My MCSD Track for Microsoft .Net

Hi All,

Upon the request of many readers of my blog, below is the track in reverse chronology which I had completed for my MCSD. I had appeared all the exams with the language of choice as C# (wherever applicable).

1) 70-300 Analyzing Requirements and Defining Microsoft .NET Solution Architectures
2) 70-340 Implementing Security for Applications with Microsoft Visual C#® .NET
3) 70-320 Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework
4) 70-315 Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft® Visual C#™ .NET and Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET
5) 70-316 Developing and Implementing Windows®-based Applications with Microsoft® Visual C#™ .NET and Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET

70-316 and 70-315 were quite easy.
70-320 was a challenging one, but I rate the toughness of this paper to be 6/10

70-340 was the hardest paper that I had ever appeared. I just got skipped with it. It was so so tough and it is one of the rarest paper that professionals appear. But it's an excellent paper to appear for those who may be interested in designing and developing security for applications.

70-300 was also a thrilling and tough one. It requires how microsoft expect you to answer on case-studies and not on your personal or any ethical experiences.

Dear Readers, if you feel my post to be helpful, please feel free to add comments to my post.

Siddharth Mehta
[MSc(I.T.), MCP, MCAD, MCSD]

Intellisense for SQL Server Query Analyzer

Friends,
Are you looking for features like these as in the image below ??


Click Here to download a completely FREE cool utility from Red-Gate software, that provides Intellisense for SQL Server and other features like
Code completion for fast, accurate script building, Discoverability in SQL Server query creation Keyword formatting, code snippet integration other extended features.

The tool/add-in is called SQL Prompt and is Free until 1st September, 2006 as published by Red-Gate Software. SQL Prompt works with Microsoft Query Analyzer, SQL Server 2005 Management Studio, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET 2003, SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager, UltraEdit32.

Siddharth Mehta.
[MSc(I.T.), MCP, MCAD, MCSD]

SQLiMail Overview

SQLiMail in SQL Server 2005 is a replacement of SQLMail of SQL Server 2000. It still exists in SQL Server 2005 but is only meant to be for backward compatibility only.
SQLiMail does not need: Extended MAPI, Outlook, to execute mail calls in the server process.
Also it is supported on a cluster, and it does support SMTP. In fact it uses SMTP to send e-mails. E-mails having mail-attachments can now also be sent. SQLiMail uses ServiceBroker to deliver messages to avoid blocking a stored procedure.
One of the striking feature is that it has a feature of failover accounts. Using this, it's possible to specify more than one SMTP server per profile. So in case of unavailability of the primary SMTP server, the next one can be used to deliver e-mails.

Siddharth Mehta
[MSc(I.T.), MCP, MCAD, MCSD]

Enhancements in SQL Server 2005 - Part III

Enhancements in full-text search are as follows:

1) Support for full text search against linked servers
2) No limitations of using either one or all the columns in a table, you can now specify whichever columns you require in the column_list argument.
3) Full-text queries using a different language to the default column language.
4) Full-text catalogs can now be backed up and restored with or without the database data.
5) Full-text catalogs are included in attach and detach operations.
6) Full-text indexes can be created on XML data.
7) Performance of index population is improved.

SQL Server Integration Services

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) provides a comprehensive solution for transferring and transforming data between diverse data sources.

1) SSIS has been redesigned to separate package-control flow from data flow. Two engines have been introduced to handle these aspects of data transformation: the SSIS Run-time engine and the SSIS Data-Flow engine.
2) SSIS Designer is hosted in Business Intelligence Development Studio or SQL Server Management Studio.
3) Provides many built-in transformations
4) Management and Deployment has become easy as you can choose to deploy a SSIS package using design time deployment or the SSIS Installer.

