by Mikael Henriksson
30. April 2008 18:59
Personally I must say that I really admire who ever decided to push the developement of the Entity Framework. Finally something extra ordinary good happened to us developers that neither have the time nor the knowledge to deep dive into all aspects of our jobs.
I did a long time ago come to the conclusion that I would never ever be the kind of developer I want to be. I want to know it all and I want to be the best. Sadly with the release of the .NET framework knowing it all became impossibly. It was hard before but since then the framework has grown even more! Entity Framework can't replace working within a well thought through Domain Model but it sure helps me in my everyday work. I just finished a drafting a part of our application that took month and a half to get up and running the first time (I was not involved in the first version). It took me 2 days to come up with a pretty much solid version 2 of that same part. Now all I have to do is add some business validation rules which will take another 2 days.
Version 1 = 2 Developers * 30 working days
Version 2 = 1 Developers * 4 working days
You do the math!
So cheers Microsoft for an extremely nice way to handle the whole business logic! No more trying to track spelling mistakes!
by Mikael Henriksson
27. April 2008 18:59
On first impression it looks really nice. The installation gui has really improved to something that is easy to understand and follow. Adding features is not supported through the gui yet. I there for recommend thorough planning of your Sql Server 2008 installation. I believe you do not want to spend as much time as me configuring it.
If you want to run Sql 2008 Server side by side with Sql Server 2005 it's no problem but a couple of words of warning here. First do not upgrade your previous installation. If you haven't allready installed Sql Server 2005 I recommend doing that first.
I had some problems installing Sql Server 2005 AFTER installing Sql Server 2008. For some sick reason it would only allow me to use the same Data directory as Sql server 2008 was allready using and I could not find a way to actually change this smoothly. I tried everything!
If you are like me (it's pretty good being me) you definitely want to keep your database files located some place where it is easy to reach them like "D:\SQL\Data" or something equivalent. The right approach is to install everything "by the book" and later change the default data directory from Management Studio. Just remember to keep your Sql Server 200X versions separated as much as you can meaning "DON'T UPGRADE" :)
For starters I'd recommend opening up regedit.exe and go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\". Delete everything that has Microsoft Sql in it. (This is only needed if you have tried and failed before, it can otherwise cause installation problems)
I only installed Sql Server 2005 Database Engine since I can use the management tools from Sql Server 2008 to administer it.
Now start up the installation of Sql Server 2008 and go nuts! Remember to install everything in it's default directories apart from that it's highly customise-able.
Don't forget to download and install the update for visual studio that enables you to use sql server 2008 as your data source.
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