A quick list of relevant [to me] tools as they relate to working on or around SQL Server for maintenance and development.

• The folks at xSQL Software produce great tools that work without too much flash, although some DO have “all the bells and whistles”.  Go ahead and download their free offerings here.
• SSMS Tool Pack.  Dude, dude, dude… what can I say… phenomenal (and after a month of using them, indispensable) add on to SSMS 2005 on…  There is some code gen goodness there, some “refactoring”, snippets, debugging capability, etc... I can’t see how you wouldn’t be able to find a good use for this add on if you are a somewhat “daily” SQL Server and SSMS user.
• SQLMonitoring Tool.  Available on Codeplex.
• SSIS Community Tasks and Components.  Available on Codeplex.
• SQL Search from RedGate software.  I’ve blogged about it before here.  It has to make this list though… I use it pretty much “daily”.
• [UPDATE] The MEGA Guide to Free SQL Tools

An additional not on the offerings from xSQL Software: For those that are not free, the cost of their software is WAY less that their value.  You can’t go wrong.  I am a user of their tools, more specifically their Script Executor Community Edition which has saved me hours of frustrating, repetitive and manual work.  (Review to follow soon).

I demoed this small, simple and free tool to the team today.  SQL Search from redgate

This is an add on for SQL Server Management Studio.  It supports/works with SQL Server 2005 & 2008 instances.  I won’t index or search databases under a SQL Server 2000 instance.  We migrated a SQL Server 2000 database and ran it under a 2008 instance in compatibility mode and SQL Search worked on it ok.

Once the install is complete, you’ll notice a new toolbar button:

Select your database within your object explorer and the click on the button and SQL Search will open up in a tab with the database selected on the left as the default selected database.  Of course you can select a different database to search within using the SQL Search interface.

Within the search box, type the name of the object (table, column, constraint, variable… whatever) you want to search for, and SQL Search does an immediate search on matches to partial names displaying the results in the grid below the search & selection criteria section.

Once you find what you are looking for you can “double-click” on it and it will find and select the object within the object explorer for you (mine is on the left).

An even more productive feature is that within the results grid itself there is a preview, read-only pane that displays the body of stored procedures as you select them on the grid above.  Want to mess around with it?  Double click it and navigate directly to the object from where you can proceed as you would within SSMS to “Modify” it.

Instant sensation with my team of developers & DBA.

Did I mention it is free?

Get it here.  And while you are there, watch the 3min video on where and how they went about building this tool.  Pretty neat.  “Coded by the sea”.

Who shot first?  (that one got me… no clue).  How embarrassed should I be?

Created by OnePlusYou - Geek Test

I just got done with running the upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on my previous Vista Ultimate x64 system. 

Kudos, two thumbs up, hooray and well done!

Painless, quick, efficient, transparent.  System is performing like a charm.  The only one visible change was that it swapped my wallpaper.

According to Baseline Magazine, you should make room on your bookshelf for the following books:

1. Managing the Human Factor in Information Security: How to win over staff and influence business managers by David Lacey
2. Information Nation: Seven Keys to Information Management Compliance by Randolph Kahn, Barclay Blair
3. The Truth About Middle Managers: Who They Are, How They Work, Why They Matter by Paul Osterman
4. Strategic Project Management Made Simple: Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams by Terry Schmidt
5. Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers by Louis Testa
6. Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofin​g Your Project by Tom Kendrick PMP
7. The Greening of IT: How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment by John Lamb
8. Winning the Hardware-Softwa​re Game: Using Game Theory to Optimize the Pace of New Technology Adoption by Ruth D. Fisher
9. The Deciding Factor: The Power of Analytics to Make Every Decision a Winner by Larry E. Rosenberger
10. Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects (Pragmatic Programmers) by Johanna Rothman

Once I stumble across a list like this, I’ll likely read a couple… already ordered one of them.

Got myself a new toy, a Linksys NAS 200, picked it up at on sale at buy.com for $75 and stuffed it with dual 1TB Hitachi 7200RPM hard drives from Newegg.com for $65 a piece after $10 immediate coupon and, where I to get my ass in gear I have a $10 rebate on each that would bring the price down to $55 a pop.

Here is my cliff notes review.

Installation

Physical

A snap, quite literally (do notice I did have a helper throughout so take that into account!).

Take the front covers out by releasing the plastic latch, then squeeze in the 3.5” SATA drives which fit snuggly and perfectly, until you feel the connectors in the back perfectly couple with the drive’s own.

Power up…

Setup

Pop in the Installation CD, which runs the app that scans for the device in your local network.  Either follow the wizard (which I did the first time) or change settings manually (without the wizard).  Settings to set include device network name, IP (static or DHPC) and drive configuration.

The NAS supports as much as you would expect from a $75, 2 drive device.  RAID 0 (stripping) for speed, RAID 1 (mirroring) for peace of mind.  You can also configure it to use the Two separate disks (Recommended)or Two disks configured as one large disk (JBOD/LVM).

I configured it using RAID 1, since I don’t think I have close to that amount of data requiring “secure” storage.  This is the purpose that best fits my immediate needs and that in my mind justified the roughly $150 expense.

One small shortcoming that I think is, again typical to expect of your $75 device, is that you are tied to manage permissions and setup shares and such from the proprietary software interface, something that may fall short of a great experience but also something that I am probably going to do seldom if ever now that it is up and running. 

It is manageable via its self contained and hosted web interface or via a desktop app included with the supporting media.

