Welcome to the December newsletter from Australia's leading SQL Server Specialists

It is that time again when we reflect on the year that was and look forward towards 2009. This year has been a tremendous year for WARDY IT Solutions and I thought I would share just a few of the highlights:

• We were recognised as a Microsoft Gold Partner
• The team has grown to 12 people
• Our technical staff presented at four different Tech-Ed events around the world
• Two staff were again recognised as SQL Server MVP’s
• We were involved in authoring the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 exams
• We continued to demonstrated our deep technical understanding of SQL Server though participation in early adoption programs for SQL Server 2008
• We now support one of the largest SQL Server installations in Australia

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our newsletter subscribers for their support and feedback throughout the year and wish you and your families all the best over the festive season. 2009 is going to be a big year for Australia's Leading SQL Server Consultants WARDY IT Solutions, some of the highlights include:

• Kalen Delaney is returning to Australia to deliver a series of one day seminars
• Paul Nielsen with be delivering several smart database design classes
• WARDY IT Solutions will introduce our rapid fire BI Breakfast series
• A new SQL Server Virtualisation workshop will be introduced

Happy Reading

Peter Ward

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SQL Server Healthcheck

Does your SQL Server need a Healthcheck? The 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 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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January SQL Server User Groups

At the January QLD SQL Server User Group Mark Morton will be presenting a session on SQL Server Reporting Services integration in SharePoint. 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 2005 Service Pack 3

The long awaited release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 occurred on the 16th of December. This Service Pack is a roll-up of fixes released in previous cumulative updates. This Service Pack can be downloaded from here. For more information on what this Service Pack means to your organisation and how to effectively deploy it, why not contact Australia's leading SQL Server consulting company WARDY IT Solutions.

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Red-Gate SQL Server E-Book

Red Gate has made available a free e-book of Pro SQL Server 2005 High Availability. This book is one of the best references if you need to deploy or support a HA solution. To access this free e-book refer to here.

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Free SQL Server Breakfast

In order to further assist organisations understand what the release of SQL Server 2008 and the announcement of the next version of SQL Server (Kilimanjaro) means, WARDY IT Solutions will be holding a series of free quarterly Breakfast events. The first event for 2009 is at the Microsoft Brisbane office on Tuesday the 10th of February. To register for these free Breakfast events email contact@wardyit.com.

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SharePoint Training and Consulting

Portal Synergy is a one-stop shop for all your Microsoft SharePoint needs which has been co-founded by Peter Ward. Whether it is pre-installation planning, installation and configuration or optimising your existing SharePoint installation, we can provide skilled and experienced consultants to help you out. We also provide a range of training in SharePoint starting at the End User and going right up to advanced development with SharePoint. To find out more about how Portal Synergy can assist your organisation refer to here.

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Analysis Services Performance Whitepaper

Microsoft has recently released a white paper that describes how application developers can apply query and processing performance-tuning techniques to their SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services OLAP solutions. This white paper can be found here.

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Tech Summerfest

Based on the outstanding success of the Tech Summerfest events in Hobart and Adelaide over the last month WARDY IT Solutions will be extending the SQL Server offering in the Brisbane Tech Summerfest to five days. Tech Summerfest not only provides an opportunity to see how you can leverage your investment in Microsoft technology to solve business problems but also an opportunity to receive cutting edge training in Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Microsoft Office SharePoint from Australia’s leading trainers. Keep an eye on the Tech Summerfest website for more details.

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Troubleshooting with Extended Events

Extended Events are a new feature in SQL Server 2008 that can be used for troubleshooting. The capabilities of the Extended Events system are far beyond those of any previous event-tracking and troubleshooting mechanism that SQL Server has provided. An article that describes how to perform advanced troubleshooting with Extended Events can be found 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. Hermes is a midrange platform that allows customers to quickly write their own plugins and even expose them as WCF services. To find out more about this framework why not contact us today?

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