The Yukon Quintet (with Apologies to Lawrence Durrell and Robert Service)

Fawcette Technical Publications (FTPOnline) published on August 26, 2005 the last of my five recent Visual Studio Magazine columns about new features in SQL Server 2005, the database formerly known as Yukon. Following are links and brief descriptions of (decks for) the columns in ascending date sequence:

• Exploit Yukon's XML Data Type. Take advantage of SQL Server 2005’s new native XML data type to add XML columns to a table, populate and index the columns, and understand basic XQuery syntax.
• Migrate to SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. Take advantage of new SQL Server 2005 features, GUI administration, and XCopy or ClickOnce deployment with SQL Express and Express Manager.
• Encrypt and Decrypt Data in Yukon. SQL Server 2005's engine-based, data-encryption functions protect confidential information from unauthorized access and disclosure, and offer native key management as a bonus.
• Take Advantage of New T-SQL Features. New T-SQL keywords implement TRY...CATCH error handling, pivot aggregate values to create crosstab tables, rank and partition rowsets, generate temporary in-memory tables with common table expressions, and more.
• Create Interoperable Native Web Services. Yukon lets you take advantage of the new kernel-mode Http.sys listener and eliminates the need for IIS to process ASMX files or SQLXML 3.0 templates that implement Web services.

Each article has a downloadable Visual Studio 2005 Visual Basic project that demonstrates the features described in the article. Click the Get The Code link in the Article Tools group on the first page of each article to download the project's ZIP file. Enjoy. --rj