Like many of Microsoft’s recent software products (Visual Studio .Net, .Net Framework or C# 3.0) SQL Server 2008 has been enhanced based previous versions by fixing bugs and adding new functionality built based on existing features. This is a welcome strategy that helps ease the transition for developers and database administrators.
In this blog post I will briefly touch on some of the database administrator functions and focus on the developer functionality, additions and upgrades.
Administrators
Management
SQL Server 2008 policy management has been updated and is now called the ‘Declarative Management Framework’. It is now possible to configure multiple database servers so that a standard configuration can be applied and maintained on multiple servers and databases.
Multiple Server Integration makes it possible to execute queries against multiple servers by placing them within special groups. Result can be categorised into one result per server or merged together as one set of results.
Security (Transparent Data Encryption)
A cool new feature of SQL Server 2008 is the improved flexibility of data encryption. Data encryption is now a property of the database instead of application code. This makes the database administrator and developer’s life’s easier as now they don’t have to make changes to the database every time encryption functionality changes at the application level.
Resource Governor
Database administrators can now specify how much CPU/RAM each user is allowed to use. This will help to eliminate situations where a user’s mistake could potentially bring down a whole server. By imposing these limitations users are restricted to a predefined amount of CPU/RAM usage.
Developers
Developers have also been treated to some appealing updates in the latest version SQL Server. There are a number of new features that have been added to make a developer’s life easier and increase their productivity.
LINQ Vs SQL
Most developers are pretty familiar with writing T-SQL queries to retrieve data for application objects. Most are also aware of the distinct syntactical differences between VB/C# and T-SQL. SQL Server 2008 provides something called the LINQ to SQL provider, which makes it possible to write LINQ commands directly within SQL Server. This lets develops use one common object centric language in the application domain and the database domain. Developers will be able to use the LINQ programming syntax on database table and application collection, XML and datasets.
DATETIME Data Type
Datetime has now been separated into two separate data types so that each one can be defined independently. These new data types will help increase performance by eliminating the need to perform certain operations to extract the date or time portion of the Datetime data type.
GEOGRAPHY and GEOMETRY
These two additions have been added to better represent location specific data. This eliminates the need to break geography and geometry data down into formats that fit other standard data types.
Syntactic Sugar
The SQL language has had some small additions in the shape of Inline Variable Declarations:
Old
DECLARE @myVar int
SET @myVar = 5
New
DECLARE @myVar int = 5
C like math syntax
SET @i += 5
Icing on the cake
SQL Server 2008 had been blessed with Intellisense. All I can say is “about time too”. Gone are the days where you would have to do a Google search to remind yourself of certain T-SQL keywords, statements or syntax. Now SQL Server will give you’re a full list of statements and keywords available for a particular variable’s data type as well as column names for a particular table.
Conclusion
SQL Server offers some interesting new features that will keep developers and administrators happy. These new features integrate well with Visual Studio and the .Net framework 3.5 making SQL Server a nice finishing touch to a well rounded application development environment.
With Sainsburys website going down this week and Amazon’s the week before it is worth taking a moment or two to consider what would happen to your business if your website was out of action.
For most e-commerce clients this could have catastrophic consequences: not only would sales evaporate but you would also lose access to all your sales and customer data.
However, hosting and the quality thereof is often totally ignored in client briefs. It is definitely not a priority and is only ever occasionally paid lip service. This may have been ok a few years ago when websites were just an experiment and an addition to an existing business rather than the core to a business.
However, it is difficult to convince people to invest in proper corporate hosting as there is a perception that hosting should be practically free. It’s true there are some companies offering hosting for £10 per year of less. Honestly, what do you think these companies would provide in terms of back up or reliability servcie lever agreement. Not much I think.
So what should you consider when hosting your website. There are many things to consider, here are just three.
First, where is your website being hosted and who manages and owns the servers. Most websites in the UK are hosted in Telehouse in Docklands where there are massive generally well managed datacenters. But have you ever seen inside a data center, have you ever asked about their air conditioning systems, their own back up power supply, their connectivity to the web? Then what about the servers; who owns them? Who is responsible for updating them with critical patches? When is this done? What happens if they crash? What is the rebuild time? How many other sites are their on the same server as yours? How secure is the access to the servers? If you are not asking these questions then you are not taking your website presence seriously.
Second there are back ups. How often is your site backed up and where are the back ups kept? If your service provider’s data center is blown up (a very realistic proposition, especially if you house your website in Telehouse in docklands) will the back ups go up with it. If they are kept offsite how often are they taken offsite.
Third, what about redundancy. If your server crashes is there a mirror server which will automatically take over? What if your website is overloaded with visitors, can your server handle the traffic? Is there a load balancing mechanism that will automatically divert users to an alternative server?
All these issues need to be addressed when considering hosting and website owners need to change their mindset from considering hosting as essentially a free service to one that is valued and is invested in appropriately according to business requirements and risk assessment.
Ever thought you could exchange Pictures from your PDA or Camera buy simply placing your device on top of the table,
or Placing an order a la minority report style
Microsoft have finally revealed Surface Computing a technology where users intereacts with the desktop
Completly by touch.
Official Surface Computer Site
Video Demo By Znet
One of the most common questions I get asked from clients is, why do I get spam or email virus that appears to originate from inside our organization.Spammers and Viruses are becoming evermore resourceful in trying to elude us to open their emails. One of the simplest ways of getting you to open an email is spoofing email address of users we trust. There are several ways they can get hold of user’s emails the question is how you stop spammers and viruses from faking addresses.Today’s anti-spam are composed of several layers for detecting spam. One of the methods for detecting fake or spoof emails is inbound authentication and Identity verification technically known as SIDF.
How Sender ID Works
- The sender sends an e-mail message.
- The recipient’s inbound e-mail server receives the message.
- The inbound e-mail server checks which domain claims to have sent the message and checks
the DNS for the SPF record of that domain. The inbound server then determines if the IP address
of the sending e-mail server matches the IP addresses that are published in the SPF record.
E-mail messages that fail may be deleted, blocked, or sent to the Junk e-mail folder.
- As a recommended option, the Sender ID result can be combined with reputation data about the
IP/domain holder. This reputation data enhances delivery decisions for all e-mail, including
messages sent from both legitimate senders and spammers which may pass the Sender ID check.
- When combined with the receiving network’s anti-spam and anti-phishing technologies, the
e-mail may be delivered to the Inbox, the Junk or Quarantine folders, or may be blocked and deleted. 
more…
Question is, so why are fake emails still getting through?
Many small businesses do not know or still have not implemented this extra layer of security until a majority of business implement the SPF on their domains we will still continue to receive fake emails or we could opt to block all emails that have not implemented, this solution is risky as businesses could possibly lose important emails from potential clients.
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