27 Articles
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• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Examples of Functionality in SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2010 JulAug
  Release Date: Friday, July 02, 2010
  Quick ID: 1008061
  A skilled database developer might find it difficult to accept that other tools can increase productivity. When Microsoft released SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS 2005), I did not think that any tool could possibly make me more productive than the C# and T-SQL code I was writing by hand. After some reconsideration (and subtle persuasion from peers), I discovered that SSIS 2005 contained many features that indeed reduced my development time - WITHOUT sacrificing flexibility. Microsoft added new functionality in SSIS 2008 to make a strong product even better. In this article, I’ll present 13 different examples that demonstrate the power of Integration Services.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Miscellaneous C#, SQL, and Business Intelligence Development Tips
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2009 Jan/Feb
  Release Date: Friday, January 02, 2009
  Quick ID: 0902071
  No, the title isn’t a misprint-this installment of the Baker’s Dozen will visit both sides of the planet. These days, many .NET user group meetings focus on database and business intelligence topics as well as hardcore .NET content. Over the last several months, I’ve spent roughly half my time modifying my own development framework for WCF. The result is some basic but functional factory classes I’d like to share. The other half of the time, I’ve been looking at different capabilities in the SQL Server 2005 and 2008 Business Intelligence stack, and solving requirements that BI developers often face. So rather than pick one side and make the other side wait two months, I decided to combine the two.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Tips for SQL Server 2008 and SSRS 2008
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2008 Jul/Aug
  Release Date: Friday, June 20, 2008
  Quick ID: 0807041
  A major software release either contains a substantial number of enhancements, or a small number of substantial enhancements.The last two releases of SQL Server remind me of the two types of Christmas: SQL 2005 was like receiving a large number of presents, and SQL Server 2008 is like receiving a smaller number of big gifts. Those of you who asked Santa for the ability to INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE in one SQL statement, or to specify multiple GROUP BY statements in a single SQL query, you will be very happy. If you wanted a hierarchical data type, you will be ecstatic. SQL Server 2008 also includes a new and completely re-written version of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)-complete with a new interface, new charting features, and (get ready to applaud) no more reliance on Internet Information Services (IIS). So while the temperatures are getting warmer, it’s Christmas Day here at the Baker’s Dozen, and we’re about to unwrap thirteen major SQL Server/SSRS 2008 gifts from Microsoft.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Tips for Building Database Web Applications Using ASP.NET 3.5, LINQ, and SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2008 May/Jun
  Release Date: Friday, April 18, 2008
  Quick ID: 0805071
  Are you moving a Windows desktop application to the browser, and sweating bullets, or perhaps just not quite sure about how all the new Web and data tools work together?With each passing year, Microsoft offers newer and more powerful tools for building rich database applications on the Web. So many and so frequently, in fact, that it can be hard to keep up with the new tools and still meet the requirements of your job! This article will show you how to get the most out of the new features in ASP.NET 3.5. The article will also show how you can use features in LINQ, even if you only use stored procedures for data access. And finally, since most applications use reporting, I’ll throw in a few nuggets on using SQL Server Reporting Services.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Tips for Building Dashboards with Microsoft BI Tools
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2008 Mar/Apr
  Release Date: Friday, February 29, 2008
  Quick ID: 0803051
  Scorecards, test results, report cards, summaries-nearly everyone wants to skip past the details and see the bottom line. Whether it is “pass or fail”, “go or no go”, managers evaluate professional efforts based on performance. Microsoft’s Business Intelligence tools provide developers and power users with the tools and methodologies to produce scorecards and other summaries that graphically represent performance. This article will create a Web-based Dashboard using several Microsoft products, including the newest product in the BI stack, PerformancePoint Server.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Tips for Querying OLAP Databases with MDX
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2008 Jan/Feb
  Release Date: Friday, December 28, 2007
  Quick ID: 0801051
  MDX is just like Transact-SQL, right? MDX is English-like and therefore easy to learn, right? Different software tools offer MDX generators and therefore I don’t need to learn MDX, right? MDX isn’t that popular, right?Well, just like the punch-line of the old Hertz car rental commercial, “Not exactly.” If your organization uses OLAP databases, you can add great value by knowing how to query OLAP databases using MDX queries. This article will cover common OLAP query requirements and MDX code solutions.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Comparisons Between Crystal Reports and SQL Server Reporting Services
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 Nov/Dec
  Release Date: Friday, October 26, 2007
  Quick ID: 0711041
  Recent polls show that nearly fifty percent of applications with reporting functionality use Crystal Reports, and about twenty percent use SQL Server Reporting Services. This article will cover some of the major reporting tasks that developers face, and how the two reporting tools (Crystal and SQL Server Reporting Services) handle the tasks. Finally, I’ll provide a sneak preview at the next scheduled releases of both products (the next version of Crystal Reports and SQL Server Reporting Services 2008).
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Transact-SQL 2005
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 Sep/Oct
  Release Date: Monday, August 27, 2007
  Quick ID: 0709031
  Thinking of upgrading to SQL Server 2005? Or are you using SQL 2005 already and you want to learn more about the language features? Then this article may be for you!Microsoft implemented many new features in SQL Server 2005, including an impressive set of language enhancements. From new language statements for SQL-99 compatibility to new features in response to customer requests, Transact-SQL 2005 helps to increase developer productivity. In this article, I’ll cover most of the new language features by posing a statement/scenario and then provide some code samples to show how you can use T-SQL 2005 to address the problem. At the end of the article, I’ll talk briefly about Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, a product that helps a development team to manage databases. Finally, I’ll give you a sneak preview of some features in the next scheduled version for SQL Server (SQL Server 2008, “Katmai”).
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: A 13-Step Crash Course for Using LINQ
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - Jul/Aug
  Release Date: Friday, June 29, 2007
  Quick ID: 0707051
  How many software tasks DON’T involve reading through data? Answer: very few. Developers work all the time with database data, XML data, DataSets, collections, lists, and arrays-all with different syntax and functionality for each one. Developers who write T-SQL code often covet set-based language statements when they work against other types of data. Additionally, developers who have coded against strongly-typed custom collections wish they could write SQL database queries with IntelliSense. Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a set of extensions to the .NET Framework for the next version of Visual Studio codename “Orcas”, brings the promise of integrated and uniform query capabilities to increase developer productivity when working with different types of data. While LINQ is a large topic worthy of books, this edition of The Baker’s Dozen will provide a crash course to learn what’s under the LINQ hood.
  
