Northwind Community Edition

Source code checked in, #80132

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Source code checked in, #80131

Project Collection Service Accounts — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:43:10 GMT

Checked in by server upgrade

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

shanselman — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:32:24 GMT

Yes, no one really rallied around this project. Happy for any help.
--

Scott Hanselman

On Mar 29, 2012, at 10:21 AM, "nlinus" <notifications@codeplex.com> wrote:

From: nlinus

It looks like this project has been abandoned, but I still think there could be something to building a database that'd take the place of northwind/adventureworks. What if the efforts were made to build a database for something like NerdDinner, but that could be used for charity events? There's a lot of different types of data that would be stored and with the Db we could do something good for the community as well as providing good samples for devs.

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

nlinus — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:21:01 GMT

It looks like this project has been abandoned, but I still think there could be something to building a database that'd take the place of northwind/adventureworks. What if the efforts were made to build a database for something like NerdDinner, but that could be used for charity events? There's a lot of different types of data that would be stored and with the Db we could do something good for the community as well as providing good samples for devs.

New Post: Community Edition = dead?

dotnetgreg — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:42:20 GMT

Anything new for this ... the suggested added capabilities would be real nice.

New Post: Where to get the old Northwind, Pubs

Godigo — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 20:26:04 GMT

Thanks, LARK :-)

Source code checked in, #55373

_TFSSERVICE — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:49:34 GMT

Checked in by server upgrade

New Post: Community Edition = dead?

strivinglife — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:09:36 GMT

Based on the stats, it looks like people visit this project (I'm sure it helps that http://sqlserversamples.codeplex.com/ links over here), but is there really no activity on this project?

Any suggestions on alternatives?

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

shaharyar — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:05:11 GMT

@AaronL:

That sounds great!

We could put the database in its own "secured" environment with all it's tests associated.

Having another project containing the logic and samples to access that particular database.

Very are getting there! ;-)

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

AaronL — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:06:31 GMT

True DBPro only comes under either Developer or Database which are both team system editions so the sku is limited to those who would have it (and I’m not going to even touch the “just DBA’s” comment J)

Regarding DBPro, personally I’ve been using it off and on since the originally CTPs, and consistently since the first of this year. I absolutely agree that DBPro would be more widely used if it was in a sku that wasn’t Team system specific, but on the other hand it does have a many strengths which have been discussed, like the unit testing and datagen that have been mentioned.

As you mention below that the question of who is the intended audience is as Northwind was used for both database presentations/learning as well as application layer presentations/learning. I agree with you that it should be separated out.

However if we separated it out, why wouldn’t we build the DB with DBPro and the sample projects (the one for just developers J) that only reference the output of the database project?

Just continuing the discussion. J

From: darren [mailto:notifications@codeplex.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 5:35 PM
To: aaron_m_lowe@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Not Northwind Planning [NorthwindCommunity:28681]

From: darren

@AaronL - VS for Database Professionals really is only seen a whole lot with people who use Team Suite or people that are just DBA's. I would venture to say that most people won't have it or won't install VSTS on a VM for a demo. While it would be nice to use it to generate the script, I don't think we'll be able to get away with that kind of dependency. I personally have access to it, but don't have it installed currently as part of my VSTS setup because i never use it.

@shaharyar - the .zip files should only be created on release builds. normal day to day development shouldn't be creating these.

I believe what we are looking at here is 2 conceptually different projects: the changes/updating of northwind and sample projects. I would suggest approaching these like so:

The project that is changing/updating/expanding the northwind data and schema will most likely be getting rapid changes and should be based on scripts that generate the database (we could look into following this model). This should have unit tests associated with it to make sure that we don't break anything. Releases will generate .sql files for supported databases.

The project that contains sample projects should only reference release version .sql files and create the database or should have the pre-generated database file in the app_data folder. This will allow the developers to update the sample applications only when the changes to the database have been approved an accepted. This way we can also build sample applications with the stock northwind database until we have time to start updating / changing / extending it.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

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New Post: Not Northwind Planning

darren — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:34:50 GMT

@shaharyar - the .zip files should only be created on release builds. normal day to day development shouldn't be creating these.

I believe what we are looking at here is 2 conceptually different projects: the changes/updating of northwind and sample projects. I would suggest approaching these like so:

Thoughts? Suggestions?

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

shaharyar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:35:09 GMT

As stated earlier, we should build on the basics of the available Northwind Database.

The current database is perfect for all days use. The ONLY thing it lacks is not being up to date with latest technologies.

Adapt the old database to SQL 2008 first. Then decide on the basic project to retreive data from it.

During the database construction/design we'll face a lot of changes and updates which will require us to change all the additional .sql/zip files or generate them every time.

Steps which would ease the pain and actually move the project forward would be:

Create an ASP.NET MVC Project (might also be some other project template else, just using MVC because it's too cool to be true ;-))
Create new Northwind Database
As shanselman said: Put the database in the App_Data dir of the project.
We are now ready to build upon this initial project setup.

Deciding too much at a too early stage only causes trouble later on ;-).

