Yesterday Microsoft announced that the beta of a new version of Visual Studio development suite, called Visual Studio LightSwitch will be available for download on August 23. Visual Studio LightSwitch directly targets business analysis and everyday business...

Yip you heard right the Microsoft PDC event will be running this year on October 28th and 29th in Redmond. The Microsoft PDC event has been the epicenter of Microsoft’s biggest platform announcements since the first event in 1991. This year will be no...

The SQL Cape User Group Kick-Off event will be taking place this Thursday 15 July 2010 at the Microsoft Cape Town Offices. I will be presenting a little something on SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Services (MDS), similar to what I presented up in Johannesburg...

I have over the past several years utilized the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit in its previous incarnations as my primary tool for getting an initial picture of a customers SQL deployments when starting any consolidation or risk assessment...

Yesterday Microsoft released the SQL Server 2008 SP2 CTP which includes all cumulative updates up to SQL Server 2008 SP1 cumulative update package 8. What makes this release interesting to evaluate (obviously only in non-production environments) for me...

The 24 hours of PASS is now online , you will need to register and login but its there for you to consume. For a complete list of all the sessions with their details checkout http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/2010/Sessions.aspx <Gary>

After a discussion last week at the ZA SQL Server User Group meeting around the scanning and managing your SQL environment for best practice deployment using  the Best Practice Analyzer (BPA) or Policy-Based Management (formerly known as the Declarative...

This is just a quick, last minute reminder that the next SQL Server user group will be held tonight (15 June 2009) at 6:30PM at the Microsoft South Africa offices in Bryanston (3012 William Nicol Drive). Inus du Preez will be discussing SQL 2008 R2 deployment...

I have received many requests for additional technical training material for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse from customers and partners when I introduce the capabilities as part of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 roadmap discussions...

As promised SQL Server latest updates (updated 5 June). SQL Server 2005 Express: SQL Server 2005 Express with Service Pack 3 SQL Server 2005 Express with Advanced Services with Service Pack 3 SQL Server 2005: SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 SQL Server...

There is now a great new whitepaper by Paul Randal on Proven SQL Server Architectures for High Availability and Disaster Recovery that extends the scope of his existing High-Availability with SQL Server 2008 white paper currently on msdn to include real...

The StreamInsight sample that I recently talked so much about in my Techdays and Bootcamp sessions are now finally online on CodePlex at http://streaminsight.codeplex.com . The purpose of these samples is to provide a guide through the StreamInsight development...

The May meeting of the SA SQL Server User Group will be on the 18th of May 2010. Venue and time are the same as always, 18h30 at the Microsoft offices This month I will be presenting on Master Data Management and SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Services...

The SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack is now available for download and includes the usual collection of stand-alone packages now familiar to the previous versions of this feature pack including all the latest redistributable components for Microsoft SQL...

Get the SQL Server 2008 R2 Trial This includes the 64bit and 32bit versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 and the 64bit and 32bit versions of the PowerPivot add-in for Office 2010. All versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 Express are also available. Additionally all...

So it’s official, an evaluation edition of Windows Embedded Standard 7 is now available for download . If you have cooked up some solutions on earlier Windows XP based versions of Windows Embedded get the latest download of Windows Embedded Standard...

The SQL Server 2008 R2 Boot Camp provided everyone with a great overview of the new capabilities of SQL Server 2008 R2: PowerPivot, Report Builder 3.0, the new Reporting Service and Multi Server Management capabilities, Master Data Services and StreamInsight...

I missed the fact that a couple of weeks back Microsoft released version 3.0 of the SQL Server JDBC drivers so quickly after having released the CPT at the beginning of March. The JDBC drivers now provides support for SQL Server 2008 features including...

For those of you that missed the fact, SQL Server 2008 R2 Express is now available for download from the SQL Server Express site. But more importantly SQL Server 2008 R2 Express now supports 10 GB of storage per database. <Gary>

Only a week away, don't forget TechDays 2010 is coming to Cape Town next week  and its the technology training conference for South African IT Professionals and it is even bigger this year! Dates: Cape Town, CTICC - 11 May 2010 ( add to calendar...

Every now and then I force myself to sit down and reevaluate my certification status across all Microsoft products and map out a personal plan against the Microsoft curriculum for those certifications that I wish to maintain (yes, there are some areas...

Last week Steve Ballmer previewed the new Windows Live Messenger in his “Five Dimensions of the Cloud” presentation at the Universidade de Sao Paul, Brazil. You can check out the 6 minute video of the demo online now and learn more about the upcoming...

As promised SQL Server latest updates (updated 3 May). SQL Server 2005 Express: SQL Server 2005 Express with Service Pack 3 SQL Server 2005 Express with Advanced Services with Service Pack 3 SQL Server 2005: SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 SQL Server 2005...

I am  pleased to announce that the PowerPivot is now available for download from MSDN for MSDN subscribers. I have just downloaded and installed and it now reports version 10.5.1600.1 <Gary>

We will again be holding a SQL Server Boot Camp next week focusing on SQL Server 2008 R2’s newest features. I will be presenting the MDS and Stream Insight sections. Come join us for an awesome couple of days to talking and working with SQL Server 2008...