My Toolbox column in the April 2007 issue of MSDN Magazine is now avaiable online. The April issue examines three products:
- WiXAware - a program for graphically creating and managing WiX installation files.
- Apose.Slides for .NET - programmatically create and edit PowerPoint presentations.
- Subversion - a popular, open-source source control product.
This month's issue reviewed SQL Hacks, by Andrew Cumming and Gordon Russell. Here is an excerpt from the review:
Most books on SQL focus on its syntax and semantics, specifying the structure of the SELECT statement, how the GROUP BY clause can be used, and so forth. While such information is helpful for beginners, seasoned database professionals are more interested in scenario-based learning. They want to read about queries and techniques that can help them tackle their difficult problems. What queries can you use to identify overlapping ranges in data? How do you create and maintain an audit table, or compare and synchronize tables? If this is the kind of information you are searching for, check out SQL Hacks, written by Andrew Cumming and Gordon Russell and published by O'Reilly.
As always, if you have any suggestions for products or books to review for the Toolbox column, please send them into toolsmm@microsoft.com.