Free Yourself from Writing Common Functions with AGS SQL Server 2005 Utilities

Software Spotlight

Product:

AGS SQL Server Utilities

Version:

1.0.2149.26346

Publisher:

GeckoWare Australia*

Price:

$49.99

Developers play an important role in today’s IT environment. However, most of these developers spend valuable time developing common functions, like checking the leap year and reading or writing to the event log. AGS SQL Server 2005 Utilities can provide some of the common functions you need in .Net for SQL Server 2005, without you having to develop them yourself.

Installation and Configuration

No installation is needed to use AGS SQL Server 2005 Utilities. You just download the zipped file and extract it. A T-SQL script is available within the Help file, which you’ll need to execute.

You’ll need to modify the DLL path in the script. After running the script, you need to enable “clr enabled” by running the sp_configure stored procedure.

(sp_configure ‘clr enabled’ , 1)

After running the script, one stored procedure and twenty seven functions will be created in the master database.


Figure 1. List of functions installed by the AGE SQL Server 2005 Utility.

Instead of having to configure the tool manually, I would like to see the application use aa installation program for the install, although the manual installation is very easy.

Product Overview

The functions can be divided into nine categories.

Compress Functions

Compress functions are useful for users to compress values. Two compress methods, Deflate and GZip are available with this utility, as well as the respective decompress methods.

Function

Purpose

AGS_Deflate_Compress

Compresses an input value using the Deflate (RFC 1951) algorithm.

AGS_Deflate_DeCompress

De-compresses an input buffer which has been compressed by AGS_Deflate_Compress using the Deflate (RFC 1951) algorithm.

AGS_Gzip_Compress

Compresses an input value using the Gzip (RFC 1952) algorithm.

AGS_Gzip_DeCompress

De-compresses an input buffer which has been compressed by AGS_Gzip_Compress using the Deflate (RFC 1952) algorithm.

Date Functions

Leap year checking is the only date function that is available with this utility. I believe more functions in this category could be added to make it more useful.

Function

Purpose

AGS_IsLeapYear

Returns true or false to indicate if the year passed is a leap year.

Encryption Functions

Encryption is the most important function that developers use due to security reasons. This utility provides the Hash and Rijndael encryption algorithms. The Rijndael encryption algorithm is the most common used type.

Function

Purpose

AGS_Hash

Hashes an input value using the Hash type selected.

AGS_Rijndael_Encrypt

Encrypts an input value using the Rijndael Encryption algorithm.

AGS_Rijndael_DeEncrypt

Decrypts an input value using the Rijndael Encryption algorithm.

Event Log Functions

Most of you will need to read and write to the event log. Those functions also provided with this utility. Because the readfromeventlog function returns values in table format, you can use WHERE, GROUP, and ORDER commands to suit your requirements.


Figure 2. Values returned in table format by readtfromeventlog.

Continues…

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