[Insert abject apology for the vacation-related delay here. Yes, the turkey-related festivities were great, thanks for asking.]

The winners were announced @ SQL PASS 2008 on Friday 21 November. And belated as they may be, here’s the Official Announcement™.

• BIDS Helper: Greg Galloway, Darren Gosbell, John Calvin Welch
• SQL 2008 Extended Events Manager: Jonathan Matthew Kehayias
• ssisUnit: John Calvin Welch
• SqlMonitoring Tool: Robert Hartskeerl
• Allocation SQL Server Management Studio Add-in: Daniel Gould

Congratulations to all of the finalists and to the winners!! Thank you for participating.

p.s. Winners, your Windows Home Server™ will be shipped as soon as feasible. Thanks for your patience. Enjoy!

Tomorrow we’re going to announce the SQL Heroes winners before the keynote @ SQL PASS 2008.

Be there!

I know who the winners are, but you’ll have to wait for the results until a week from Friday, though. Heh. The winners will be announced from among our nine finalists on the last day of SQL PASS 2008: Friday 21-November 2008. Be there!

Without getting into the philosophical question for the ages “Is everyone a winner?”, the question came up about Finalists­® over the weekend. Because we had to kick a number of entries that didn’t meet the simple rules outlined in the Official Contest Rules®, we have fewer than 15 qualified entries. This means that everybody blogged about so far is a Finalist®.

They haven’t won any prizes, yet, since the SQL Rangers have just started picking through the code with their Fine-Toothed Combs®. After all, the suspense will remain in place until morale improves (or until SQL PASS 2008) whichever comes first. Heh.

To summarize, here’s the list of SQL Heroes 2008 Contest Finalists:

Five of those projects are expected to win a Windows Home Server® very much like the one that sits quietly next to the TiVo and Xbox 360 underneath my LCD TV.

Yes, I’ve actually used the Home Server restore-from-backup feature to recover accidentally deleted Files of Great Importance® and thereby saving my marriage. Yes, the Home Server is quieter than the Xbox 360 when the DVD is spinning. (I have one of the older Elites before they got the quiet new optical drives that come with the new Xbox 360s.)

Don’t forget to vote! SQL Heroes 2008 Community Finalists Survey

Our survey got posted to Connect a little while back (life and work kept getting in the way of posting all the entries). Those of you who spend more time on Connect than is strictly healthy have already seen it and voted. There are a lot of overachievers in the SQL Server community, I tell ya’.

For the rest of us, here’s the official announcement of the survey:

SQL Heroes 2008 Community Finalists Survey

Pick your Fave Five Finalists® and help them on toward the Winners’ Circle® at SQL PASS 2008!

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have “SQL 2008 Extended Events Manager”!!

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/ExtendedEventManager/
• SQL Hero: Jonathan Matthew Kehayias from the US.
• Personal Website: http://jmkehayias.blogspot.com

A big thanks to Jonathan, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have “ssisUnit”!!

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/ssisUnit 
• SQL Hero: John Calvin Welch from the US.
• Personal Website: http://www.agilebi.com

A big thanks to John, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have “QPee Tools 1.0”!!

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/QPee
• SQL Hero: Jason Massie from the US.
• Personal Website: http://statisticsio.com

A big thanks to Jason, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have “BIDS Helper”!!

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/bidshelper
• SQL Hero: Greg Galloway, Darren Gosbell and John Welch from the US.
• Personal Website: none specified

A big thanks to Greg, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Update: Greg emailed me last night to remind me, in all humility, that his partners on this project deserve just as much (or more) credit than the guy who filled out the entry form. Darren Gosbell and John Welch are the other two heavy-lifters that contribute to BIDS Helper. We love all three of 'em!! Thanks, guys.

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have “Allocation SQL Server Management Studio Add-in”!!

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/SSMSAllocation
• SQL Hero: Daniel Gould from the UK.
• Personal Website: http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/danny/Default.aspx

A big thanks to Daniel, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have “SQL CLR Measure Time”!!

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/SqlClrMeasureTime
• SQL Hero: Gorm Braarvig from the Norway.
• Personal Website: http://gorm-braarvig.blogspot.com/

A big thanks to Gorm, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have “SqlMonitoring Tool”!!

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/sqlmonitoring
• SQL Hero: Robert Hartskeerl from the Netherlands.
• Personal Website: none specified

A big thanks to Robert, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have “a hash implement by basic array and link list in C#”!! (I’m tempted to make an acronym of that, but I’m not sure that it would help.)

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/hashByArrayLink
• SQL Hero: Hou Jacky (aka 侯建宇) from Beijing, China.
• Personal Website: none specified

A big thanks to Hou, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Weighing in as a finalist in the SQL Heroes competition, we have CDCHelper!!

• Project URL: http://www.codeplex.com/CDCHelper/
• SQL Hero: Ignat Andrei from Bucharest (Romania)
• Personal Website: http://serviciipeweb.ro/iafblog

For those of you keeping score, I did say that I would blog them in alphabetical order by country and hero name, and although I know Bucharest isn't a country per se, that's what Ignat put in the Country field of the entry form, so I'm sticking with it. (Knowing at least one other Romanian personally, I'm told Bucharest is like a whole 'nother country, even to other Romanians, if you'll pardon the humor.)

A big thanks to Ignat, on behalf of the world and the SQL Server community, for spending his own time to create this cool entry!! Check it out and get ready to vote on your favorite entry when we put up the survey.

Everybody wants to know how many entries there are. Well, everybody who put in an entry anyway. Heh. Next week, we're going to put up the survey for YOU to select your favorites. You're welcome to count them.

Heh.

I will blog about the entries, one per day, in alphabetical order (by country and then by contributor name), starting on Monday. Promise!

First up will be Bucharest...