Thanks to everyone in INDA Cork for a great turnout last night for the community launch of Visual Studio 2005. For those of you wanting more please do attend the official launch in December in Cork. Sorry that I couldn't show more in the short time, I deliberately focussed on the team collaboration aspects, if you want to see SQL and Biztalk and the great new developer capabilities then the December event is a must. Note - the event is full so please register and go on the waitlist.
I got asked some good questions that I promised to revert to you on. Firslty "will there be a migration tool from NUnit to the integrated test tools in Team System"?. There is one in the works already. In a similar vein I was asked about migrating existing Visual Source Safe projects into VSTS. There is a process - there is some manual activity (actually quite a lot of it) but the nice thing is that it should preserve the history.
Finally I got asked a question I get asked at nearly every session in one form or another. The specific question was about the best SQL hardware environment and why on a multi proc box they were seing only one proc being exercised. A good pointer on the multi proc issue is here.
The more generic question is "How do I tune, design, install my SQL Server to run fast/exercise the hardware/ensure resposiveness and on what hardware/configuration/cluster etc." As you can probably tell there is no one answer to this question. and its my least favourite question as my answer is always "it depends" which often dissapoints. People expect a silver bullet and even if there is one, I can't possibly find it without examining the environment. Here is what I recommend in general
1) Check the resources - SQL documentation is excellent use it.
2) Get training - SQL tuning/admin courses are highly recommended. Here is a list of the certified training partner in Ireland (see under CPLS section). Also check out the new certification programs announced recently.
3) Get help - there are some excellent SQL experts who can work with you to examine your environment and see what the best solution is. Everyone's environment is different and its the main reason I can never give a satisfactory answer to the question "How do I make SQL Faster" on the spot. If you want to engage Microsoft Consulting in Ireland let me know and I can give you pointers.
Bill