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

shanselman — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:15:00 GMT

Interesting point. I'd like both, a project AND a zip file.

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:56 PM, AaronL <notifications@codeplex.com> wrote:

From: AaronL

As jwcarroll stated, I’m all for starting off small and then building upon it.

As far as release strategy, most Codeplex project released as Visual Studio projects with a build file. Why not follow suit utilizing Visual Studio for Database Professionals? This would have the added benefit of integrating straight into TFS on Codeplex and we could include Data Generation plans and Unit Tests and the build file is just a .sql file.

Thoughts?

From: darren [mailto:[email removed]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 2:10 PM
To: [email removed]
Subject: Re: Not Northwind Planning [NorthwindCommunity:28681]

From: darren

I would say data dump to .sql/.mdf, then extract data into seperate human readable files that can be combined into a script. The advantages of having something like an xml file is that we can isolate changes to related data and multiple people can work on different parts all at the same time without having to do crazy diff's against one big giant text file. It also allows us to isolate the data so that the generated script can be different based on the target database. Cons are that now we have to figure out a way to generate the script and we have the angle bracket tax.

For the release strategy, the following is under the concept if we went with a generated script approach. I think what would be ideal is if we made an MSBuild task or leveraged an existing community one as well as continuous integration so that when we decide to do a release, it would go and generate a .sql file for each database we want to support, and optionally a native data file for each database we want to support. Generating the data file is a bit tricky as we would need the integration to run on a machine that has the server installed so that we could run the sql script on it then grab the data. I'm not sure what level of CI support CodePlex has in comparison to TFS, so all of this would depend. Without CI, we could just run the build script and then upload the script to releases as well.

I am very much for the idea of doing an initial release right now of sql server 2008 script / mdf as well as a script that will work on sql azure (if that's how it's done). I believe i have access to sql azure, but i'll have to double check. I could tackle figuring out what needs to be done to create a sql azure database and how we could get northwind data on it.

Read the full discussion online.

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To start a new discussion for this project, email NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com

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Read the full discussion online.

To add a post to this discussion, reply to this email (NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com)

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http://www.hanselman.com

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

AaronL — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:56:00 GMT

As jwcarroll stated, I’m all for starting off small and then building upon it.

As far as release strategy, most Codeplex project released as Visual Studio projects with a build file. Why not follow suit utilizing Visual Studio for Database Professionals? This would have the added benefit of integrating straight into TFS on Codeplex and we could include Data Generation plans and Unit Tests and the build file is just a .sql file.

Thoughts?

From: darren [mailto:notifications@codeplex.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 2:10 PM
To: aaron_m_lowe@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Not Northwind Planning [NorthwindCommunity:28681]

From: darren

I would say data dump to .sql/.mdf, then extract data into seperate human readable files that can be combined into a script. The advantages of having something like an xml file is that we can isolate changes to related data and multiple people can work on different parts all at the same time without having to do crazy diff's against one big giant text file. It also allows us to isolate the data so that the generated script can be different based on the target database. Cons are that now we have to figure out a way to generate the script and we have the angle bracket tax.

For the release strategy, the following is under the concept if we went with a generated script approach. I think what would be ideal is if we made an MSBuild task or leveraged an existing community one as well as continuous integration so that when we decide to do a release, it would go and generate a .sql file for each database we want to support, and optionally a native data file for each database we want to support. Generating the data file is a bit tricky as we would need the integration to run on a machine that has the server installed so that we could run the sql script on it then grab the data. I'm not sure what level of CI support CodePlex has in comparison to TFS, so all of this would depend. Without CI, we could just run the build script and then upload the script to releases as well.

I am very much for the idea of doing an initial release right now of sql server 2008 script / mdf as well as a script that will work on sql azure (if that's how it's done). I believe i have access to sql azure, but i'll have to double check. I could tackle figuring out what needs to be done to create a sql azure database and how we could get northwind data on it.

Read the full discussion online.

To add a post to this discussion, reply to this email (NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com)

To start a new discussion for this project, email NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this discussion on CodePlex. You can unsubscribe on codePlex.com.

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New Post: Not Northwind Planning

darren — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:10:07 GMT

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

jwcarroll — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:17:40 GMT

This sounds pretty good to me. We can be lean about how we proceed and see where it goes from there. If we try and make the solution slice bread and solve world hunger nothing will ever happen.

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 2:13 PM, shanselman <notifications@codeplex.com> wrote:

From: shanselman

Well, then maybe we pivot on deliverables:

* 2008 .MDF file for /App_data and autoattach scenarios.
* Database in XML form?
* Updated .SQL File? or just re-release it here so it can be easily found?

Thoughts?

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:10 AM, darren <notifications@codeplex.com> wrote:

From: darren

After re-reading the main page and what this project was targeting I think there are two parts to this project.

The script to generate the database.

The sample application(s)

And I think the glue for the project is the motto that it should "just work." The question we now face since this project started is, how should it "just work." Who are we trying to target here? Are we targeting people who do demo's on throw away machines? or are we targeting developers who want to look at/run/debug the code, or both?

