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Shows how to store images in SQL Database Image Storage & create Thumnails easiliy from

An article about Custom Businessobjects in conjunction with the DataSet to Retrieve Data

Cutting your code time in half using a smart SQL frontend.

SQL Server Reporting Services versions 2000 and 2005 (SSRS) has many powerful features. SSRS has a well-designed data access engine, a great set of layout tools, and an excellent expression system for creating complex formulas. While the expression system is quite powerful it is not suitable for all applications. This is where SSRS shines. SSRS gives developers the ability to add custom code to their report layouts. This article demonstrates adding custom code to SQL Server Reporting Services reports.

Database development has gotten easier, thanks to Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals (or DB Pro edition, for short). If you need to create, manage, or build solutions that connect to SQL Server, this tool is for you.
DB Pro edition provides a number of features to make managing databases easier. As a member of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite, DB Pro edition works in conjunction with Team Foundation Server's source code control feature to manage database changes just as you manage your source code. DB Pro edition supports sandbox development of databases, and it includes tools for database comparison, data generation, unit testing, and database deployment. But what is most compelling about DB Pro edition is using all of its features together as part of a holistic, database development life cycle.

Although T-SQL is extremely powerful for most data processing, it provides little support for text analysis or manipulation. Attempting to perform any sophisticated text analysis using the built-in string functions results in massively large functions and stored procedures that are difficult to debug and maintain. Is there a better way?
In fact, regular expressions provide a much more efficient and elegant solution. It is easy to see how they would be helpful for comparing text to identify records, but there is so much more they can do. I'll show you how to perform a variety of tasks, some simple and some amazing, that were considered impractical or impossible in SQL Server 2000, but are now possible in SQL Server 2005 due to its support for hosting the common language runtime (CLR).

The Windows Forms binding controls are vastly improved descendents of the data binding controls of the past. They get you going quickly and handle the redundant tasks associated with setting up forms, and you can customize and extend their behavior significantly. Data can travel in a variety of containers, including DataSets and custom class entities, and the Windows Forms binding tools allow you to bind to all of these types of objects. If you don't want to use a DataSet, you can create custom entities to be used as the data store for your application, and you can use List<T> and other collection types to store a set of your custom entities. These types of custom entities can easily be bound using the BindingSource and the BindingNavigator. In this column I'll demonstrate how to bind a custom list of business entities using the binding tools present in the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, and I'll do so by writing a fully functional data-driven Windows Forms application.

The Entity Data Model and ADO.NET vNext let you deal with tabular data as objects, eliminating much of the effort endemic to older data-retrieval and modification code.

The most popular instrument to access database data for .NET applications is ADO.NET. This set of components contains three main classes those are used to manipulate and store data: DataReader, DataSet and DataAdapter. DataReader is only able to read data and can't work as data source for data-aware components like DataGridView; DataSet provides all interfaces to be a data source but disconnected model considers some restrictions that can become important for some kind of applications, especially for desktop programs that work under multiuser concurrent environment and change database data actively. Below we consider main restrictions and popular ways to solve them; non standard solutions are considered also.

This month John Papa fields some of his favorite questions regarding data manipulation with ADO.NET.