MDX Injection Tool

Considering DRY (Don't repeat yourself) principal of pragmatic programming, Analysis Services does not have that kind of feature, where you can include some common steps or source in your solution, so that you have some sort of re-usablility.

But Miky Schreiber did put some efforts in creating a toolset which could help others achieve DRY principal a bit.

The MdxInjection program takes your common MDX Script and a very simple xml file that defines where to inject this script. It injects the script into your desired cubes and even replaces the dimensions' names where necessary (it is relevant where you put dimension in a cube with a different name to thr dimension or when you use Role Playing Dimensions).

You can view its rough usage here and can download it from here.

IQToolkit, building your own LINQ IQueryable provider

Matt Warren, who provides the most detailed HOWTO for creating your own LINQ IQueryable provider, has now published a dedicated toolkit on CodePlex.

IQToolkit is essential if you are building your own LINQ IQueryable provider. It contains common tools and source code you can apply to your own project.

In the toolkit you will find useful techniques for manipulating LINQ expression trees, implementing IQueryable providers, and a host of extensible components for building providers that target translation of LINQ expressions into SQL like languages.

http://www.codeplex.com/IQToolkit

Creating a LINQ provider is not a walk in the park, but at least if you have to, you have everything you need at hand.

Enterprise Library 4.1 released

Don't forget to download Enterprise Library 4.1, which was recently released by Microsoft Patterns & Practices.

The Microsoft Enterprise Library is a collection of reusable application blocks designed to assist software developers with common enterprise development challenges. This following application blocks are included: Caching Application Block, Cryptography Application Block, Data Access Application Block, Exception Handling Application Block, Logging Application Block, Policy Injection Application Block, Security Application Block, Validation Application Block, and Unity Application Block.

This release includes:

• Support for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1.
  
• Interception mechanism in the Unity Application Block.
  
• Performance improvements.
  
• Usability improvements of the config tool.
  
• Fixes
  

 

Download Enterprise Libary 4.1 here.

jQuery support in Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft released the second part of their support tools for jQuery in Visual Studio this week. The second part comes in the form of a hotfix for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 that provides built-in support for –vsdoc.js files to – when present – automatically provide Intellisense support in Javascript documents. In combination with the recently released jQuery Intellisense file that Microsoft released you can now very easily get jQuery Intellisense in Visual Studio.

Here are all the things that you need to get the best jQuery support in the VS 2008 editor:

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 

SP1 provides a number of enhancements to the Javascript Intellisense engine in Visual Studio and is the basis on which all the other enhancements run on. These improvements include faster parsing and some built-in knowledge of a few common Javascript libraries including jQuery to find and provide at least basic Intellisense support. 

jQuery Intellisense document file (jQuery-1.2.6-vsdoc.js) 

This .js file is an annotated version of the base jQuery.js that includes detailed Visual Studio style Intellisense information about each of jQuery’s functions and utilities. None of the code is changed – only comments have been added. This file isn’t meant to replace your original jQuery.js file, but rather to serve as a more complete Intellisense file during development. Not meant for production. 

VS 2008 SP1 Hotfix for –vsdoc.js Intellisense (KB958502) 

This hotfix enables any file with –vsdoc.js extension to act as an Intellisense background file for any referenced .js file. So if you have a script src referencing jquery.js all you have to do is have the jquery-vsdoc.js in the same folder as jquery.js and Visual Studio will automatically find and use the –vsdoc file for Intellisense. This works for jQuery with the above mentioned files as well as your own files.

This is all very nice and it works great.

The way intellisense works is that Visual Studio first looks for the –vsdoc.js file, then a debug.js file and finally for the file you actually specified in the source.

This works in basic script includes in the head  tag or inside of the document inside of ASPX pages or in script source files.

The Intellisense file and the hotfix in combination are a welcome addition to Visual Studio – it makes working with jQuery inside of the VS Javascript editor a lot easier because the documentation provided through the Intellisense interface is pretty rich and helpful in many situations.

Have a look on the new Integration Services page on MSDN

SQL Server 2008 – Integration Services on MSDN got its page overhauled with some new refreshing things on it.

Here are some good things on this page:

• At the top, you have a search box that's would search within SQL Server 2008 documentation, and some getting started links on the right.
• Then you can see some downloadable stuff from Microsoft in the left column, and community contribution in the remaining columns.

Here is the link to