To commemorate the second birthday of the WARDY IT Solutions newsletter, we have redesigned the newsletter to reflect the recent changes to the WARDY IT Solutions website www.wardyit.com. To celebrate this occasion we also have a Maxtor OneTouch III USB 200GB External Hard Drive (valued at over $250.00) to give away. To be in the running to win this fantastic prize simply send an email to newsletter@wardyit.com with answers to the two questions below. We will draw a winner at random from all of the responses received.

1) If you could see any SQL Server presenter in the world who would it be and why?

2) What changes, if any, would you like to see to the WARDY IT Solutions newsletter and why?

We would like to thank everyone who took advantage of the introduction of our new Client Referral program. By now you should have received your special thank you gift. The Client Referral program is a way for us to say thank you to our valuable clients for showing the faith in us to continually deliver world class SQL Server solutions by referring new business leads to us. So if you know of anyone who you think would benefit from the SQL Server solutions that WARDY IT is renowned for, we invite you to introduce them to us and take advantage of the Client Referral program.

As can be seen from all of the SQL Server Community Technology Previews that are currently available, Windows Vista will not be the only product that generates excitement over the coming months. So why not contact Brisbane's Leading SQL Server Consultants, WARDY IT Solutions, to find out how your organisation can take advantage of these new releases.

Happy Reading

Peter Ward

PS: Don't forget that the inaugural Queensland VSTS Users Group is on Friday the 1st of December. For more details refer to here.

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WARDY IT Community Dinner

The WARDY IT Community Dinner is a casual event for IT professionals in South East Queensland. It's a fun way to meet some new people and find out how other people are dealing with the challenges that we face every day. The December WARDY IT Community Dinner  is on Monday the 11th of December at Kafe Meze. Add this event to your Outlook Calendar.

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December QLD SQL Server User Group

At the December QLD SQL Server User Group Jim Katsos from Quest Software will be demonstrating how to monitor SQL Server Replication Topology. For more details and to register for this free event refer to here.

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SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-in

The Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007 includes three new add-ins that allow you the ability to take advantage of SQL Server 2005 predictive analytics in Office Excel 2007 and Office Visio 2007. The CTP can be downloaded from here.

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SQL Doc

If you are looking for a tool to document your SQL Server 2000 and 2005 databases then red-gate software have a great tool for you called SQL Doc. SQL Doc is one of the only tools available to document multiple SQL databases including any cross-database dependencies. So if you are looking for a simple documentation tool that is extremely flexible SQL Doc is the tool for you. A free 14 day trial can be downloaded from here.

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SQL Server 2005 SP2

SQL Server 2005 SP2 is not just a collection of bug fixes but also includes significant new and enhanced features such as custom management reports and my favourite, you can now specify that the scripted objects include a DROP statement before the CREATE statement. For a complete list of what's new in SQL Server 2005 SP2 refer to here. The CTP can be downloaded from here.

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Taskpad View

If you miss the Taskpad view of SQL Server 2000 and the way that details are broken down such as disk usage you are not alone. Jasper Smith has developed a Management Studio custom report which replicates the Taskpad view for Enterprise Manager. The report can be downloaded from the following blog post.

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Performance Point

Performance Point is the next generation analytics tool from Microsoft that incorporates Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 and the analytics tools acquired when Microsoft purchased Pro Clarity. You sign up to be involved in the CTP here.

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PASS Interviews

At the recent PASS Community Summit in Seattle a number of the speakers and other high profile member of the SQL server community where interviewed on various topics ranging from what they thought about the PASS conference to the pitfalls to be aware of when configuring a SAN. These interviews can be downloaded from here.

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SQL Nexus

SQL Nexus is another arrow in the Database Administrator quiver that has been developed by Ken Henderson and Bart Duncan. SQL Nexus collects SQL Server performance information and then generates a set of Reporting Services based reports for analysis of issues.  This utility can be downloaded from here .

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Data Dude RTM

The Release to Manufacture (RTM) date for Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (aka Data Dude) has been announced as the 30th of November 2006. For more details regarding this product refer to here .

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