Recently our website got a new look and feel (DNN based). However, old blogs where so static that migrating them to the new website was a cumbersome task. Some post where outdated and so I start all over again. Just to get familiar with the new look & feel I'm just writing a short post: Things I like most off MS SQL 2005.

If you are a database programmer: Get to know CTE's (Common Table Expression). Working with CTE's is heaven of your data is hierachy-based. (e.g. get a list of employees falling directly and indirectly under a specific manager). Usualy you needed a loop or a smart cross join to solve this issue, with a good written CTE is childplay.

Databases are for data, applications for user interface, but what if you needed application code (e.g. VB.NET) to solve business issues like sending automatic generated generic mailmerges? Doing this in the datalayer is nearly impossible. Running an app at night? Not very reliable. Use CLR Integration. Yes! Writing your favourite language at store them in the database assemblies! I wrote some articles to do this manually, but working with visual studio (at least with professional) it can be fairly easy. It's powerfull, lightning fast and very robust!

To conclude this, here's a last thing about SQL2005 what strikes my fancy: Restoring databases, migrate them from SQL2000 is really easy with the new SQL managing studio. In some aspects I like the old one more than the new one, but some tasks are really made easy. And migrating and restoring data is one of them! The new interface is more genericly build and I'm still discovering more and more functionality. Now, I'd never go back to SQL2000.