Visual C# / SQL RAD + Finance

[daW0lverine]

Hello all,

I used to be relatively well versed in .Net back when 2.0 was still the latest framework and I have stayed out of the loop for a few years. Looking to kick in a new pet project, I am interested in developing in Visual C# / SQL again.

I am looking for your input on a few topics if you may :
1) SQL : what is now the best front end for SQL database management, is Visual Studio now well implemented for a graphical and fast definition and management of tables, queries etc.. ?
2) I'm looking for a RAD framework that would allow me to create at the same time the .cs files, objects definitions, properties as well as basic methods, along with creation of the SQL tables. Is such a thing available now ?
3) Most of the visualization of data will be done through grids, I am mostly looking for a full featured grid that would allow me to group, sort, filter, as well as change the properties of columns and rows to have different formatting, what would be the best free solution for that ?
4) Finance : the background of the application would be mostly financial, therefore I am wondering if there are well approved libraries for
a) market data : spot (is there a wrapper to google finance available, otherwise reuters, bloomberg ?) spot delay is not an issue
b) derivatives valuation : plain vanilla, monte carlo etc...

Thanks in advance for the help

[MartinPlatt]

I don't think you'll have a problem picking things back up after 2.0, up until 4 nothing really changed, just new stuff added like LINQ, which in my opinion you don't just use because it's there, you need to know why you're using it.

You can use the database projects that are in VS2010, it's quite good for creating incremental scripts for deployments, but really takes some getting used to; You basically create an image of the database, which is all the script necessary, then you can point at another database, and compare - the scripts get built for you. So it probably would be good if you knew how to use it, but since you don't, I think I'd stick to SSMS?

There are loads of those sorts of frameworks - the trouble I find with them is the more they help you, the hard it is to do something custom when you need to. I'd stick to the simple stuff that you already know, unless you have an actual need to choose something else.

Grid - is this something you're going to be using in a web app, or desktop app? Don't the standard controls already do what you need them to do?

No idea on finance libraries - I know that they exist, as a few year back I looked into this sort of thing - they do cost though, and Google can help :)

[daW0lverine]

Thank you for your answer that helped a lot, I m going entity/wpf, using the default datagrid and adding on top, and for the finance library haven't gotten around to it yet