Watch the Latest SelectViews Here
> Watch Now – The Weekly SQL Server Show from SSWUG.ORG
Featured Article(s)
Troubleshooting error 3628
In this article, Alexander Chigrik explains how you can troubleshoot error 3628.
Managing SQL Server-Based Email?
If so, you may have come to realize how difficult and what a pain it can be to manage the bounce emails and challenge/response emails that you’re no-doubt generating. Our systems here run against a SQL Server database, create the newsletters and other mailings, send out the mailings, etc. — then, we work with BoogiePop to automatically manage the email trouble messages. BoogiePop from BoogieTools has been helping us out, literally for years, in making the process of updating our SQL Server tables, keeping track of the types of bounces, managing the hard-bounces, etc. If you’re doing work that does involve working with mailings and SQL Server, make suer you check out BoogiePop – it’s a great product!
SQL Server 2008 Release Date Announced
Microsoft has announced the official release dates for SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. The date is February 27, 2008 in Los Angeles. The actual launch will be the start of a worldwide launch "wave" – Microsoft will be doing demos, partner expos, how-to sessions, etc. – all to help people get comfortable with and aware of the features and functions in the new releases.
There is a lot to getting SQL Server up to date – and keeping it there. Making the move to upgrade is not a process to be taken lightly – there are many "moving parts" to be considered. With the release "so soon" after the release of 2005, are you considering moving directly from 2000 to 2008? Will you move to 2005 and wait? I’m curious about your plans, even if very, very preliminary at this point.
Drop me a note – what are your plans for SQL Server 2008? Clearly Microsoft is delivering on the shorter development times, which is great to see. They’ve revamped their development and delivery process significantly and it shows. Their confidence in dates (look how far out this is to be announcing a firm date!) and the ability to not take 5 years for the release is great to see.
Database Information Categorization
David wrote in with a few ideas on approaching the DB tagging and categorization issues:
"Most enterprise data is in an unstructured (non-database) form, such as word processing files, spreadsheets, PDF documents, email, contracts, legislation, etc.
The enterprise needs ways of finding any of this that is pertinent to an issue.
So far, we depend on people. We depend on the right people to know that something is an issue, and we depend on their memories and the filing system they individually choose to keep track of things they believe will be needed.
My vision has four aspects to it.
1) A firm or industry makes a list of words that are important to it, and a modified word-checker program automatically notes which of these words are in a document. This is kept, along with the name and location of the document.
2) The same word-checker program lists other words that may be candidates for this important-word list. As a document is checked, the user is given this additional list and chooses which words from it to also keep in the document’s key-word list.
3) A set of rules is made for identifying the primary topic of a document, so that documents on the same topic will have a similar wording to explain the subject matter. This will help when searching for a topic.
4) An automated way will be developed to pull out significant sentences.
So, some database will keep this meta-data about documents – the document location and name, the document subject (in a way optimized for finding similar topics), the key words from the industry or company list, and other key words selected.
This would go a long way towards making non-database information available when needed."
Featured White Paper(s)
Improving Database Development Methods
This white paper surveys several different methodologies of database development, examines their strengths and weaknesses, an… (read more)
Strategic EDI for the Resource Constrained Company
For the foreseeable future, we expect to see a surge of activity in "strategic EDI" initiatives among mid-sized companies – d… (read more)
Common Table Expressions
Common Table Expressions(CTEs) are new to SQL Server 2005. CTEs are defined in the ANSI SQL-99 standard. We need to begin lea… (read more)
Are AJAX Applications Vulnerable to Hack Attacks?
This paper reviews AJAX technologies with specific reference to JavaScript and briefly documents the kinds of vulnerability c… (read more)