• A small yet extraordinarily powerful programming language, Lua achieved its popularity early on as a video game scripting language and has since evolved into a general purpose programming language that is compact enough to fit on a variety of host platforms
• This book provides programmers, game developers, and Web site developers with an in-depth look at the various aspects of programming in Lua
• Complete code samples with practical applications and robust error handling offers beginners helpful learning tools
• Diagrams provide a visual glimpse behind the scenes of important Lua features such as stacks, hash tables, garbage collection, lexical scope, and function closures
• Features discussions on managing memory, garbage collection, using libraries, strings, tables, extending Lua, event handling, databases, and Web and game programming

Professional SQL Server 2005 Programming shows experienced developers how to master the substantially revamped feature set of the latest release of Microsoft SQL Server. The book begins with a concise overview of the new features of SQL Server that is of interest to experienced developers. This is especially important given the substantial changes to SQL Server with this release. From there, the book quickly moves on to the “meat” of the title. Beginning-level material has been removed to provide more room for covering new features and more extensive code examples.

SQL Server 2005 offers the capability to write code in a .NET language that can be compiled and run inside SQL Server. CLR Integration, or SQL CLR, lets you create stored procedures, user-defined types, triggers, table valued functions, and aggregates using a .NET managed language. You can read and write to resources outside of SQL Server and enjoy a tighter integration with XML, web services, and simple file and logging capabilities.
Here's the reference you'll want on your desk as you develop SQL CLR solutions. It helps you decide whether to use SQL CLR, how to lock down security, and learn from real examples. If you want to develop stored procedures or other objects in .NET for SQL Server 2005, this book offers exactly what you need.
What you will learn from this book

• The concepts and architecture of SQL CLR
• Uses of .NET namespaces in SQL Server programming tasks
• How to develop and benchmark routines in T-SQL and .NET to determine when CLR-based solutions are advantageous
• How to replace extended stored procedures using SQL CLR stored procedures
• How to use SQL CLR objects in external applications
• How to restrict and secure SQL CLR object capabilities
• Processes and procedures for deploying SQL CLR objects

Who this book is for
This book is for developers and architects who are familiar with .NET concepts as well as DBAs who, although developers in their own right, may be slightly less up to date on .NET. A solid grounding in T-SQL is necessary.
Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.