Snowball - The Blog

I must confess, I haven’t been using SQL Server 2008 up until recently. The main reason was having a few customers that were still on 2005 so I didn’t really have to upgrade. Now with my new laptop, I forced myself to use only 2008 (where possible that is, and also for my personal work).

On a quiet evening like today, I was creating a sample database for a demo I’m working on using ADO.NET Data Services with Silverlight. I noticed I forgot to set the primary key on a table, so I went ahead and added it. However, on saving the table, I got a dialog from SQL Server, saying that the change I requested was being prevented.

Very weird, I thought to myself. I have been doing that for years with 2005, never had an error like this. I went searching for the option “Prevent saving changes” and turns out, it’s an option that can be set in the options of SQL Server 2008. To change it, go to Tools –> Options and in Designers –> Table and database designers, you can switch of the option.

I’m preparing some demo’s on ASP.NET caching. One of them includes SQL Server Cache Notifications (with SQL Server 2005).

For this to work, the first thing you need to do is enabling the Service Broker on the database. This can be done using the SET ENABLE_BROKER command.

   1: ALTER DATABASE Northwind SET ENABLE_BROKER

This command seemed to be taking way too much time (I left it running several minutes, but it still didn’t do anything). I then stopped the database service and retried. The command completed in just seconds.

The reason appears to be the following: this command wants to create an exclusive lock on the database. However, if you still have open connections, it cannot create this lock and it thus waits and waits… and hangs.

Stopping the service closes all connections and makes it possible to create the broker.

Just minutes ago, after a long wait, SQL Server 2008 was released on MSDN Subscriptions. Just like previous versions, several versions are available: Developer, Standard, Web, Enterprise and Workgroup.

Note the new logo (finally, SQL Server has one!)



You can find the press release here.

Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the new version of the company’s acclaimed data management and business intelligence platform. This version of SQL Server provides powerful new capabilities such as support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis services. SQL Server 2008 provides the trusted, productive and intelligent platform necessary for business-critical applications.

“Microsoft developed this release of SQL Server with the customer in mind,” said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. “SQL Server 2008 is the only major database that includes comprehensive, tightly integrated functionality for data management as well as advanced business intelligence out of the box. By offering a complete solution, we save customers time and money and allow them to focus on deriving the most value from their data assets.”

SQL Server 2008 Express and SQL Server 2008 Compact Edition are available for free at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspx.

If you're using Visual Studio 2008, don't get too excited just yet: you need Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (along with .Net Framework 3.5 SP1) to get things rolling. This major update will become available on August 11th. For more info on what else is included in VS 2008 SP1, go to ScottGu's blog entry on the topic.

Just a small post on a new download that's available on Microsoft Download: Visual Studio 2008 Support for SQL Server 2008, Community Technology Preview.

Using this CTP, you can now have your Server Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 successfully connect to SQL Server 2008 and have it show tables and stored procedures. Other resolved issues can be found on the download page.

Unfortunately, the CTP does not make it possible yet to use LINQ to SQL with SQL Server 2008.

Download can be found here.   

After Visual Studio 2008 went RTM last November and Windows Server is expected to this month, SQL Server 2008, the third big products Microsoft is launching this year, is delayed until Q3 2008.

In a blog post on January 25, SQL Server Director of Product Management Francois Ajenstat said that the new date for SQL Server 2008’s RTM is some time in the third quarter of this year.

“Microsoft is excited to deliver a feature complete CTP (Community Technology Preview test release) during the Heroes Happen Here launch wave and a release candidate (RC) in Q2 calendar year 2008, with final Release to manufacturing (RTM) of SQL Server 2008 expected in Q3. Our goal is to deliver the highest quality product possible and we simply want to use the time to meet the high bar that you, our customers, expect. “

 

Today, I got a spam message that managed to get through the spam filter, and because I was using webmail at the time, it opened up automatically in the preview window.

Now, I work with Microsoft technology every day, but I might think of ordering someting in this shop... Appearantly, they have a very special version of SQL Server, namely SQL Server 2006 Special Edition.
Must be a really special edition then... I wonder if I'd get my money back if it turns out to be a 2005 version after all...

I guess these people really are pathetic and stupid at the same time. I hope the day will come that spam like this really can disappear completely, and those responsible for creating all the overhead will be put on trial. In the end, it's "the little guy" who does not know any better that is the real victim of these scams.

TechEd 2007 started today in Orlando. Microsoft JUST released the first CTP of SQL Server 2008, and you can get it for free (download is not very fast at the moment, probably a lot of people downloading it...).

Anyway, you can download it here from Connect.
Enjoy the beta bits!

From Bink.nu:
Preliminary product literature reveals that Katmai will be more deeply integrated with Microsoft Office system front-end tools, including Office Excel, Excel Services, Office SharePoint Server and Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, its business score-carding application. Katmai’s reporting capabilities will be more robust, supporting any report size or complexity.

Additionally, it will manage and accept nonrelational data types, including documents, geographic information and XML. Katmai provides more advanced data warehousing capabilities with Integration Services and Change Capture Functionality, and can synchronize data from devices to the central data store.

On the flip side, Katmai enables applications to interact with local data stores and synchronizes the local store with a central store for reference and line-of-business data.

Katmai also supports the next-generation ADO.NET data access framework to define business entities, according to the literature. Data entities can be retrieved and queried natively within any .NET language—compliments of LINQ (Language Integrated Query). LINQ support is built into the upcoming Visual Studio “Orcas” release, which will reach beta 2 by the end of this year, Microsoft officials have said.

Katmai integrates with Visual Studio 2005 as well as Visual Studio Orcas and supports the .NET 3.0 Framework.

The official release is set for 2008, no further detailed timeframe is annouced yet.

More info can also be found here.

I was just installing SQL Server 2005 in my Windows Vista, and then applied SP2 (november 2006 CTP) to get things running smoothly.

However, when trying to run Management Studio for the first time, I couldn't log on using the Windows (built-in) account... I got "Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 11." in the SQL Server Error Log.

After some searching, I found that when using Vista and SP2, you are not automatically added to the sysadmin role in SQL Server. Therefore, you have to be able to add yourself.

This can be done using the Surface Area Configuration Tool, by clicking the link, as shown below.

I found an interesting list of database-related queries on Google. These are the 10 most sought after problems... Probably you'll already have searched for one or more of these, didn't you?