Welcome to the July WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server Newsletter

It has been a few months since the last newsletter and it is amazing how many things have been happening since the end of February. Below are just a few of the highlights that have occurred since the last newsletter:

• I presented two sessions at Tech-Ed North America
• I have been chosen as a Spotlight speaker for the PASS Community Summit in Seattle (the world's largest SQL Server event)
• I assisted in authoring two of the new SQL Server 2008 exams
• I have been selected as a review panelist for the SQL Server 2008 certifications
• I will be presenting at Tech-Ed Australia and New Zealand
• I have been nominated for the Australian Institute of Management Young Manager of the Year Award 
• Jeff Wharton was named one of the top 10 speakers at the IT Pro week of Tech-Ed North America
• Jeff Wharton worked at Tech-Ready in Seattle
• Jeff Wharton will be presenting at Tech-Ed Australia
• WARDY IT Solutions has opened an office in Sydney
• WARDY IT Solutions was listed in the Rust Report as 'Aussies Worth Watching'
• WARDY IT Solutions is now a Gold Certified Partner – this represents the highest level of competence and expertise with Microsoft technologies

In the last few months we have also added two new faces to our leading .Net development team along with another SQL Server specialist:

Richard Angus (Software Architect) – Richard has a wealth of knowledge working with enterprise systems and was the driving force behind the application development for the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

Matthew Turner (.Net Developer) – Matthew has been working on cutting edge .Net Development projects and brings with him proven experience in designing highly scalable applications.

Steve Kossaris (SQL Server Consultant) has also joined us a to assist with a SQL Server data conversion project and has extensive experience working with large enterprise SQL Server installations.

Below is a recent photo of the Brisbane component of the WARDY IT Solutions team:

Happy Reading

Peter Ward

PS. If you will be at Tech-Ed this year make sure you email me for an invite to the WARDY IT Tech-Ed Party at the Red Oak Boutique Beer Cafe

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August 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. For something different, the August 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 August WARDY IT dinner is being held on Monday the 18th of August. Add this event to your Outlook Calendar.

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August SQL Server User Groups

At the August QLD SQL Server User Group and Canberra SQL Server User Group; Catherine Eibner from Cybner will be presenting on the Change Data Capture (CDC) feature in SQL Server 2008. For more details on the Canberra event refer to here and for the Brisbane event 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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Reporting Services Training

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).

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Camouflage

One of the problems with highly sensitive data is how to go about scrubbing the data so testing can be performed whilst maintaining functional data. Camouflage is a solution that can be used to protect personally identifiable and other sensitive information whilst maintaining realistic data. For more details on Camouflage refer to here.

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SQL Server 2008 Benchmarks

SQL Server 2008 is currently the leading performer in the new TPC-E benchmarks. The TPC-E is a new benchmark that is designed to measure real world performance by using complex but realistic database schema and requires mainstream capabilities such as referential integrity and RAID protected storage. For more details regarding these results refer to here.

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Managing Unstructured Data

Organizations increasingly need to be able to store and control digital data of all formats in order to manage the information life cycle, meet compliance requirements and implement content management solutions. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 provides a flexible solution for storing unstructured data and combining it with relational data. Microsoft has released a white paper on how to manage unstructured data in SQL Server 2008. This white paper can be found here.

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Article Writing Opportunity

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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SQL Down Under Code Camp

SQL Down Under Code Camp is a Free SQL Server 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 Microsoft data 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 11th and 12th of October. WARDY IT Solutions will once again be organising the Espresso van on the Saturday morning. For more details refer to here.

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T-SQL Programmability Features in SQL Server 2008

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 introduces several important new Transact‑SQL programmability features and enhances some existing ones. Itzik Ben-Gan has written a white paper that covers the new features and enhancements and demonstrates them through code samples. This white paper 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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