Build #13

This build has a lot of minor changes from user tickets, but the major update is for Visual Studio 2010 RC.

Visual Studio 2010 RC

Visual Studio 2010 RC now works.  There were several changes in Visual Studio between beta 2 and the RC with respect to data providers and plugin installation.  We have fixed these issues. 

Hopefully the Visual Studio 2010 final release will not introduce any more surprises.  Beta 2 has not been tested with this build, we do not intend to support it.

VistaDB 3 and 4 side by side in Visual Studio 2008

There is a conflict that impacts Visual Studio 2008 side by side of our two data sources.  Once VistaDB 4 has been installed Visual Studio 2008 still knows about VistaDB 3.x, but it will not show it for new connections from the Server Explorer (this will impact Strongly Typed Datasets that reference Server Explorer connections). 

In order to fix this you will need to first uninstall VistaDB 4 prior to build 13. 

Then run InstallDesigner for VistaDB 3 from the VistaDB 3 install path like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\VistaDB 3\VisualStudio\InstallDesigner.exe  ( 32 bit users will not have an x86 in the program files )

After running this command line tool you should see the VistaDB 3 entry in Visual Studio 2008 again. 

Finally, install VistaDB 4 build 13 or higher and you will have two entries present.

Changes and Fixes

There are a number of small changes from user tickets.  Read through the list below if you are looking for something specific.

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This build is designated as a development build because we made a change in the optimizer that could affect a lot of applications.  We don't expect it to cause any problems (it fixes one possible error case), and you are free to Go Live with it with your products.  We just ask that you test your code and let us know if there are any problems.

Logging Build

This build is a full logging build.  Logging does not happen automatically against every run of the engine.  You have to turn it on from the Diagnostics namespace, and the Customer Experience tray app has to be running with logging enabled.  By default the only thing we are logging in the CEIP application are Data Builder runs, and the Visual Studio tools (logging exceptions, errors, etc).

To turn on diagnostic logging within your application

At app or unit test startup you would call the startup like this:

VistaDB.Diagnostic.Support.BeginLogging("Starting Test to demo some error"); 

Then during your application shutdown call the EndLogging method:

VistaDB.Diagnostic.Support.EndLogging("Test shutdown complete");

You could also do the begin and end just around a problem area as well.

There are two boolean options on the logging right now to turn on additional information.  By default we only log exceptions and errors in the engine process.  If you are having a problem with an output being incorrect, or some other SQL specific problem you can turn these two options on to log more detailed information.

VistaDB.Diagnostic.Support.IncludeCommandSQL = true;
VistaDB.Diagnostic.Support.IncludeDataReaderRows = true;

The IncludeCommandSQL includes each SQL command that is executed and the parameters passed as a part of the query.
The IncludeDataRows will log each row returned to the command (NOT recommended unless REALLY necessary to see a problem since these rows can get quite large).

Issues and Fixes

Changed the optimizer code to be a little more deliberate in its choice of indexes.  There was an error case where a compound index containing two columns also had a duplicate index covering the first column of the compound index.

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Happy New Year!

This will probably be the last build of the 4.0 line as we are almost ready to start the beta testing for 4.1.

Errors and Exception Handling

Changed how the Error dialog displays exceptions.  Many exceptions include a Data dictionary collection of Key/Value pairs with additional information about the exception.  This is present even on a DbException object.  We do fill these out with helpful information in many cases, but the Data Builder dialog was not showing the Data dictionary.  You can trap this in your code and walk the dictionary also using the code below.

   1:  private string GetAdditionalData(Exception ex)

   2:  {

   3:      StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); 

   4:   

   5:      foreach (DictionaryEntry de in ex.Data)

   6:      {

   7:          sb.Append(de.Key);

   8:          sb.Append(" : ");

   9:          sb.Append(de.Value);

  10:          sb.Append(Environment.NewLine);

  11:      } 

  12:   

  13:      return sb.ToString();

  14:  } 

The custom error box we provide has been updated to show this information to the user.

TOP used with variables

Fixed issue where TOP could not be used with a variable dynamically allocated within a SQL Script. 

   1:  declare @howmany as integer; 

   2:  set @howmany = 30; 

   3:  select top(@howmany) from table; 

This now works as expected.

Mono 2.6 now supported

Mono support issue with an invalid IL Code being inserted through our obfuscator now appear to be working.  We have only tested this under Mono 2.6 as the previous production build of Mono had a bug in their implementation of the Microsoft License class.  This has been fixed by the Mono team in the current branch of their code repository, but I am not aware any plans to release it to the prior 2.4 branch. 

As always we recommend you test your application on your target runtime.  Mono is not something we do special coding scenarios around, if there are bugs in the implementation they have to be fixed by the Mono team.  We develop and test on Windows, any compatibility issues should be brought to the attention of the Mono team.

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The first release of the VistaDB 4 source is now available for download.  This source is based upon what is going to be released as Build 11.  Since this will be the final planned release of 4.0 we wanted to ensure we had a solid source release for customers.  We have improved a number of internal tools we use to generate the source build, so we will probably be able to provide 4.1 builds more quickly (really appreciate the patience with this initial 4.x build!).

Read the included PDF / Docx file for more detailed information about the source, how to build it, etc.  The entire process is different than the 3.x source system was built.  The entire directory structure of the source was changed for 4, so the build processes are also quite different.

The only real requirements are Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .Net 3.5 SP1 on the machine.  We provide one master solution file for VS 2008 to build all the parts.

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Build 10 is mostly a rollup of fixes from user tickets over the past few weeks.  This will also become the new trial version since it works with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

ASP.NET Membership

Corrected issues in the VistaDB ASP.NET Membership providers and wizards pertaining to the Asp.Net Configuration Wizard of Visual Studio. The web.config should persist newer provider entries, and the license manager can correctly fall back to the design time license for use in the Asp.Net Configuration wizard of Visual Studio.

Corrected issue in the VistaDB ASP.NET Membership providers where the GetRolesForUser and GetUsersInRoles methods were not returning any results when roles were mapped in the database.

DBNull vs Null

Corrected VistaDBDataReader to return DBNull instead of null on column values.  Attempts to read from a row that contained a null value would return null rather than DBNull.  The SQL Server behavior is to return DBNull, so we have changed to match that behavior.  This was actually performed in Build 7, but we forgot to include it in the release notes.

DBA Sample Tool Update

A big thanks to Chris Bray (long time Team VistaDB member, customer, and contributor) for updating the DBA Sample tool.  Chris made a number of changes to make it faster to modify the tool to be branded for your own company, and updated some features as well. 

There were also some artifacts still left of VDB3 in the code that he removed.  This sample can be used commercially within your applications, but may not be sold as a stand alone product or tool.  You have to be including it with a product for your users to use as an admin tool, something like that.  It should not be used as a data entry replacement - it is not end user friendly in that regard.  Tech support personnel, local admins, etc are all good candidates for the tool. 

A new file (Common.cs) has been included to allow a central point for the customization of the tools naming and config options.

The DBA Sample Tool is a tremendous time saver for building a tool your tech support people can send to customers.  We have had a number of companies tell us this tool alone was worth the purchase price because it saved them more than the VistaDB license cost in programmer time to build something like this for their applications.

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