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I must admit for a pure SQL guy I am a fan of GUI development and nothing is more appealing than a well developed Ribbon control. Well, the people behind the Krypton Ribbon have a new release on the way and it includes a really cool Gallery feature as seen in the 2007 Office Suite.
If you want to see what the Gallery looks like check out this blog entry from the source; Component Factory Blog
If you don’t mind giving out your email, they offer a FREE trial of the Ribbon and Navigator package. There’s also the excellent totally FREE Toolkit available. Go grab it now from:
Component Factory Download (Krypton Ribbon, Navigator and Toolkit)
I attended the SQLBits conference on the 1st March and at this event a “developer” (not a SQL Developer I will add) did a quick overview presentation of LINQ; this wasn’t the full session on LINQ that was also presented that day but one of the open mic sessions. He was a very animated chap with a loud Hawaiian shirt but what concerned me (apart from the shirt) was what he said and his view on LINQ.
He presented LINQ as an excellent way to cut corners and query databases and basically said that because Microsoft know what they are doing you can use the T-SQL LINQ it outputs , without having to think about coding SQL again. He even went on to to say that you can use the output from LINQ to quickly build stored procedures; copy and paste and there is your database stuff done.
Now, coming from a SQL Developer perspective I was a little shocked at this – not because I thought my job was in jeopardy (“hey, just use LINQ and you wont have to write another line of SQL”) but that people actually might believe the hype around LINQ and other developers might think the same way.
At the end of the day LINQ is great at creating boiler-plate SQL access code;making it easier to get up and running and quickly. A good way to start your model, something you can expand on. However, for pure performance the T-SQL it generates will (currently) not touch what a good SQL Developer can squeeze out of SQL Server. It just couldn’t be used for a high percentage of business applications.
My recommendation is to still use Stored Procedures via LINQ (LINQ does allow you to easily substitute the SELECT, UPDATE , INSERT and DELETE calls for each object with a Stored Procedure) for all but the simplest objects, possibly keeping the boiler-plate LINQ to SQL output for lookup tables or non-critical tables.
What do other developers and SQL Developers think about LINQ?
Do you need to use the excellent RMLUtilities (in particular ReadTrace) against SQL Server 2008 trace files? Well, ReadTrace does not support 2008 yet but if you need to convert your files , please try this free utility:
This is a command line tool, simply jump to the command line and use as follows:
trace.convert.exe -iC:TraceFiles (or any other folder).
Trace Convert will then convert all trace (.trc) files in this folder so that they can be used with ReadTrace. You can optionally include -r so that is converts trace files in all sub folders (recursively).
If you have a new SQL 2008 database and have used the new datatypes, this tool is not guaranteed to work as expected and you should wait until the new readtrace has been released that is compatible with SQL 2008. However, this is very handy for upgraded SQL 2005/2000 databases where you want to analyse trace output of re-playable traces.
Give it a try and see if it helps you..
A new control has been added to the excellent Krypton Toolkit, the Krypton Command. This allows you to group settings together and assign the group to a control. For instance, you could have the Text property set to Katmai then assign the command to a number of controls, each control’s Text property will be shown as Katmai. Making a change in the command will change all the controls. Its really about reducing code I guess for controls that have common or the same function. Excellent work. You can read more about it at the following link:
Ok, not exactly SQL Server related but if any SQL Dev’s out there are interested in GUI development as well and do not know about this fantastic product then I thought it was worth letting you all know. The product is Krypton Ribbon. It mimics the Office 2007 ribbon almost perfectly, getting better on each release. Support is excellent and they also have a Free Toolkit which includes replacement controls using Office 2007 themes .
You can download both from their website. If you wish to buy the Ribbon, it won’t break the bank either – its is the cheapest Ribbon control out there.
