How to Take Part in a Beta Test

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How to Take Part in a Beta Test

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Grant Fritchey

Posted Friday, September 26, 2008 12:20 AM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Take Part in a Beta Test

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"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood..." Theodore Roosevelt
The Scary DBA
Author of: SQL Server 2012 Query Performance Tuning
SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled
and
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Product Evangelist for Red Gate Software

Post #576532

Jerry Hung

Posted Friday, September 26, 2008 9:27 AM

Right there with Babe

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We used TFS 2008 Beta, that didn't go so well as there was no official Microsoft Upgrade Path from TFS 2008 Beta to RTM

SQL 2008 we tested RC0 and was a smooth move to RTM

SQLServerNewbie

MCITP: Database Administrator SQL Server 2005

Post #576955

Grant Fritchey

Posted Friday, September 26, 2008 9:31 AM

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My most recent set of beta testing is with the Visual Studio Team System Database Edition. They've got a new release coming out to support SQL Server 2008, but it's also changing the mechanisms the tool uses for builds and deployments. CTP 15 hosed the virtual I was running it on, but CTP 16 seems pretty solid. You just have to plan for the fact that from one release to the next, software or code or projects that worked might stop working. It's a pain, but part of the process of taking part in a beta.

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"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood..." Theodore Roosevelt
The Scary DBA
Author of: SQL Server 2012 Query Performance Tuning
SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled
and
SQL Server Execution Plans

Product Evangelist for Red Gate Software

Post #576960

Anipaul

Posted Saturday, September 27, 2008 2:44 AM

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Interesting article...

Post #577279

Karl Royle

Posted Saturday, September 27, 2008 2:34 PM

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I couldn't have said it better myself. The article lists every reason that I take part in Betas and the appropriate approach to feedback.

I was amused by the "if it doesn't install, the Beta evaluation ends though". In my experience about 30% of Betas don't install properly on all platforms - probably 40% on MS products! I always sigh, and then try and figure out ...just...exactly...why...the blasted thing will not install before I get to start! :)

Post #577334

Grant Fritchey

Posted Sunday, September 28, 2008 4:17 AM

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You're just more diligent than I am. If I can't get it installed, I toss my hands up & move on. Since I've started working exclusively on virtuals when I'm doing a beta, I've had fewer install problems. It comes from not having to worry about uninstalling all the previous betas.

----------------------------------------------------
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood..." Theodore Roosevelt
The Scary DBA
Author of: SQL Server 2012 Query Performance Tuning
SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled
and
SQL Server Execution Plans

Product Evangelist for Red Gate Software

Post #577383

Karl Royle

Posted Sunday, September 28, 2008 2:22 PM

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I'd say that's a fair point. One bad Beta can mess up a lot of the installs that follow it, particularly with development tools that don't uninstall the Betas properly!

As a software house, almost all of our company's internal testing is on Virtual Machines now. Increasingly the Beta's go on those too, although when it comes to dev' tools I can't help but try them on "real" hardware. Hmmmm....I wonder if that VS2008Beta will perform better with the corporate McAffee config. Ermm

Post #577459

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