check that out and blog it, but someone has to remind me” – I need the reminder because, as I expected, I don’t remember what that was – outside of checking the perf differences between using row add to add many rows to a table or using dataset merge and modify row state – as expected – no difference. I tried it with 400 new rows. So I have to find a better scenario for my demo!

The C#/VB talk was a total blast. Although the sessions were a generous 90 minutes, mine was before lunch. So at the point my talk was supposed to end, everyone just went and grabbed their lunch and came back and we played for another 45 minutes. Even though I don’t know the ins and outs of CodeRush too well, I spent about 10 minutes demoing it. I think it is a great tool for people who are used to one language and have to do some coding in the other. We got a little deeper into delegates than I meant to. I believe that delegates are the A#1 biggest hard to grok thing for VB programmers but I have found a way of explaning it that I think works. I think that I will get myself better versed in them and put together a session on delegates and event handling in .NET for VB programmers.

Thom Robbins did an extraordinary job putting this together!



http://www.AcehAid.org

BatchUpdate screams in Feb CTP!

ADO.NET 2

holy canoli.

remember when I compared using bulk copy to insert 104,000 records into another database? I compared it to dataadapter update using batch updating with the size set at 100.

The difference in November CTP (VS2005 and SQL Server 2005 full version) was 21 seconds for the bulk copy and 41 minutes for the update.

Out of curiousity, I just ran this again with the Feb CTP versions of vs2005 and sql server 2005.

The bulk copy was about the same. But the update using the same table and the same settings took only 8 minutes!

Wowee kazowee!

update: Pablo Castro recommends: “For maximum perf in batching, make sure you wrap the batched update around a transaction.“


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Getting at AdventureWorks from the SQL Server 2005 Feb CTP install (a kludge)

ADO.NET 2

When I uninstalled the November CTP of SQL Server 2005, I inadvertantly deleted my databases as well. When I installed the Feb bits and looked at the instructions for getting AdventureWorks back in there, I didn’t have the right files. So I trolled around the install disk, found the CAB file where the mdf and ldf were, extracted them, trimmed off the extra glob at the end of the files names and then attached. No problem. They are in [DISK]\Setup\Samples.cab.

The files are named AdventureWorks_data.mdf.EE9FA……… and AdventureWorks__Log.ldf.EE9FA…..

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ADO.NET 2.0 Problems encoutered with February CTP

ADO.NET 2

1) SqlDependency is throwing a wierd error just after the notification comes back from the sql server to the client: ObjectDisposedException – no stack trace, not happening within a method. This also effects the Web.Cache.SqlCacheDependency which uses the ado.net class (someone at MS is helping me with this one)

2) iXmlSerializable features of DataTable appear to be broken. I only tried two – passing a datatable from a web service (the webmethod that returns a datatable is getting serialized improperly) and DataTable.Merge (it just adds, does not merge)

3) Bulk Copy is throwing a bizarre error nowhere to be found in google. When I run the WriteToServer method it throws an exception quickly that says “Cannot access destination table ‘mytablename'”. I can’t see in the profiler what’s going on. Duh! One second after I posted this I remembered. It’s an INSERT! Previously I was deleting all rows from the destination table and then doing the bulk copy. This time I’m using a different table from AdventureWorks. I have to get the empty table in there first.

This is a bummer – 3 2 of my demos for my ado.net 2 talk are dead for now. But I knew what I was in for…



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Demo Demo Demo

Just Rambling

I am having a blast working on my ADO.NET 2 demos for the ASPConnections talk (and for Code Camp). It is forcing me to think beyond what I did for my MSDN Mag article. For the article, I have about 50 little tests that I ran from a windows form. Here, not only is everything from ASP.NET, but the idea is to show where the benefit is if you are doing asp.net. It’s a lot of fun. Also I have done so much Windows Forms lately, I’m happy to be focusing on ASP.NET again.

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Why does it always snow whenI have to travel

Just Rambling

uggh – if it weren’t for the 200 mile drive I wouldn’t be worried about the forecast of snow (heavy at times) all night and tomorrow morning. the plan is to meet up with Laura Blood at 7am or so nearby and then haul a** to Mass. (hey, it rhymes). I was counting on a pedal to the metal 3 hour trip. Good thing my first talk is not till the afternoon. I hate all that time sitting in the car but at least I’ll have company this time! Dave Burke, who is presenting on customizing .Text, has a plan that will help him continue preparing while he drives. He’s smart – going down today. I still have plenty of prep to do today.

http://www.AcehAid.org