Welcome to the February WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server Newsletter

February has been a busy month in the lead up to the launch of SQL Server 2008. The February 2008 Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2008 (aka CTP6) has been released and is available for download from here. This CTP is a feature release version and was released just in time for the Hero's Happen Here lanch of Windows Server, Visual Studio and SQL Server 2008. The early release of CTP6 is a great sign that SQL Server 2008 is on track for an RTM in Q3 this year.

The last month has also seen the release of Cumulative update package 6 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2. For details about the issues resolved in this update package refer to here.

WARDY IT Solutions will be hosting a Free breakfast on Monday the 17th of March from 7:30AM at Microsoft's Brisbane office which will provide an overview of what the upcoming release of SQL Server 2008 means to your organisations. To register your attendance to this free event email contact@wardyit.com.

Happy Reading

Peter Ward

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March WARDY IT Community Dinner

The WARDY IT Community Dinner is a casual event for IT professionals in South East Queensland. It is a fun way to meet new people and find out how other IT professionals are dealing with the challenges that we face every day. The March WARDY IT Dinner is being held on Monday the 10th of March at Montezuma's, New Farm. Add this event to your Outlook Calendar.

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March SQL Server User Groups

This month at the QLD SQL Server User Group John O'Brien and Bronwen Zande from Soul Solutions will be presenting on the new spatial features in SQL Server 2008. For more details and to register for this presentation refer to here.

For details of SQL Server User Group events in other Australian cities refer to the Australian SQL Server User Groups website.

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SQLCAT.com

The SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (CAT) has put together a new site http://www.sqlcat.com. This site is a portal to all the SQLCAT resources including deep level technical short papers and top 10 lists for Best Practices and Recommendations. This new site can be found here.

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CodeCampOz

CodeCampOz is a Free .NET developer community-driven event which is held at Charles Sturt University in Wagg Wagga. It is a great opportunity for people of all interests across the .NET platform to come together in one location and see some of Australia's best presenters. This year’s event is being held on the weekend of the 26th and 27th of April. For more details refer to here.

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ETL World Record

At the launch for SQL Server 2008, Microsoft and Unisys announced that SQL Server now holds the title of world’s fastest ETL. Using SQL Server 2008 and SSIS, 1TB of data was parsed from flat files and loaded into the destination in less than 30 minutes achieving an unprecedented throughput of 2.36TB/hour. For more details on this record refer to here.

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Cheap SQL Server Training

It can cost thousands of dollars to attend training with the world's leading SQL Server practitioners. So, if you are looking for SQL Server training at prices that anyone can afford. why not check out SQLServerDVD? The first DVD with Kalen Delaney is available to pre-order for only US$19.95 plus postage. For more detail about these great DVD's refer to here.

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Want to Earn $200?

As of the 1st of January, Peter Ward is the Technical Editor for SQL-Server-Performance.com which is a site that has over 45,000 pages of SQL Server information. The site is currently looking for authors that would like to publish regular articles for the site. Apart from the recognition that you get for your article there is also the opportunity for you to get paid for your efforts. To find out more about contributing refer to here or email editor@sql-server-performance.com.

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Geospatial Data Generator

One of the challenges of demonstrating spatial data in SQL Server 2008 is generating meaningful data. Mike Ormond has developed a web page that uses Virtual Earth to help generate spatial queries. To find out more about the SQL Server 2008 Geospatial Data Generator refer to here.

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Statistics Used by the Query Optimizer

SQL Server collects statistical information about indexes and column data stored in the database. These statistics are used by the SQL Server query optimizer to choose the most efficient plan for retrieving or updating data. Microsoft has released a whitepaper that describes what data is collected where it is stored, and which commands create, updates, and delete statistics. This whitepaper can be found here.

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SQL Server Virtual DBA

Virtual DBA was recently featured at the Microsoft Enterprise Product Roadmap Event. To find out more about our participation in this event refer to here.

Something you may not know is that our Virtual DBA service can be utilised for phone and email support. So, if your organisation just needs someone that they can call on for advice then why not use a Virtual DBA?

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