This is how I spent mine:

Doped up on Morphine and a few other things I do not have memory of.

Started out with incredible abdominal pain, getting progressibly worse. We finally called an ambulance when my hands and feet started going numb, and I couldn't control the shuddering.

Turns out I have four kidney stones, the largest (4mm) of which was trying to pass down to my bladder. The other three are still partying in my kidneys. Guess I am in for a really fun week ahead.

In addition to learning how to screw up database schema manipulation in SQL 2005, I also picked up a few nifty tidbits in today's ISV event (all subject to change before RTM, and always the chance I misunderstood the material presented):

1. SQL 2005 supports synonyms. Well, it always supported them within a query, but now it supports them as permanent object aliases too.
2. DDL triggers. You can setup triggers for most DDL operations, such as CREATE TABLE, DROP PROCEDURE, ALTER LOGIN, etc.
3. "text" and related BLOB types are being depricated. "varchar" now supports unlimited size, which is defined using the MAX keyword. In other words, use "varchar(MAX)" instead of "text".
4. DML statements now support an OUTPUT clause where you can dump the contents of the "inserted" and/or "deleted" special virtual tables out to a table-valued variable.
5. Native encryption and signing support. Built-in functions that accept a text value and a passphrase (symmetric encrypt) or x509 certificates (asymm encrypt). SQL Server can also store certs internally for these purposes.
6. XML support is pretty cool, but jeez using .insert() or .update() can get really nasty in a hurry if the XPath strings get complex.
7. Kinda neet that you can create a CONSTRAINT based on an XPath expression. You can also create an index based on an XPath expression.
8. SQL Notification Services shows some promise. But aside from old-school client/server scenarios, the SqlDependency class seems to be of limited usefulness. Not very viable for smart-client or n-tier deployments without a lot of extra plumbing code (CAO's or sponsored SAO's and such). However, if you ARE doing client/server, SqlDependency is a nice way to watch for changed query results.
9. Service Broker is rather pimp. It's a message queueing engine that operates within SQL Server. It's contract/schema based, and lets you enqueue/dequeue messages within DML transactions. New MESSAGE, CONTRACT, QUEUE, and SERVICE objects in T-SQL are used to support this.
10. CLR integration looks pretty useful (as long as applied correctly). UDT's and Aggregate UDF's look most promising here.
11. You can use Service Broker to perform long-running transactions, as long as the requester does not need to be notified of completion/failure, or you can use Notification Services to send a message back to them.
12. Microsoft decided to not supply Query Analyzer tool with SQL 2005. Bad move IMO. QA was nice because it was very lightweight, and it also didnt give developers a whole lot of chance to screw up with the "right-click database drop" stuff.
13. ADO.NET 2.0 has a few new handy features...
1. SNAC - Sql Native Client, no longer need MDAC. I am guessing this is a full native .NET implementation of SqlClient, but not clear on that point.
2. MARS - Multiple Active Result Sets. You can essentially have more than one DataReader open on a single connection (useful when doing nested loops) (of course, nested loops are probably bad in your middle tier anyways, but who am *I* to judge this feature?).
3. New Async versions of operations. BeginConnect()/EndConnect(), BeginExecute*()/EndExecute*(), etc.
4. You can now load a DataTable directly from an existing DataReader. No longer need a DataAdapter... MyTable.Load(MyReader).
5. New DataTableReader is an IDataReader implementation that sits on top of a DataTable. MyReader = MyTable.GetReader().
6. In order to enable MARS and async operations, you need to specify "Asynchronous Processing=true" in your connection string. This might end up unnecessary when SQL 2005 is released.

This will work in SQL 2005...

Create trigger trgHmm1 on DATABASE for CREATE_TABLE, DROP_TABLE, ALTER_TABLE

AS

   ROLLBACK;

GO

Create trigger trgHmm2 on DATABASE for CREATE_TRIGGER, DROP_TRIGGER

AS

   ROLLBACK;

GO

OK so I am really late on the heads-up, but tonight is our monthly Atlanta geek dinner. Hey there! Yes, you reading this, you are coming right? You did RSVP to Shawn right? Thought so.

The Powerpoint Presentation and Source Code I used in monday's Visual Studio Integration topic can now be downloaded from this link.

If you just want to install the NVEdit Add-In (with Core Library and Help File), you can download it from this link.

If you have no idea what I am talking about:

NVEdit is a simple Visual Studio 2003 Add-In that I created as a working example for my presentation to the Atlanta C# Users Group. This Add-In allows you to store large "non-volatile" textual data (SQL queries, XML/XSD documents, etc) as an embedded resource in your assemblies. The NVEditor keeps seperate name/value collections (Dictionaries) for SQL, XML, XSL, XSD, and HTML. The values are accessible in a very easy manner at runtime using static members, not too unlike the ConfigurationSettings class of the .NET Framework. Unlike the ConfigurationSettings class however, the NVData values are not stored in the .config file (which is succeptible to tampering).

The whole idea is that this gives you a very viable alternative to cramming stuff that doesn't belong into .config files or into hard-coded string constants.

Here you can see a screen capture of the simple NVEditor UI:

I apologize for the delay in getting this uploaded. I tried (again) to get the RichTextBox to perform colorizing the way I wanted it, and it just wasn't working out (jeez that control really sucks). All of that stuff is ripped out now, and I cleaned up a few other bits since my presentation.

And I also compiled a help file that gets installed as well now (Hooray for NDoc!). Even though it really didn't need a help file. I mean, come on, this is a pretty darn simple tool!

Anyone else dig motorcycles?

The 2005 Great American Motorcycle Show is being held in Norcross this weekend. I went last year, and some of the bikes really kicked ass! So I am thinking about going this year too. Anyone else into hogs and choppers and all that, and wanna go check it out too?

Tattoos and grizzly beards are optional!

And yeah, I know my VTX has been sitting in the garage for a year now (undriven), but one day... one day.. I will get to take it out again on the road :/

My VTX (well, mine also has saddlebags and stuff):

(yeah, it's not a Harley... can't afford a HD or a custom bike just yet...)