Turns out SQL server is awesome.

So I was introduced to databases earlier on this semester. The teacher started us with Oracle SQL. The results are seen on this post here. So yes, not much of an impact on my life. But I decided to start a side project with databases, with MySQL. I made a small login application to register games, never finished but I made the SQL part successfully. From MySQL I was introduced to SQL Server from Microsoft. I dismissed it at first because I thought it was just a jumble of toolbars and another VisualStudio-like application.

Well its not. I messed around with it a bit and I'm amazed. Being a feature crack addict I just can't resist the interface with all its menus and functionality toolbars.

The code editor is great and offers IntelliSense and bla bla, the usual Microsoft development'ish features you would find in any other product. You can schedule publications to subscribers and manage remote servers. 

So there goes my craze placing images. I'd like to get more code sample but with school killing us I won't be coding anything really fun for a while. Just 20 more days and I'm outta there. Can't wait.

My Tools

The IDE

IDE for Integrated Development Environment, is the "main tool" used for programming. It is the workbench in which you will code and look at the results. Nearly every language have an IDE, many languages indeed have many of them. The one I am using is the Visual Studio 2010 from Microsoft. 

Visual Studio 2010 - Ultimate

This is the release candidate for the 2010 version of Visual Studio. This include the Team Suite. The Team Suite is the set of tools to work with a Team Foundation Server, I manage one and I use it to share all my projects with different computers. It is a very powerful version control system. 

Team Foundation Server

Team Foundation Server is a version control software. In layman's terms, it keeps your projects sync'ed between computers. How it works is that you first upload a project to a Collection. A collection might contain many files and VB projects. When you want to work on a project you do a "Check-Out" of the files you need. While the files are checked out, no one can save any modifications to it until files are checked back in.  

Red Gate's Reflector

This tool is a decompiler made specifically for .net assemblies. What a decompiler does, is that it shows you the software source just by looking at the .exe or .dll.  You can understand that it is a very powerfull tool to inspect other's people code without having the source code. This decompiler works only with .net assembles. 

Sandcastle

Sandcastle and its GUI package is a software that will go through your project's code pages and generate .htm files out of your XML comments. This is very useful for publishing documentation.

SQL Server

SQL Server is what helps me with the configuration and use of the Team Foundation server. It allows me to create databases for each collection.