Professional SQL Server™ 2005 Programming

Chapter 14. Nothing But NET!

In terms of where to locate a subject in my books, this subject has to be the hardest one to place I've ever had to deal with. At issue is how fundamental the addition of .NET assemblies is to SQL Server programming in the SQL Server 2005 era versus how much it is shared between the various programming topics and how much of it happens in its own world. Oh well, obviously I made a choice, and that choice was to hold the introduction of major .NET elements until we had all the major SQL Server-specific programming elements covered. So, that done, here we go.

.NET and all things related to it were just on the horizon when SQL Server 2000 came out. It's been a long wait since early 2000 (yes, even before SQL Server 2000 was out) when I first heard that T-SQL was finally going to accept code from non T-SQL languages. The story just got better and better as we heard that complex user-defined data types would be supported, and T-SQL itself would become a .NET language with associated error handling. And so it is here, and the days of the old claustrophobic TSQL are gone, and we have a wide world of possibilities available to us.

In this chapter, we're going to take a look at some of the major elements that .NET has brought to SQL Server 2005. We'll see such things utilizing .NET as:

• Creating basic assemblies — including non T-SQL based stored procedures, functions, and triggers

• Defining aggregate functions (something T-SQL user defined functions can't do) ...