It was brought to my attention that there was some concern that the “amateur” LightSwitch developers would be incapable of writing stored procedures so the tool should not support accessing them—it doesn’t. Here is my response along with a couple of other questions for Microsoft…
Microsoft is gearing up to announce “LightSwitch”, it’s newest data application developer tool. Targeted to developers of “…all skill levels” it’s designed to permit access to local or remote data sources including SQL Server, Azure and SharePoint. I assume this means that amateur developers will have another tool to work with—assuming they can afford it and their IT organization will let them use it.
Frankly, I’ve known about this new offering for some time but until now, I was under NDA and could not reveal any of its details (or even the name). Now that it’s been released, I have a few choice words to add to the drumbeat…
They’ve invited me to talk at the local SQL Saturday #47 on June 12th. I’m giving two talks—one on Report Builder 2.0 and another on Visual Studio Local Data Cache.
SQL Saturday is a training event for SQL Server professionals and those wanting to learn about SQL Server. This event will be held Jun 12 2010 at THE MIXER on the Microsoft campus, 15255 NE 40th Street, North Commons, REDMOND, WA 98052. Admittance to this event is free, all costs are covered by donations and sponsorships.
Please register soon as seating is limited, and let friends and colleagues know about the event.
A third-party report generator (Pebble Reports) sent me this IBM presentation (see page 71) when I asked if their tool supported 2005, 2008 or 2010 RDL (they only support 2005).
“We depend on ReportViewer control for printing purposes and we are as miffed as you are that ReportViewer is always out of sync with ReportServer. Even MS competitors are taking advantage of this situation, for example see slide 71 of this IBM presentation where they talk about Microsoft's version incompatibilities.”
This further adds to the argument that Microsoft is not seen as capable of keeping their various development paradigms and the metadata they support in sync. I pounded on this issue two years ago when Visual Studio 2008 was getting ready to ship. However, two years later Visual Studio BI and ReportViewer developers are facing the same lack of compatibility with the latest RDL (about to ship with SQL Server 2008 R2). Are developers expected to wait another two years before the ReportViewer control will work with RDL 2010 in local mode? By then I expect additional innovations to be out of reach as RDL evolves—leaving the ReportViewer control perpetually one version behind.
Progressive Business and Beta V have partnered together to present another series of technical webinars. The current series focuses on SQL Server and Reporting Services and consists of six 90-minute talks given two a day for three days. The next scheduled offerings are September 9-11, October 13-15 and November 2-5th. See the following link for an outline and pricing details. Note that this series includes a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition) as well as a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services—once we get them from the publisher…
Visual Studio, SQL Server & Reporting Services: 6 High Impact Training Sessions
This is a set of 6 seminars given in two parts—one that focuses on SQL Server, the second on Reporting Services. This high-impact series of training webinars is for anyone who wants to leverage Visual Studio, SQL Server and Reporting Services best practices—learning what works, what doesn't and why. These sessions are for developers, architects and managers who want to know how and (more importantly) when to leverage the power and benefits of SQL Server and Reporting Services.
Progressive Business and Beta V have partnered together to present another series of developer-centric webinars. The current series focuses on SQL Server and Reporting Services and consists of six 90-minute talks given two a day for three days. The next scheduled offerings are September 9-11, October 13-15 and November 2-5th. See the following link for an outline and pricing details. Note that this series includes a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition) as well as a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services.
Visual Studio, SQL Server & Reporting Services: 6 High Impact Training Sessions
This is a set of 6 seminars given in two parts one that focuses on SQL Server, the second on Reporting Services. This high-impact series of training webinars is for anyone who wants to leverage Visual Studio, SQL Server and Reporting Services best practices- learning what works, what doesn't and why. These sessions are for developers, architects and managers who want to know how and (more importantly) when to leverage the power and benefits of SQL Server and Reporting Services.
The webinars I’ve already recorded (and those I’m going to present) can be found by visiting this site. Look under the “IT” heading to see links to the content. The recorded sessions might be repeated in the future but the recording are available:
CLR Executables: Stored Procedures, Functions, Aggregates, & User-Defined Types
(presented May 13, 2009)
Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio & SQL Server Reporting
(presented April 7, 2009)
Managing and Writing High-Performance SQL Server Stored Procedures
(presented March 12, 2009)
This has just gone online. While the picture is a bit dated, the subject is not…
Here I talk about using RDL and the ReportViewer to build sophisticated applications with far less code.
