Some friends passed this along to me, and it's a pretty cool download. It runs in the system tray and allows you to easily view the date and time in various locations around the world. You can also quickly and easily add your own personal locations to customize Microsoft Time Zone the way you want.
I happened upon this today. Enjoy!
In a recent posting on the Team System forums, Microsoft suggested that we will be really pleased when we see the new certifications for both VSTS and VS2005. These will get announced at Tech-Ed.
"Outsourcing", which has become synonymous with sending American jobs to India or China, could soon mean foreign workers sleeping in ships just a few miles off America's coast. Read the story here
Read more about the product here, and even sign-up to receive an evaluation of it here.
Looks like I'll be presenting three sessions on Team System at Wintellect's Devscovery event in DC next month.
I found a few more answers to some questions that came up during the ISV Community Days Tour.
Q. Will there be an XML data type in SQL Mobile?
A. No. In Beta 2 there is not an XML data type. If you replicate a SQL Server table with a XML datatype it converts it to ntext in the SQL Mobile database. You can see more information at the end of this article.
Q. Can you index a managed UDT column? If so, does it index on what the implemented ToString() provides?
A. Yes; we can define constraints on UDTs (PKs, FKs): constraints are implemented with indexes; the “key” is created with the serialized value; when you create the UDT, you must define how the value is going to be serialized: Format.Native or Format.UserDefined. If you select UserDefined format, you must implement the Sql.IBinarySerialize interface coding the methods Read and Write to serializate and deserializate the value. You can create an index on the column, as long as SQL knows which value to index, and this is what you decide when you select how to serialize the UDT.
Q. I’ve heard that Intellisense is gone, will we see it back in any form? Maybe for just T-SQL or system sprocs?
A. It was dropped when Beta2 came; I think we will not have it in any form.
Q. I’ve been hearing scary things about the scalability of managed UDTs – anything public on this yet? Some students are thinking that since Microsoft dropped ObjectSpaces, this is an alternative.
A. We must think about UDT as an extension of scalar types (date, time, points and so); we should not think of UDT as extension of business objects (Employee, Address, Contact,…). For this release, CLR UDTs are meant to be a mechanism to create new scalar data types, not complex objects, so it is NOT a replacement for ObjectSpaces. Balaji published a white paper which talks about this.
Must've happend overnight. If you're a subscriber, check it out ... but give me about a 4 hour headstart! 
Martin Danner sent this to me tonight. He scanned this advertisement out of the Idaho Statesman. I'm not really sure who dropped the ball, but see if you can spot the bug ... 
Wanted to say a quick hello to my friends in Chippewa Falls in Wisconsin. I met Doug Rhoten, who is the president of this INETA group at a SQL Server 2005 Business Inteligence event in Minneapolis a few weeks ago. If you get a chance, drop by their Website and say hello.
When: May 4-5, 2005 (Wed-Thu)
Where: MK Plaza, downtown Boise, ID
Cost: FREE to InfoSec professionals
Extras: FREE audience gifts to participants and CDs for registered participant
Click here for more information.
Looks to be a great chair for you and your programming buddy. Unfortunately, orders are only taken on April 1st.
Microsoft just published a whitepaper on how System.Transactions can be used for transactional applications in the .NET Framework version 2.0.
The city of Philadelphia will become the largest U.S. Internet "hot spot" next year under a plan to offer wireless access at about half the cost charged by commercial operators, city officials said Thursday. Read the CNN/Money article.
Google maps is a cool way to find maps for pretty much any location. They also have satellite imagery in various levels of detail available for some maps (click the Satellite link in the upper right). Have fun lookup up addresses.
Oh, and if you want to have fun, there's a couple of Easter Eggs in there too. See if you can spot something weird in the center of this photo and this photo (zoom in to the maximum level).
I'll keep looking for more ...
T-Mobile and HP just made available a download which promises more stability (wee), better Bluetooth performance (yay), and some other features.
Wish me luck. I'm going in!
Yesterday, at the TechMentor conference in Orlando, Al Valvano, Lead Product Manager with Microsoft Learning, unveiled the Microsoft Certified Architect Program, a board-level certification on a scale the company has never attempted before.
Read all the details from his keynote here.
Boise and Ada County have finally joined the ranks of other high-tech cities that offer real-time camera-based traffic information. Visit the ATIS site to see for yourself.
If so, then you certainly don't want to stop and take time to explain yourself to the masses. You want to keep on coding, and generating your .NET masterpiece! If this sounds like you, then you may need the The Commentator:
“The Commentator uses revolutionary real-time language processing to actually grok your code and add the necessary comments on the fly. No more doco to slow you down. Just install The Commentator and watch as your coding elegance is eloquently decorated with insightful, nuanced commentary ...as you type. What's more, The Commentator's powerful Personality Controls allow you to tweak it's output so completely that it's as if The Commentator is speaking for you. In your voice. Explaining to those that need it, so that you can get on and get busy.”
As you can imagine, the debate has been lively, as to whether hosting CLR sprocs, triggers, etc. in a SQL Server 2005 should be a best practice for an organization. You all know my feeling on the subject - go for it, in moderation!
Joe Celko disagrees. First, check out his analysis from last fall, and then his follow-up article more recently.
Personally, I like the comment posted on April 1st at the bottom of the follow-up article:
“I have been doing this for 31 years. I came to a DBA role through a developer path. The CLR is here, it can do neat stuff, make the best of it. I sympathize with with DBAs who cannot or have never written procedural code but you will have to learn. Also management is paid to be cheap. My brother (a CPA) still uses DOS based accounting programs. (posted: 4/1/2005 8:56:48 AM)“
From various student questions over the last few weeks. More to come ...
