The Software Environment

We assume that you have already installed, or are capable of installing, Visual Studio.NET. The only thing to note regarding its use is that there are significant differences between available capabilities and behaviors of the visual database tools, depending on the edition of Visual Studio and the type of database that you use. Some of these differences are as follows.

Visual Studio Edition	Available Features
Standard	View tables and data, and execute stored procedures for SQL Server Desktop Engine and Access (MDB) databases.
Professional	View tables and data, and execute stored procedures for any database that has an OLEDB provider or ODBC driver.
	Design (create/modify) tables and views for SQL Server Desktop Engine databases.
Enterprise Developer or Architect	View tables and data, and execute stored procedures for any database that has an OLEDB provider or ODBC driver.
	Design (create/modify) tables, views, stored procedures, triggers, and functions for SQL Server Desktop Engine, SQL Server, and Oracle databases.

In parts of Chapters 1, 2 and 8 we use some features found only in the Enterprise Developer or Enterprise Architect versions of Visual Studio.

In Chapter 3 we provide step-by-step instructions for installing SQL Server 2000, in case you're not familiar with the process. We recommend that you back up or make a copy of the pubs sample database installed with SQL Server because many of the code examples use this database and some of them modify the data that it contains.

All the Business Cases and many of the other code samples use the Novelty database, which was designed specifically for this book. Both Chapters 3 and 8 show the development of SQL scripts to create this database. To use many of the code samples in the book, you must first create and populate the Novelty database on SQL Server 2000. The steps provided here are based on the assumption that the user (you, in most cases) logging in has the rights necessary to create a database on the server. Keep in mind that some people may refer to a database and actually mean the application that handles the data that is not the case anywhere in this book. When we use the word database, we explicitly mean the container of organized, relational data kept in SQL Server 2000.

Included in the download samples for this book, located at http://www.awprofessional.com/titles/0672323435, is the file NoveltyDB.sql, which is used to create the database. Complete the following steps to create the database on SQL Server 2000.

1. Open SQL Server Query Analyzer and log in to the desired SQL Server.

2. Open the NoveltyDB.sql file by first selecting the File menu and then Open and browsing to the location of the file on your computer.

3. Once open, the SQL code is displayed in a window for you to view.

4. Click on the Execute Query item on the toolbar. It is a green arrow to the right of a checkmark icon.

5. The script will execute and create the database. You can populate the database by repeating steps 2 4 and replacing the filename NoveltyDB.sql with any of the SQL files with the word "Data" in the name. The OrdersData.sql file is an example of the included files that will insert data into the database.

Finally, the original 1.0 release of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio.NET did not include the .NET Data Provider for ODBC. It is included in later releases, and you can download it separately from the Microsoft Web site (http://www.microsoft.com) if you need to do so. While there, you can also download the Microsoft .NET Data Provider for Oracle, if you use an Oracle database, although we don't specifically discuss that provider in this book.