  
• MVP Corner: 13 Steps for Building an Article
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - Jul/Aug
  Release Date: Friday, June 29, 2007
  Quick ID: 0707021
  July/August 2007 MVP Corner
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: A 13-Step Crash Course for Learning Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - May/Jun
  Release Date: Friday, April 27, 2007
  Quick ID: 0705041
  This article will present a crash-course in the basics of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). WCF is one of the exciting new capabilities in the .NET 3.0 Framework. It provides a unified and uniform programming model for building distributed applications. Those who previously built multiple code bases to deal with Web services and .NET remoting will surely come to appreciate the power standardization that WCF offers. WCF, like any other new technology, requires research and experimentation to become productive. This article will assume no prior experience with WCF, and will walk you through some basic exercises and steps to show WCF’s capabilities.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Steps for Building a Lookup Page Using ASP.NET 2.0, SQL 2005, and C# 2.0
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - Mar/Apr
  Release Date: Friday, March 02, 2007
  Quick ID: 0703041
  Lookup and navigation screens initially seem like no-brainers, when compared to other parts of an application-yet by the time a developer has met all the user requirements and requests, he/she has expended much more time than expected. This issue of The Baker’s Dozen will build a lookup Web page using ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, and C# 2.0. The lookup and results page will contain optional lookup criteria and custom paging of the result set. The solution will utilize new language features in SQL 2005 for providing ranking numbers to correlate with custom paging, and new capabilities in .NET generics to pump the results of a stored procedure into a custom collection. Just like Mr. Mayagi taught Daniel the martial arts by doing exercises, the example in this article will demonstrate some common design patterns, such as factory creation patterns, using .NET generics. The article also subtly presents a general methodology for building database Web pages.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Moving from VFP to .NET
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Focus Magazine, 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9
  Release Date: Thursday, February 01, 2007
  Quick ID: 0703092
  When Visual FoxPro developers take the plunge to learn .NET, the most common reaction is, “I could do such-and-such, this-and-that in VFP-how can I do it in .NET?” This special edition of The Baker’s Dozen will offer solutions for many of the typical challenges that VFP developers face when tackling .NET. I’ll start by covering .NET solution and project structures and an overview of the .NET Framework, and I’ll spend time showing how to use .NET reflection to do some of the things that VFP developers could accomplish with macro-expansion. Then I’ll cover different .NET features such as Generics, ASP.NET 2.0, and I’ll show how to create a reusable data access component. Finally, I’ll build the architecture for a set of reusable data maintenance classes in .NET.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Crystal Reports Redux
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - Jan/Feb
  Release Date: Friday, December 29, 2006
  Quick ID: 0701031
  This article presents a follow-up to my January/February 2005 article, The Baker's Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Crystal Reports and .NET, where I presented productivity tips for developers who use Crystal Reports for .NET. In this sequel article, Crystal Reports Redux, I’ll offer some changes to the original article and will present some new material for Crystal Reports development. While I’ll focus on the version of Crystal Reports that ships with Visual Studio 2005 Professional, I’ll mention some of the capabilities found in the latest version, Crystal Reports XI.
  
