As I was surfing through StackOverflow today, I noticed a question that got me thinking.  This developer had been working with a classic ASP application that used MySQL for it’s backend database.  The project on his plate was to convert this application to ASP.NET with MS-SQL as the database.  The only problem he encountered was the fact that passwords were stored in the database using a MySQL-specific hashing algorithm called via the PASSWORD() function.  He needed a way to convert these passwords to .NET. Given that I have a MySQL database laying around, I decided to poke...

Recently I’ve been debating moving my site over to a Windows VPS.  If I make this move, I’m hoping to take advantage of the new features available in Windows Server 2008 as well as .NET 3.5 SP1 and IIS 7.  After some preliminary research, I decided to give KickAssVPS.com a try.  Within a few hours of my order, they had my VPS up and running, and so far I’ve been fairly pleased with the performance. When I logged into my VPS, one of the things I wanted to install right away was SQL Server 2008.  In order for SQL Server 2008 to install, you must first have installed the...