One of the most frequent questions I have gotten from emails and comments on my blog have been with regard to centralizing the database server for Business contact manager. While BCM was designed to be a peer to peer deployment in small businesses with limited centralization of servers, the inherent architecture of BCM does permit administrators to host the database on a central server/dedicated computer where office2007 and BCM are NOT installed. In response to all the requests for this capability, we released a very detailed white paper and KB article with step by step instructions several months ago. However the interest has been so high that we put in a lot of work to quickly develop and release a database admin tool that makes this process a piece of cake for administrators. The tool can be downloaded from MSDN. It is a 4.7MB download.

Here is what the tool does :

• It creates and backsup BCM2007 databases
• Restores BCM databases (V2007, V2003 and V2003 update)
• Shares out the BCM databases for access by other users on a local area network

Note: to create a database the user must be signed on as the local administrator. In addition the system requirements still include .NET framework 2.0, SQL express 2005 SP2 (32 bit only) or SQL server 2005 SP2 (32 bit only). The tool does not support SQL instances with case sensitive collation. Lastly the tool does not open the required ports for more then two SQL server instances.

We hope this new tool will help with deployments where our customers need a centralized BCM database.