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December 2004 - Posts

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 10:24 PM

The SQL Server Web Data Administrator enables you to easily manage your SQL Server data, wherever you are!

Because it often pains me to find so many of our (SQL Server) customers aren’t aware of the freebies available to them, I will be posting ‘adverts’ for these freebies from time to time.  This is one such tool and this is the advertising pitch: The
posted by Mat_Stephen | (Comments Off)
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Wednesday, December 22, 2004 6:34 PM

Benchmark your SAN or disk subsystem IO throughput – with SQLIO, free to Microsoft SQL Server users

Benchmarking systems is one of the most important things you can do; amazing how many people don’t do it.  Benchmarking your disk subsystem is even more vital; even more amazing how many people don’t do it.   Why is benchmarking your disk subsystem
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Monday, December 20, 2004 4:08 PM

3rd Party Report Builders for SQL Server Reporting Services that don't require Visual Studio know how.

A recurring concern for IT Pros looking to employ SQL Server Reporting Services is the apparent need to use Visual Studio as the report designer.  This is not the case.  There are a number of alternatives out there.   Firstly, there are
posted by Mat_Stephen | 3 Comments
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Monday, December 20, 2004 1:22 PM

MSDN Webcast: Identifying Application Performance Problems with SQL Server and Shadowfax (Level 400)

Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time Chuck Delouis, Enterprise Architect, VERITAS Over the last three years, Microsoft and VERITAS have collected and analyzed the most frequent performance related problems with Microsoft SQL Server
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Monday, December 20, 2004 1:21 PM

MSDN Webcast: New Features in Reporting Services Service Pack 2 (Level 400)

Monday, January 10, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time Geoff Snowman, MSDN DEVELOPER COMM CHAMPION, Microsoft Corp. Service Pack 2 for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services contains two improved features: client-side printing and Microsoft SharePoint
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Monday, December 20, 2004 1:19 PM

MSDN Webcast: Application Performance Tuning Using SQL Server Profiler 2005 (Level 200)

Friday, January 07, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time Geoff Snowman, MSDN DEVELOPER COMM CHAMPION, Microsoft Corp. If your system has a performance problem, how do you know whether the problem lies in the application or the database? You need a tool
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Monday, December 20, 2004 1:18 PM

TechNet Webcast: Migrating Oracle and UNIX Systems to SQL and Windows - Level: 200

Thursday, January 20, 2005 - 11:30 - 1:00 PM Pacific Time Peter Larsen, Software Development Engineer, Microsoft Corporation Does your organization have plans for a process-driven migration of an Oracle database on UNIX to Microsoft SQL Server on Windows?
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Monday, December 20, 2004 1:15 PM

TechNet Webcast: A Technical Overview of SQL 2005 High Availability Features (Part 2 of 2) - Level: 200

Friday, January 14, 2005 - 9:30 - 10:30 AM Pacific Time Matthew Hester, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation There are a number of barriers to availability, and only some of these are addressable by DBMS technology. This session looks at some of the
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Monday, December 20, 2004 1:14 PM

TechNet Webcast: A Technical Overview of SQL 2005 High Availability Features (Part 1 of 2) - Level: 200

Friday, January 07, 2005 - 9:30 - 10:30 AM Pacific Time Bryan Von Axelson, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation There are a number of barriers to availability, and only some of these are addressable by DBMS technology. This first part of a two-part
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Monday, December 20, 2004 12:42 PM

Microsoft Executive Circle Webcast: Improve TCO by Migrating your Siebel Applications to Microsoft SQL Server

Friday, January 07, 2005 - 8:00 AM -9:00 AM PT Pacific Time Anu Chawla and Frank Mcbath, TechnologySpecialist  and Technologist, Microsoft Have you realized the total cost of ownership (TCO) you expected on your Siebel CRM investment? It is more
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Monday, December 20, 2004 12:39 PM

TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 Technical Overview - Level: 200

Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 8:00 - 9:30 AM Pacific Time Bryan Von Axelson, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is the next version of the SQL Server product family. This new edition offers a number of enhancements to meet
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Friday, December 17, 2004 8:26 PM

SQL Server Disaster Recovery (DR) and SANs, Remote Mirrors and Geo-Clusters

After some positive comments arising from my High Availability post I’ve decided to Blog on DR earlier than I had intended.  I hadn’t intended to blog on DR for a while because it’s a difficult subject and I was hoping it might get easier if I left
posted by Mat_Stephen | 2 Comments
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Wednesday, December 15, 2004 5:21 PM

SQL Server can run your enterprise? Here's how to prove it

SQL Server 2000 has to live with the legacy that it was once called SQL Server 6.5 – if a database could have a pain in the neck this would be SQL Server’s.  When Microsoft completely rewrote Microsoft Mail it gave it a new name, Exchange; thus everyone
posted by Mat_Stephen | 5 Comments
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Wednesday, December 15, 2004 2:12 PM

SQL Server Security – you can’t do without it

Security – I find it very hard to get enthusiastic about security, after all it doesn’t visibly do anything; I’d far rather solve the world’s problems than avoid them.  However this is such an important topic I thought I should blog on the topic
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Wednesday, December 15, 2004 8:12 AM

SQL Server High Availability – I have to talk about this so much I feel like a scratched record.

Rather than write endless amounts here I’m just going to describe some useful pointers that you can reference.  The first reference is to failover clusters, I mention this one first as it dives head on into that word ‘Cluster’.  This word is
posted by Mat_Stephen | 2 Comments
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Monday, December 13, 2004 5:22 PM

How to get Reporting Services if you're not signed up to MSDN or Select (and live in the UK)

Last week, up in Edinburgh, I did a Technet evening gig on Reporting Services and was shocked when a customer came up to me afterwards and told me he hadn’t been able to download Reporting Services from the Microsoft website even though he was a card
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Wednesday, December 08, 2004 10:05 AM

SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence (SSABI) - often unheard of and sometimes underestimated

SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence (SSABI) is one of the best and most exciting tools I've ever used.  Alas too many people haven't heard about it and sometimes people underestimate it because of its appearance – an Excel spreadsheet. 
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Tuesday, December 07, 2004 10:06 AM

My Introduction to the Blogsphere - and my first useful tip for SAP enthusiasts

Hello, my name is Matthew Stephen, I work as a Microsoft SQL Server Evangelist, based in Reading UK.  I started working for Microsoft in early '93 as a PSS support Engineer.  I spent many happy years supporting SQL Server and then,
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