Azure virtual machines are created for many reasons, even just to have an environment to quickly test something out. In this article, Robert Cain demonstrates the first few steps in automating the process with PowerShell. He shows how to gather information needed and set up a resource group, storage and networking needed for the VM. … Read more
The next step in learning how to create games in C# using Unity is to add extensions to get custom functionality. Lance Talbert shows you how to create an extension that changes the properties of many objects at once.… Read more
One big question for software developers and IT departments in small companies is always “should I hire a DBA?” The fact that one is asking this question demonstrates that there are some symptoms that need a deeper diagnosis than you can handle. This may be a concern about backup procedures, database slowness for users, or errors … Read more
Sharing and reusing large objects between components and services can save time and computing resources. Tom Fischer explains how to take advantage of the Memory Mapped Files feature of .NET to help boost performance.… Read more
With SQL Server 2017, Microsoft announced the exciting news that SQL Server would now run in Docker containers. Laerte Junior provides a guide to get started creating SQL Server instances in Docker.… Read more
Azure, Microsoft's cloud, provides dozens of services to make cloud development fast without the need to worry about infrastructure such as hardware. In this article, Jakub Kaczmarek explains the benefits and challenges of creating a bot using the Microsoft Bot Framework found on Azure. He also walks you through creating a simple bot.… Read more
One of the most important tools for query tuning is the ability to view execution plans. They are even portable; you can send an execution plan to get advice from someone who doesn't have access to the underlying data. Have you even considered that sensitive information might travel along with the plans? Hugo Kornelis explains how execution plans affect data protection. … Read more
SQL Server has a couple of different ways to represent hierarchies, but they do not allow storing any additional information that is important to the relationship between objects. In this article, Phil Factor explains how to use closure tables to overcome this deficiency.… Read more
Modifying data in Graph Database tables is similar to working with traditional tables, but there are several things to consider. Robert Sheldon explains how to insert, update, and delete rows of Graph Database tables and explains how to use several new helper functions. … Read more
SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) is a great tool for managing SQL Server. Darko Martinovic demonstrates how to use SMO within a C# solution to create tables, backup the database, and more.… Read more
About ten years ago, my friends and family were abandoning their Myspace accounts and heading to Facebook. I fought it for a while but eventually assimilated and ended up with over 650 Facebook “friends” at last count. Even my mother embraced the platform, very happy that she could see frequently updated photos of her many … Read more
Some time ago, Phil Factor wrote his booklet 'SQL Code Smells', collecting together a whole range of SQL Coding practices that could be considered to indicate the need for a review of the code. It was published as 119 code smells, even though there were 120 of them at the time. Phil Factor has continued to collect them and the current state of the art is reflected in this article. SQL Prompt is committed to cover as many as possible of them. Phil has also updated his book which you can download here.… Read more
VS Code is a cross platform lightweight development environment from Microsoft. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript. Ed Elliott shows you how to create a VS Code extension using TypeScript in this article.… Read more
Git stands out among source control systems as providing great support for branching and merging. However, as with any complex tool, there are productive ways and not so productive ways to use it. This article shares Michael Sorens' perspective on best practices and biggest pitfalls related to branching.… Read more
Bootstrap is a popular open source tool for developing HTML and CSS. Version 4 has recently been released. Dino Esposito explains some of the differences between Bootstrap 3 and Bootstrap 4 when developing navigation bars.… Read more
Unity makes it simple to create an object that follows a path. In this article, game programmer Lance Talbert shows how to use C# to control the object's path.… Read more
With Amazon RDS, it’s easy to have a SQL Server running in minutes. There are some limitations, though. Seth Delconte explains a workaround to overcome one of the limitations: the inability to restore a second copy of a database to recover missing data.… Read more
