What is Silverlight? [VIDEO]

Instructor Leslie Koorhan explains Silverlight and what it means to a .NET developer. Check out our Corporate Class Schedule for the next available Silverlight class date!  

http://www.centriq.com/CentriqSchedule.aspx

- Leslie Koorhan, .NET Expert; MCT, MCSD (.NET), MCTS, MCDBA, MCPD LinkIn with Leslie

Ask Your Instructor: SQL Server FAQ's Part I

Got SQL Server questions? I love them! Even when I don’t have the answer right then!

I recently delivered a class on “Maintaining a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Database” and I promised my students that I would capture their ad-hoc questions (and even some answers) in a document and, thinking that it was possible that someone else out in the web ether might have had the same question, decided to share them.

So here they are in all their glory. Enjoy!

1) Is there any reason to use Binary Collation?
It is the fastest. More on collations at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143515(v=SQL.90).aspx

2) Can you backup and restore an entire instance?
Not in the same way as a database, no, BUT, you can right-click on the instance, choose Facets, and “Export Current State as Policy” and use this exported data with Policy Based Management to apply against another instance or even multiple instances.

3) Is sqlcmd -A (dedicated administrator connection) for the local host only? No, you can connect to a remote server using: sqlcmd –A –S ServerName

4) Where can I get a list of torn pages?
(USE msdb) SELECT * FROM suspect_pages

5) Are Windows credentials cached in a SQL Server session?
Yes, until the connection is ended

6) Where can I get a list of certificates in SQL Server?
SELECT * FROM sys.certificates

7) Is there an issue with resolving conflicting Identity columns in HTTP merge replication?
Identity columns cannot be ADDED to a publication (GUID’s are used for uniqueness) but they can be used if different values are used in the publication and each subscriber http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms152543.aspx

The questions I get from students keep these courses interesting for me and I would love to hear your questions through this blog or in my class. After all, as a long time veteran Microsoft employee told me a few years ago, “After 10 years of work on Microsoft products with a dozen certifications, you can only attain about 1% knowledge of the Microsoft technologies.”

Ok, I gotta go hit the books. My next class is probably going to ask about the other 99%... again. Stay tuned for Part II of this post!


- Peter Trast, SQL Expert; MCITP DBA, MCITP EA, MCT LinkIn with Peter

With an Iron Fist (SQL PBM)

Maybe you were a system admin that got sucked into the exotic land of database administration because there was no one else to do it. Maybe you are a DBA on purpose. It might even be possible that one day you were writing web applications in your remote and intentionally isolated cube at the far end of the “trailer park” and faster than you can say DBCC CHECKDB REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS you found yourself in charge of an unwieldy, quickly expanding and barely governed SQL Server environment.

In any case, you may have wondered, if there were some way to control the environment of SQL Server proactively and to have an automated way to enforce all of those naming convention standards and object settings that you TALKED about, documented and trained on. Have I got news for you!

In SQL Server 2008, a new feature called Policy Based Management (PBM) was introduced. The idea is that if you have a setting or convention that you wish to check for and/or ENFORCE (get your control freak on), you just create a policy that defines the object (maybe a database), a facet (the property that can be checked for or enforced, like the recovery model of a database), and a condition (the value of the property, like Full for the recovery model). Systems Administrators (yes the “A” is capitalized!) will recognize this concept as having some similarity with Group Policy in Active Directory Domain Services, although the application and verification of the policy is done quite differently.

The really fun part is that using Central Management Servers in SSMS, you can enlist one or more instances to monitor or enforce, manually or on a schedule, from one instance. You can do ad-hoc policy checks and enforce the policy on objects that are not in compliance and you can include all objects of the type within an instance or you can un-enlist individual objects.

Some examples of the types of policies you might create and assign might be controlling role membership and preventing future modification by doing a ROLLBACK when someone is added (sounds like Restricted Groups in AD), or perhaps you need to make sure that every instance in your organization must use Windows Authentication only. Maybe, instead of asking nicely and resending out that paper policy that governs object name conventions, you just need to make those ornery developers name all of their user stored procedures with a “usp_” prefix (I love you guys, really). Whatever the standardization need, PBM probably has the property you need to get a handle on. And standardizing is the whole point. It is an interesting exercise to document standards. It is a whole lot more satisfying to be able to inflict -- um – enforce them.

Hopefully, I will be speaking on this topic for SQL Saturday in Kansas City, on October 2, 2010 http://www.sqlsaturday.com/53/eventhome.aspx or you can spend some time trying it out in one of our Microsoft 6158 classes in Leawood, KS, (many of which can be attended remotely) http://www.centriq.com/CentriqSchedule.aspx.

Now go forth and standardize!


- Peter Trast, SQL Expert; MCITP DBA, MCITP EA, MCT LinkIn with Peter

Geotagging: Take care when posting photos

Most new smart phones are GPS enabled. It allows us to use multiple applications to find directions to our favorite locations. However along with the usefulness of GPS comes a security concern. Geotagging is when metadata is added to a picture or document taken with a smart phone that has GPS enabled. In that metadata are the longitude and latitude of the location of where the picture is taken. The information might be used by a criminal to track where you live or track your location. If you go into the options of your camera on your cell phone there most likely is an option to either turn on or off geotagging.

There is also a website trying to raise awareness of geotagging. http://icanstalku.com/

To show you an example of how this works, below is a picture I took with my camera with geotagging enabled on my Blackberry.


Next you can either use an add-on to Firefox like Exif (install the add-on and then, open the picture in Firefox, then right mouse click on the picture to see the Exif information at the bottom of the pop up window) or go to Jeff’s Exif Viewer and put the url of the picture into Jeff’s Exif Viewer to see the location of the picture.

Can you find the location of where the picture above was taken? Write back a comment if you find it.

Here is a link to an article on geotagging. http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=9734

- Tom Pruett, Cisco & Security Expert; MCT, CTT+, CISSP, CWNA, CEH, CHFI, CCSI, CCNA, MCSE LinkIn with Tom

Cybercriminals Easily Cracking Corporate Networks

The Black Hat 2010 Conference took place in Las Vegas last month. This is the biggest security conference with security professionals from every industry attending to find out the latest in technical security. The opening session had Verizon issuing their security report.

http://bit.ly/b22K67

- Tom Pruett, Cisco & Security Expert; MCT, CTT+, CISSP, CWNA, CEH, CHFI, CCSI, CCNA, MCSE LinkIn with Tom

Joins, Joins, Joins

Hey SQL DBA's and developers, still having trouble trying to visualize joins and how they work? Well, give that part of your brain a rest and look at this article that uses Venn diagrams to make a visual representation of how joins work.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/a-visual-explanation-of-sql-joins.html

Many of my students have told me that this has helped them tremendously to get a better grasp on the concept and, admittedly, it has made my job alot easier :)

Now, certainly, there are some exceptions that cannot be expressed in this manner, and the analogy breaks down under careful examination. Please refrain from bombarding my inbox with all of the reaons that this analogy is flawed :) Most analogies are. But for those of you who are trying to get just the slightest notion of what a join does, this article is a great starting place to get your brain moving in the right direction.

And you can always come to my October class on T-SQL to have this clarified. Look forward to seeing you there!

- Peter Trast, SQL Expert; MCITP DBA, MCITP EA, MCT LinkIn with Peter