Feng Yuan has an interesting post up on generating XPS (formerly Metro) documents from Win32 application. Its not interesting in -- at least to me -- because it talks about Win32, but rather for the neat and brief primer provided on XPS syntax and construction.
Nice.
From the blog of Joris Poelmans:
.Net Language Integrated Query will add query capabilities directly into the CLR and this will be supported by both VB.Net and C#. This means that you will be able to use standard query operators directly from within your code.
It is going to be interesting to see where this goes...
Justin King asks a really good question: Where are all the SQL Server 2005 books?. Well Justin, there's five I can recommend off the top of my head:
- "A First Look At SQL Server 2005 For Developers" by Beauchemin, Sullivan and Bergland.
- "Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for Developers" by DeBetta
- "The Rational Guide to SQL Server 2005 Service Broker Beta Preview" by Wolter
- "The Rational Guide to Scripting SQL Server 2005 Integration Services" by Farmer
- "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 New Features" by Otey
That said, there's a reason you don't see one of my books on this list. I've done my share of writing for beta books in the past. And I think I've half-jokingly, half-honestly said that one of the best ways for me to learn a technology is write a book about it. There's a couple of problems with doing this of course. First and foremost, you really that to be an expert in the domains where where the technology gets used in practice in order to find all of the things that the best books talk about. Folks like Alex Homer, David Sussman, Dan Sullivan, Niels Bergland, Bob Beauchemin, Roger Wolter and Donald Farmer have always impressed me by being able to show me ways to apply the new technologies in terms of problems that I understand today. That's something that I think I have to improve on. Second, and probably more germane to your question is the very nature of SQL Server 2005 its self. While it pretty easy to explain the technology as it is and as it applies, its much harder to fully understand, appreciate and communicate one something like the XML datatype really affects the preformance of a Data Warehouse on the whole. Lastly, SQL Server 2005 is a massive and highly integrated platform. The sheer number of featuers and changes makes groking all of it difficult enough. Each released Beta and CTP has introduced a huge number of delta to keep track of as well. So while I envy Dan, Niels and Bob for the tremedious success they've had with "A First Look At SQL Server 2005 for Developers", for example, I'm glad its them doing it rather than me.
I suspect that a lot of other authors have decided that they too would rather wait for the bits to settle down and then spend time doing the kind of exhustive research on them rather than engage in that work early. I see value in both approaches: We definitely need "betabooks" to help prime the pump, and we need more comprehensive books based on production practices with the final bits to tell that part of the story.
One other thing to keep in mind is that SQL Server 2005 isn't like .NET in that the product already has a deep and strong production basis that isn't going to be as easily adopted. One of the real draws for me with ASP.NET was that it took almost no server side or highly specialized adminstrator knowledge to implement quick. SQL Server 2005 is 180-degrees opposite of that and as result, I think SQL Server 2005 gives authors more "shelf-life" and time write good books.