Drill down into Vista Technicalities

Thomas Lee recently published a post that will doubtless appeal to "hard-core" Windows techies with an interest in Vista/Longhorn:
Under The Stairs: Mark Russinovich at IT Forum

"Books Online" - Online

The most up-to-date version of the most important SQL reference material Books Online can be found here. Books Online is the definitive SQL reference - very useful if you are unsure of the correctness of other material such as books.

The most recent download-able version (July 2006 at the time of writing) can be found here. The website version is always the most up-to-date version - the download versions are simply point-in-time snapshots of the material on the website.

Review - Free SQL Server Training Videos - Part 1

I like a variety of learning materials and I've recently come across a few sites that offer free SQL Server videos. I have found that video material is helpful in initial learning of various procedures via the GUI, which we are expected to know these days. Of course to gain the most benefit you should actually use the product yourself once you've seen the video ;-) The first two sites I will be looking at are tempting you to subscribe to further videos, but free is free :-)

In this post will I look at LearnSqlServer.com which has a number of free videos which changes monthly. To play the downloadable videos (zipped avi files) you need to download and install the TSCC Codec, but this is also free. You can download and play the free content without parting with any personal information or creating an account which is always nice these days! The picture quality of the free videos is the same as that you would receive as a full subscriber. Much of the free (and subscriber) material is SQL Server 2000 specific, or in some cases is applicable to both versions, but it would appear that more and more SQL Server 2005 specific videos are being added as time passes. A few of the videos relate to both versions. The Videos are graded (a bit like the MS webcasts) 100, 200 up to 500, but I suspect there is not an exact equivalence between the grading scheme for learnsqlserver.com and Microsoft, where I don't recall see any material above 400 (correct me if I'm wrong).

LearnSqlServer.com is part of a web of interconnected sites that fall under the banner of http://www.learnitfirst.com/ which also includes LearnIntegrationServices.com, LearnTransactSQL.com, LearnDTS.com and LearnWindows2003.com. There is some overlap between the sites.

At the time of writing, there were 5 free videos:

1. Part 1 - An Overview of the AdventureWorks Database part 1 of a 2 part series, at skill level 100 (Beginner), introducing the AdventureWorks database. SQL Server 2005 specific. Duration: 17:24 minutes.


2. SQL Server 2005 Services and Service Accounts - What They Do and What's New at skill level 200 (Beginner - Intermediate). SQL Server 2005 specific. Duration: 14:35 minutes.


3. JOINs and UNIONs - How Do I Know When to Use a JOIN or a UNION? at skill level 300 (Intermediate) which I noticed is also on LearnTransactSql.com. Duration: 7:12 minutes.


4. Enterprise Manager - Put Table On Filegroup at skill level 400 (Intermediate - Advanced). SQL Server 2000 specific. Duration: 14:47 minutes.


5. Reason to Install SP3 - Buffer Overflow Attack using OPENROWSET at skill level 500 (Advanced). Again SQL Server 2000 specific. Duration: 11:43 minutes.

The file sizes ranged from about 5.5 to 12.5 MBytes depending on length, so you will probably want to download this material over a fast Internet connection.

This was the December 2006 collection. The site states that on 1 January 2006, the selection of videos will change. Because I am focusing my efforts on passing the 70-431 exam, I just viewed the first three of this selection. All three videos were of excellent visual quality and quite pacey, teaching the topic as described. The presenter was actually working with the SQL interface as they spoke. The presenter, who I believe may have been the same person on all three videos, had an easily understood clear male US accent. There were one or two mistakes in the first video, that were corrected although this slightly marred the flow of an otherwise useful video. I found all three videos were excellent short introductions to the topics described. They certainly imparted enough information with which to encourage me to delve into the interface myself or look up further details in a textbook or Books Online.

The thing that I particularly liked about this site is that, rather than streaming the videos, the avi files are downloaded before viewing, so that they can easily be viewed offline. I would also note that looking at the entire collection of videos as it stands, in my opinion it is still definitely a growing collection with some notable gaps rather than a complete collection of every topic for SQL Server 2005. In fairness, it doesn't claim to cover every topic, even for the 70-431 exam. Of course this is something you would doubtless investigate for yourself before parting with any cash.