For demo people it really depends on what they are demoing. I would guess that if it's just a simple application on a throw away virtual machine they are probably just running sql server express. Unless they are demoing websites running in the cloud, in which case is Sql Azure (which is very important as it didn't exist publicly when this project started).

For developers just wanting to jump in and see how we did the sample code I would guess sql server express also, however it's not unfeasible to believe that they might have a sql server 2005/08 server in which they run the script on. They could be in the azure category also.

To summarize, we need to pick what we want to do first and what we want to support, and do it well. I would suggest we extract the existing data into a more workable form (xml files or what not) that can be used to generate the sql for multiple databases (sql server 2008 for sure, with option of sql azure). Then once we have this, we can go about updating the data and building sample applications. But at least if we can deliver a script to generate the existing schema and data on 2008 and SQL Azure, then I think it would be beneficial to the community (let them continue using their existing sample apps for now).

Read the full discussion online.

To add a post to this discussion, reply to this email (NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com)

To start a new discussion for this project, email NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com

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Please note: Images and attachments will be removed from emails. Any posts to this discussion will also be available online at codeplex.com

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http://www.hanselman.com

Read the full discussion online.

To add a post to this discussion, reply to this email (NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com)

To start a new discussion for this project, email NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com

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New Post: Not Northwind Planning

shanselman — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:13:10 GMT

Well, then maybe we pivot on deliverables:

* 2008 .MDF file for /App_data and autoattach scenarios.

* Database in XML form?

* Updated .SQL File? or just re-release it here so it can be easily found?

Thoughts?

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:10 AM, darren <notifications@codeplex.com> wrote:

From: darren

After re-reading the main page and what this project was targeting I think there are two parts to this project.

The script to generate the database.

The sample application(s)

And I think the glue for the project is the motto that it should "just work." The question we now face since this project started is, how should it "just work." Who are we trying to target here? Are we targeting people who do demo's on throw away machines? or are we targeting developers who want to look at/run/debug the code, or both?

For demo people it really depends on what they are demoing. I would guess that if it's just a simple application on a throw away virtual machine they are probably just running sql server express. Unless they are demoing websites running in the cloud, in which case is Sql Azure (which is very important as it didn't exist publicly when this project started).

For developers just wanting to jump in and see how we did the sample code I would guess sql server express also, however it's not unfeasible to believe that they might have a sql server 2005/08 server in which they run the script on. They could be in the azure category also.

To summarize, we need to pick what we want to do first and what we want to support, and do it well. I would suggest we extract the existing data into a more workable form (xml files or what not) that can be used to generate the sql for multiple databases (sql server 2008 for sure, with option of sql azure). Then once we have this, we can go about updating the data and building sample applications. But at least if we can deliver a script to generate the existing schema and data on 2008 and SQL Azure, then I think it would be beneficial to the community (let them continue using their existing sample apps for now).

Read the full discussion online.

To add a post to this discussion, reply to this email (NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com)

To start a new discussion for this project, email NorthwindCommunity@discussions.codeplex.com

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New Post: Not Northwind Planning

darren — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:09:53 GMT

After re-reading the main page and what this project was targeting I think there are two parts to this project.

The script to generate the database.
The sample application(s)

And I think the glue for the project is the motto that it should "just work." The question we now face since this project started is, how should it "just work." Who are we trying to target here? Are we targeting people who do demo's on throw away machines? or are we targeting developers who want to look at/run/debug the code, or both?

For demo people it really depends on what they are demoing. I would guess that if it's just a simple application on a throw away virtual machine they are probably just running sql server express. Unless they are demoing websites running in the cloud, in which case is Sql Azure (which is very important as it didn't exist publicly when this project started).

For developers just wanting to jump in and see how we did the sample code I would guess sql server express also, however it's not unfeasible to believe that they might have a sql server 2005/08 server in which they run the script on. They could be in the azure category also.

To summarize, we need to pick what we want to do first and what we want to support, and do it well. I would suggest we extract the existing data into a more workable form (xml files or what not) that can be used to generate the sql for multiple databases (sql server 2008 for sure, with option of sql azure). Then once we have this, we can go about updating the data and building sample applications. But at least if we can deliver a script to generate the existing schema and data on 2008 and SQL Azure, then I think it would be beneficial to the community (let them continue using their existing sample apps for now).

New Post: Not Northwind Planning

shanselman — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:49:20 GMT

Ah, just for putting in App_data? Certainly. It's easier than the .SQL file we have now. That's a good idea!

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 9:47 AM, shaharyar <notifications@codeplex.com> wrote:

From: shaharyar

if planning is all what's missing, then start it simple..

what about just replicating the 100k years old Northwind database in the SQL Server 2008 environment as a mdf database? - it would totally allow us to distribute it easily

good or bad idea?

Read the full discussion online.

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New Post: Not Northwind Planning

shaharyar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:46:55 GMT

if planning is all what's missing, then start it simple..

what about just replicating the 100k years old Northwind database in the SQL Server 2008 environment as a mdf database? - it would totally allow us to distribute it easily

good or bad idea?