I've used Safari (the O'Reilly version) for a number of years now and it is a resource I often recommend to coworkers. Basically, it's an on-line library of technical books (since expanded to include video) from a group of publishers. O'Reilly, Microsoft Press, Cisco Press, Syngress, and many others have books and resources on-line at Safari. It came into being in 2001 but I remember a predecessor version back in the late 90s from Que Publishing/Macmillan Computer Publishing called Personal Bookshelf, which I also used. Back in those days I was in the Air Force and that provided some of the technical books I couldn't afford on an Air Force salary.

Subscribing to Safari gives one the ability to put a certain number of books onto a "bookshelf" and the books have to remain there for one month. The exception is the library subscription, which has no limit to how many books you can have on your bookshelf (favorites). Another advantage of the Library subscription level is it gives access to Rough Cuts (books in pre-release stages), Short Cuts (excerpts from books and other material on a focused topic), and Video. Library also gives one five download tokens a month (and up to 3 months can be accumulated). You can pay for some of these features separately if you don't get Library level, but the Library level, at least for me, is the best value package deal. For those interested in getting their organization's on Safari, yes, there are apparently corporate plans, too.

I initially subscribed to Safari because it was cheaper than the equivalent price of one technical book a month. Even at the Library level, it's still at the lower end of the technical book range. The number of books which I have access to far exceeds that novel price. I say novel because when I considered how much I was spending on technical books, it was well worth the price to me. I have a friend who doesn't use Safari because he indicates he can find everything on-line. To some extent this is true. However, when I was leading my organization's Active Directory migration, Safari became my Active Directory library. Having those resources readily at hand without having to lug 4 or 5 Active Directory books around was priceless.

Others have written about the value they find in Safari, such as Sean McCown (Database Underground on InfoWorld). He specifically mentions some of the books/authors he found on there as a reason to recommend Safari. The catalog is quite large and it's not unusual for a book to appear in Safari shortly after publication, say within a few months. Safari also does a good job of putting older books on-line that may be of interest to some, such as the older O'Reilly published Perl books. Here is a list of some of the books that are on-line right now which are relatively recent (within the last year or two) and relevant to this blog:

MySQL

• Learning MySQL
• MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide
• MySQL Administrator's Guide and Language Reference

SQL Server

• Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine
• Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying
• Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Programming
• SQL Server 2005 Practical TroubleShooting: The Database Engine

Windows

• Introducing Windows Server 2008
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Performance Guide
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Troubleshooting Guide

Technorati Tags: DATABASE | SQL Server | Microsoft SQL Server | SQL Server 2005 | MySQL | Windows 2003 | Windows Server 2008 | Active Directory | Work | Books

I read through a lot of blogs each day in a variety of technology categories. I've always fashioned myself as a jack-of-all-trades and that helps me a great deal with my current position. However, it does mean consuming a lot of feeds to try and stay up in all the areas I have a profound interest in. Here are my shared feeds on share.opml.org.

Google Reader has a nice feature where I can share items I find interesting. There are a ton of good blog posts each day, so I've started marking them to be shared. There are two ways to view these shared items: one is the web page and the other is through the RSS feed.


Technorati Tags: Google Reader | Blogging | Sharing Feeds | RSS | OPML | Reading List

Haidong Ji, co-author of Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services, blogged on Learning Perl using the Perl Debugger. Haidong posts SQL Server related content here on SSC.com but for his other interests include regular life, DotNetNuke, and other technologies, you'll find them on The Ji Village News. Here is the post:

Learn Perl through Perl Debugger

As to the post, Haidong had just gotten back a training class on Perl and learned a trick using the debugger to get instant feedback on checking the syntax of individual statements. It's a great tip whether you're new to Perl or an old guru with the language. Check out his post if you want to learn this neat way of learning Perl better.


Technorati Tags: Perl

Catching up on recent updates for tools I've looked at and/or recommended.

SQL Server Tools:

PromptSQL is now up to version 1.4. The latest release was February 24, 2006.

ApexSQL Log is now up to version 1.9. The latest release was February 22, 2006. This version includes SQL Server 2005 support.


Languages:

ActiveState ActivePerl is now up to version 5.8.8.816. This is Perl for Windows-based systems. The latest release was March 2, 2006.

This is one of those "bang head here" issues. I was trying to install Net::SSH::Perl, which basically drives SSH through Perl, on a Win32 client today. First I couldn't locate Net-SSH-Perl in the ActiveState repositories. Odd, but we can overcome that. A quick search and I have several locations where the .ppd file is. Great! Let's try that install again with one of those URLs. It starts to install but then it failed telling me it couldn't find Crypt-DES.ppd. I had the Net-SSH-Perl.ppd from one of apache.org's web servers, so I tried a different site with the Net-SSH-Perl.ppd. Same error. This couldn't have been a coincidence. Okay, search on DES and sure enough, it's there. But try to install it and get the failure to find the .ppd file.

So I did some more searching and came across this post on Pavleck.com. Sure enough, under the ActivePerl FAQ for 5.8, there is a section that lists unavailable packages. And the reason given is the following:

Unlike the United States, the Export Control List of Canada places no significant restriction on the export of cryptographic software; however, the Canadian Federal Government does require that companies, organizations or individuals that wish to distribute cryptographic software get a permit in order to do so. ActiveState does not currently have this permission, so you must currently access other repositories for the following modules:

    Crypt-Blowfish, Crypt-Blowfish_PP
    Crypt-CAST5, Crypt-CAST5_PP
    Crypt-DH
    Crypt-DSA, Crypt-RSA
    Crypt-GPG
    Crypt-GOST, Crypt-GOST_PP
    Crypt-IDEA
    Crypt-OpenPGP, Crypt-PGP2, Crypt-PGP5, Crypt-PGPSimple
    Crypt-OpenSSL-DSA, Crypt-OpenSSL-RSA, Crypt-OpenSSL-SMIME
    Crypt-RC4, Crypt-RC5, Crypt-RC6
    Crypt-RIPEMD160
    Crypt-Rijndael, Crypt-Rijndael_PP
    Crypt-Serpent
    Crypt-Twofish, Crypt-Twofish2, TwoFish
    Crypt-SSLeay, Net_SSLeay

ActiveState is based out of Vancouver so that means they need a permit to "export." But they don't have one. Anyone can download ActiveState Perl, use PPM and come right in to those repositories, so I understand why ActiveState has to take this stance. Grumbling, I connect to the University of Winnipeg repository and not only do I find Crypt-DES, but I also find Net-SSH-Perl. Net::SSH::Perl depends on Crypt-DES, Crypt-DES_EDE3, and a few others, none of which are available from the ActiveState repositories. Run the install and all is well. So if you're needing the Crypt packages or anything depending on them in Perl, check the University of Winnapeg's repository or another like it.

SQL Server MVP Erland Sommarskog has announced a name change to MSSQL::OlleDB. It's now known as Win32::SQLServer. This is to bring it in line with the other Win32 modules that are used in Perl.

For those who use Perl and access SQL Server, MVP Erland Sommarskog has announced a new module which uses OLE DB to access SQL Server. Called MSSQL::OlleDB, you can find it here:

http://www.sommarskog.se/mssqlperl/

This requires ActiveState Perl 5.8.3 (most current release is 5.8.7).