Creating SQL Server tables and columns

Creating SQL Server tables and columns

Creating and maintaining SQL Server tables isn't a rocket science, or is it? Anyone can use SQL Server Management Studio or the CREATE TABLE statement to put together a collection of columns. How well the tables perform depends largely on choices you make when defining data types, constraints, indexes, file groups where the table is built, as well as partitioning.

Find the rest of this "quick tip" at TechTarget.com.

Troubleshooting Access Problems Using Packet-Tracer

Troubleshooting Access Problems Using Packet-Tracer

Troubleshooting access problems through a firewall is often very difficult, especially when speed to resolution is critical. Errors in long complex ACLs can be easily overlooked, and access failures caused by NAT, IDS, and routing make the problem even more difficult. Cisco has released an incredible new feature in ASA software version 7.2(1) that virtually eliminates the guesswork. Packet-tracer allows a firewall administrator to inject a virtual packet into the security appliance and track the flow from ingress to egress. Along the way, the packet is evaluated against flow and route lookups, ACLs, protocol inspection, NAT, and IDS. The power of the utility comes from the ability to simulate real-world traffic by specifying source and destination addresses with protocol and port information.

A "reader tip" from the...

London Games Festival 2007

London Games Festival 2007

Evereyone can have fun, learn and play for free in the London Gamers Festival 2007
Join in some computerised fun and games all over London in the London Games Festival 2007.

Whether you're a parent or child, young or old, boy or girl, gamer or not, there's going to be at least a thing or ten that's going to take your interest in the the London Games Festival.

Exhibitions, talks, competitions, symposiums and most importantly gaming will all be going on, and lots of it for free!

See the whole article here.

The interesting one is this one hosted by EA Games:

Be The One in Trafalgar Square, London
Closest tube: Charing Cross
Dates: daily 24 - 26 Oct
Hosted by Electronic Arts, this showcase includes some of their greatest games. You can...

Stripped-down ‘MinWin’ kernel to be at the core of Windows 7 and more

Stripped-down ‘MinWin’ kernel to be at the core of Windows 7 and more

Microsoft has created a stripped-down version of the Windows core, called MinWin, that will be at the heart of future Windows products, starting with Windows 7, the Windows client release due in 2010.
While the Windows team has been working for years on reducing the dependencies in Windows which have made the operating system increasingly bloated and difficult to maintain and upgrade, it’s only been recently that the team has been able to create a separate, usable new core.

See here for the full article.

-Ken

Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries

Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries

One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them. Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year. We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

Read the...

Win 2003 High Availability Solutions, NFS Share Implementation

Win 2003 High Availability Solutions, NFS Share Implementation

In the previous installment of our series dedicated to Windows Server 2003 High Availability Solutions, we described cross-platform authentication mechanisms incorporated into Windows Services for Unix (focusing on the version included in Windows Server 2003 R2). The information we provided was necessary to introduce concepts critical to understanding clustered implementation of Network File System shares, the focus of this article. To summarize, we have outlined three options that offer user, computer and group account integration between Unix and Windows environments.

You can read the rest of the article at ServerWatch.com.

Virtual Earth Beta Exam

Virtual Earth Beta Exam

"New Microsoft Exam! Be the first to certify on Virtual Earth 6.0!" Feel free to share this with Virtual Earth-aware developers. You can register starting October 15, adn the beta is open until November 14. If you don't know much about betas, read this or this first. Register for Beta Exam 71-544: TS: Microsoft® Virtual Earth™ 6.0, Developing

By participating in beta exams, you have the opportunity to provide the Microsoft Certification program with feedback about exam content, which is integral to development of exams in their released version. We depend on the contributions of experienced IT professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Microsoft...

A Guide to Active Directory Replication

A Guide to Active Directory Replication

Prior to the introduction of Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory, many corporate environments relied on Windows NT for their server infrastructure and identity and access management. By the time Windows NT 4.0 rolled out, it was a solid offering in the network operating system (NOS) space, but it had a number of drawbacks that made it difficult to deploy across a large enterprise. For starters, Windows NT utilized a flat namespace to store network resources, which meant that there wasn't a good way to separate resources into smaller subsets or to configure any sort of granular administration. You could not, for example, configure a departmental container for the resources in your marketing department or configure a local administrator who had rights to reset passwords for the users within that department only. In this manner, Windows NT security was largely all-or-nothing; if you wanted to delegate...

Secrets of the Windows Gurus

Secrets of the Windows Gurus

In his latest book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell tries to discover how great thinkers and decision makers get to be so great. There is no one answer, he concludes. Great decisions can be made in the blink of an eye, but only after years and sometimes decades of building expertise. Redmond magazine set out on a similar journey, to find out how the visionaries that drive today's third-party innovations came to be so visionary. We interviewed a dozen serial entrepreneurs, CTOs and company founders to find out where their ideas come from, and how they turn them into the products that you all know and love.

The entire article can be found at Redmondmag.com.

Beta exam for System Center Operations Manager

Beta exam for System Center Operations Manager

Feel free to share this with your System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)-aware colleagues: beta is open until October 26 for Exam 71-400: TS: Microsoft® System Center Operations Manager, Configuring. If you don't know much about betas, read this or this first.

By participating in beta exams, you have the opportunity to provide the Microsoft Certification program with feedback about exam content, which is integral to development of exams in their released version. We depend on the contributions of experienced IT professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and...