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Review Free SQL Server Training Videos

Cool Download - Complete AdventureWorks Diagram

Just came across this interactive diagram of the whole of the AdventureWorks OLTP Database. A Visio diagram is also available for those of you with access to Visio (or the Visio Viewer).

This diagram is especially useful as many learning materials (especially those from Microsoft) tend to be based on this database.

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AdventureWorks Diagram

70-431 Exam Reviews

I've decided to post some collections of useful online material that I've come across.

So far, I've come across the following independent online reviews of Exam 70-431:

1. Stan Segers (NewLevel) review of the 70-431 beta exam:
http://blogs.newlevel.nl/training/2005/12/review_70431_mc.html

2. Doug Welty's comprehensive review in MCPMag:
http://mcpmag.com/reviews/exams/article.asp?EditorialsID=118

3. Peter Koller's short review in his BI blog:
http://peterkol.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!68755AEAC31F9A6C!156.entry

I hope that you find these useful - why not post a comment if you do? Also, if you come across any other reviews or the status of these links changes, let me know and I will update this post (and credit you).

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Topic missing from Exam Cram 70-431 Book

Much as I like the Exam Cram book for 70-431, there are some errors and omissions. I was revising the topic of Database Mail from the Microsoft Training Kit (more on this later), but I couldn't find the topic mentioned anywhere in the Exam Cram book. Has anybody else with this book found anything on Database Mail?

The topic is definitely in the official exam objectives for 70-431.

.Net Framework Security Annoyance

As part of my day job, I support some classroom machines in an Active Directory domain running Windows XP and various applications. We recently started teaching a couple of Visual Basic 2005 courses. I installed all the VB bits of Visual Studio 2005. When the students logged in however, they were having problems running software they had written and saved in their home directories. Specifically, they had problems with applications they had written that write files back to the same (server hosted) folder. The bizarre thing was that the same software was fine when run from either the local hard drive or an attached USB memory device.

This was not an obvious one to fix ... it turns out that in .Net framework security, network shares are considered to be in the Local Intranet security zone (although USB devices are considered to be in the Local Computer security zone). The default restrictions in Local Intranet include preventing code from writing back to the drive - which makes sense from a security point of view as this would limit the ability of malicious code to use that zone to spread between machines. However, it also causes big problems for anyone trying to develop software using network shares for file storage. Anyway, fortunately the .NET 2.0 Framework configuration tool lets you alter these defaults and create an msi file that can be applied to each client machine with Group Policy. I just needed to restart each client to force the policy to be applied and everyone was happy again.

Although the final solution was straight forward (and a bit 'cool' in a geeky Active Directory way) it took a fair bit more work than the usual Google searches to find this solution - I had to go and read up about the .Net Framework security model and work out how to change the defaults. Only deep in the documentation did I find hints about this issue. I'm really suprised more people haven't come across this one - please post a comment if you have!

Well, here we are ...

I guess many people start a blog and only keep it up for a few months. Let's see how this goes ...

Who and Why

At the moment I am a Windows Sys Admin working towards an MCSA - whilst they still have those - that seems to have been 'a work in progress' for a few years! I have passed my 70-270 and 70-290. At the moment I'm working towards the new SQL Server 2005 base exam 70-431. I've started from just a bit of MS Access experience a few months ago (and some ancient DB knowledge from years ago), retaught myself SQL and the basics of 'grown up' databases and then managed to go on a condensed version of the 2779 and 2780 MS courses. I have been thinking about a windows techie blog for a while, but never quite got around to it ... then I saw a suggestion that writing a blog might help pass exams(!) So here we are.

My short term goal is to pass the 70-431 and then move swiftly on to the 70-291 to complete the MCSA by next Easter, but I do also have a job and a life beyond that! Initally, I shall mostly be posting stuff on my experiences with working towards the 70-431 exam, but might also post other Windows techie stuff. Let me know if you find anything particularly helpful.