Come To The PASS 2005 Summit

Less than two weeks away, sessions tried and tested at the PDC, the Microsoft SQL Server development team and gambling with SQLServerCentral.com! Register today!

On the Road...Part II

Continuing on an interview with Raj Gill, SQL Server 2005 Roadshow Presenter by Robert Pearl. Get inside the mind of the co-founder of Scalability Experts.

Big SQL Server 2005 News

Confidential until the official release at 9:00am Pacific Time today. Check back after that time to get the big news!

TechNote: Installing SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005

If you are working with SQL Server 2005, you really need Visual Studio 2005 as well. And since they are both in Beta, there are some interesting issues when installing both of these pre-products. New author David Russell brings us some technical notes he made while installing both of these many times in a corporate environment.

SQL Server Barcodes

You may never need to work with them, but if you do then you will quickly realize how complicated barcodes can be. Michael Coles recently had a project and developer a toolkit to actually print barcodes from SQL Server.

Regular Expression Transformation

The regular expression transformation exposes the power of regular expression matching within the pipeline. One or more columns can be selected, and for each column an individual expression can be applied. If all columns selected pass their tests then rows are passed down the successful match output. Rows that fail to pass all tests are directed down the alternate output.

Extreme SQL Server

Clustering, partitioning, database snapshots, database mirroring, SQL Server SAN storage design and more are all in the September issue of the SQL Server Standard.

No Outlook for Alerts!

SQL Server 2000 has a fantastic subsystem for alerting the DBA and keeping him or her informed as to the state of the server. However the email subsystem introduces a dependency on Outlook for alerts that can be a problem for some environments. Author Roy Carlson brings us an ingenious method for reading logs and sending alerts without Exchange or Outlook.

Reporting Services Part I: Overview, Architecture and Installation

Hopefully you've heard about Reporting Services. But have you tried it? James says you'll be sorry if you don't read the docs first! Reporting is something every enterprise struggles with, maybe this will make things better? Here's how to get started.

Software patents: stupid or insane?

Lest the headline mislead you as to my biases, I consider software patents to be both stupid and insane. I raise this issue because it is currently rearing its ugly mug in the world of open source software, but it has affected much development in the proprietary worlds of Windows as well.

First of all, patent laws were created long ago, which is not to say the thinking was correct then either, but we have to recognize the intellectual and technological climate back then.