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

I hope that 2009 has started out well for you and that you had a great festive season.

Happy Reading

Peter Ward

^top

Tech Summerfest

Based on the outstanding success of the Tech Summerfest events last year, WARDY IT Solutions will be extending the SQL Server offering in the Brisbane and Perth Tech Summerfest event to five days. The SQL Server training on offer will include the much anticipated courses Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence Launchpad and Integrating SQL Server Business Intelligence with MOSS. For more details and to register for the limited places on these courses refer to here.

^top

February SQL Server User Groups

There will be a special February QLD SQL Server User Group at lunchtime on Friday the 20th of February. Nicholas Dritsas from the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (SQLCAT) will be presenting a session on Working with Very Large Cube Databases in Analysis Services 2008. For more details on this event refer to here.

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

^top

Kalen Delaney in Australia

SQL Server expert Kalen Delaney, the author of Inside SQL Server and the new SQL Server 2008 Internals, is a special guest in Australia for WARDY IT Solutions. Kalen will be presenting two must see one-day seminars in Australia; SQL Server Index Internals in Canberra on June 17 and Brisbane on June 19; SQL Server Storage Formats in Melbourne on June 15 and Sydney on June 22.

Up until the 27th of March each course registration will receive a free copy of Kalen's new book SQL Server 2008 Internals. Places on these seminars are strictly limited so don't delay registering as Kalen sold out last time she was in Australia. You can register by emailing contact@wardyit.com or calling 1300 WARDY IT (927 394).

^top

SQL Server 2008 System Views Map

The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 System Views Map shows the key system views included in SQL Server 2008, and the relationships between them. This poster can be downloaded from here.

^top

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 Wednesday the 11th of February. Two lucky attendees will win a bottle of Penfolds St Henri Shiraz valued at over $100.00 a bottle. To register for this free Breakfast event email contact@wardyit.com.

^top

SQL Server 2008 Compliance Portal

Microsoft has released a new portal to help address compliance concerns. The portal contains a series of whitepapers that shows how to address organizational needs around regulations such as HIPAA, SOX and PCI. This portal can be found here.

^top

Performance of CDC in SQL Server 2008

This document provides guidance on how to configure Change Data Capture (CDC) parameters to maximize data capture performance while minimizing the performance impact on the production workload. This whitepaper can be found here.

^top

SQL Server 2008 Spatial Data Support

SQL Server 2008 offers a number of enhancements, including new data types, new T-SQL statements, however one of the most anticipated new features is Spatial Data Support. Bob Beauchemin has recently released an MSDN article that walks through how to use this new feature. This article can be found here.

^top

SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Guide

Microsoft has released a document that covers the essential phases and steps to upgrade existing instances of SQL Server 2000 and 2005 to SQL Server 2008 by using best practices. This guide includes preparation tasks, upgrade tasks, and post-upgrade tasks. The guide can be downloaded from here.

^top

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?

^top