In the past I usually updated any local database changes directly at the server everytime I uploaded something. If your database is small and the changes occur not very often, this is not a big issue, but once the database grows and especially if you update something here and there very often, it is an absolute waste of time and annoying to do all this by hand. The SQL Management Studio does not really help you out like for example when you are trying to backup data or restore them again. You can connect to two databases, but you can't even have them side by side in a window and you certainly cannot drop anything from one db to the other. You will be able to copy some data from one table into a table of the other db, but that is pretty much about it.

Scripts are helpful, but if you are not a SQL pro and do not want to waste even more time getting involved with that (keep in mind I did most of my SQL coding in either LinQ or some other object releational mapper like EntitySpaces). I checked out some tools a year ago, but saw not really the need to purcase them (especially when you need these tools once a month for 5 minutes and they cost like 500 bucks). I think I bought something cheap and crappy for a few bugs, but it does not work anylonger and did not support my 64bit system. If you do a google search on sql tools you will find a lot of tools, and quite a lot cheap and crappy ones too, probably also quite a few free tools. But the more business related the problem is, the more unlikely it is to find freeware and open source (nobody wants to do this for free). Sometimes I get lucky and find exactly what I'm looking for and it only costs somethink like 19 bucks, then it is ok, even if you use it just for a short while.


Anyway, today I checked out some tools again, first the Teratrax Database Compare tool, which is nice and simple, but does cost quite a bit ($200 per developer). After I entered all the data for both databases it was able to figure out where there are changes, but once I tried to actually synchronize the database schemas (remember, I'm not interested in the data, copying that over is not so hard, I even have some functions in my code that do that) the program stopped and cleared all fields. I checked both dbs and nothing happend. I tried it some more times, but no errors appeared, it just did not work. This was very frustrating.


Instead I went to the next google search result ^^ It was SQL Compare 6 from Red-Gate. I'm already a Red-Gate customer (using the Ants Profiler quite a lot and recently have been using the new Exception Hunter tool), but I always found their SQL tools to expensive for me, especially since I do not do much SQL work (at least I don't want to ^^). Anyway, I fired up SQL Compare after installing their whole SQL toolbelt and quickly entered the connection data for both db connections, clicked next a couple of times, saw some nice statistics and messages and was all done. I checked my local database I used for testing and yes, everything from the other server was there, with default values, descriptions and so on. SQL Compare 6 is priced at around $300, so even more expensive then Teratrax and certainly more expensive than some of the other tools I have encountered. But it works and if I need it again for a few more times in the next 2 weeks (the trial period) I will probably buy it. The amazing thing is that they claim they have already 150 000 customers of the SQL tools, that is quite a lot of money they have generated with some developer-specific-tools. But then again, more than a million people have downloaded XNA Game Studio Express and I would not have guessed there are even so many programmers around (at least I do not see them in the real world, maybe they are all hiding).

Ok, end of story, all the boring database stuff is well again. Also makes generating database code much faster when done locally from a synchronized database instead of pulling the schema from some online server.

A friend of mine (Hi Frederic Schneider ^^) wrote a little article on gameports.net about the work conditions in the games sector, especially about game programmers, designers, artists and journalists. I also answered some questions. It is written in german and may only apply to Germany, but I guess it is not much different in other countries (relative low wages, not a good job security, lots of underpayed interns, long workhours).

Here is the article:

• http://www.gameports.net/cms/meldung,medien-kritik-an-arbeitsbedingungen-in-der-spielebranche,2292.html

And here is a followup article:

• http://www.gameports.net/cms/artikel,medien-eine-branche-im-aufwrtstrend,801.html

In case you run into the following error:

Could not load file or assembly 'xunit, Version=7.10.25.1028, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
    System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'xunit, Version=7.10.25.1028, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
    File name: 'xunit, Version=7.10.25.1028, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'
    at Xunit.TdNet.TdNetRunner.RunTests(Type type, MethodInfo method, ITestListener listener, TestRunState& runState)
    at Xunit.TdNet.TdNetRunner.RunMethod(MethodInfo method, ITestListener testListener)
    at TestDriven.TestRunner.AdaptorTestRunner.Run(ITestListener testListener, ITraceListener traceListener, String assemblyPath, String testPath)
    at TestDriven.TestRunner.ThreadTestRunner.Runner.Run()
    
    WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF.
    To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1.
    Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging.
    To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].

This usually just means you have installed a newer version of xunit (in my case 1.0.0.1105), but you also had an older (beta, rc, etc.) version of xunit before, which maybe used the xunit.installer.exe utility to add support to TestDriven.NET 2.x or ReSharper 3.0. Just disable the support with this tool, Visual Studio and TestDriven (or ReSharper) work fine with the new version without that extra tool. In fact you can delete it after you have disabled all options.

Hi everyone,

I prepared some new exciting blog posts, especially about XNA and I will post them shortly and also quite a few things will change at this blog. Stay tuned.

Recently one of my companies (namely realis) moved to Hamburg and I have a new PC at the new office, where I installed Visual Studio 2008 and everything else I needed. After I downloaded the latest source code files from Team System, I ran into some problems. BTW: The Team System trial will end next month and I will probably not switch back to SubVersion, but instead go back to Visual SourceSafe since the integration is the best in Visual Studio. Team System is nice to have but absolutely not something important for me as I'm most of the time the only guy using it anyways.

Back to the Problem. After I loaded the main solution the 2 web applications in it were unable to be loaded. The rest of the projects did load fine and worked after a while until I had all the missing Assemblies installed (xunit, Ajax stuff, Silverlight, IronPython, EntitySpaces, etc.). But even after making sure Silverlight and the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio Alpha was installed and working (checked it by creating a new Silverlight project, which worked fine), I was still unable to load those projects. I thought at first maybe something went wrong when I checked in or out all the files, but after testing it on my laptop this was not the issue, all files are intact. Everything worked just fine on my laptop, where I had done most of my work during the move and first weeks until everything was finally working here.

After digging around a bit I went back to the IIS were those 2 websites should run on and they did not run yet (not compiled yet, no wonder). But even after I pointed to some dummy website the IIS did throw out some errors (first some dlls were missing, they were quickly replaced, then some security issues with Vista, also easy). Then I pointed back to the location of the projects and made sure IIS was working this time. Now I could go back to Visual Studio and finally load the web projects.

If you have such a InteropServices.COMException, try to see if you have missed something like the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio Alpha and then figure out if your IIS is working. You can also edit the .csproj file and remove the references to IIS at the very end of the file to see if the project can then be loaded (using IIS again is not hard through the project properties).

Hope this helps (phase stolen from ScottGu, btw: really cool stuff going on over there, the ASP.NET MVC framework is nice and the .NET Framework SourceCode is very helpful!)