Data Adventures in Africa

... let your data lead you on an adventure

July SQL Server User Group Reminder

Just a reminder that everyone is invited to the SQL User Group meeting - 10 July 2012 as part of the...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 07/09/2012

New Visual Studio Version for Business Users

Yesterday Microsoft announced that the beta of a new version of Visual Studio development suite,...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 08/04/2010

PDC10 is here!

Yip you heard right the Microsoft PDC event will be running this year on October 28th and 29th in...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 07/12/2010

SQL Cape User Group

The SQL Cape User Group Kick-Off event will be taking place this Thursday 15 July 2010 at the...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 07/12/2010

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0 Released

I have over the past several years utilized the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit in...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 07/12/2010

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 CTP

Yesterday Microsoft released the SQL Server 2008 SP2 CTP which includes all cumulative updates up to...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 07/08/2010

The 24 hours of PASS is now online

The 24 hours of PASS is now online, you will need to register and login but its there for you to...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/21/2010

SQL Server 2008 R2 Best Practice Analyzer Released

After a discussion last week at the ZA SQL Server User Group meeting around the scanning and...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/20/2010

SA SQL Server User Group Meeting (June 2010)

This is just a quick, last minute reminder that the next SQL Server user group will be held tonight...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/15/2010

Parallel Data Warehouse Clinic Released

I have received many requests for additional technical training material for Microsoft SQL Server...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/09/2010

SQL Server Latest Updates – May 2010

As promised SQL Server latest updates (updated 5 June). SQL Server 2005 Express: SQL Server 2005...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/05/2010

New SQL High Availability and Disaster Recovery Whitepaper

There is now a great new whitepaper by Paul Randal on Proven SQL Server Architectures for High...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/05/2010

StreamInsight Samples Finally Online

The StreamInsight sample that I recently talked so much about in my Techdays and Bootcamp sessions...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/27/2010

May SA SQL Server User Group meeting

The May meeting of the SA SQL Server User Group will be on the 18th of May 2010. Venue and time are...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/15/2010

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack Update

The SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack is now available for download and includes the usual collection...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/13/2010

SQL Server 2008 R2 Et Al Public Download

Get the SQL Server 2008 R2 Trial This includes the 64bit and 32bit versions of SQL Server 2008 R2...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/12/2010

Windows Embedded Standard 7 Download

So it’s official, an evaluation edition of Windows Embedded Standard 7 is now available for...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/08/2010

SQL Server 2008 R2 Boot Camp Review

The SQL Server 2008 R2 Boot Camp provided everyone with a great overview of the new capabilities of...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/08/2010

Microsoft SQL Server JDBC 3.0 Released

I missed the fact that a couple of weeks back Microsoft released version 3.0 of the SQL Server JDBC...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/04/2010

SQL Server 2008 R2 Express now with 10GB DBs

For those of you that missed the fact, SQL Server 2008 R2 Express is now available for download from...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/03/2010

TechDays 2010 Cape Town Next Week

Only a week away, don't forget TechDays 2010 is coming to Cape Town next week  and its the...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/03/2010

My Microsoft Certification Status Update

Every now and then I force myself to sit down and reevaluate my certification status across all...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/03/2010

Windows Live Messenger Update Coming Soon

Last week Steve Ballmer previewed the new Windows Live Messenger in his “Five Dimensions of the...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/03/2010

SQL Server Latest Updates – April 2010

As promised SQL Server latest updates (updated 3 May). SQL Server 2005 Express: SQL Server 2005...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/03/2010

PowerPivot Now On MSDN

I am  pleased to announce that the PowerPivot is now available for download from MSDN for MSDN...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/03/2010

SQL Server 2008 R2 Bootcamp

We will again be holding a SQL Server Boot Camp next week focusing on SQL Server 2008 R2’s newest...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/01/2010

SQL 2008 Slipstream Install of Service Packs and Cumulative Updates

One of the questions that often comes up is “How to perform a installation of SQL 2008 without the...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 04/23/2010

SQL Server Latest Updates – March 2010

I just had a question today from one of my customers around what the latest SQL Server Service Packs...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 04/06/2010

SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Broker Changes

Having been involved with a large SQL Server Service Broker deployment and having to deal with the...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 04/06/2010

SQL Server 2008 R2 the last release to support Itanium

Some time back, in the context of the then recently released TCP results, I blogged about the rise...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 04/06/2010

Generations in computing and their builders

The definition of the beginning of one generation and the end of another as it relates to computing...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 04/02/2010

TechDays 2010

TechDays 2010 - The technology training conference for South African IT Professionals is coming to...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 04/01/2010

Live @ TechEd Africa 2009 (Part 1)

I am now in Durban at the International Conference Center (ICC) where I will be presenting a couple...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 08/02/2009

July SQL 2008 Cumulative Updates Released

Earlier this week (21 July 2009) the SQL Server Release Services team released Cumulative Update #3...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 07/26/2009

SQL Server Disk Partition Alignment Whitepaper

I have over the past couple of years engaged with many customers around the benefits of correct...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/20/2009

SQL Server Cumulative Updates

Earlier this week (18 May 2009) the SQL Server Release Services team released Cumulative Update #4...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/20/2009

ZA SQL Server User Group June

Just a quick, last minute reminder that the next SQL Server user group will be held on Tuesday (23...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 06/20/2009

SQL Server Virtual Guest Clustering Support

During TechEd 2009 last week it was announced that Microsoft will now support SQL Server 2008 guest...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/19/2009

May ZA SQL Server User Group

This is just a quick, last minute reminder that the next SQL Server user group will be held tonight...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 05/19/2009

ZA SQL Server User Group

This is just a quick reminder that the next SQL Server user group will be held tomorrow (17 March...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 03/16/2009

SQL Server 2008 Auditing Whitepaper

Il-Sung Lee and Art Rask’s whitepaper exploring the details of Auditing in SQL Server 2008 is now...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 03/02/2009

SQL in Botswana

Its going to be in Botswana for the next month or so. More specifically the city of Gaborone...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 03/01/2009

Canvas for OneNote

It amazes me how many people have yet to discover the power of Microsoft Office OneNote as I use it...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 02/28/2009

GeoLife at TechFest

Every year around this time Microsoft Research allows us a glimpse at the technological development...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 02/28/2009

SQL & CLR Base64 Conversion Performance

As a follow-up to my previous post I thought I would have a look at the performance of this type of...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 02/26/2009

SQL Base64 conversion

Someone asked the question “Using T-SQL only, is there a way to decode Base64 data” and Peter...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 02/26/2009

TED Siftables are cool

One of the guys at the office pointed me to a video of one of the coolest TED presentations I have...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 02/25/2009

New TPC-H Results

Last week Unisys posted their latest 10TB TPC-H results for their 16 socket Xeon X7460. There are a...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 02/25/2009

GeoSynth

It often amazes me just how much goes on inside Microsoft and where other interesting stuff is being...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 02/24/2009

GPS and Bluetooth - better together

There is growing evidence that integration is the name of the game when it comes to wireless...

Author: Gary Hope Date: 02/24/2009

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