Programming SQL Server 2008
The speaker opened the session by discussing data access methods and more specifically the things to think about when selecting the most appropriate one for your application. Factors to consider include:
- New application development.
- Application migration from other API and database.
- Multiple database backend support.
- Platform restrictions and data access availability.
We looked at a cool feature of SQL Server 2008, namely Table-Valued Parameters. This is where you can bind an in-memory data table as a SQL parameter and send to the server. The parameter is then parsed and the contents used to carry out multiple inserts or updates.
We next looked at streaming data for the application to the database using TransactionScope.
A tour of new additions/enhancements to 2008 were discussed next such as the 4 new date/time data types on offer. Currently, SmallDateTime has precision to 1 minute whilst with DateTime this is 3.33 milliseconds. The new types and precisions are: Date (1 day), Time (100ns), DateTime2 (100ns) and DateTimeOffset (100ns).
Although a couple of demos were attempted by the speaker, none worked and this seemed to dent the poor chaps confidence for the rest of the session. A good lesson to take from that would be to have a supply of "heres one I made earlier" projects as backup.
2008 also boasts unlimited length User Defined Types (UDT). The speaker introduced the FILESTREAM storage attribute on VarBinary(max) columns. The designer is no longer restricted by a 2GB LOB.
Good session but could have been better.
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