Siddharth Mehta
[MSc(I.T.), MCP, MCAD, MCSD]

Enhancements in SQL Server 2005 - Part II

Analysis Services available in SQL Server 2005 has a lot to offer for the Business Intelligence platform. Microsoft has come up with a new Business Intelligence Studio. Analysis services makes it possible to create datawarehouses and also mine out data from OLAP data warehouses. Enhancements to Analysis services are as follows:

1) With the Business Intelligence Development Studio, it has become lot easy to use and implement this feature similiary like Visual Studio.
2) Multiple instance of Analysis services can now be implemented. I guess there's a limit of maximum 50 instances, still I am not sure of this limit.
3) New features KPI - Key Performance Indicators, support for stored procedures are avialable that enable business for making powerful analysis and decision making.
4) As published by Microsoft, Analysis services now supports Microsoft Naive Bayes algorithm which would enhance the performance of data mining.
5) Even for development there are major enhancements like Integration with CLR, XML for Analysis (XMLA), Enhanced MDX, ADOMD.Net API, Analysis Management objects, and Analysis Services Scripting Language.
6) There's a new support available now for development in live mode as well as project mode. Development in project mode makes it possible to make and test changes without affecting client's production systems.

Siddharth Mehta
[MSc (I.T.), MCP, MCAD, MCSD]

Enhancements in SQL Server 2005 - Part I

Enhancements in SQL Server 2005 worth consideration are for the following features: Database Engine, Analysis Services, Integration Services, Full Text Search, and Replication

Database engine is the heart of SQL Server. If provides all the services for adminstering the data right from storage to backing up the data. There has been many many great improvements in the database engine.

1) The first among them is the xml datatype. There is also good support for using XQuery expressions.
2) With the integraton of CLR with the database engine, it's now possible to build database objects with the language of your choice like VB.Net or C# for example.
3) Table partioning has improved a lot which yields performance gains.
4) DDL Triggers are a new feature avaialable in SQL Server 2005. These triggers get triggered when DDL statements are executed.
5) MARS i.e. Multiple Active Result Sets allows more than one pending request per connection.
6) A completely new secuirty architecture is available which provides enhanced database protection.

In my next post, I would come out with Part II - Analysis Services, which would summarize the new improvements in Analysis Services.

Siddharth Mehta
[MSc (I.T.), MCP, MCAD, MCSD]

Recompilation in SQL Server 2005

Hi,

Below described is the SQL Server 2005 Batch Recompilation Process.
I will come up with the explanation as well as my work-around on the same in my next post.



References
[Mar04] Arun Marathe, Batch Compilation, Recompilation, and Plan Caching Issues in SQL Server 2005

Problem Installing SQL Server 2005 Express

Hi Friends,

When installing standalone SQL Server 2005 Express on XP Pro SP2, the install hangs at "Detecting Installed IIS". Even rebooting doesn't make any effect.

I searched numerous sites and found out a successful and effective solution for this.

The reason is that Norton/Symantec Anti-Virus and Firewall products causes the hang-up on "Detecting Installed IIS". Disable all Norton/Symantec Internet Security as well as Antivirus software. The install will get completed sucessfully.

Below are the recommendations from Microsoft for Installing SQL Server 2005

· Be sure the computer meets the system requirements for SQL Server 2005. For more information, see Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server 2005.

· Review Security Considerations for a SQL Server Installation.

· Setup includes a preinstallation check that identifies unsupported configurations on installation computers and guides users to remedy blocking issues. For more information, see Check Parameters for the System Configuration Checker.

· Make sure you have administrator permissions on the computer where SQL Server will be installed. If you install SQL Server from a remote share, you must use a domain account that has read and execute permissions on the remote share. To create a failover cluster, you must be a local administrator with permissions to logon as a service, and to act as part of the operating system on all nodes of the virtual server.

Security Note:

· If you modify permissions on a domain user account to run SQL Server Setup, be sure to revoke those permissions after Setup completes.

· Create one or more domain user accounts if you are installing SQL Server 2005 on a computer running Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 2003, and you want SQL Server 2005 to communicate with other clients and servers. For more information, see Setting Up Windows Service Accounts.

· Do not install SQL Server 2005 on a domain controller. For more information, see the "Isolation of Services" section in Security Considerations for a SQL Server Installation.

· Back up your current installation of SQL Server if you are running an instance of SQL Server on the computer where SQL Server 2005 is to be installed.

· Verify that the disk where SQL Server will be installed is uncompressed. If you attempt to install SQL Server to a compressed drive, Setup will fail.

· Exit antivirus software while installing SQL Server.

· Stop all services that depend on SQL Server, including any service using Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), such as Internet Information Services (IIS). Exit Event Viewer and registry editors (Regedit.exe or Regedt32.exe).

· Review all SQL Server installation options, and prepare to make the appropriate selections when running Setup.

Siddharth Mehta.
[ MSc (I.T.), MCP, MCAD, MCSD ]