Welcome to the August WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server Newsletter

SQL Server 2008 has been released! On the 6th of August at the locknote of Tech-Ed South Africa, the of release SQL Server 2008 was announced. SQL Server 2008 certainly lives up to the promise of an enterprise-ready data platform. WARDY IT Solutions has already deployed several SQL Server 2008 installations to production and we are seeing dramatic performance improvements over SQL Server 2005.

To find out more on how the release of SQL Server 2008 will affect your organisation; why not contact Brisbane's Leading SQL Server Consultants, WARDY IT Solutions?

In order to further assist organisations understand what the release of SQL Server 2008 means, WARDY IT Solutions will be holding a Free Breakfast in Brisbane on Tuesday the 14th of October. To register your attendance to this free event email contact@wardyit.com.

This month:

• I will be presenting at Tech-Ed New Zealand and Australia
• Jeff Wharton will be presenting at Tech-Ed Australia
• The WARDY IT Team will be participating in the 10km Bridge to Brisbane fun run to raise money for Youngcare

Don’t forget that WARDY IT Solutions will be running a two-day hands on SQL Server Reporting Services course in Brisbane (27th & 28th October), Sydney (3rd & 4th November) and Canberra (6th & 7th November). For more details and to register for this popular course call 1300 WARDY IT (927 394).

Happy Reading

Peter Ward

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September 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. As the August dinner was re-scheduled to September, this month’s WARDY IT Dinner will start with a few buckets of balls at the Victoria Park Golf driving range from 6:00PM and then head to the Newmarket Hotel for dinner from about 8:00PM. The September WARDY IT dinner is being held on Monday the 8th of September. Add this event to your Outlook Calendar.

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September SQL Server User Groups

At the September QLD SQL Server User Group there will be a presention on SQL Server Data Profiling. For more details on this event go 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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SQL Server Healthcheck

Does your SQL Server need a Healthcheck? A WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server Healthcheck is designed to review and verify the implementation of common SQL Server Best Practices. Our Database Health Check includes all of the usage and administration aspects of SQL Server databases, ensuring that your SQL Servers are managed and operated well. Our approach is to analyse the total health of your SQL Server environment and highlight areas of concern, providing recommendations to improve the health and performance of your database environment. For more details on our SQL Server Healthcheck refer here.

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SQL Server Backup, Integrity Check and Index Optimization

Although SQL Server provides the ability to create Database Maintenance Plans to perform operations such as backups and integrity checks, these Maintenance Plans are not always the appropriate solution especially when managing very large databases. Ola Hallengren has updated his collection of Maintenance Plan scripts for SQL Server 2008. These scripts can be downloaded from here.

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SQL Server 2008 Express

The release of SQL Server 2008 also means that SQL Server 2008 Express has been released. There are now three version of SQL Server Express depending on your individual requirements: Express edition, Express with Tools and Express with Advanced Services. The Express edition includes the database engine whereas Express with Tools also includes Management Studio Basic. Express with Advanced Services includes Management Studio Basic and additional features such as Full-text search and Reporting Services. For more details and to download SQL Server 2008 Express refer to here.

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WARDY IT Tech-Ed Party

If you are going to be at Tech-Ed Australia this year make sure you pop by the WARDY IT Solutions booth on the Tuesday night during the Welcome Reception. WARDY IT Solutions will be hosting a party at Redoak Boutique Beer Café on Wednesday for all of our customers. So make sure you don’t miss out on collecting your invitation.

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SQL Server 2008 Administration

Rod Colledge who runs SQLCrunch.com is in the final stages of authoring one of the first books on SQL Server 2008 Administration. This book drills down on the techniques, procedures and practices that help you keep your database running like clockwork. The Early Access version of this book is now available so that you can read new chapters as they are being written. To access the Early Access for this book refer to here.

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SQL Server 2005 SP 2 Cumulative Update 9

Cumulative update package 9 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 was released on the 19th of August. This updated contains hotfixes for SQL Server 2005 issues that have been fixed since the release of Service Pack 2. To access this update refer to here.

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BIDS Helper

A new version of BIDS Helper has been released that supports SQL Server 2008. If you have not used BIDS Helper before it is a Visual Studio.Net add-ins with features that extend and enhance the functionality of the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio. To download this new release refer to here.

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PHP Driver for SQL Server 2005

Version 1.0 of the SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP is now available for download including the full source code. The SQL Server Driver for PHP is built on top of the Microsoft SQL Server ODBC driver and provides a new way for developers to access SQL Server from non-Microsoft development environments. To download this new driver refer to here.

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Integration and Messaging Framework

Are you looking for a light weight integration and messaging framework? WARDY IT Solutions has developed a Framework known as Hermes which is designed as a heterogeneous delivery mechanism to process thousands of requests a second. To find out more about this framework, why not contact us today?

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