ADO Guy_s Rants and Raves

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I was reading this codinghorror.com entry today and thought someone else was advocating Guids as keys when I saw mention of something I hadn"t seen before:

NEWSEQUENTIALID() Function in SQL Server 2005

This function (which is only valid in a columns"s DEFAULT constraint) will make GUIDs that are somewhat sequential which eliminates the biggest complaint of mine (fragmented PK Indexes).  It is SQL Server 2005 only, but its a cool feature.  To be clear this is how its used:

CREATE TABLE Employee 
            (EmployeeID uniqueidentifier DEFAULT NEWSEQUENTIALID()) 

I was reading this codinghorror.com entry today and thought someone else was advocating Guids as keys when I saw mention of something I hadn"t seen before:

NEWSEQUENTIALID() Function in SQL Server 2005

This function (which is only valid in a columns"s DEFAULT constraint) will make GUIDs that are somewhat sequential which eliminates the biggest complaint of mine (fragmented PK Indexes).  It is SQL Server 2005 only, but its a cool feature.  To be clear this is how its used:

CREATE TABLE Employee 
            (EmployeeID uniqueidentifier DEFAULT NEWSEQUENTIALID()) 

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I"ve been confused by the whole Expression Web interest.  I use Visual Studio primarily and I couldn"t see the great benefit of Expression Web.  I am not an artist so I don"t fiddle with HTML as my main job much. But I do write some articles directly in HTML. Finally a reason to use Expression Web...Spell check. Yeah, spell check. 

Visual Studio"s HTML editor doesn"t have it, Orcas" HTML editor doesn"t have it...but Expression Web does.  Using Word to edit HTML files is a completely joke.  My editors that I write HTML articles for want very clean XHTML...not exactly what Word does best.  Now I have a good solution...

(I am sure there are a plethora of other reasons to use Expression Web, but I suspect they don"t apply that much to me.)

I"ve been confused by the whole Expression Web interest.  I use Visual Studio primarily and I couldn"t see the great benefit of Expression Web.  I am not an artist so I don"t fiddle with HTML as my main job much. But I do write some articles directly in HTML. Finally a reason to use Expression Web...Spell check. Yeah, spell check. 

Visual Studio"s HTML editor doesn"t have it, Orcas" HTML editor doesn"t have it...but Expression Web does.  Using Word to edit HTML files is a completely joke.  My editors that I write HTML articles for want very clean XHTML...not exactly what Word does best.  Now I have a good solution...

(I am sure there are a plethora of other reasons to use Expression Web, but I suspect they don"t apply that much to me.)

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I was reading an article about VB9"s XML Literal support and why C# decided not to support it.  (Note, I agree with C#"s lack of support for it, but that"s not what this post is about).  Paul Vick said:

It is extremely risky to tie yourself explicitly to a technology that may or may not be here 15 years from now. Right now, XML is king. But what happens if some other technology comes along and knocks it off its perch? What if things radically shift in some other direction and XML suddenly becomes a side track instead of the main line?

While I agree with this notion, this seems to be the exact reason for *not* including LINQ. Why are they willing to tie the language to a brand-new notion of language integration that might not be here in two years, but they saying they don"t want to pollute the language with XML becuase they are not sure it will be here soon? 

It seems like they are talking out of both sides of their mouth on this one. If it is important that the language remain clear and simple, why introduce LINQ with the related features (extension methods and variable inference)?

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I was reading an article about VB9"s XML Literal support and why C# decided not to support it.  (Note, I agree with C#"s lack of support for it, but that"s not what this post is about).  Paul Vick said:

It is extremely risky to tie yourself explicitly to a technology that may or may not be here 15 years from now. Right now, XML is king. But what happens if some other technology comes along and knocks it off its perch? What if things radically shift in some other direction and XML suddenly becomes a side track instead of the main line?

While I agree with this notion, this seems to be the exact reason for *not* including LINQ. Why are they willing to tie the language to a brand-new notion of language integration that might not be here in two years, but they saying they don"t want to pollute the language with XML becuase they are not sure it will be here soon? 

It seems like they are talking out of both sides of their mouth on this one. If it is important that the language remain clear and simple, why introduce LINQ with the related features (extension methods and variable inference)?

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