Welcome to the July newsletter from Australia's leading SQL Server Consultants and Trainers

You may have heard that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were released in late July. Not to be outdone, the new WARDY IT Solutions website was also released late in July. Why not check out the changes at www.wardyit.com. We are giving away a US$100 Amazon gift voucher for the best feedback on the new design. Send your feedback here.

Due to the current economic conditions some software companies are increasing their prices to maintain their margins, however is 40% too much? Oracle has announced a 40% price increase on management options. SQL Server has maintained its pricing and continues to offer the lowest total cost of ownership. What you may not be aware of is that WARDY IT Solutions can assist to migrate your database platform from Oracle to SQL Server. We are currently working with several government agencies to help them realise the benefits of SQL Server 2008 over Oracle.

Are you looking for timely information on how you can start implementing SQL Server Business Intelligence? The WARDY IT Solutions BI Breakfast is a new half-day workshop that empowers attendee’s so that Business Intelligence is no longer an oxymoron. To find out more information on the first workshop kicking-off in September, email here.

Are you achieving the maximum performance from your SQL Server investment? Worldwide Industries knew they weren't and called on WARDY IT Solutions to perform a SQL Server Healthcheck. Below is the feedback from the IT Manager, Tom Calloway:

We knew we had a few performance bottlenecks with our vendor supplied ERP system and we were looking at investing in some new iron. Due to budget constraints we needed to delay our capital expenditure and engaged WARDY IT Solutions to perform a Healthcheck. With the performance tuning they have done, they saved us over $60,000 in new hardware and I can't see us needing any more horsepower anytime soon.

Why not contact WARDY IT Solutions, Australia's leading SQL Server Consultants and Trainers to see how a SQL Server Healtcheck can assist in maximizing your SQL Server investment.

Happy Reading

Peter Ward

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Policy-Based Management

Policy-Based Management is a new feature that has been introduced in SQL Server 2008. A new article has been released that explores how this feature can be used to control many different aspects of SQL Server. This article can be downloaded from here.

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Tech.Ed Party

If you will on the Gold Coast for Tech.Ed Australia this year, make sure you don’t miss the WARDY IT Solutions Tech-Ed party. The WARDY IT Solutions party will be on Wednesday the 9th of September for all of our valued customers. For more details and to register your attendance send an e-mail here.

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PowerShell Support in SQL Server 2008

The PowerShell executable SQLPS is provided with SQL Server 2008 and incorporates a number of cmdlets that can be used with SQL Server. A new article has been released that provides an overview of how PowerShell can be used with SQL Server. This article can be found here.

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Automating Policy Evaluation

The Enterprise Policy Management Framework is a framework to support automated policy evaluation for SQL Server 2000 and 2005. The Enterprise Policy Management Framework is a reporting solution to show the state of SQL Server against a desired state defined in a policy. For more details regarding this Framework refer to here.

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How Data Access Code Affects Database Performance

There is a religious like debate about whether query tuning, and database application performance tuning in general, is the province of the database administrator, the application developer, or both. However an often overlooked point is that the application developer writes the database API code that accesses the database. This article explores the impact that data access code can have on performance. This article can be found here.

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Disk Alignment Whitepaper

Microsoft has released a new whitepaper on Disk Alignment for SQL Server. Disk Alignment is an often overlooked aspect of properly configuring hardware for SQL Server performance. You can find the whitepaper here.

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SQL Server Healthcheck

Does your SQL Server environment 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 Healthcheck includes all the usage and administration aspects of a SQL Server database, 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 Azure Database

At the recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans it was announced that the branding for SQL Data Services will be updated to Microsoft SQL Azure Database. SQL Azure is Microsoft's vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud. To find out more about this vision refer to here.

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An Early look at SQL Server 2008 RC2

Some of the features that will be available in the next version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 R2 are Self Service Business Intelligence, Application & Multi-Server Management and Scale-out Data Warehousing. For a sneak peek at these features refer to 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.

Virtual DBA was a finalist in the QLD Australian Computer Scocitey Awards QLD ICT Awards for Service Delivery and Training.

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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