Featured Article(s)
Business Intelligence Applied To Online Marketing
What happens when a successful Chief Executive Officer from a big company, and DBA goes from offline to online businesses?.
Virtual Event is Friday AM (9:00a Pacific)
Special Announcement – SQL Server 2008 Community Launch Virtual Event
(Event is today, FRIDAY) We’re excited to announce that we’ll be hosting a huge online virtual event helping launch SQL Server 2008 and bring real-world feedback, information, tips and concepts to you for SQL Server 2008. Time is very short to register to attend.
The event will happen Friday, October 24 at 9:00am Pacific (Noon Eastern). The kicker: The event is free – no charge whatsoever. You do need to register though – just head to our Launch Event site and you’ll be able to register there.
We’ll have a new feature overview session, information about SSIS 2008, an interview with Jason Strate and more. You’ll also get to check out the vConferenceOnline platform, host of our upcoming Virtual Conferences November 5, 6 and 7 for SQL Server, Business Intelligence, SharePoint and .NET Developers.
Seeking Performance Insight On Your Servers?
There are so many things that can impact your server’s performance. From locking and blocking to hardware resource utilization and any of a number of issues that can combine to slow things down, it can be really challenging to see what’s up. If you’re facing this type of situation, or if you want to be able to actively monitor your servers so you can respond before the end-user even makes the call to the help desk, check out Idera’s SQL DM. SQL DM will give you solid insight into what’s up on your system and help you get on your way to solving the issues. Check it out here.
SQL Server 2008 Favorite Features
It was interesting the feedback I’ve received on the favorite features of SQL Server 2008 thus far. From "Not the intellisense. It seems to require me to type more ENTER keys than I use to" to "SSMS features like parentheses highlighting and intellisense." Oddly, this same time of opposing viewpoint came through on several other features as well.
Spatial data types, encryption and compression were mentioned as well. One of the gripes mentioned was where the line was drawn in the versions – what features are available in which versions of SQL Server. I’ve heard this from a couple of different sources now, that there is confusion and other "feedback" about features and versions. Needless to say, if you’re basing an upgrade project on a specific feature, make sure you’re checking to make sure it’s in the version of SQL Server (standard, enterprise, etc.) that you’ll be using.
The one item that I have seen consistently talked about as a feature people are really excited about is the data change capture capability for SQL Server. This really seems to have the attention of a lot of people and I think it holds a lot of promise on several fronts. In a nutshell, this capability helps you track changes to tables – you essentially tell SQL Server to keep watch over the table and it creates a copy of the table along with other metadata to record and document changes that are done. This means for your compliant-related tables and information – be it medical information or credit card information – you can use this feature to fulfill some of the controls you need to be putting on your information.
Do you have a favorite tool not mentioned yet? Email me here…
Featured White Paper(s)
Top Ten Steps to Secure Your SQL Server
In most organizations today, business critical and confidential data increasingly resides in Microsoft SQL Server databases. … (read more)
Deploying Microsoft SQL Server in an iSCSI SAN
This Technical Report describes how to deploy SQL Server in an iSCSI SAN with PS Series storage arrays. It provides configur… (read more)