Migrate to SQL Server 2008 R2 and Manage

So if you have decided to migrate your SQL Server database to SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft TechNet has collected resources for you to easily accomplish the job.

There are many scenarios during an upgrade where you’ll want to migrate a SQL Server installation. We've collected a series of articles and resources that describe the processes and tools to make the task easier.

This set of topics includes information on how to migrate a reporting services installation, how to migrate integration services packages, and how to migrate data transformation services packages.

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Defensive Database Programming (Free eBook)

The goal of Defensive Programming is to produce resilient code that responds gracefully to the unexpected.
To the SQL Server programmer, this means T-SQL code that behaves consistently and predictably in cases of unexpected usage, doesn't break under concurrent loads, and survives predictable changes to database schemas and settings.

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LLBLGen Pro v3.0 RTM has been released!

After two years of very hard work, version 3.0 has been released! 
LLBLGen Pro now is the most advanced O/RM Designer for .NET and offers, among other things, Entity Framework (v1 & v4) support, NHibernate support (hbm & FluentNH), Linq to SQL support, Model-first and Database-first development, .NET 4.0 support, Model views and much much more.

Click here for the full feature list or download the trial to experience the power of v3.0 yourself. Congratulations team for another nice effort.

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SQL Server 2008 R2 update finally ships

 Microsoft today released to manufacturing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, the new version of its relational database management system software.

The software, a major update of the SQL Server 2008 code base, has been in development for almost two years. Thus far, the developer version of the software has been downloaded more than 300,000 times, the company said on Wednesday.

The R2 version updates the SQL Server 2008 in a number of ways, said Mark Linton, director within Microsoft's application platform group.

One notable feature is the scale. A single SQL Server 2008 instance can now be run on up to 256 logical processors. Previously, a SQL Server instance could only scale up to 64 logical processors. It will also run on as much as two terabytes of working memory. This will pave the way for more large scale, enterprise deployments, Linton said.

The software also has been updated to work better in Microsoft's Hyper-Vvirtualized environments. For instance, the virtualized instance of the software can be migrated from one server to another while continuing to run.

The software's administration software has been updated as well. A new feature, called Utility Control Point, enables database administrators to manage the policies of entire farms of SQL Servers from a single console. "Through one control point, you can administrator your entire infrastructure through a standardized set of policies and tools," Linton said.

The software also helps other Microsoft products in providing users with "self-service business intelligence," Linton said. The software can provide live data for a new Microsoft Excel data analysis add-on call PowerPivot, which was designed to manipulate "millions of rows of data" quickly.

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Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors

The 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors is a list of the most widespread and critical programming errors that can lead to serious software vulnerabilities. They are often easy to find, and easy to exploit. They are dangerous because they will frequently allow attackers to completely take over the software, steal data, or prevent the software from working at all.

The Top 25 list is a tool for education and awareness to help programmers to prevent the kinds of vulnerabilities that plague the software industry, by identifying and avoiding all-too-common mistakes that occur before software is even shipped. Software customers can use the same list to help them to ask for more secure software. Researchers in software security can use the Top 25 to focus on a narrow but important subset of all known security weaknesses. Finally, software managers and CIOs can use the Top 25 list as a measuring stick of progress in their efforts to secure their software.
The list is the result of collaboration between the SANS Institute, MITRE, and many top software security experts in the US and Europe. It leverages experiences in the development of the SANS Top 20 attack vectors (http://www.sans.org/top20/) and MITRE's Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) (http://cwe.mitre.org/). MITRE maintains the CWE web site, with the support of the US Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division, presenting detailed descriptions of the top 25 programming errors along with authoritative guidance for mitigating and avoiding them. The CWE site contains data on more than 800 programming errors, design errors, and architecture errors that can lead to exploitable vulnerabilities.

Guidance for Using the Top 25

Brief Listing of the Top 25

Category-Based View of the Top 25

Focus Profiles

Organization of the Top 25

Detailed CWE Descriptions

Monster Mitigations

Appendix A: Selection Criteria and Supporting Fields

Appendix B: What Changed in the 2010 Top 25

Appendix C: Construction, Selection, and Scoring of the Top 25

Appendix D: Comparison to OWASP Top Ten 2010 RC1

Appendix E: Other Resources for the Top 25

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Business Intelligence Features in Excel 2010

If you're an Excel geek, you can't miss this collection of posts about the new Excel 2010 features on the Office 2010 Engineering blog.
The Excel team has made a number of improvements in the Business Intelligence area for Excel 2010, which have been covered in-depth on the Excel Team Blog.

First, the team added slicers, which are visual controls that allow you to quickly and easily filter your data in an interactive way. Slicers can connect to PivotTables, PivotCharts, and CUBE functions to creative interactive dashboards:

Part of an interactive Dashboard with Slicers and PivotCharts
A number of enhancements have been made to PivotTables- including the ability to modify values in PivotTable cells (writeback), more flexibility and power through named sets, and a series of other enhancements.
A new search filter is available for tables and PivotTables, which allows you to quickly navigate through large data sets.

The New Search Filter
Finally, the Excel and SQL teams have collaborated to create a PowerPivot, a powerful data analysis tool made up of two components: an add-in for Excel 2010 and a series of new features for SharePoint 2010.
"Designed for business users, PowerPivot […] delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love — Excel. Leveraging familiar Excel features, users can transform enormous quantities of data from virtually any source with incredible speed into meaningful information to get the answers they need in seconds."

PowerPivot add-in for Excel 2010
Here's the full list of Excel blog posts about Slicers, PivotTable Improvements, and PowerPivot.
Slicers

• Easy (and Even Fun!) Data Exploration: Introducing Excel 2010 Slicers
• Interacting with Slicers
• Dressing up your Slicers

Table and PivotTable Improvements

• Excel 2010: New Search Filter
• PivotTable Named Sets in Excel 2010
• Excel 2010 PivotTable What-If Analysis (Writeback)
• A Few More PivotTable Improvements in Excel 2010

PowerPivot

• Introducing PowerPivot
• New PowerPivot Site
• Using PowerPivot with Excel 2010
• PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 – The Business User’s Perspective

Also, read about improvements in other areas of Excel:

• Data Visualization Features in Excel 2010
• Functions and Solver Improvements in Excel 2010
• Excel Services 2010: Excel in the browser 

Ref:
http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/01/28/business-intelligence-features-in-excel-2010.aspx

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