Chapter 27: .NET Programming with SQL Server 2005

Overview

SQL Server 2005 is the first version of this database product that hosts the .NET runtime. In fact, it is the first new version of Microsoft’s SQL Server product in nearly six years. It allows running .NET assemblies in the SQL Server process. Furthermore, it enables you to create stored procedures, functions, and data types with .NET programming languages such as C# and Visual Basic.

In this chapter, you will find the following:

• Hosting the .NET runtime with SQL Server

• Classes from the namespace System.Data.SqlServer

• Creating user-defined types

• Creating user-defined aggregates

• Stored procedures

• User-defined functions

• Triggers

• XML data types

Tip 

SQL Server 2005 also has many new features that are not directly associated with the CLR, such as many T-SQL improvements, but they are not covered in this book. To get more information about these features you can read Wrox’s SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Starter Kit (Wiley Publishing, Inc., ISBN 0-7645-8923-7).

The samples in this chapter make use of a ProCSharp database that you can download with the code samples, and the AdventureWorks database. The AdventureWorks database is a sample database from Microsoft that you can install as optional component with SQL Server 2005.