You must have heard the buzz around the WebsiteSpark program that we are launching today. It is a great program that covers a lot of concerns start-ups have – where is the money for me to buy all the software. Earlier, we had launched programs such as BizPark for the start up eco-system, DreamSpark for students which has helped millions of people world wide. Today, we are launching Websi...

Recently I upgraded to Windows 7 RTM and started setting up my machine. The usual set of tools I install are Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, Expression etc., Also, for .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 I would require to install the respective SP1 releases as well since they are mandatory and contain tons of new features as well. I had done this in the past in Windows Vista, Windows 7...

SQL Azure is the latest buzz around Cloud Computing and the ability to take relational database to the cloud as is, is something most would welcome compared to the earlier model of ACE (Authority, Container, Entity) that was there when SQL Azure was SSDS. Well, like others, I also got interested and wanted to explore the SQL Azure. SQL Azure is currently in CTP and offers token based acc...

In the previous post we had examined on getting access to SQL Azure, creating your first database, accessing it with SQL Server Management Studio and then migrating the Northwind database schema to SQL Azure using the SQL Azure Migration Wizard Beta. As explained earlier, the SQL Azure Migration Wizard migrates the schema of your database after tuning it for working with SQL Azure. Howev...

Earlier, I had written this post on how you can accomplish using FileUpload control in UpdatePanel since by default it wasn’t supported. The post seems to have helped many and keeps being the most visited one. However, with the new release of Ajax Control Toolkit (v 3.0.30930) released specifically for .NET 3.5 SP1 (with Visual Studio 2008 SP1), there are couple of new controls. One of t...

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is out and has a slick new UI. Also, this Beta has most of the features that would ship with the final version compared to the earlier Beta. Note that while new features might be added, there are chances that some of the features demonstrated here may also not be a part of the final release. But, for now, lets examine the current Beta 2. The first thing you woul...

If you have been using the SQL Azure Portal for creating SQL Databases and connecting to them from your SQL Server Management Studio, you would have realized the ability to query the Azure Cloud Databases from within the management studio. While this provides great opportunities in terms of relation capabilities and accessibility over the Cloud, there has been a recent upgrade to SQL Azu...