Anjana's Arena

Microsoft Released SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 two days back on Feb 19th.

Key focus of this service pack is compatability and enhancements in and around the following technologies.

• Vista Compatability
• Office 2007 compatability
• Virtualization

This is a fully compatible with Windows Vista and also has enhancements that make the SQL Server 2005-Office 2007 marriage more interesting. Apart from this, a virtualization user can now run unlimited virtual instances on servers with the licences SQL Server 2005 Enterprise edition.

Key new features can be seen around Business Intelligence and some in Database Administration and Interoperability

Business Intelligence

• Data Mining Add-ins for the 2007 Microsoft Office system enable data mining functionality from SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) to be used directly within Excel® 2007 and Visio® 2007.
 
• SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) compatibility with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 provides integration with the Report Center in SharePoint, enabling the seamless consumption and management of SSRS reports within SharePoint.
 
• SQL Server Analysis Services improvements for Excel 2007 and Excel Services relate to performance and functionality.
 
• Data compression (varDecimal) is an important feature for data warehousing scenarios, requiring less disk storage of decimal data and increasing overall performance.

Administration & Manageability
• Manageability enhancements, based on customer feedback, provide management capabilities for database administrators such as improvements in database maintenance plans, enhanced management reports and a new copy database wizard.
 
• Management reports added to SQL Server Express Edition enable customers to get insights into the performance of their Express Edition and SQL Server Compact Edition databases.
 

Interoperability
• Interoperability improvements including Oracle support in the Report Builder feature enable customers to use its functionality on top of Oracle data sources. Customers also have access to SQL Server Reporting Services to build reports on top of Hyperion’s Essbase cubes.
 

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 can be downloaded by customers here http://www.microsoft.com/sql/sp2.mspx 

This is something many web developers are interested on and have been asking for since sometime.

Mike Ammerlaan writes here on how to get this working.

Past few months I have been working more on Office 2007 and development around it. I must say it's fun, though before i started working i wondered what can a tech person do around Office. In fact i still find lot of people not understanding what it means when someone says 'Office 2007 for Developers'. What matters is how you utlize the whole of Office System 2007 which includes a set of clients and servers to build an end to end solution. And this definetly makes office 2007 very interesting for developers and architects

We had developed a POC around Office 2007 for the MS Office launch using Office Beta 2 and VSTO SE. Working with VSTO SE has been very exciting. I have seen people working on information bridge framework earlier. However the object oriented approach and also easy integration with Sharepoint server makes office developement with VSTO more comfortable. And the BI features in Excel are very interesting. Excel Services is definetly a features that has lots of business value.

One of the toughest things was deployment and i hope the next release of Orcas would take care of that. Because for an enterprise implemetation of Smart office clients what's most important is the deployment strategy. And this is something i find most challenging.

The link for the video of the solution developed can be found here. (copy paste the url on the browser)
http://directory.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/SolutionPage.aspx?i=1&cat=&SolutionID=5883&pid=0&vid=0

Aaah, i have been struggling with my blog credentials since sometime as someone had tampered with it, and i thought i have lost my blog. But today i got it back after so much of running around with weblogs.. I have too many things to blame for this inlcuding the crazy password reset functionality in weblogs, irresponsible admin emailids and ofcourse myself :), but i will play this blame game later.

It's been since a month i have been waiting to blog on Performance Point Server and now the pricing is also out for the same.

Performance Point Server (PPS) is next release of Business Scorecard Managar 2005. But the interesting fact is Performance Point Server also includes some of the major functionalities of Proclarity and also introduces a planning component code named Biz#.

The product component can be broken down as Monitoring, Analytics and Planning (acronymed as MAP). The monitoring component is almost same as the Business Scorecard Manager. While the analytics component is more of the proclarity analytics server. The planning component is codenamed as Biz#, and allows planning, budgeting, forecasting etc which can reach all users in an org and also by using the common end user tools like MS Excel.

The pricing was out two weeks back and the pricing model is considered interesting and probably would play an important factor in tempting the buyers, as it gives them the economic advanatage over the competitors. Well this was expected from MS as this has been it's strategy. And from what ever i have seen so far about PPS, i think the functionalities as well can tempt the buyers, not just the pricing:).

I have just started to work on this and it defenetly seems interesting to start with , ofcourse there is lot more for me to do and may be even for the Micrsoft to do.I intend to keep posting on the same.

This URL gives some info on PPS
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101639481033.aspx