Level: Intermediate
If you are a .NET developer building any kind of application on top of SQL Server, then this intensive demo-packed day is just what you need to advance your skills to the next level. Lenni will get you up to speed on the most significant enhancements in the product—including the latest improvements in SQL Server 2012—as he rips through the many powerful features aimed at developers.
Part 1 — T-SQL Enhancements. After kicking off with a quick introduction to SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT), the new database development environment for SQL Server in Visual Studio, we will examine the many enhancements made to the Transact-SQL language (T-SQL). We’ll dive into table-valued parameters, learning how to pass entire sets of rows between stored procedures and UDFs, and even marshal them easily across the network from client to server. We’ll then move on to MERGE, a powerful DML statement that combines the capabilities of four (or more) separate operations, and INSERT OVER DML to enhance your ability to capture change data from the OUTPUT clause of any DML statement. We’ll also look at the date and time data types, including support for time zone awareness. Then learn about the newest T-SQL enhancements in SQL Server 2012, such as the powerful windowing (OVER clause) enhancements, running and sliding aggregates, 22 new functions, the THROW statement, server-side paging, the SEQUENCE object, and new metadata discovery techniques.
Part 2 — .NET Data Access. Your .NET applications consume SQL Server data, and so we’ll examine the plethora of data access strategies available with the .NET Framework 4. We’ll examine the mechanics of language-integrated query (LINQ), and then compare conventional ADO.NET with LINQ To SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework. You’ll see how these object relational mapping (ORM) technologies work, and also learn how WCF Data Services and WCF RIA Services can be used to extend your data’s reach to the world.
Part 3 — Beyond Relational. The powerful “beyond relational” features will get you thinking outside the box with respect to the types of data that can be managed by a relational database system. Learn about the rich XML support in the database engine, including XSD, XPath, and XQuery. With the hierarchyid data type, you will learn how to cast a hierarchical structure over any relational table. Discover how FILESTREAM and FileTable greatly enhance your native ability to store large unstructured data (binary objects) in the database using the file system. We’ll also look at the geospatial data types that embeds location-intelligence into the database, and then build several location-aware applications on top of these new data types.
Part 4 — Enterprise Features. We’ll conclude with three extremely convenient enterprise-level data warehousing and security features: Change Data Capture (CDC), SQL Server Audit and Transparent Data Encryption (TDE). With CDC, you can monitor and record changes made to transactional tables without requiring any application changes or resorting to triggers. Enabling TDE automatically encrypts the entire database in the background, without increasing database size, and without requiring any code. And with SQL Server Audit, virtually any action taken by any user can be recorded for auditing in either the file system or the Windows event log.
Attend this information-packed day, and you’ll learn a ton of new SQL Server features!