Featured Article(s)
A Look at New Features in SQL Server 2008
SQL SERVER 2008 New FEATURES – an overview and summary of features.
Fantasy Football League – Interested?
(Need to let me know by Friday)
Every year we’ve done a Fantasy Football league and had some great fun pitting DBAs against one-another. If you’re interested in participating, it’s free. We use the Yahoo! premium league tools and it can make the football season a lot of fun from some new angles. If you’re a member, it’s a free benefit. If you’re not a member, and we have extra "seats" on a given league, we try to squeeze you in. So, if you’re interested, here’s all I need:
– Your member ID (top of the page on sswug after you login)
– Your member level (full member (paid) or registered guest (free))
– Whether you participated before
– Your email address that you use to work on SSWUG
I need all of this information – so please be sure to include it all. If you don’t, I cannot guarantee you’ll be receiving a league slot.
Email your information to me here. (please send the info ASAP to make sure you can participate)
Are You An Accidental DBA? Here’s Help.
I’ve written many times about accidental DBAs, what to think about, what others suggest people pay attention to and a lot more. We have even included mini-segments on SelectViews about working with SQL Server on a part-time basis. At long last, I pulled all of these together, built checklists for you, outlined the counters to watch, what different things you can do for performance and a whole host of other things that can make your life a bit more straightforward as a part-time or "accidental" DBA. Check out the workshop here – you can even get the outline and great registered. I’ll be doing Q&A during the workshop to make sure you get your questions answered.
Perhaps Unexpected Cloud-Based Benefits
I had several interesting conversations with people about the data sharing application of the cloud-based services (vs. log shipping, replication, etc.). I talked with DBAs and ISVs (several of each) after the post yesterday about the fact that the cloud-based services could easily begin to replace these other ways of sharing data between applications and locations.
Of interest, Amazon’s new announcements of cloud-based services that can more fully-integrate into your corporate network, while still living in the cloud.
I think that as the security models get more mature, and as applications continue to take advantage of not having to worry as much about the movement and sharing of data, we’ll start to get a real feel for what can be done. As nearly every person I talked with pointed out, there is significant education needed for both end-users and for corporate purchasers of these applications.
Several people also pointed out that we’ll likely start with "public" applications – things where security is less strict (perhaps sharing of public data or at least providing publicly accessible reports against databases) to show the systems and how they can be applied. This is sort of the first baby step to getting things going.
Perhaps with the combination of the Gemini BI toolsets and the cloud-based initiatives, we’ll see the report-building processes move toward the user side of things and away from dedicated development processes. Maybe we’ll see storage of reports, created by users, within the database schema so they can more easily be shared and re-used as well.
Featured White Paper(s)
SQL Server 2008: What to Expect
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 has many great new features that will allow you to develop higher performing, more scalable nex… (read more)