By Ronald Barrett With the advent of SQL Server 2008, many DBAs worry about issues that sometimes arise with updating query plans during the upgrade process. Plan Freezing allows you to store plan guides, which can be reverted to if queries either fail or drain resources after the upgrade. Plan Freezing allows stability to queries and comes with ...

By Michael K. Campbell One of the great things about IIS 7 is that it provides an entirely new architecture – which enables it to finally treat all application platforms as first-class citizens. For example, with IIS 6 ASP.NET (Microsoft’s own flagship web development platform) was effectively a bolt-on afterthought that was implemented as an ...

By David Chernicoff TechNet Virtual Lab: Working with Pipelines does a good job of pulling the covers off of some basic BizTalk functionality by walking the user through the process of configuring Biztalk and setting up a custom pipeline. By providing the bulk of the project in predefined form, Microsoft enables the user to walk through ...

By Ronald Barrett Yet again another virtual lab title which had me thinking “That’s a mouthful”, but one must admit the idea of using Analysis Services in Office is in itself a great motivator for moving forward with this lab. Anytime you can move data from the SQL Server and into users’ hands via a product like Microsoft Excel, it’s bound to be ...

By Orin Thomas In the Technet Virtual Lab, New Administrative Features in Exchange Server 2007 SP1, you will work on a virtualized Exchange Server 2007 computer and learn about the new administrative features available with the release of service pack 1. The first area of functionality that you learn about is how to configure Exchange ...

By David Chernicoff TechNet Virtual Lab: Installation and the New Modular Architecture walks the user through examining the roles installed on an IIS 7 server and gives the user the opportunity to install additional server roles. This 45 minute Virtual Lab uses Server manager and Internet Information Services manager to walk the user through ...

By Ronald Barrett A new feature of SQL Server 2008 is the SQL Extended Events (a.k.a. the X-Event Infrastructure), while event reporting is not a new feature in SQL Server products. X-Event is an exciting new event infrastructure that allows for detailed traces of what is happening within the SQL Server. X-Event has support for sending events to ...

By Ronald Barrett When I first saw the title of this virtual lab I thought it would be shorter had they called it “everything but the kitchen sink”. But seriously as daunting as the name sounds, and as difficult as the lab might be deemed based upon the name, the areas covered in the virtual lab all fall under the new enhancements for Reporting ...

By Ronald Barrett The dynamic nature of databases, and in particular data warehouses, calls for a method of updating, inserting and deleting activity in a SQL server table. But change data capture is not only about the physical change of the database, it is about the ability to report on and track these changes. Change Data Capture is part of a ...

By Mark Burnett I watched a very interesting WebCast today called Why I Can Hack Your Network in a Day. The WebCast is from a TechEd 2007 presentation by Marcus Murry, a Swedish pen-tester. Marcus’ clever humor and knowledge of the hacking tools makes for an entertaining and informative session. After a short intro, Marcus jumps right into ...