For many of us, working with the identity property allows us to easily generate a sequential series of numbers. But what if you need to generate a sequence according to some pattern, like one that includes the year? New author Asif Sayed brings us a technique and the code for generating a patterned sequence.   Read more...

The Windows Mobile platform, which includes Microsoft .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft SQL Server CE, encapsulates the complex tasks of communication management and data exchange while your device is in a disconnected state. (16 printed pages)  Read more...

A new article from MSDN magazine on stopping SQL Injection attacks by examining how the SQL can be exploited. It's a good basic article for developers as well as DBAs who might have to review code.  Read more...

Andy has been busy lately on a project you'll be hearing more about soon (!), but he did manage to get part four of his managing jobs series done. This article discusses ideas for patterns to follow when building jobs, including writing to the console, setting errorlevels, and how to get them installed on the server. DBA's, if you're not developers, look at this article - this is stuff you can take to your development team and get better/more manageable jobs.   Read more...

If you're a VB.NET programmer who wants to learn database programming with ADO.NET, here's a new book that presents all the skills you need in a logical progression from the simple to the complex. Along the way, you'll learn how to use the classes, properties, methods, events, and techniques that have made this subject so hard to master. And when you're done, you'll have a reference that you'll use on the job every day. (Publisher Provided Description, not reviewed)   Read more...

This week Andy looks at where, when, and how jobs should be run and why you need to think about those items before you build the job. Part of this is deciding what runs on production servers and what doesn't.   Read more...

Andy talks briefly about why the company he works for has decided to require all developers to obtain the MCSD, then takes a look at the book they chose for the initial round of study for the first exam.   Read more...

In this article, columnist Christopher Duncan shows you how to create your dream development project.   Read more...

Andy relates some info he got from Wes Grant about his freeware and open source project to build a web based admin tool for SQL that is currently in the design/initial coding phase. Get the scoop and maybe write some of the code too!   Read more...