DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by vistadb

Professional Grade Email Application Alerts for .NET Applications

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:19:18 GMT

Receive beautiful & descriptive email alerts from your .NET application in the field by dropping in the Gibraltar Agent. You'll know when you need to leave the meeting and check into a problem, or if it can wait until tomorrow.

Native .NET Local Storage with VistaDB

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:46:54 GMT

VistaDB is a database engine written entirely in .NET managed code. It's a great solution for distributed applications that need to store data locally.

Building a Dynamic LINQ to Entities Compiler (Part 1)

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:56:44 GMT

In this article I will explain how to build a dynamic LINQ to Entities compiler for any database provider that supports the Ado.net Entity Framework. Due to the wide range of technologies used this article, it will be broken up into two parts as listed below. We are working on a dynamic linq query mechanism for the next major release of VistaDB. Our goal is to provide a LinqPad type of environment in Data Builder for users to write LINQ queries against the database without having to first build an EF model.

Entity Framework Compliance VistaDB vs SQL Server 2008 R2

Fri, 21 May 2010 03:34:47 GMT

We have spent a lot of time on our Entity Framework provider over the past 18 months or so. There is a sample EF provider from Microsoft that illustrates basic points, and if you look at all the open source databases they pretty much all used the default code in their implementations. But what if that sample code doesn't implement something? Or if it is just plain wrong? I have to tell you we didn't expect the results we got from this test at all. We expected that we probably had some room for improvement and that SQL Server would ace all the tests. Didn't turn out that way.

Become a SharePoint Knight with IronRuby

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:20:08 GMT

Feel the Power of SharePoint and IronRuby, learn how to script your SharePoint Solutions.

Create Primary Key with Specific Name when Creating Table

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:00:52 GMT

Does your PK has big long not readable name? Well this is quick post to save the day!

Gibraltar 2.1.1 Released: Real world insight into production .NET apps

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:48:36 GMT

New release debuts dramatically improved flexibility and scalability of metric analysis, new notification capabilities to send real time alerts when errors happen and more performance counters for troubleshooting memory management problems. You can get insight beyond just logging into your production .NET applications at a price that works for you. Free 30 day trial including Gibraltar Hub Service.

10 things you must do to make your desktop database apps better

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:12:28 GMT

Each of these items could be a blog post unto themselves, but I am going to try really hard to not be too verbose and just cover the core of the concept and why you need to do it. Everyone knows that any app driven by data is much more than just the app. In most cases the app without a database doesn't even function, or fails to function properly. If a database is an integral part of your application, then shouldn't you be doing all you can to ensure it stays healthy and prepare for the worst case events of corruption or dead drives?

How we solved twice as customer issues easily (and so can you!)

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:17:55 GMT

Creating reliable software requires more than just managing exceptions - you need to have logging, performance monitoring, and a way of bringing it all together so you can visualize the problem. This doesn't have to take a lot of work - we were able to bring it together easily and make it work in the field, doubling the number of customer issues we could resolve before our next release.

How our Customer Experience Improvement Program improved Gibraltar 2.1

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:30:00 GMT

The Gibraltar CEIP helped us find and resolve a large number of unreported issues, all without requiring our customers to lift a finger. Read the story for real numbers you can use to understand what the same techniques might mean for your application.

Mindscape LightSpeed 3 domain modeling and persistence framework

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:06:09 GMT

Mindscape has announced a new version of their dot net ORM tool named Mindscape LightSpeed 3. Version 3 includes support for VistaDB 4 and a lot of other new features. Priced at only $199 per developer (source is available for an extra fee) LightSpeed is a very cost effective tool to add to any developers tool belt. There is also a free version available for databases with less than eight tables if you just want to take the product for a test drive. We recently spoke with John-Daniel Trask of Mindscape about their new release, and adding support for VistaDB 4.

Does Silverlight 4 really use .Net 4 assemblies?

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:53:41 GMT

I have gotten a lot of questions from Silverlight users wanting to know if VistaDB will be able to load in Silverlight 4. This would be a great thing if you could actually have a client side database in a Silverlight app. I still am not 100% convinced this is a good idea in most circumstances, but for offline Silverlight apps this would definitely make sense. It would allow you to store data locally in isolated storage on the users machine, and then send it to the server when they next are online. The typical airplane offline app scenario.

How Dot Net 4 Side by Side will impact API writers

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:36:13 GMT

As I mentioned in my previous Dot Net 4 strategy blog entry, we have been thinking about how we want to handle Dot Net 4 from an API and runtime standpoint. Just as a little refresher, remember that when I am talking about a .Net 2 assembly it can actually be any of the .Net 2, 3.0, 3.5 or 3.5 SP1 runtimes. They are a layered cake design in that they all use the same base and build up with additional tiers of functionality. You cannot have a .Net 3.5 app without .Net 2 present, doesn't exist. It turns out there is an interesting new feature in Dot Net 4 to allow side by side running of managed runtimes within the same application. There is a great CLR Inside Out article online that explains probably way more than I will here, but I wanted to point out a few specific parts of the article and how they impact API writers like VistaDB.

