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Microsoft Launches Tafiti
Microsoft launches a preview of a cool search portal dubbed Tafiti to bring the web search to a new level and give Google a run for its money. From FAQ “Tafiti, which means ‘do research’ in Swahili, is an experimental search front-end from Microsoft, designed to help people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results. Tafiti uses both Microsoft Silverlight and Live Search to explore the intersection of richer experiences on the Web and the increasing specialization of search.”
The Silverlight-based UI looks pretty sleek.
SQL Server 2008 (Katmai) to Launch February 28th 2008
From the latest MS press release “In anticipation for the most significant Microsoft enterprise event in the next year, Turner announced that Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008, kicking off hundreds of launch events around the world.”
Whoa, I didn’t expect Katmai so soon. Well, Euan Garden is telling us that a marketing launch doesn’t mean all that much after all [;)]. It will probably be a few more months before Katmai RTMs.
MVP Summit Is Over
MVP Summit is over and I am back in Atlanta. I had great time meeting other MVPs, MS employees, and learning about the future in MS terms. I posted pictures from the event. Some interesting statistics given to us by Microsoft:
The MVP Summit is the largest event held at the Microsoft campus
- 1889 attendees were registered to attend
- 88 countries will be represented (based on registrations)…including for the first time: Algeria, Andorra, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Gibraltar, Honduras, Latvia, Morocco, Nepal, Oman, Rwanda, Tunisia, UAE, Uruguay and Vietnam
- 533 Sessions were delivered
- 956 Microsoft employees pre-registered as speakers/attendees
- 10 Microsoft Executives and 4 Technical Fellows
Next stop – TechEd USA 2007. See you in Orlando.
2007 MVP Global Summit
Joining some 2,000 other MVPs from all around the world, I am heading tomorrow for Seattle to participate in the annual MVP Global Summit. It’s time to shake hands, take pictures, put names to faces, and soak up as much as possible about what’s coming up in Katmai (the next SQL Server release). Unfortunately, the last part is under strict NDA so I won’t be able to talk about it (not until the first public CTP is out that is).
I will also present a spotlight session for the Reporting Services group during which I will share my feedback about the product harvested from a real-life project. Looking forward to meeting these guys at last! Hey, BillG will be also kind enough to talk to the MVP Community and this will be one of his last public appearances as a Microsoft Chairman. A sort of a farewell party for Bill. I will back on Friday with lots of pictures I hope.
SQL Server 2005 SP2 Refresh
The initial release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) contained an issue that caused maintenance plan cleanup tasks to remove data before the specified cleanup interval. Install this update to correct the interpretation of existing cleanup task intervals, and to avoid this issue in new cleanup tasks. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.
If you already installed the SQL 2005 SP2 released on Feb. 19th, 2007:
- Install the General Distribution Release (GDR) on top of that build to fix the problem. No un-installation of the old SP2 is needed.
- GDR download location:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=e2c358a1-ecc4-4c49-8f65-daa6b7800eec&displaylang=en
If you have not upgraded to SQL 2005 SP2 official release:
- Microsoft has released the refreshed SQL 2005 SP2 at Microsoft Download Center last night (March 5th, 2007):
- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d07219b2-1e23-49c8-8f0c-63fa18f26d3a&DisplayLang=en
- This SP2 (9.00.3042.00) includes the fix for the database maintenance job problem Microsoft has identified on the SP2 build we released on Feb. 19th, 2007.
- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d07219b2-1e23-49c8-8f0c-63fa18f26d3a&DisplayLang=en
The updated SP2 doesn’t fix the RS black preview issue for which a separate hotfix will be available at later time.
SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is Born
As an update to my previous post, SQL Server 2005 SP2 is now officially available. The SP2 build is 9.00.3042. A SP2 landing page is available too that includes links to the SP2 release, KB articles, marketing information about the benefits of SP2.
As a personal contributor to Service Pack 2 (mainly in the areas of Reporting Services SharePoint integration and Analysis Services), I hope you enjoy it!
SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 Is Semi-born
Thanks for Russell Christopher’s blog, we now know that the final release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is very close to going live. I will update this blog when the download link is known. I listed the SP2 major BI-related enhancements in this blog. The most significant ones (RS-SharePoint integration, enhanced Excel OLAP and data mining features) makes SP2 a major milestone in the Microsoft Business Intelligence roadmap.
CTP3 Build of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 Released
In the spirit of the season, the SQL Server team give us the third (and probably last before the final release) CTP3 build (version 9.00.3033.0000) for the forthcoming SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2.
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Prologika is a boutique consulting firm that specializes in Business Intelligence consulting and training. Our mission is to help organizations make sense of data by applying effectively BI technologies.
