Hey everybody,

Every once in a while, amidst the deluge of emails we each receive daily, one jewel shines out of the many - a valuable resource or tidbit of knowledge which makes drudging through all of the other messages worthwhile.  Well, today I had the privilege of discovering two great developer and IT professional resources.

The first resource opens a window into the tools and processes that Microsoft SQL Product Support Services (PSS) engineers use to help customers troubleshoot SQL Server 2000.  You can download these hands-on labs here.  All labs are documented so that users can work through different scenarios in a self-study environment.  These labs cover popular topics such as blocking, performance, memory, and debugging, and data recovery.  They include hands-on usage of the PSS tools: READ80TRACE, OSTRESS, and PSSDiag.

The second set of resources at your disposal are online clinics to help you with XP SP2 deployment and administration and application development and maintenance on XP SP2.  The coolest thing about these clinics is that you have total freedom about what to learn and when.  With these clinics, you can access the topic you want, when you want it, and learn at your own pace. Each lesson can be paused, and all topics are indexed for fast and easy repeat use.  Not to mention the fact that they're completely free.

Happy Coding,
Jacob