Upgrading Dot Net BlogEngine to VistaDB 4

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:33:04 GMT

Our blog uses the excellent Dot Net Blog Engine as our blogging platform. You can use VistaDB as the backend store quite easily. Al Nyveldt's blog has some great posts about setting up and configuring VistaDB with Blog Engine, but they are all for VistaDB 3.x. The Dot Net Blog Engine knows how to load provider factories, so it is quite easy to update the configuration to talk to VistaDB 4. I did these steps on our blog a while ago and everything has continued to run smoothly.

How Dot Net 4 Side by Side will impact API writers

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:46:57 GMT

Using SQL Server Import and Export Wizard with VistaDB

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:25:37 GMT

How can you use the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard to migrate data from VistaDB 4 to SQL Server 2008? There is only one real tricky part that is specific to VistaDB 4, the license setup. SQL Server obviously was not built by you (or us), so it has not built in license for VistaDB. But we already thought of that, and give you a way to add a Design Time license flag to third party applications through their app.config. DTSWizard and the other related tools all have app.config files that you can easily edit as shown in this blog post.

VistaDB 4 Lite Edition Released

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:15 GMT

The first release of VistaDB 4 Lite (Build 7) is now available! VistaDB Lite is a very low cost embedded SQL database engine that includes many of the features only found in large server systems like Microsoft SQL Server. VistaDB Lite users can utilize the power of CLR Procedures and Triggers to expand the functionality of the default database engine. The VistaDB Lite edition is intended for hobbyists, students, teachers, anyone who needs a small footprint xcopy deployable...

Learning .Net Programming Resources

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:54:55 GMT

There are a lot of areas to learn in .Net programming. I don't know any programmer who actually knows all of them, the namespace is just too big and complex. I know programmers who specialize only in one small area of the .Net framework and still tell me they learn new things all the time. I wanted to list a few resources that I find invaluable in my day to day programming, and a few sites for those just getting started or just moving to a new area of .Net. These resources are great tools for dot net developers of any experience, not just people starting out.

The SQL Server natural order query myth

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:51:55 GMT

There is this myth among developers and DBAs that SQL Server has a natural order that is logical and predictable (and can therefore be relied on). Not so! I wanted to take a few moment to explain and debunk the myth, explain how VistaDB is different, and share something I learned along the way. The Myth(s) SQL Server stores entries in a natural order based upon the first column. SQL Server always appends inserted rows at the end of the current table. Unindexed data is always available in the order it was inserted. Dot Net developers often don't care about these things, but they should.

VistaDB 4.0 Preview 1 with Entity Framework support released

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:45:04 GMT

VistaDB 4.0 Preview Release 1 includes the new engine, DataBuilder changes for color syntax highlighting, Entity Framework and much more. VistaDB 4.0 Preview 1 is for existing customers only, but you can purchase a license before release at a large discount and get instant access to both 3.5 and 4.0.

How does the Entity Framework get relationships from the database?

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:33:23 GMT

I put together a brief video showing some relationships in the NorthwindEF model, and how they relate to the VistaDB database. The Foreign Keys in VistaDB may seem a little backwards from how SQL Server generates them. For VistaDB you should go to the table you want the dependency contained in and generate the Foreign Key.

ASP.Net Databound example using EntityDataSource

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:21:40 GMT

Microsoft included a new DataSource control for Asp.net developers with the Entity Framework. The EntityDataSource lets you perform data binding to Entities using a wizard in Visual Studio. Video demonstration of how to use the new binding to create a quick webpage.

VistaDB 3.6 Preview Build 87 with Entity Framework Support

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:28:18 GMT

Entity Framework Sneak Peak We have not decided if we are going to leave the EF in the 3.6 edition when we release, or if it will continue to be a Preview technology. It all depends on the feedback we get from the community. The Entity Framework DLL implements all the commands, but we are not sure about all the various SQL generation strategies in the EF runtime. I am sure there are some LINQ commands that will generate terrible SQL for us, but we need to find those and get them addressed. I wanted to get a profile and stat output for this build, but it didn't make it in - maybe next one. I think the EF basics should work for just about anything, it just remains to be seen how well it performs on various LINQ commands, and what we can do to improve it. The current plan is to test EF for now as a Preview technology and ship it later this year. Is this feature a big enough deal to bump the version to 4.0? We would like to know your feedback. It has been a lot of work to get all of the EF implemented and tested, but hopefully it will show people that VistaDB is quite serious about the future of database technologies. People thought we hadn't shipped it because we couldn't do it for some reason. We are just taking a very cautious approach, hopefully that is something you can appreciate from your database vendor.

.NET String Theory

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:37:40 GMT

By implementing a single instance string store, the Gibraltar Agent and Analyst leverage the fact that most logging data is repetitive to reduce the memory needed to view lots of data.

VistaDB two day sale July 3-4, 2009

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:01:12 GMT

You want to the source code added on to your Small Business or Corporate account we are offering it for 50% off these same two days. Open a ticket with your information request and we will take care of you. Visit the online pricing page for more information.