Sparse columns will have Optimized storage format for NULL values. When we declare a column as SPARSE and if we insert NULL into that column, it will not take any space. These will be useful when there are more number of possible attributes and users ...

Often we want to find all the places the variable or selected member is used in current document. Reference Hightlighting makes very easier this. Just put the cursor on that word. It will automatically highlight all the references of the selected word i...

Visual Studio now came up with faster intellisense support. It is now 2-5 times faster than the earlier versions. It also has few functional enhancements. 1. In Visual Studio 2008, if we type the word, "test", intellisense will show only the members wh...

A nifty little feature that Microsoft has added is the Quick Search window. This isn't the same as the Search or Search and Replace window that searches for specific textual strings. It's different in the sense that it searches across symbols (methods, ...

Often when we are trying to debug/understand applications code, we always will see recursively from where the function is getting called or from this function, what are the other functions getting called. Especially in enterprise level applications, the...

Visual Studio 2010 provides search support for toolbox items. In toolbox, when you search for some word, it will show the control that matches with search word. On pressing tab key, focus will go to the next control that matches search text. You can se...

Now Visual Studio 2010 introduced a new functionality, "Detaching Window outside the IDE". You can drag the window outside the Visual Studio editor. You can keep the 2 windows side by side and compare. Before if you are working on dual monitor, you will...

VS 2010 now supports importing/exporting breakpoints to XML files – which you can then pass off to another developer, attach to a bug report, or simply re-load later. 1. Go to Debug -> Windows -> Breakpoints window, which shows all breakpoints 2. You c...

VS 2010 also now supports importing/exporting pinned DataTips to XML files – which you can then pass off to other developers, attach to a bug report, or simply re-load later. To export the datatips, choose Debug -> Export Datatips To import the datati...

While debugging code, we wants to see the variable data to be always visible, i.e. pin to solution, even when execution is away from the variable. In this scenario, Visual Studio 2010 provides variables data to be pinned. While debugging, select the va...