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Posted October 7, 2003

View System UDF Definitions With T-SQL
I thought Roman Rehak's Database Design column, "Reuse SQL Code Easily With UDFs" [September 2003], was excellent and worth reading. He stated that users can't view the system UDF definition from Enterprise Manager. However, users can view the system UDF definition with Transact-SQL (T-SQL) like this:

use master
go
select routine_definition
from information_schema.routines
where routine_type='Function' 
and routine_schema = 'system_function_schema'
and routine_name =    'fn_RowCountEstimate'
go

Narasimhan Jayachandran, Omaha, Neb.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked the article. You brought up a good point worth mentioning. Even though Enterprise Manager hides function definitions for system UDFs, you can still retrieve them with Transact-SQL because they're stored in a system table in the master database. The function definition is stored in the text column in the syscomments table. Your query uses the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES system view; you can use this view to extract many details about UDFs and stored procedures from the system tables. I should also mention that Microsoft highly recommends using the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views for querying system tables because they are ANSI SQL-92 standard compliant and guaranteed not to change between SQL Server versions, even when the system table structure changes in the future releases of SQL Server. —R.R.

GDI+ Feature Not New
I read with great interest Bill Wagner's article, "Leverage New Graphics Capabilities" [September 2003]. I just wrote a white paper for my company on using the GDI+ transformations for our own application.

I must point out that Bill erred every time he said that the world transformation was a new feature of GDI+ and something that you could not do in GDI32. Under NT, you have been able to do it since 3.1 that I know of. The API contains a SetWorldTransform() that allows you to set the transform matrix. For it to have any effect, you must call the magic API, SetGraphicsMode(). You can SetMapMode() to set the world space units.

Bill is very right to say GDI+ makes it much easier, because you have to build the matrix yourself in GDI32. But all things can be done in GDI32.

My other point is trivial. I'm kind of disappointed that Bill didn't note that a simple scale of 1.0 in the x direction and -1.0 in the y direction changes the y-axis to positive up, just like the old Cartesian system.

Thanks for a good article.

John J. Reilly

Correction:
Due to an editorial error, VSM ran an incorrect version of the First Look review of Wise for Visual Studio .NET 5.0, Enterprise Edition, "Simplify .NET Deployments" [October 2003]. In contrast to what was stated, Wise does offer built-in support for installing the .NET Framework automatically if it's missing from the destination computer. Statements to the contrary should be stricken from the fifth paragraph, from the final sentence of the review, and from the "Cons" section. The correct version of this product review is available online at www.visualstudiomagazine.com. VSM regrets the error.