Q. I had heard that SQL 2005 was going to have an UPSERT (try UPDATE, if it fails, do an INSERT) capability. What's the status?
A. UPSERTs have been requested for many years and always wind up on the request list for features. It does not exist in SQL Server 2005 and isn't going to be added. There was, however, mention of an Insert With Merge ("Upsert") in some early Yukon documentation and books, but nothing there now.
Q. When I upload an RDL file in SQL 2005, is that RDL stored in an XML data type column somewhere? If so, which table?
A. Not in XML. I believe it is stored in the Catalog.Content column which is a blob.
Q. Will SQL/Express have DTSRun capability? I know it won’t have the designer.
A. No. unless something changes
Q. Will the Office Business Scorecards Accelerator be the “Microsoft way” of viewing KPIs, besides from BI Dev. Studio?
A. Not sure where they are with MOBSA and updating it 2005, and as you know, the KPIs that are in MOBSA are not exactly the same since they simply point to an AS2000 measure and have the ability to also handle metadata and weighted rollups.
Q. Is the XML support in SQL 2005 provided by .NET or MSXML? I’m guessing MSXML, because that’s what’s listed during install.
A. I believe this is correct. This is why the MSXML6 Parser and SDK get installed
Q. The Website www.sqlserverdatamining.com has some sample code on how to host the DM viewers in your Windows apps. What about licensing?
A. This is still an open question with marketing, they have not nailed down that specific issue but should by Beta3 timeframe as a number of questions have come up on that.
Q. Any late breaking news on SQL 2000 DTS packages being able to be opened, edited, migrated, etc. into SIS packages?
A. There is a migration tool that will perform some upgrades to DTS packages, but there are certain things that need rework, such as scripting, Data pump transforms, and dynamic properties. A good Whitepaper was just published on this coming out of the Project REAL work it outlines most of the details. However, I hear that there is more work being dome on the upgrade process so stay tuned. Also, when installing SSIS, there is an advanced option to install the DTS runtime components which will allow DTS packages to run with SSIS packages.
Q. Any other ways to persist SIS packages besides as an XML file?
A. Packages can be saved as external files or in SQL Server tables, but both are stored as XML. I've asked about a way to encrypt the XML, but this is not an option unfortunately unless Windows file level encryption is used, but an administrator can always take control of the files.
Q. I thought I had heard that SIS packages get compiled to an assembly and run as .NET code, like BizTalk maps and orchestrations? Not true? What gets “deployed” then?
A.The deployment utility has some nice features in that it can package up the runtime DLLs for SSIS packages to run on other servers, it also will include any compiled custom components, adapters and tasks. The SSIS packages are just XML and nothing changes there when deploying them. There is a SSIS service, however, that can run on the server and it helps performance by allowing the built-in components to remain in memory for quick use when a package is executed.
Q. Is there a way to put a breakpoint on a particular SIS task and the execute the package, stopping at that breakpoint? If not, how else to “debug”?
A. Yep, full breakpoint support and its very cool for development... with all the standard VS options of watches, stepping through code, etc There's also something called a data viewer that can show sample/full data at different transformations in the form of a grid or even graphs. It halts the data flow while the data is reviewed and then the designer can continue on with the dataflow.
Q. Why doesn’t Reporting Services 2000/2005 support an .RTF or .DOC export format? Their competitors do, so why not Microsoft?
A. This is on the Office team. Expect this in the next Office release (hopefully). Until then, check out OfficeWriter.
Q. Any word on other .RDL converters out there? I had heard that Hitachi (I believe) had one for Crystal Reports, but that they are sitting on it.
A. Crystal got out the big stick and went after Hitachi and RPTtoSQL and others offering either a utility or a service since the .rpt is a blackbox and folks had to use Crystal objects to perform the conversions and that is against the legalize in the Crystal licensing. Since Microsoft does not want to give the perception of intentionally stomping on Crystal, they have steered clear of the topic all together.
Q. Is the Sharepoint BI portal ready for SQL 2005?
A. RS2000 SP2 will have SPS webparts for RS, these will also be offered for 2005. Will it work on Windows Sharepoint Services? They work with SPS and WSS Where do I find this? SP2 should be out in soon. I have not looked for them in 2005 IDW13 Licensed? There will be no licensing for the webparts, they will be covered by SPS (or Win2K3/WSS) and RS licensing, nothing additional for the use of them
Q. Hooking up a Reporting Services matrix control to an AS cube is a daunting task. Are there any good step-by-step guides out there or links I can share with my students?
A. It is a little easier in 2005 given the MDX query builder.
Q. Besides Report Builder, what other cool and interesting features are going to be part of SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services?
A. There will be a configuration tool that will keep people from screwing up their config files. There will be an API for Report Controls that will crack the ISV market open by permitting folks to plug-in items to RS -- the most referenced is that Dundas will offer their Enterprise Charting capabilities that you can license above and beyond the OEM version. Of course, a very large feature is the UDM integration, they are really peas & carrots how they are meant to work together to offer a “single version of truth.”
Q. Can you connect to Analysis Services 2005 via mixed mode?
A. No.
Q. Will you be able to secure Perspectives? In other words, are they just used to simplify viewing, or can they be used to restrict what a User can access?
A. No.
Q. If a cube has 4 partitions, and 1 of the 4 is ROLAP without caching, and that data source goes down, will the entire cube be unavailable or just that aggregation?
A. The other partitions remain available.
Interesting Web site for the answers to all things trivial and more. This site is the home of Cecil Adams, claimed to be the World's Smartest Human Being, and his famous syndicated column The Straight Dope. Here you will find all manner of things relating to the column and the vast Straight Dope media empire.
And, while we're on this subject, how about BuzzWhack.com? They are dedicated to de-mystifying buzzwords.
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