In the first of a series of in-depth software reviews, Brad investigates a newcomer, SQL Virtual Restore. What does it aim to do? How does it achieve it? Why is it safe to use? What are the benefits? Brad aims to answer a range of questions fairly and squarely

It is a question every development manager dreads; “So how does your company handle database changes?”. The reply usually masks a multitude of sins against all the canons of version control. Mike has seen most of these sins and is keen to give you the awful warning, 'Neglect database source control at your peril'.

Does success in one field transfer to another?

One irritating thing for the occasional SQL Server Developer is that the experts assume that you are familiar with the use of number tables when they write about techniques. We therefore asked Greg Larsen to spell it out in a way that would help the beginner and intrigue those already familar with the technique.

Almost certainly, you use the results of Roy Fielding's work every day. After all, he was one of the principal authors of the HTTP specification, was active in developing HTML and the URI, defined REST, and remains one of the directors of the Apache Software Foundation, having co-founded the Apache HTTP Server that runs the bulk of the words webservers.

We were hired to protect the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of the data that is stored within the many databases throughout our companies, to backup these same databases and restore them when needed, to maximize and preserve the performance of these database and to architect and build data storage systems to which data is efficiently maintained.

I've been using an ASP.NET application, which my colleague Alex wrote some time ago: a simple Digg clone called Shovell. I've been planning to publish the application for a while, and have finally got round to posting it up here, along with full installation and usage instructions.

Arthur finds philosophy deep in a dialog box.

If you ever need to set up fine-grained rules to control the maximum size of messages a subset of your picky users can send or receive, Krishna Kumar has you covered. His step-by-step instructions will tell you everything you need to know to keep emails sizes under control.

One of the more important tasks in the process of rolling out incremental developments to a multi-server production system is to double-check that all of the planned modifications, and nothing else, have been deployed. An Oracle expert, Bruce Armstrong, comes across SQL Compare for Oracle, and sees if it helps with this time-consuming task.

To make progress as a relational Database programmer, you have to think in terms of sets, rather than lists, arrays or sequential data. Until that point, you'll feel the need to pass lists, arrays and the like to functions and procedures. Joe suggests some unusual ways around the difficulty and broods on the power of the VALUES constructor.

In retrospect, it was probably the inclusion of the OUTPUT clause in the MERGE statement that gave SQL Server 2008 its most powerful SQL enhancement.. It isn't the easiest of features to explain, but Bob does it in his usual clear and careful way.

Often, there is a huge difference between software being easy to use, and easy to develop. When your pilot users tell you "by week three of any development project you've thrown out anything that takes time or just gets in your way", then it is time to be serious about usability, as well as quality. We decided to find out from some of those at the sharp end of the development of Red Gate's SQL Source Control.

Why are they here? Why is anyone?

If you ever feel uneasy when you set about handcrafting database maintenance jobs for SQL Server, it may be the voice of your conscience saying 'Ola, Ola!'. Follow your conscience. Ola Hallengren has already crafted a superb set of routines to do this for you. Why reinvent something that does it all, safely and well. Brad McGehee explains....

It's a little like having a security firm visit your house and tell you about the weaknesses that a criminal might exploit and best practices that you can adopt to make yourself less vulnerable. Alex covers clearly and explains how and why they could be problems before providing working examples of how to avoid getting caught out.

Quite often at Red Gate, we are some of our own most enthusiastic software-users. SmartAssembly is a case in point. In the words of the current IT cliché, 'we eat our own dogfood'. We sent Andrew Clarke to find out more....

It is an interesting time for any .NET developer wanting to develop software for mobile phones. We've always taken it for granted that there would be a good .NET platform for mobile phones. Surely Microsoft aren't going to fumble the key component, Windows Phone 7, after getting the development tools so right.

Djonatas Tenfen demonstrates in fine detail how to quickly and easily build a mashup Silverlight application to consume and manipulate multiple data sources, and plot airports' realtime status onto a map.

Its long been a constant concern of mine that there are changes being made to databases that I manage that will one day trip me up. Someone will add just one too many columns to a table, or even drop a table, and an application will stop working. When was the change made, who made it, why, was it tested before it was rolled into live?