29 February 2008

Goodbye SDM!

Today was my last day at SDM. I'm going to join the "contractors club" to experience a new type of work and want to be an independent consultant in the near future. Hence I'm starting a contract role in Tenix on a large-scale data migration project.

Working at SDM was a great experience for me and I have learned a lot and made some good friendships over the 1 year working with them.

27 February 2008

Exam 70-551: UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Web Developer by Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework

Today I passed 70-551 (a tough one!) and upgraded my MCAD to MCPD. The exam was devided in 3 sections and each section was contained of 30 Questions:

  • Section 1 - .NET Framework Fundamentals
  • Section 2 - Core Web Application Development
  • Section 3 - Application Development Advanced Topics

Time for each section was around 70 minutes which seems not to be enought.Once you finish one section, you can't go back to that section again. Passing score is 700.

The first section was specific to web applications and it has a bunch of question with mobile pages, web forms and new web controls like webparts, login, profiles, site map and master page as the main topics.

The second part of the exam was the hardest one, it was related to framework and types with security attributes, xml serialization attributes, class design and generics in its topics.

The third part was the architecture one and it was lot of logical questions about designing solutions, unit testing, code coverage and integration test and best practices.

Check out this links:

22 February 2008

SQL Server 2008 - CTP 6

The latest Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2008 is available.

SQL Server 2008 CTP6 is "feature complete," which means that Microsoft won't be adding or removing features between now and RTM later this year.

SQL Server 2008 February CTP 6 can be downloaded from here

13 February 2008

Microsoft Positioned in Leaders Quadrants in Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms

Congratulations Microsoft!

You can read the press release on the news here.

11 February 2008

Overview of SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence by Tom Casey

In this 9 minutes video, Tom Casey (general manager SQL Server Business Intelligence at Microsoft) gives an overview of BI in SQL Server 2008 (code name Catmai)

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/bi/

09 February 2008

What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for Business Intelligence

Integration Services in SQL Server 2008

  • SSIS 2008 provides the data integration features such as SSIS pipeline, SSIS persistent lookups, and SSIS data profiling that help you to integrate data more effectively.
  • SSIS 2008 provides data warehousing features and tools that help you to effectively manage large volumes of data. These features and tools include partitioned table parallelism, query optimization, Resource Governor, and data compression.
  • SQL Server 2008 provides the MERGE statement that helps you to simplify the code and enhance the system performance. You can also use the MERGE statement as a join between a target that is the recipient of the DML and a source that is the provider of the data.
  • SQL Server 2008 provides the CDC (Change Data Capture) feature that helps you to insert records, update, and delete activities applied to SQL Server 2008 tables. You can use CDC to store details of the changes in an easy relational format. CDC also provides a structured, reliable stream of change data that can be applied by users to dissimilar target representations of data.

Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008

  • SSRS 2008 includes the report server that is used to set a memory threshold for background operations and performance counters for monitoring service activity.
  • SSRS 2008 supports two modes of deployment for report server, the native mode and SharePoint integrated mode.
  • SSRS provides the report authoring features that help you to manage large reports. These features include Report Designer, data visualization, and Tablix.
  • SSRS provides the report delivery features that help you to generate reports. The features include rich-text, Office Word rendering, Office Excel rendering, export to Office Word and Office Excel, and report delivery through MOSS.

Analysis Services in SQL Server 2008

  • SSAS 2008 provides several Cube Designer enhancements for better detection and classification of attributes along with identification of member properties. These enhancements include Analysis Services personalization extensions, best practice alerts, enhanced dimension design, enhanced aggregate design, and dynamic named sets.
  • SSAS 2008 provides you with the capabilities to can enhance the data mining models by appending a new algorithm to Microsoft Time Series algorithm. This new algorithim is based on the ARIMA algorithm. This enhancement improves the accuracy and stability of predictions in the data mining models.
  • SSAS 2008 provides several performance enhancements to manage cube space. The enhancements include subspace computation, MOLAP-enabled write back capabilities, scale-out analysis, and scalable backup tool.

Source: MS Clinic 6189: What’s New in Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 for Business Intelligence

01 February 2008

PPS 2007 MCTS Exam 70-556 Now Available

Prometric already listed the exam on its site.

The official preparation guide for the exam:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-556.mspx