Two Projects
I have decided that the best way to have a more interactive community blog is to have posts that follow a project from start to finish. To accomplish this goal and because I know I get board if I only have one project I decided to start posting about two personal projects on this site. “theSystem” and another project “SOAK”. Each of these projects has entirely different goals and each will allow me to explore and learn about different areas of SQL Server (and its components….SSIS, Service Broker, Reporting Services, ect…)
The first is called “theSystem” and is my attempt to create a game engine based wholly SQL Server. I know this sound like a daunting task and may make someone to ask “why would you want to do this? “ The answer is simple, the challenge, I have been kicking around the idea o building a game engine since about 5th grade when I first came across nethack/rogue. I think SQL Server is up to the challenge, and when I say game engine I mean the game logic, functions, and data required making a game like this progress. If I ever get around to building a front end for it, it will be in something else…don’t know what. The current plan is to have all user functions available via stored procedures (either T-SQL or .NET) and make them available to users through and ODBC/OLE/JDBC connection and through the web via an XML interface.
· SQL Server 2005 based gaming engine
· All “business/game” logic to be encapsulated in SQL Server objects (T-SQL or .NET)
· All game data to be stored in SQL Server 2005
· All user functions to be available through ODBC/OLE/JDBC connections (XML Web Service when time allows)
· All users to get individual SQL Server accounts (we will see how this works out)
The second is “SOAK”, a Data Warehousing and Master Data Management project dedicated to collecting, consolidating, cleansing all of the publicly available datasets found on the web for free. (No sending off for CD’s or any other costs). The examples attached to this project will not only give overall view of how to do something in SSIS for instance but provide actual code for a particular data set that is usable by anyone who needs to gather this data. This system will also provide the ability for users to enter their own statistical information for given datasets to allow the system to grown on its own. The current plan is to have all user functions available via stored procedures (either T-SQL or .NET) and make them available to users through and ODBC/OLE/JDBC connection and through the web via an XML interface. Finally statistical information in the system should be made available through Reporting Services reports.
· Datasets to be pulled from the web for free
· Allow users to enter updated statistics/information on pre-defined datasets
· All user Functions to be available through ODBC/OLE/JDBC Connections(XML Web Service when time allows)
· All users to get individual SQL Server accounts (we will see how this works out)
· Provide reporting thru MS Reporting Services
Hopefully this will be a good learning experience for everyone including myself. If you see me going down the wrong path some let me know. I plan on making the code base of each project available on line. As each of these projects is flushed out I will utilize this post to document ground rules for each. Finally if you know of any other projects like these let me know… I did a quick Google search and couldn’t find anything resembling these two ideas so I figured I would try to take them on.