My fourth Toolbox column in the April 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online. The April issue examines three products:
- IEWatch, an IE plug-in for dissecting HTTP traffic and diving into the markup sent to the browser
- SQL Examiner, a tool for comparing and synchronizing the schemas of different databases, and
- VBDocman .NET, an XML comments tool for VB.NET; also includes a nifty XML comment WYSIWYG tool for creating XML comments in both VS.NET and VS2005.
Also reviewed is APress's SQL Server 2005 T-SQL Recipes. From the article:
Most developers rely on IntelliSense and statement completion to relieve the burden of memorizing the vast array of classes, methods, properties, and events that make up the .NET Framework and any third-party components or controls used. Unfortunately, for SQL we must still use the old fashioned techniques—memorization, documentation, online resources, and books.
While there are plenty of books that provide a thorough discussion of database theory, or the intricacies of a particular database platform, often I'm in need of just a nugget of information, such as the syntax for iterating through a cursor, the syntax for RAISERROR, or how to retrieve database metadata through T-SQL syntax. These tidbits of information are just a glance away with SQL Server 2005 T-SQL Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Apress, 2005) by Joseph Sack. Like a cookbook, SQL Server 2005 T-SQL Recipes contains a bounty of short and to the point sections, each one detailing a feature of the SQL Server 2005 T-SQL syntax.
You can keep abreast of the latest Toolbox articles through the column's RSS feed or the Toolbox column category here on my blog.
Also! I'm planning on reviewing a couple of open-source / freeware tools for the column, and am looking for any recommendations on products to consider. Ideally, the products won't be ones that have already been covered extensively in MSDN Magazine (such as NUnit), and are not Microsoft created (such as Reflector). If you have any suggestions, email 'em on in to toolsmm@microsoft.com!