  
• I Have a Dream
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Nov/Dec
  Release Date: Friday, October 20, 2006
  Quick ID: 0611011
  Rod Paddock Nov/Dec 2006 Editorial
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Generating PowerPoint Presentations
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Nov/Dec
  Release Date: Friday, October 20, 2006
  Quick ID: 0611071
  This installment of “The Baker’s Dozen” finds the Baker expanding from pastries to eye candy: generating PowerPoint output. Many power users build presentations using data from Excel or other data sources. This article shows how to automate Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 from within a Visual Studio 2005 application. The article presents a class called GenPPT, which creates several different types of slides, including slides that integrate tables and charts. GenPPT is written in Visual Basic 2005, and the demo program that calls it is written in C#: this demonstrates using multiple .NET languages in a solution.
  
  
• MVP Corner: A Baker’s Dozen of Reflections
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Nov/Dec
  Release Date: Friday, October 20, 2006
  Quick ID: 0611021
  November/December 06 MVP Corner
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen Doubleheader: 26 Productivity Tips for Managing Data (Part 2 of 2)
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Sep/Oct
  Release Date: Friday, August 18, 2006
  Quick ID: 0609041
  In the conclusion of this two-part series on managing data, I will focus on .NET generics, the ASP.NET 2.0 ObjectDataSource, and some more T-SQL 2005 capabilities. Regardless of whether you work in C# or VB.NET, or whether you spend more time on the front-end or back-end of an application, the ability to manage data will directly impact your contributions to a project. The new .NET generics classes provide you with near-quantum leap in efficiency by allowing you to write simpler code that accomplishes more. ASP.NET 2.0’s ObjectDataSource class helps you to easily integrate middle-tier data-aware classes to data-bound controls on a Web page. Finally, as you saw in Part 1 of this series (and will see again here in Part 2), T-SQL 2005 provides new language capabilities to help database developers be more productive.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen Doubleheader: 26 Productivity Tips for Managing Data (Part 1 of 2)
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Jul/Aug
  Release Date: Friday, June 16, 2006
  Quick ID: 0607061
  Regardless of your .NET language of choice, managing data is a vital skill for most applications. Developers frequently must work with data at different levels, with different tools, and in different forms. This article is the first in a two-part series on some of the more common data challenges that developers face. In Part 1 of this article, I’ll cover some capabilities in ADO.NET 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0, and T-SQL 2005. Part 2 will feature some additional T-SQL 2005 coverage, as well as ways to use .NET 2.0 generics.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Remoting in Visual Studio 2005
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - May/Jun
  Release Date: Friday, April 21, 2006
  Quick ID: 0605071
  This installment of the Baker’s Dozen presents an introduction to remoting and remoting interfaces.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for ADO.NET 2.0
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Jan/Feb
  Release Date: Tuesday, January 03, 2006
  Quick ID: 0601031
  This installment of “The Baker’s Dozen” presents a variety of tips and techniques to become productive with data handling techniques using ADO.NET 2.0 in Visual Studio 2005. ADO.NET 2.0 is faster than the first version of ADO.NET; in some instances, significantly faster. While many view ADO.NET 2.0 as more evolutionary than revolutionary, it provides many functions to give developers greater control over data access and data manipulation. It also leverages the new database capabilities in SQL Server 2005. In addition, ADO.NET 2.0 simplifies the creation of multiple-database solutions.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Reasons for Upgrading to Visual Studio 2005
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2005 - Nov/Dec
  Release Date: Friday, October 28, 2005
  Quick ID: 0511021
  This installment of “The Baker’s Dozen” covers some of the major features in Visual Studio 2005. Visual Studio 2005 offers language, data handling, and development environment enhancements that are sure to please many developers. Programmers who are currently using Visual Studio .NET 2003 will find many ways to write more efficient code and increase their overall productivity. In addition, programmers who are new to .NET will find the migration to Visual Studio 2005 a bit easier than the migration to the first version of .NET. While it’s not possible to talk about every new feature in Visual Studio 2005, this article will cover many of the primary changes and enhancements.
  
