Linux ODBC connection to MS SQL on Virtual Box Windows

From some time I was looking for a way to develop MS SQL connected application on Linux. I want to create a bridge between two applications and one of them stores data in Microsoft SQL. Since Kubuntu Linux is my development platform of choice I needed a way to be able to connect to the database from my system.

There are several obstacles to overcome, of which the most annoying is that you can’t put MS SQL on Linux directly. There might be a dozen solutions to this (like having an additional Windows/MS SQL server) I prefer to keep all the needed things on my dev box.

Since I have Windows 7 RC downloaded and there’s a free download of Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 I decided to put Virtual Box to hard work for me.

Read more…

Git as a branch container and Visual Studio

One of the features, that differentiates Git from other DSCM like Bazaar and non-distributed SCM like Subversion, is that it holds all of your branches within .git repository that’s in your working copy directory.

Some of devs consider it a disadvantage: you get main development line and all of the branches in one working copy; others as an advantage – since you get all the repository in one directory.

Git: private repositories on shared hosting

“You are a developer, software engineer, web designer, text writer… You want your files accessible from all the places (like a source for your project or a template for a website) – and you want to be sure that it is always the most up to date version…

Sure you can drag those files along on a USB stick and copy it forth and back. You have those files even if there’s no Internet access. Important? Sure but…”

Remember this? I have written very similar article on using Bazaar-NG for private repositories on shared hosting. It is time to make the same with git – which is becoming very popular due to its robustness and support from Linus and kernel devs themselves.

With MinGW Git port (no need for Cygwin!) coming to the light – git now looks as a great alternative to both Subversion and Bazaar.

Update:  With latest release a preliminary support for git-svn has been brought!

Let’s get things started.