Need a Connection String?

This handy little trick has helped me for years. I have used it so much and so often, that I forget that it really is almost a "hidden" part of Windows.

So, you need a connection string to a database, AND you would like to test that string before you plug it in to your application. Doing this is actually very easy. First right click on your desktop and create a new text file. Name the file what ever you want, but change the file extension to be ".UDL." This stands for Universal Data Link. Now double click on the file. This is what you will see:

The Provider tab will list all of the available providers installed on your computer. Choose the one you want. In this case we are going with the ODBC provider for SQL server.
The next tab is the Connection tab. This is what you see:

Here, you put in the server name, choose the type of authentication, and select the default catalog. The best part is that little button towards the bottom right "Test Connection." With the simple press of this button, a connection attempt is made using the settings and credentials you have provided. If the test succeeds, you are good to go, if not, well then you know you have a problem.

The advanced tab really isn't that interesting, you can set your impersonation level and other things if the provider supports that kind of thing, but really, it isn't vital to the success of your connection string. The really interesting tab is the All tab.

This tab has all of the settings you can tweak for your selected provider type. If you need to set an Application Type, you can do that here, time outs, Network Address, whatever you need to set here is the spot.
After you have everything set, and the test connection succeeds, click OK. That will save all of your settings. Then right click on the file and select "Rename." Change the file extension back to ".txt" Now double click on the text file. TA-Freaking-DA!!!

There is your tested, working connection string all ready for you to copy and paste in to your application.

Big Things Coming!!!

It seems as if the thing at Microsoft over the past 10 years or so was to sync major updates to their products every three years or so. So, in keeping with this new tradition, Microsoft is releasing a TON of products over the next year.
Take a look a what will be rolling out in the coming months:

• Windows 8 Desktop
• Windows 8 Tablet
• Windows 8 Server
  • HyperV
• Internet Explorer 10
• IIS 8
• Office 15
  • Word 15
  • Excel 15
  • Access 15
  • Visio 15
  • Outlook 15
  • InforPath 15
  • OneNote 15
  • Publisher 15
  • Office 365 Updates
• SharePoint 15
• FAST Search For SharePoint 15 (I haven't seen anything on this yet, however I assume that a new version would be released with SharePoint 15)
• .NET Framework 4.5
• Visual Studio 11

What do I find most exciting about each of the releases? Well, I haven't really done much other than read about enhancements, and new features, but some of the reading I have done had gotten me excited about many things.

Windows 8 Desktop and Tablet

I am really excited about Windows 8 for Desktops and Tablets. I think that the touch interface is going to revolutionize the notebook and tablet industry. Think about a Tablet, like the iPad that has all of the power and usefulness as a desktop computer, AND has the touch screen usability and app interface that you have come to love. Think of a notebook computer that can give directions and do text messages, yet still has a keyboard for typing documents. It all rolls in to one with Windows 8. I can't believe that Apple did not do something like this amalgamation before. They are the hardware company that builds their own OS after all. But they wanted to keep their OSes separate, and now they will be playing catch up with Microsoft, again.

Windows 8 Server

I am just starting my preview of Windows 8 Server. Right off of the bat, there are somethings that you notice about Windows 8. First and foremost, after you get past the new UI, you notice that there is a theme of Local Server and All Servers. Previous versions of Windows were designed to be islands of functionality. Servers could be linked together, but only as an afterthought. All services needed to be installed on each individual server, and then connections could occur. In Windows 8 the central theme is that there is more than one server that will be joining in the roles that you will be deploying on the server. So on servers that you deploy with GUI are designed to act as central hubs for the deployment and administration of other similar role servers. New is an interface that can report events from several servers, as well as an interface to administer these servers from.
Dynamic Access Control is a new feature that allows admins better control over the permissions inside of your file structure taxonomy. Rules and policies are much more friendly to layer on top of file structures.
There are so many changes to HyperV that I added it as a bullet under Win 8 Server. HyperV steps up with the big boys allowing for large clusters, fiber optic support, and many performance increases. Combine that with Live File Migration and HyperV addresses many of the advantages VMWare had over the Microsoft technology.
Microsoft listened, and stole, all of VMWare's advanced networking features and integrated them in to the new HyperV Virtual Network Switch. In 2008, the virtual switch was introduced to deal with multiple computers sharing a single networking interface. Outside of that, it really didn't do much. Combine it with RRAS and you really had some confusing and difficult configuration on your hands. Those days seem to be behind us with the implementation of port ACLs, private VLANs, per-vNIC bandwidth reservations, QoS, metering, OpenFlow support, VN-Tag support, and network introspection. I admit that I haven't had time to play with all of this stuff yet, but I have been very vocal with Microsoft on the lack of private VLANs on their virtual "switch" in Server 2008. Why call it a switch if it has none of the functionality of a modern network switch? Should have called it a virtual hub. It would have been more accurate.

