18Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Still no Joy in Mudville: GDR RC0

PASS, Tools, Visual Studio
The guys at Microsoft tried to recreate the problem I was having and were unable to. It probably means I've got a bad uninstall of CTP17 or something. Since I'm running on a virtual it won't affect me in the future since I can toss it, but that doesn't help for the PASS Presentation tomorrow. So, no demo at the end of the presentation, just a bit of tap dancing. It'll be fine, but I would that it were otherwise.
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14Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

VSTSDBE GDR RC0: No Joy in Mudville

PASS, Tools, Visual Studio
A few posts ago I outlined the problems I was having getting the RC0 of the GDR to deploy appropriately. I was successful in a deployment, so I thought I was done. Yesterday I went to do a run through of the presentation for PASS and my deploy failed. Despite the fact that I'm running on the same machine with the same project that worked before. I've now gone back through the whole process again, but I'm getting nothing but failures. It's totally hosed. At this point, barring a miracle, I'm going to present the process and then explain that I can't demo it because of failures. I don't know if it's just a configuration issue with my virtual machine or something flawed in the release. Either way, I'm at…
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04Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTSDBE RC0 Post 3

Tools, Visual Studio
Second round of testing. Instead of associating with a project, I tried creating a reference to a .dbschema file. Same error. This time, I'm going to clear out everything. I tried creating it initially on top of the code from CTP 17. So, another chance to try out the reverse engineer process of "Import Database Schema." Works great. New AdventureWorks database inside Visual Studio with a tested deployment faster than you can spit. Created a new server project. Added a login, just to give it something to do. It deployed fine. On to the compound project. Let's see what happens. Just to see, I did a build and deploy before I added references or objects or anything. It worked great. Whatever that means. I'm taking it a step at a…
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03Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTSDBE RC0 Post 2

nHibernate, Tools
There is no joy in Mudville. The install of RC0 went smoothly. I was able to create a new server project and deploy it. I was able to reverse engineer AdventureWorks into a new project and deploy that. When I went to create a new compound project, combining the output from the two... deployment failed. I got an arcane error about something in the Microsoft.Data.Schema.SchemaModel.ModelSerializationException erroring out. Useful. So, at this point, the functionality I had in my demo for the PASS Summit isn't working. Yikes. I've got two weeks... no pressure... I posted a note about it over at the MSDN discussion site. If you have a solution, swing by and drop it off.
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31Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTSDBE RC0 Install

Tools, Visual Studio
I've downloaded and started the install. The first screen I'm seeing is not filling me with confidence. The executable that is currently running is called "DBProRepair.exe" However, the installed completed without any issues. Just for giggles, I tried opening my PASS presentation (created on CTP 17). If it worked, I wouldn't have to recode. Ah, well, no joy. Not that I expected any. Oh, but the Conversion Report that comes up afterwards is very informative. Reverse engineer against the AdventureWorks2008 database went off without a hitch. All the objects imported into the database with no issues too. So far, so good. Created all the projects. No issues. I'm configuring for a deployment now. We'll see how that goes. Builds worked fine. I forgot to change the deploy action the first…
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31Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Visual Studio Team System Database Edition GDR RC

Tools, Visual Studio
I'm a bit late to notice this, but Gert Drapers announced on Monday that the release candidate for VSTSDBE, or good ole VSDB as I've decided to call it, is now available. I figured they'd do something during the Professional Developers Conference (where supposedly a new printing of my book was being given out). Now I need to get on the stick & upgrade my virtual... maybe. According to the post, functionality hasn't changed. Maybe I should just leave everything alone on my machine until after PASS... Nah! I'll post progress for the uninstall, the install and the recreation of the compound project.
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07Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

SQL Server 2008: Database Engine Tuning Advisor

Tools
I don't think this thing works. I posted a bug report in Connect. If you can replicate my problem, described below, please go here and confirm the issue. Get a copy of AdventureWorks2008. Pick any of the bigger tables. In my case I went with the Sales.SalesOrderHeader table. Write a query, a simple one or a complex one, that has performance problems that can be easily fixed by the right query. Here's a simple example: SELECT  soh.Freight, soh.SalesOrderNumber FROM    Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh WHERE   soh.SalesOrderNumber LIKE 'SO' + CAST(6 AS VARCHAR) + '%' AND soh.Freight > 50 If you run this query and get an execution plan, it immediately flags a missing index. The plan itself is a clustered index scan and a filter operation. Take the index it suggests and build it:…
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12Sep 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR CTP 16

Tools, Visual Studio
CTP 15 utterly hosed the virtual device I had it on. I tried uninstalling, but it just wouldn't come off clean. I finally have rebuilt the virtual and reinstalled everything except VSTSDB GDR. Having learned my lesson (the hard way as usual), I started a differential on my virtual for the install of CTP 16 so that I can roll back and install the release candidate and the release as they come out without having to go through that whole rebuild thing again. While Gert & crew are still making some changes, the fundamentals are still there so my presentation at PASS should work fine as currently defined. The only problem I ran into was that I couldn't get the database to deploy by simply clicking on the deploy menu…
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