MSDE not supported on Windows Vista
August 14th, 2006This may be old news for you, but I’ve just discovered that MSDE will not be supported on Vista. After thinking about it, it is not a big surprise. Microsoft is promoting SQL Server 2005 really hard. Indeed, SQL Server 2005 Express edition seems a lot better than the old MSDE. It has no workload governor for example.
However, that means that a lot of applications out there that relies on MSDE will be broken on Vista. Most of my custom projects use MSDE/SQL Server 2000 as the database engine and, although users are instructed to install the database on a dedicated server, I’m sure that at some point, some of them will try to install the database on Vista.
The good news is that most apps will work by default on SQL Server 2005. However, some install scripts and documentation will need to be updated. (Not to mention that those apps should be tested again; especially the database connection code).
More info from Microsoft:
MSDE on Windows Vista FAQ
Happy TiddlyWiki user
August 12th, 2006Last week I checked out TiddlyWiki as it has been mentioned several times on JoS forums recently.
I’m impressed. It so useful and easy to use that I’m using it as the main way to communicate my progress on a custom development project I’m working on.
It’s basically a self-contained wiki. Just one html file. No setup required, no server side configuration, nothing. It looks like an AJAX app but it is not; it’s just JavaScript.
I showed it to my wife and she has become addicted to it. She is using it and sharing it with her office mates.
Nice piece of software.
dbdesc 1.6 & dtsdoc 1.2 available
July 5th, 2006A new version of both dbdesc (1.6) and dtsdoc (1.2) is now available. These upgrades are (as usual) free for registered customers.
These are the main features added to dbdesc 1.6:
- Create statements for tables
- List of “dependent tables” which have foreign keys referring to the table
- View’s fields documented
- Triggers on views documented
- INSTEAD OF triggers
- Stored procedure parameters documented
- Index properties added: IS_UNIQUE and IS_CLUSTERED
- New option to include/exclude object definitions
- New option to insert a page break after each object in the built-in report
- Added key-accelerators to dbdesc GUI
- Improved error handling
- XSL templates updated
About dtsdoc 1.2:
This version adds only one new main feature, but I think it’s going to be really useful for some of you so I decided to release it early.
dtsdoc now generates an image with the parent/child relationships among your packages. It looks for your DTSExcutePackage tasks and tries to navigate them to build the image. 
I’ve included some minor bug fixes and enhancements as well, like additional links and package labeling in the report.
Great font for developers
May 24th, 2006I’ve downloaded Microsoft Consolas Font and it looks great!
This font is optimized for ClearType. The installation package will install the font in the system and it will set the default font for Visual Studio 2005 to Consolas automatically. However, if you want to use it in VS 2003 you have to manually change the settings.
The picture shows the look of Consolas font (10px and ClearType enabled).
dtsdoc 1.1 released
May 17th, 2006I’ve just uploaded the first revision of dtsdoc. This new version fills some gaps on the documentation and enhances the usability of the tool.
As a quick summary of the new features added to this version, dtsdoc now documents the workflow scripts, step precedence constraints and extracts basic properties from OlapProcess and Prediction tasks. I’ve added a new section that should help take a general overview of the task execution sequence. It lists the steps that will be called when OnCompletion, OnSuccess and OnFailure events are triggered.
It also adds ‘nice-to-have’ features like syntax highlighting on SQL, JScript and VBScript code, multiple package documentation in one file and a nicer HTML template with images support.
dbdesc reviewed on Larkware News
May 9th, 2006Yesterday Mike Gunderloy posted a small review of dbdesc 1.5 on Larkware site. (dtsdoc was reviewed last month).
Mike highlights the ease of use of the tool and the power of the command-line interface. First version had, in fact, no GUI at all.
I’m very happy with the review and hopefully it will increase the product visibility.
dbdesc 1.5 released!
April 19th, 2006Yesterday I have uploaded a new point release of dbdesc. It can be downloaded from here.
These are the main changes since last version:
New features
- New HTML template with cleaner design and images support (check this example)
- Extended properties are now documented
- Numeric fields now show precision
- Object permissions documented for tables, views, stored procedures and UDF
- Application roles marked as such
- Case-sensitive databases support
- New command-line switches to exclude database objects
- Index size on table’s summary on internal report
- Syntax highlighter performance improved
- Updated XSLT templates to handle the new sections
Bug fixes
- Overlapped long user names on some reports
- Error when multidotted table names present on SQL Server 2000 databases
- Missing check constraints sections on Word 2003 and RTF templates
- Some other minor bugs fixed
I want to thank everyone that has been sending me feedback about dbdesc. It is getting better with each release.
Keep the feedback coming!
Mike Gunderloy reviews dtsdoc 1.0
April 12th, 2006Mike Gunderloy posted a review of dtsdoc on Larkware site last week.
It’s a very positive review and it has brought some users interested in dtsdoc. I’ve got a lot of great feedback and suggestions not only from the review but from the traffic it has generated.
dtsdoc has already made some sales in its first two weeks, which is more than I expected for version 1.0. I’m pretty confident about the future of dtsdoc.
dtsdoc: new product to document DTS packages
March 30th, 2006I’m very pleased to announce you the release of a new product called dtsdoc (www.dtsdoc.com).
dtsdoc is focused in helping database administrators document SQL Server 2000 data transformation packages.
I got the idea to develop this product after several requests from dbdesc users who wanted to document their DTS packages.
At first, I considered adding this functionality to dbdesc, but soon I realise that it would mean to do a major redesign of the interface and to loose focus: document databases. Besides this, only a small part of the people who has to deal with SQL Server actually uses Data Transformation Services. So the choice was obvious.
If you work with DTS packages give dtsdoc a try. I will appreciate any feedback.
SQL Server Express has no workload governor
March 16th, 2006I’ve used MSDE as my database engine for most of my contract projects. I’ve never had any issue with MSDE (at least none that could be avoided if I had been using SQL Server).
However, by using MSDE, sometimes I’ve had to deal with some customers’ objections regarding the ‘MSDE 5 concurrent users limit’. I think that none of my projects has ever hit that limit, not because the databases were used by less than five users at the same time but because that limit simply doesn’t exists. Of course there’s a limit, but not in the number of concurrent connections. MSDE will accept as many connections as SQL Server but it will add a delay processing requests if there are more than five operations waiting to be executed. Microsoft calls this ‘the workload governor’.
Here is an interesting read about the history of MSDE, the workload governor and the new SQL Server Express (found via Larkware News).
The good news is that there is no workload governor in SQL Server Express.
