Thank you for attending the Get Ready for SQL Server 2005 event in Minneapolis. I hope you liked my presentation of the new developer-related features. As promised, here are links to the slides and demos from today's presentation.

It was a simple enough question that Ethan, my .NET remoting student, asked me yesterday. I did some research, and couldn't find anything official from Microsoft, just their human readable schema on MSDN. Then I found radsoftware's page, which offers a product providing Intellisense to your VS.NET 1.X config file editor. About half way down the page is a ZIP file containing an XSD schema that they built. It looks pretty thorough, but I sent off an email just to make sure.

Just "of the week"? I'm hurt.

My interview with Simple Talk is online now.

Thanks to Mike Gunderloy for creating this cool INF file. Even though it's been around for a couple of years, I just found out about it!

David Anderson of Microsoft will be hosting a Webcast and Chat on August 18th. The Webcast will run from 11 AM to 12 PM Pacific Time (GMT -8), with the chat starting at 12 PM and running to 1 PM Pacific Time. Bring your MSF/CMMI questions and be there.

Thanks to Rob Caron for the original posting ...

A few weeks ago a student told me about Fiddler, which is a cool HTTP Debugging Proxy. It logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and an endpoint. It event includes a JScript.NET event-based scripting subsystem.

RegEx can be a pain. I regularly check out regexlib.com and regexadvice.com, but Clemens Vasters just pointed out this cool, free tool for learning and testing regex. It allows you to build and verify a regular expression against any text input, file or web, and displays matching, splitting or replacement results within an easy to understand, hierarchical tree.

A week ago, I mentioned that Longhorn is now officially known as Windows Vista. Well, Indigo has also been renamed to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Avalon renamed to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Here's an eWeek article discussing it.
 

Since I have nothing else going on in my life (ya - right), I thought I would start installing the July CTP of TFS and VSTS. This CTP requires a dual-installation, because you have to use the June CTP of SQL Server 2005 which uses a different build of the .NET Framework than VSTS July CTP. Anyway, I've run into some problems, which I will share with you ...

• You can install SQL 2005 June CTP on the same VPC as the DC, because of this problem.
• So, I had to create a separate VPC for the DC (at least it runs with < 200mb of memory allocated).

More to come, I'm sure ...

If anyone is planning on attending the PDC, be sure to come a day early and check out the great pre-conferences. I'll be presenting a full day on Team System development, Sunday the 11th.

See you in LA!

I just read this article in the Idaho Statesman. Extended Systems is a Boise-based company that makes, among other things, the Advantage Database Server product. They employee 180 people and as many as 20 would get cut if the acquisition were to take place.

Congratulations to my friends John Alexander (Microsoft RD from Kansas City) and Jeff Julian on their forthcoming book. I just saw it advertised on Amazon.

This new division will unify the Distributed Systems Group (DSG) and the Business Process/Integration Division (BPID), bringing these technologies together:

• Windows Communication Foundation ("Indigo")
• Web Services Enhancements (WSE)
• InfoCard
• MSMQ
• Active Directory
• Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS)
• BizTalk Server
• Host Integration Server
• Commerce Server
• RFID
• Industry Standard Accelerators
• Windows Workflow Services ("Windows OE").

Read the announcement here.

A few weeks ago I blogged the shirt sizing chart of Tech-Ed/Europe. The sizes only went up to 5X. Well, at this fall's MVP summit, the 6X folks are finally given a conference to attend ...

I want to wish my long-time business partner and friend Steven Borg a long and happy marriage to Lori Larsen, er. Lori Borg!

This tool analyzes your SQL 2000 applications for potential upgrade issues when migrating to SQL Server 2005. This new version is based on the June CTP and contains additional rules, support for scanning batch files, command line support and usability improvements.

The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor is a tool used by Database developers and administrators to analyze SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 database servers in preparation for upgrading to SQL Server 2005. The Upgrade Advisor will allow users to analyze the configuration of their existing database services and database applications. As a result of this analysis, Upgrade Advisor will provide reports that identify deprecated features and necessary configuration changes that will impact their Database upgrade process. Upgrade Advisor will also provide links to documentation that describe these changes and necessary steps to complete the process.

Download it here.

You've no doubt heard about earth.google.com by now. Well, it was only a matter of time before we got moon.google.com as well.

"In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing."

Tip: Be sure to zoom all the way in on the moon!

Yes, Microsoft and a certain MVP have gone to great lengths to provide you with this simple how-to.

Thanks for attending Steve and/or my talks (if you did). Here are links to the presentations on SQL Server 2005 and Team System.

• Introducing Visual Studio 2005 Team System
• SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence (BI)
• SQL Server 2005 for Developers
  

Yep, my session in Austin was canceled today, because someone left some suspicious backpacks downstairs at the Hyatt Regency in Austin, and they cleared the building for 3.5 hours. Methinks Oracle was behind it!

Read the article from News 8 Austin

(Update) Here's the letter from the hotel.