SQL Server: Why is my Transaction Log Full?

One of the more common questions asked about SQL Server is: "Why is my Transaction Log full?" Gail Shaw posts about this at SQL Server Central.

Searching SQL Server Tables by Keyword

Sometimes it is necessary to search a database table by keyword. In other words return all rows that have a text string similar to the required string--or the inverse, don't return any rows with the matching text string. Obviously, this can be a performance intensive task. Over at SQL Server Central, Todd Fifield posts about how to do so with better performance the obvious way--using 'LIKE'.

Mole 2010: Debugging Tool for Visual Studio 2010

If you are developing with Visual Studio 2010, you may want to look at this debugger--it seems interesting.

Agile: Planning, Testing, Costing

I came across several articles on Agile. Shane Hastie at InfoQ points out that Agile does not mean 'no planning', Dan Puckett talks about trying to cost control in Scrum (hint: a bad idea) and Bob Lewis discusses 'Agile vs Haphazard development' and testing.

WCF Web APIs

Quoting from a post at InfoQ:

Most developers first use WCF as a way to expose SOAP-based Web Services. But despite the name, Web Services are not really well suited for building web sites. XML and JSON-based REST services are simply a better fit for most projects. Microsoft has recognized this and is working on a project to bring WCF up to date with modern standards.

The post goes on to note that Microsoft is releasing on CodePlex a set of libraries called 'WCF Web APIs' to address the issue.

MonoDroid

Over at InfoQ, I found a post about MonoDroid.  MonoDroid enables developers to write .NET applications for the Android OS.

Extracting Files From an MSI

A co-worker of mine found it is possible to extract files from an MSI by adding this registry entry: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Msi.Package\shell\Extract MSI\command]

@="msiexec.exe /a \"%1\" /qb TARGETDIR=\"%1 Extracted\""