The skinny: apparently back in April, SEC Consult notified the MSFT team of a vulnerability in the sp_replwritetovarbin system stored procedure. Microsoft has thus far declined to create a patch and so, for whatever reason, SEC Consult decided to release the vulnerability publicly. You can view the scripts to reproduce...
Microsoft is really making it easy for us developers to use MVC (Model-View-Controller) in ASP.NET. One thing that they've recently done is created the MVC Gallery - check it out: http://www.asp.net/mvc/gallery/...
If you have done any web development in, I dunno the last 5-6 years, you understand how terrible IE6 is. Frankly I'm tired of having a separate stylesheet just for the IE6 browser and its terrible box model not to mention complete lack of PNG alpha layer support. As...
FIVE days after the release of SP3 we already have CU1. Give me a break... Timeline is simple: Dec 15: SP3 released. Dec 20: CU1 released. I haven't installed it but what do you want to bet that CU1 requires me to stop/restart my SQL Server?! Argggghhhhhh. This follows on...
The good news: No fooling around required - WLW 2009 installs just fine on Windows 2008! Here's my install screenshots: (I don't understand what "Mail" is or why the Photo Gallery is in here...) This is the build number from Help -> About showing the RC0 build number....
Saw this today on the Windows Live Writer blog: We're excited to announce that Windows Live Writer Beta is available for download today. I was actually excited - "Will they finally let me install the damn thing on Windows 2003/2008?", I thought... (see this post for why I thought such...
The SQL 2005 BPA can be found here: SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer Do: Take full, differential, and/or log backups (whichever is appropriate) before running the analyzer (so you don't get warnings/information messages that clutter the report) Prior to running the BPA, run DBCC CHECKDB commands on your DBs...
The official name is a mouthful: "Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer". What it does is exciting though: you can test Exchange Servers remotely for troubleshooting things like Exchange ActiveSync connection errors, AutoDiscover failures, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003 connectivity, and Inbound SMTP email tests. I played around a little...
I just read an interesting piece over on Aaron Bertrand's blog about how the overlap of Cumulative Updates 10 and 11 (CU 10 and CU 11) overlap with Service Pack 3. It's a good read - check it out here....
Here's a good read: How the SQL Server team releases updates. Okay - so that's not the official title (the official title is the overly officious An Incremental Servicing Model is available from the SQL Server team to deliver hotfixes for reported problems) but I think my title is something...
It's here, it's here! The new phonebook service pack is here! Now before you run out and patch all of your SQL Servers, repeat after me: I will not install brand new service packs and patches on important systems I will not install brand new service packs and patches on...
I'm an admitted RSS junkie - I love RSS because it allows me the most info that I care about with the least amount of effort. If I find a site/author that I like, I always look for the RSS icon - - because I can throw the feed into...
We all use web apps these days. I’m sure many of you hate the cloud, but love or hate it is here to stay… I’ve picked 5 web apps that I feel are well designed. 5 apps that you can use cues from as you develop the front end design...
Ray from IndyPASS (Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server) dropped us a line today to let us know that their November meeting, which LearnItFirst sponsored, went off without a hitch. Here is a picture Ray sent us of the event:We hope everyone had a good time. Enjoy the LearnItFirst schwag!...
As the year winds down and I look back at the interesting events over 2008, one of the most interesting things, I think, to happen in Dallas was Alex Muse's Happy Hour events for startups that he started back in July. If you don't know Alex, Alex is the entrepreneur...
After this all happened, we were both all laughing and life was good but for a while, things were very tense... Here's what happened: From: Ted User Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 7:51 PM To: LearnItFirst.com - Customer Service' Subject: RE: Thank you for contacting LearnIntegrationServices.com Question: I wrote in...
Dunno why but MSFT made a version checker in the installation wrapper for Windows Live Writer so that you can't install it on a Windows Server 2008 box. Oh sure, I know what you're thinking: "But why would you want to install WLW on a server?" Well, I wouldn't. But...
My four year old, Seth, loves to play with my iPhone. He's pretty computer-savvy for a four year old and he is therefore good with the iPhone. I've found a few nice little apps for him and I thought I would share. I'm doing this for two reasons: (1)...
