The 4-part video series on how user identity is established for different PowerPivot ops is now available on the TechNet Wiki. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/powerpivot-for-sharepoint-architecture.aspx These videos provide...

I know I have been remiss is posting here lately, and I do apologize for that. I will try to do a better job of posting here more frequently. But, that doesn't mean we have not been busy! I'm pleased to announce that SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP has...

I am pleased to announce the availability of Documentation Refresh 9 (DR9) of SQL Server 2008 Books Online in the MSDN and TechNet Library. To see a list of the latest updates, please see the topic " New and Updated Topics in SQL Server 2008 Books Online...

Continuously striving to help you find the best and latest content in the ever-growing pool of content, the SQL Server documentation team has not only redesigned our business intelligence (BI) technology pages (as I posted here earlier), but also has...

I'm pleased to announce the release of the first Service Pack of SQL Server 2008 is now available. Service Pack 1 (SP1) focuses on essential updates only, primarily roll-ups of cumulative updates 1 to 3 and fixes to issues reported through the SQL Server...

This helpful tip comes courtesy of Matt Stroshane, a Writer on our team. I made a little Excel formula that you might find useful when using Excel for researching or otherwise tracking help topics. This Excel formula displays the topic GUID as a...

Just wanted to let everybody know that you can now download the Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1). The download is available from the Microsoft Download Center . Try the CTP today and submit feedback on...

The January 2009 update to the SQL Server 2008 Books Online has now been published to the MSDN Library, TechNet Library, and the Microsoft Download Center. The lists of new topics and updated topics with significant changes are available at http://technet...

"Table-valued parameters (TVPs) in SQL Server 2008 provide an easy way to marshal multiple rows of data from a client application to SQL Server without requiring multiple round trips or special server-side logic for processing the data. TVPs come in handy...

Hi everybody! here is a new Christmas present for you all -- the release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (SP3), and supporting documentation, including: SQL Server 2005 SP3 Download Updated SQL Server 2005 Feature Pack Updated SQL Server...

I am pleased to announce the availability of the SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Technical Reference Guide . This 490-page white paper covers the essential phases and steps to upgrade existing instances of SQL Server 2000 and 2005 to SQL Server 2008 by using...

Think we're slowing down with the holidays right around the corner? Not so! Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Data Mining Add-ins for Microsoft Office 2007 (Data Mining Add-ins) helps you take advantage of SQL Server 2008 predictive analytics in Office Excel...

The SQL Server Developer Center on MSDN and TechCenter on TechNet contain what are called "navigation pages" because their primary purpose is to navigate you to more information and resources. For example, one path you might take starting from the Developer...

Hi all, I am pleased to announce that the SQL Server User Education team has just published its first set of video content. You can find the initial eight videos in the MSDN Library at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc952928.aspx . We will...

Hey everybody, MSDN and TechNet have now released their v1 of social bookmarking technology. This is very cool and will help you find SQL Server documentation and content much more easily, as well as share your bookmarks with others in the community...

I am very pleased to announce that SQL Server 2008 Books Online is now available for download on the Microsoft Download Center in 11 languages. The final version of the documentation is now currently being published to the MSDN Library and TechNet...

With Release Candidate (RC0) of SQL Server 2008, we have now enabled the Community Content feature on the SQL Server 2008 Books Online . This is the same feature that has been enabled on the SQL Server 2005 version of the documentation for about a year...

We're getting very close to the final release of SQL Server 2008, and I am pleased to inform you all that as of today the Release Candidate (RC0) version is now available for download. SQL Server 2008 RC0 is available in the following languages: ...

Hi everybody! Just because we're very busy putting the finishing touches on the SQL Server 2008 documentation, doesn't mean that we stop releasing other things too! In fact, we just released the next Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of the...

If you've ever happened to find a SQL Server documentation topic that you were looking for and wanted to be able to come back to it later, you very likely have created a Favorite or Bookmark to it. But if you do that very frequently, your list of Favorites...

Awhile back, I wrote about a SQL Server 2005 Scoped Search Macro that uses Windows Live Search to help you narrow your search to just the SQL Server 2005 Books Online documentation and eliminate extranneous results from other sources. Now, we have...

As you all know, the next version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2008, is due to be released this year. We recently released the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP) version of SQL Server 2008 in February. A CTP release is very similar to what used to...

Hi everybody, I realize it has been quite awhile since my last post, sorry about that. We on the SQL Server team have been very busy lately, with the joint SQL Server/Visual Studio/Windows Server Launch coming up next week. As part of that, we have...

Hi everybody, welcome back from the holidays. Hope you all are ready to jump back into the world of SQL Server content and documentation! We had one release over the holidays that may not have gotten much notice while folks were celebrating and taking...

The Microsoft SQL Server support team uses several internally-written utilities to make it easier to work on a typical customer support case. These utilities may also be useful to database developers and system administrators who work with Microsoft SQL...