What do these have in common? Sounds like a question on Jeopardy. There is some bad and good news as part of this.

Bad

Adam Saxton and I were not able to travel to Europe this past week to speak at Europe PASS.  A little volcano in Iceland got in the way. We tried our best even securing a flight to Barcelona to hopefully get there by train but those flights eventually got canceled as well.

Good

• We were able to use the wonders of Live meeting and a webcam to successfully present our pre-conference seminars yesterday (or was it the day before? Right now I’m kind of on European time). So far the feedback is that it was still successful despite the fact that we could not be there. Adam gave another talk this morning US time and I’m due to give my main con talk tomorrow.
• Both of us as part of our preconference talks announced the upcoming availability of a new Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) for SQL Server 2008 R2

The new SQL Server 2008 R2 BPA is based on the new Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer (MBCA) v2.0. We hope to release the free downloadable package to the web in early Summer of 2010. Here are a few facts about the new BPA and some sneak peek at screenshots (the details are subject to change):

• Supports both SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2
• Free download from the web.
• Runs on various operating systems such as Vista, XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2
• Supports GUI and command line execution
• Supports remote execution through remote Powershell 2.0
• SQL Server 2005 rules converted where appropriate
• ~150 rules in the first release spanning engine, security, replication, SSAS, SSRS, Servicing, and SSIS

Here are a few screenshots (the overall look and feel will be like this but the details as shown here are subject to change before we release):

Look for more posts on this blog with the tag SQLBPA in the coming months as we move toward ship.

Bob Ward
Microsoft