Internet Explorer 10

IE 10 changes are mainly to incorporate all of the changes to the "Metro" UI that comes with Windows 8. Support for HTML5 is the big game changer, especially with support for Web Sockets. More on that later.
Performance was the name of the game with this release. Microsoft was looking to take down its major competitor, Chrome, and beat it by being the fastest browser on the market. Did they do it?? No. I don't think so. I'll test again when the RTM version is released, but the latest beta isn't nearly as fast as Chrome.

IIS 8

I am primarily a web guy and the first thing I did when I installed Windows 8 was to add the IIS role so that I could get a look at IIS 8. On the surface, there isn't a whole lot of difference. However if you do a lot of work with large site deployments, or if you host a good number of sites, you would definitely notice a difference!
The biggest change for "normal" users of IIS, the ones who run in house corporate intranet or SharePoint deployments, is going to be Application Initialization Module. Ever since the first version of the .NET framework users have complained that the first time the hit an ASP.NET site it takes forever to load. This is because a bunch of things happen behind the scenes to make the web site work. Check Just In Time compilation if you want to know more. (This should get you started)
This delay is supremely annoying, and the worst part is, the more complex the application is the longer the wait. Add that wait to all of the supporting services and applications, and the first time a user hits a complex site,like SharePoint, they could be sitting for quite a while. With IIS 8, Microsoft has finally solved the problem. Applications and sites can now be set to always run, essentially never allowing the worker processes to expire, and automatically starting up if the IIS services are restarted.
This is a big deal, and one that has to be undertaken with careful planning. One of the major reasons for JIT in .NET is to save on resources, and if you set all of your applications to always run, you will waste resources on applications that don't necessarily need to be running.
If you do a lot of work with SSL and certificates then you will be happy to know that Microsoft has done quite a bit to aid you with SSL. SSL can now use host headers so that multiple SSL sites can be run over the same IP address. IIS 8 also has a feature, called Central Certificate Store, that will allow you to store certificates in a centralized place, allowing for easier deployment as well as easing use in a cluster.
The last big change is for companies that have a lot of sites, and each site has a lot of custom configuration. This custom configuration of many sites makes the IIS XML configuration files, such as applicationHost.config, grow to be very large files. These large configuration files caused IIS to start very slowly and, in some cases, could even cause IIS service to time out during start up. IIS 8 is designed to load these large configuration files easily and quickly, making this particular problem a thing of the past.

Office and SharePoint 15

Not a whole lot is known about the next version of Office and SharePoint. Many things are speculated, but only a few are known for sure. For sure SharePoint 15 will have an "App" store. This means that companies can release "Apps" for SharePoint. This will allow users to connect directly to SharePoint via the Windows 8 "Metro" interface without having to go through a browser. I am interested about this particular piece of SharePoint 15, especially how it will tie in with the already familiar web interface.
Information Rights Management will FINALLY be a first class citizen in SharePoint 15, and will deploy as an Application Web Service. With all of the document retention and record center stuff put in to MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010 IRM should have been integrated in to SharePoint many years ago, BUT I guess Microsoft was too busy creating the ribbon interface to bother with something so obviously needed in ANY records management system. Sheesh.
Because SharePoint is being used more and more as a Knowledge Repository, a new module will be released that will make SharePoint a true Learning Management System. There are a TON of LMS out there, and I find it odd that Microsoft is only now trying to get in to the market. The real interesting thing to see will be if the current LMS companies will embrace SharePoint and move their functionality over to it, or if they will see SharePoint as a threat and attempt to compete with it.
It is also widely speculated that SharePoint 15 is being built on the 4.5 framework. I'll get in to this a bit more below, but with the 4.5 framework's heavy emphasis on HTML 5, could it be possible that Microsoft thought ahead and built SharePoint 15 using Web Socket technology??? That would be super cool!!

Not a whole lot is known about Office 15. What is known for sure is that all of the office apps will be created to actively interface with the "Metro" UI. That means that their UI will specifically be developed so that you can use the applications with just your fingers. I don't know if this will do away with the ribbon, but it just might.

.NET Framework 4.5

Lots of really cool updates to the .NET Framework 4.5. Of course 4.5 will support the creation of Windows 8 apps and the Metro UI. I don't think anyone used Microsoft Touch to do anything at all, so it should be a relatively new API to play around with. New to us anyway.
The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) becomes a first class citizen in the new framework, moving up from an add on in framework version 4.0. (check this out for information on MEF)
Changes to ASP.NET surround HTML 5. This makes sense, as IIS 8 now supports HTML 5. I see what you did there Microsoft... Very sneaky!!
The last super cool thing in the 4.5 framework is additional support for parallel computing. I haven't done any work with parallelism, but I have always been intrigued by it. Check out this blog for the skinny on what is new in the 4.5 framework

Visual Studio 11

With the release of a new framework, a new OS, a new UI, AND a new version of SharePoint, there must be a place where developers can create all sorts of new stuff for them. In short a TON is new in Visual Studio to accommodate all of the new developer stories for the new products. I really don't want to list them all here, So you can go here to check out all the cool new stuff.

It's a brave new world out there, and, if you are smart, you will begin to look in to how you can learn about the new stuff that will soon be in great demand. I am just upset that I will have to take all of the tests over again... Maybe I will wait a year or so this time... but I know I won't...