Editorials

Webcast Today: Securing Your SQL Servers From Attack

Webcast: Securing Your SQL Servers From Attack
This presentation introduces a new mechanism in SQL Server 2008 that can report on and enforce server states, using Policy Based Management. You will learn how this feature works, where you can apply it, and how it can save you time in managing your systems. You’ll learn to run a compliance report across your SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 systems and act on that report to find databases that are not backed up, naming standards that are not enforced and more.
Presented by: Sarah Barela

> Register Now
> Live date: 2/17/2010 at 12:00 Pacific

*THIS* Is a Great Idea for Deployment Help
I stumbled across a great link today from the Office Facebook page. It’s a link to an "intervention" showing the Seattle Opera the different types of tools that are available for deploying SharePoint.

OK, so they have tools.

What caught my attention was that they (the SharePoint folks) have gone above and beyond. Rather than just post articles and point people to Microsoft.com resources, they’ve actually built a library of short videos that you can download to your local network and make available to your users. COOL! It’s a great idea.

I had no idea these types of resources were available and that they were user-focused, not admin or developer-focused.

Take a look at the post here – and the resources are linked on the page.

Kudos to the SharePoint team.

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack
Many have called for it, and it looks like they’ll get what they wanted… there will be a SQL Server 2005 Service Pack later this year, due to be the last one before SQL Server 2005 goes into extended "really, it’s time to move" support in April of 2011. There is also a service pack on the way for SQL Server 2008 – so it’ll be time to get busy deploying these to test servers, then production after you know all is good.

Featured Article(s)
Undocumented SQL Server 2008 Catalog Stored Procedures
In this article, Alexander Chigrik looks at four undocumented catalog stored procedures that shipped with SQL Server 2008.