The other day I posted on the limitation on build numbers. Well Neil Enns has delved into this topic a little bit more, and I wanted to post about it as well … Why are build numbers limited to 65535.
I have been anticipating the release of Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition (formerly Everywhere Edition). They have just released it on January 11 2007. I have been watching this project the past few months, and I am looking forward to using this on an upcoming project I will working on.
Quote from the Overview:
“Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition (SQL Server Compact Edition) is designed for developers who need light weight, in process relational database solution for their applications that can be developed and deployed on desktop as well as on mobile devices. SQL Server Compact Edition Runtime can be used to develop and deploy applications on desktop.
SQL Server Compact Edition is a powerful, yet lightweight relational database engine that makes it easy to develop desktop applications by supporting familiar Structured Query Language (SQL) syntax and providing a development model and API consistent with SQL Server. When compared to its previous release, SQL Server Mobile, SQL Server Compact Edition includes new features like |DataDirectory| and ClickOnce support for ease of deployment (Please see SQL Server Compact Edition Readme)”
I usually pride myself in figuring out any problems I may have while developing. Well one popped up the other day on me and I couldn’t figure out why, well I just changed a couple numbers just to get the build working again and continued on. I had many things to get done and I wanted to come back to this problem when I had more time.
Well the time just passed on by and I actually forgot all about it. Well today I just happened to stumble across a post by Frans Bouma. Just wanted to say thank you Frans for the post. I would never have thought about 16 bits numbers.
Most programmers know how to use an explicit cast. In C# the way of handling is as follows:
int i = 0;
decimal d = 3.4M;
i = (int)d;
This is a trivial case and my main point is how will the explicit casting operation handle null references.
When attempting to cast a null reference to another reference type, the casting will not throw an exception. So be careful after attempting to access a method or property from a reference after casting, it is a possibility the reference is set to null. I (try to) always check for a null reference before attempting to cast in hoping I will save some CPU cycles.