Have you ever launched SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and had to wait over 60 seconds before you could even login? I have - all too often! It's annoying - and thankfully there's an easy fix. Launch Internet Explorer Browse to Tools -> Internet options -> Advanced tab Uncheck the...
I saw this link and thought I'd share for anyone who is in the market for a new gig. It's a Salary Search Engine - try it for yourself: SQL Server DBA in Dallas, New York, San Francisco .NET Developer in Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles I think those are...
I was intrigued by the article's headline: "The $2 million Penalty Clause". I didn't know what it was about but the headline was catchy enough. So I read it. And here's the gist of it: there's this company (http://www.schoolcheckin.com/) that has a line in the EULA (end user licensing agreement)...
Saw this a while back and had a chuckle: http://weblogs.asp.net/dfindley/archive/2006/06/20/Microsoft-Product-Name-Generator.aspx#454129. Go ahead - click the "Get Product Name" link. Here's a few fun ones that I get: Embedded FoxPro Workflow Server Foundation Windows XML System .NET Compact Graphic Workstation Standard Visual Office Web Server Standard Expression Windows Small Business Server...
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) can be customized by using "switches" - little things added after the executable in the path to the file. Technically these are called "command line switches" and they are very common in most applications. Here's a great one for SSMS: Right click on your shortcut...
Delete the original ...\SQL Server x86\Tools\Setup\SqlServer2K5_BOL.msi Rename the downloaded SqlServer2K5_BOL_Jul2006_v2.msi (or whatever the latest version is) to SqlServer2K5_BOL.msi and copy it to the ...\SQL Server x86\Tools\Setup folder. Run setup. Thanks to John Paul Cook, a SQL Server MVP out of Houston, TX, for pointing this out. John Paul Cook...
Peer to Peer Replication made its SQL Server debut in SQL Server 2005 and just got even stronger in 2008. I found an interesting article recently that talks about how MSFT uses peer-to-peer internally and thought I would share: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/07/InsideMSFT/default.aspx. It talks about how Peer-to-Peer replication with SQL Server 2005...
A bit of history revealed, really. Did you ever wonder about how the Rolling Stones got involved with Microsoft? Or maybe you aren't even old enough to remember. It goes like this... Microsoft wanted desperately to stand out when Windows 95 launched. After all, this was a radically different operating...
Saw this today on techcrunch: Google takes Chrome out of Beta. I had to chuckle - how quickly Chrome came out of beta... This is from the company that invented the perpetual beta. What - you didn't notice that Gmail is still in beta? Chrome lasted three months before...
Over the weekend learnsqlserver2008.com was launched. Currently there is 13 hours of content on the site. Make sure to view the full list of videos here. Stay tuned as Scott will be adding quite a bit of content to the site over the coming weeks. UPDATE: We've moved LearnSqlServer2008.com to...
Microsoft released CU2 (Cumulative Update 2) for SQL Server 2008 which contains a multitude of fixes. What's a "Cumulative Update"? Watch this video - Service Packs, Hotfixes, and More: Keeping Your SQL Server 2008 Up to Date Download/request it via KB article 958186 I've been running it in development for...
I found four pretty cool holiday gift ideas ranging in price from $50 to $900 and wanted to share. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill, seen-1,000-times gifts - these are interesting gifts that I’ve either bought (don’t tell my wife), received, or wanted to buy at some point! 1) The “Naef Gloggomobil”...
In Part 1 I talked about the cost of starting a car company in today's market. This entry covers the point Seth makes that having more car companies will lead to more innovation: "I'd spend a billion dollars to make the creation of a car company turnkey. Make it easy...
In case you aren't familiar with Seth Godin (bio, blog, books), here's a quick intro: Seth is a writer, marketer and entrepreneur. You might have heard of Squidoo - that's him. Right before Thanksgiving, Seth wrote a blog entry titled, What to do about Detroit in which he makes an...
Those of you used to working with SQL Server 2000 are familiar with using the stored procedure sp_dbcmptlevel to view and change the compatibility of a database. That stored proc has been deprecated however and it's replacements are far better!By the way, LearnItFirst has some great SQL Server training classes...