  
• The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Generating PowerPoint Presentations
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2005 - Sep/Oct
  Release Date: Thursday, August 25, 2005
  Quick ID: 0607151
  This installment of “The Baker’s Dozen” finds the Baker expanding from pastries to eye candy: generating PowerPoint output. Many power users build presentations using data from Excel or other data sources. This article shows how to automate Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 from within a Visual Studio 2005 application. The article presents a class called GenPPT, which creates several different types of slides, including slides that integrate tables and charts. GenPPT is written in Visual Basic 2005, and the demo program that calls it is written in C#: this demonstrates using multiple .NET languages in a solution.
  
  
• The Baker's Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Building a .NET Distributed Application
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2005 - Jul/Aug
  Release Date: Friday, June 24, 2005
  Quick ID: 0507031
  This installment of "The Baker's Dozen" presents a Windows Forms database application that demonstrates some of the primary attributes of a distributed architecture. These attributes include authentication and connectivity, data management, business objects, user-interface modules, and reporting. The featured application is a job-costing and invoicing application for a Masonry company, and is available for download. The application contains many functions that are required in most business applications. This article steps through the construction of these key pieces and provides classes and methodologies that you can apply to your next application.
  
  
• The Baker's Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Database Development Using Transact-SQL
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2005 - Mar/Apr
  Release Date: Friday, February 18, 2005
  Quick ID: 0503071
  Many application developers face the challenges of working with SQL Server 2000.These challenges include retrieving and grouping large amounts of data, building result sets, and tracking changes to data. All require professional strategies that hold water against a seemingly endless number of possibilities. This installment of "The Baker's Dozen" presents a variety of real-world database situations and how you can use Transact-SQL and SQL-92 to tackle these issues.
  
  
• The Baker's Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Crystal Reports and .NET
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2005 - Jan/Feb
  Release Date: Monday, December 20, 2004
  Quick ID: 0501071
  I'll show you how to build tools to address common reporting requirements for your business using Crystal Reports with .NET.I'll also show you how you can use graphics and multiple levels of detail to summarize large amounts of information and efficiently present it to business users and decision makers. Users of your company data will be the first to determine that an otherwise quality software solution is incomplete if it fails to present data in a way they can easily interpret. Although Crystal Reports provides many outstanding capabilities to help build and deliver sophisticated presentation output, I'll present a proven collection of reusable practices and methodologies that you can apply across most reporting projects to add that extra sparkle to your solutions.
  
  
• The Baker's Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for the Windows Forms DataGrid
  
  Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - November/December
  Release Date: Wednesday, October 20, 2004
  Quick ID: 0411081
  New developers often struggle with the .NET DataGrid when trying to replicate grid functionality from other platforms.More experienced developers lament the deficiencies of the .NET DataGrid to address end user requirements. Consequently, many developers seek sophisticated third-party alternatives. In this article, I'll present a set of classes for the DataGrid to help address some of the more common struggles. Although third-party tools always offer more capabilities than a native control, this article also demonstrates how it's possible for you to implement some of the functions found in these third-party tools.