The Bit Bucket

Victor Isakov has decided to spin up a new SQL Server user group that will be meeting on the 1st Wednesday of each month, at Westpac Place in the city. He describes the group as focussing on best practices, optimisation, design and implementation and is aiming directly at the local corporate market.

Access to Westpac Place will be quickest if you have pre-registered so Victor is asking you to let him know you’re coming by sending him an email to [email protected] .

2009-01-29

Ken Tanner recently reminded me of the link showing current certification status.

(no longer available)

The SQL Server related entries from this list are:

MCDBA	SQL 2000	152086
MCTS	SQL 2005	41665
	SQL 2005 BI	2600
	SQL 2008 Dev	336
	SQL 2008 BI	134
MCITP	SQL 2005 DBA	6695
	SQL 2005 Dev	2925
	SQL 2005 BI	1088
	SQL 2008 DBA	92
	SQL 2008 BI	50
MCM	SQL 2005	18
	SQL 2008	2

The 18 SQL 2005 Certified Masters folk have been brought across from the earlier SQL Ranger program. The list doesn’t include the SQL 2008 DBA TS certification for some reason. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on why there was such a big drop in numbers from the 2000 versions to the 2005 versions. I suspect that part of it has to do with the 2000 exams being much easier and that they were a relatively easy option for those pursuing a variety of certifications, including the developer certifications.

2009-01-29

I’m also locked in to present a one day “SQL 2k8 for Developers” preconference session and three conference sessions for DevWeek in London in March, along with a number of my colleagues from Solid Quality: Itzik Ben-Gan and Javier Loria. I’m really looking forward to it and would love to catch up with any SQL locals while there. Details are at the DevWeek site.

2009-01-27

Got the email today to say I had a session accepted for TechEd US. I’ll be doing the “Answering the queries your users really want to ask” session on full text indexing in SQL Server 2008. It’s an update of the session that I did at TechEd EMEA in Barcelona recently.

I’m really pleased to get to present again this year, given the vastly reduced number of data track sessions.

2009-01-26

Kevin Kline recently posted, wondering about the directions for LINQ.

When people refer to LINQ, they’re often referring to “LINQ to SQL” instead.

LINQ as a language enhancement is pretty cool. It provides a way to easy navigate enumerable objects. The only thing that puzzles me is why they picked SQL-like syntax for this instead of something more appropriate for objects.

On the other hand, LINQ to SQL I can’t get excited about. The main issues are that it’s tied to SQL Server and only gives you a one-to-one mapping of tables to objects. That leaves you with either a lousy database design or a lousy object model.

2008-12-24

Some time back, I posted about how to do this. Well by the time we got to RTM, this had changed.

There isn’t a “create placeholder” option when you right-click a cell any more.

When you drag a field into a cell, it creates a placeholder that contains the field. If you right-click the placeholder that was added, you’ll see an option to edit the Placeholder Properties. What threw me for a while was that if you right-click the cell, you won’t see this option. Turns out you have to right-click the field-name within the cell, not the blank area beside the name within the cell. Thanks to my colleague Jessica Moss for helping me find it.

2008-12-19

I’m always encouraging people to keep up to date with books online. There’s another update out now.

I know when you get to this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=be6a2c5d-00df-4220-b133-29c1e0b6585f&DisplayLang=en  

it says “September” but it really is the one issued in December. (Of course when it’s installed, it says November :-))

2008-12-12

I’ve recently posted up another podcast with Ryan Dunn. Ryan is a senior evangelist with Microsoft dealing with SQL in the cloud.

I keep running across people that suspect that this “cloud stuff” is some sort of fad. I doubt you’ll think that after you listen to this show (and alsoshow 40).

It’s now available for download from www.sqldownunder.com .

2008-12-12

Mai and I got back from New Zealand last night after attending the PASS Community Connection event in Porirua (near Wellington) in New Zealand.

It was a fun weekend as always and congratulations need to go to Nathan Pitcher (PASS Chapter leader from Dunedin) for organising it in conjunction with Adrian, Dave, Amanda, Sue and all the gang from the other local chapters as well as the staff of the local polytechnic where the event was held.

2008-12-08

CodeCampOz will be April 4th/5th in 2009 and the SQL Down Under Code Camp (PASS Community Connection) will be October 10th/11th in Wagga Wagga. Mark your calendars!

Regards,

Greg

2008-12-01