Loving Windows 7

I installed the public Windows 7 beta on one of my laptops early this week. This is a laptop that I use all the time when I’m at home (I love the keyboard, so I sit at this one and Remote Desktop into my other machines) but it’s been running Windows XP because Windows Vista never ran particularly well on its 2004-era hardware. And as is always the case when working with a pre-release operating system, there is both good news and bad news.

Let’s do the bad news first:

• I’m traveling this week and next, so I only had two days to play with new features before heading out on the road.
• I have a bunch of demos I need to do next week at the MCT Summit in Redmond, so I can’t blow away the Windows Server 2008 install on my demo laptop and replace it with Windows 7 until the Summit is over.
• That’s about it for the bad news…

The good news is much longer, so I’ll just hit on the highlights:

• Windows 7 runs faster and better than Windows XP ever did, even with the same software running. I’m vastly impressed by how well it runs, and I can’t wait to get it installed on more modern hardware.
• It looks and feels great, with all of the nice features of Windows Vista (I love Vista search and some of the Explorer enhancements that I miss so much when I go back to Windows XP or 2003) and is more usable (and just plain prettier) as well.
• Windows 7 automatically detected my Nvidia video card and downloaded drivers for it. This may sound trivial (and isn’t really something for which i can give credit to the Windows 7 team) but the new driver finally works. For all previous operating systems and driver versions, this video card has always displayed any video being played in full-screen mode on the secondary monitor. This meant that I could not work on one display while having a video (any video – not just Manowar videos) play on the other. With the new driver, this is no longer the case, and video finally works the way that it should.
• Did I mention it’s amazingly fast? ;-)

But the thing that prompted me to post this article is not my own experience. I found today a list of “Windows 7 Secrets” published by Tim Sneath here: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2009/01/12/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx. This includes a ton of keyboard shortcuts (one of my favorite tools) and ways to work with the new OS features that you’d be unlikely to stumble across on your own. Definitely check it out the next time you sit down at your Windows 7 machine, or if you’re wondering whether you should make the move…

Christmas Came Late!

Santa has just delivered the gift that many SSIS developers have had on their Christmas lists: more samples and options for programmatically building SSIS packages. Although in this case, the role of Santa is played by Matt Masson of the SSIS team, who must have gained quite a bit of weight since the last time I saw him. Matt posted seven new articles on his blog yesterday, including this index post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mattm/archive/2008/12/30/samples-for-creating-ssis-packages-programmatically.aspx

There are samples for building a package with a data flow task, and for adding OLE DB Source and Destination components, adding the ADO.NET Source component, adding a Row Count transformation and adding a Conditional Split transformation. Each post includes nicely commented C# code, and each one goes a long way towards filling the documentation gap around the SSIS data flow API.

And if that's not exciting enough, Santa was just getting started. Evgeny Koblov, a tester on  the SSIS team has gone far beyond simply it easier to work with the less-than-intuitive COM API exposed by the SSIS data flow. He has built a better API. It's called EzAPI and you can read about it on Matt Masson's blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mattm/archive/2008/12/30/ezapi-alternative-package-creation-api.aspx. You can also download it and start using it on the CodePlex web site here: http://www.codeplex.com/SQLSrvIntegrationSrv/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=21238

EzAPI is probably the most exciting thing I've seen coming into the world of SSIS since the release of SQL Server 2008, if not before. It's essentially a native .NET wrapper around the underlying COM API, which doesn't sound particularly interesting at first glance, but since it delivers the ability to quickly and easily build SSIS packages and data flows through code, it's sure to be a time-saver (if not life-saver) for many SSIS developers.

Now please excuse me while I download EzAPI and start to play...

Math and Terror

My son just celebrated his eighth birthday. While he was eating his birthday breakfast before heading to school, he came out with this gem:

"I'm half of sixteen today!"

Now part of me is happy that he's thinking of mathematical relationships at the breakfast table. But another part of me is thinking how I am so incredibly not yet ready for sixteen. These first eight years have gone by so quickly, I can't begin to imagine how quickly the next will fly.

So the next time you're wondering if the glass is half empty or half full, just be glad that it isn't half of sixteen...

Better File Rename

This is just a random tool recommendation - I've been meaning to post it for months, but have never made the time. Well, a meeting just finished early, so the time made itself.

I've love this tool: Better File Rename

It's a Windows shell extension that gives you a ton (maybe more) of batch file renaming options. Right-click on a folder or a group of files and you can:

• Add characters to the beginning of a file
• Change the file extension
• Add sequence numbers to the file name
• Add date/time stamps to the file name
• Replace characters or string patterns in the file name
• A staggering number of other possibilities

I've been using this delightful little tool since 2002, and it works great on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and I assume Windows Server 2008 as well, although I've never personally tested it. If I ever rebuild my primary laptop to run Server 2008 then I'll know, because this app is one of the few 3rd party "must have" utilities that I install whenever I rebuild my main machine.

Ok, that's that. Check it out - download a trial version and see if it rocks your world too. Especially with all of the Christmas photos you'll soon be taking, you know you want it...

Changes in SQL Server 2008

MCT Russ Loski recently shared this great link with the SQL Server trainer community:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280407.aspx

This is the top-level "Backward Compatibility" topic from SQL Server 2008 Books Online, and includes sub-topics for the DRBMS, SSAS, SSIS, SSRS and replication, covering deprecated features, behavioral changes, breaking changes and more.

If you're looking into what's new and different (and what might bite you if you're not careful) with SQL Server 2008, this is a great place to start. Thanks, Russ!

"Bonus" Technical Deep Dive Session at the MCT Summit - Redmond and Prague

The vast majority of the content at the 2009 MCT Summit events is heavily weighted toward the IT Professional audience. This is largely due to the fact that the major developer and database product releases took place in 2007 and 2008, while there are significant releases in-flight for Windows and Exchange Server. But I believe there should still be some deep technical content for at least one underrepresented trainer audience: the BI developer.

So I'm going to fill in this gap by presenting an "off the schedule" technical deep dive on SQL Server Integration Services. I did something similar at the 2008 Redmond summit and it was very well received, so I'm going to model the 2009 Summit session on the same model. Here's the deal:

“Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About SQL Server Integration Services but Were Afraid Your Students Would Ask”

In this technical “deep dive” session, Matthew Roche will take attendees on a wild and sometimes horrifying ride into the dark underbelly of real world SSIS development that existing SSIS books and courseware doesn’t effectively cover, including development and deployment best practices, data flow internals and performance tuning and more. But be warned – there will be no fixed agenda for this session! The topics covered will be driven by attendee involvement, so the more questions you bring to the session the more everyone will get out of it. If you teach (or fear you may be asked to teach) the SSIS courses for SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008, this is a session you don’t dare to miss.

Does this sound interesting to you?

If you are attending either event (Prague or Redmond) and would be willing to attend this session after the summit sessions end one day[1] then please reply here[2] to express your interest. If anyone (even one attendee) is interested then I will come prepared to spend as much time as necessary (I think we ran around three hours at the 2008 Summit in Redmond) to give each attendee everything he needs. So speak now or forever hold your data...

[1] This is a key point, as it will mean skipping on some other planned after-hours event, I'm sure.

[2] Or in the microsoft.private.mct.mctsummits newsgroup.

Connection Strings

This is just a little reminder for myself as much as for anyone else. There's a great resource online at http://www.connectionstrings.com/ that lists the syntax for hundreds of different types of data sources (SQL Server, Oracle, Excel, Active Directory, etc.) complete with examples and general rules/guidelines for constructing them. If you're ever in a situation where you need to build a connection string without a GUI to help you, I've never seen a better reference. Check it out.