If you happen to need additional storage to be served via the same mechanism and want to add to the NAS, one option is to do it via it’s USB interface.  The device will manage up to 2 external USB drives and serve them up via the same interface with some limitations, served straight up no RAID.

Some cool, non advertised features include power management (very welcome indeed) and a “Media Server” option which I haven’t tried out yet.

Thus far, not quite 1 month into the purchase, installation, setup and configuration, I would recommend this product to anyone looking for a truly inexpensive way to store and manage (secure if so desired) data.  How expensive or cheap you end up going depends on your options for the actual drives you put in it, but you could start with one and add to it.  Of course that would limit or somewhat restrict your ability to use mirror after the fact.

The September 15th issue of InformationWeek (perpetually mistakenly delivered to me for 3 years), features their 20th annual ranking of companies they deem “The Top Innovators In Business Technology”. 

The listing has a regional breakout, and so I thought It would be easy to just go through it and identify & extract all of those companies with headquarters in our state of Wisconsin.  It is in a way a means to show my regional pride.

Here’s the list of companies in alphabetical order, containing the company name, city and the company’s highest ranking IT executive & title:

• Actuant (Butler, WI), Dennis B. Biederman/IT Director
• Acuity, A Mutual Company (Sheboygan, WI), Neal Ruffalo/VP of Enterprise Technology & CIO
• Assurant Health (Milwaukee, WI), Lance Wilson/Sr. VP & CIO
• Fiserv, Inc (Brookfield, WI), Richard K Jones/Executive VP & CIO
• Foley & Lardner LLP (Milwaukee, WI), Douglas D. Caddell/CIO
• KI (Green Bay, WI), Vicki Petit/VP of IS
• Kohl's Corp (Menomonee Falls, WI), Tom Kingsbury/Sr. Executive VP Markerting, Business Development & IT
• Marshfield Clinic (Marshfield, WI), Carl Christensen/CIO
• Metavante Technologies (Milwaukee, WI), Gary A Refinski/Executive VP of Integration and Implementation Services
• Schneider National (Green Bay, WI), Judith Lemke/Executive VP & CIO

There is no other way to put this before I delve into the details: You (as a professional developer, product owner, product manager, software practitioner in any ability) owe it to yourself to read this book… that is, if you are anything like me and reading about all of these tidbits of software development history while getting a degree of insight into the process of an "organized" open source project, in any way call to you.

There is a little bit of everything here, presented in a narrative that is pleasant to read, and with the right amount of abstraction to keep you at the right interested at the right level without too much detail making the reading terse.  I almost [ALMOST] gave it to my wife to read, only until I was deeper into the book itself I reluctantly admitted it would have not have appeared as appealing to her as it was to me.

The [story] follows a team assembled and funded by Mitch Kapor, in its quest to create the open source product that would Chandler.  In the process, the OSAF is founded as the backbone supporting and governing the efforts.

Their trials and tribulations make up the narrative's main thread, but the vision, the lessons learned, the passion that one can feel jumping off the pages from those involved in the project and who wanted it so badly, was what made this a page turner for me.

Needless to say, the stories, the citations, the anecdotes surrounding all of those who end up intertwined in the process, as well as all of those that emerge from the story itself, and some of what otherwise would be considered useless footnotes in the history of software development, spoke to me, enticed my curiosity for wanting to know more about them and motivated more than a few searches and articles to be read parallel to and after finishing the story.

The book was published in January of 2007, and covers the project time (including vision and conception) spanning 2001 to late 2005, where the book sort of trails off and never quite has what one could call a "written form of closure". 

The author, Scott Rosenberg, sort of ends the book with a couple of chapters that are full of historical (albeit somewhat relevant) notes and an observer's retrospective analysis which are probably more subjective than actual factual conclusions.  I don't mean and certainly don't intend this to be criticism to the book itself or to the way he (and his editors) chose to conclude the book, but I would have liked a cap on the story more fitting to the initial heart beat of the book, one that would give the story it own identity, a beginning and an end.

The project itself is still alive, the product is available but beyond knowing that I would suggest that if you intend to read the book that you don't spoil the whole experience of reading the book by "catching up" on where the project is at currently.  I can share with you that the many players in the story and the project are interesting and up until the end they "all" came and went.  An interesting note worth mentioning is that a good number of the people involved in this project are the same "core" that brought us Firefox.

You can read it as a story, you can read it as a use case, you can read it as a diary of a software development project, you can read it as a text book that is 100% pragmatic, but nonetheless I recommend you read it.

You can find other reviews here, here, and here.  More opinions will for sure confuse the heck out of you, so go right ahead and read them all!

The book's main site is kept by the author at Dreaming in Code, available on Amazon or you can just let me know you want to borrow it!

Woohoooo!

I won the raffle for 2 great software products, that Max Pool @ {codesqueeze} put out in honor of the blog's 1 year anniversary.

As entries to the contest one could twitter, blog or post videos... I twitted a couple of times and wrote a blog post here.  That was enough to make me a winner.

So freakin' cool... I can't wait to start using Bamboo CI.

All my data are belong to them.

I can't help but realize now how much of my data, my valuable and precious data, that I think means nothing to anyone but me, keeps finding itself somewhere where I have truly no control over it <*sigh*> oh well, it is what it is. 

The reason why I do it, why we all do it is primarily because it appears convenient, in a way that is accessible for us and other that may be interested... or not, and even then I'll just put it up there... right on your face!  Here are my books (the first 100 or so I've entered so far in any case).

Very cool, albeit overly graphic in my opinion and according to my preferences, but usable, Web 2.0 ish, with friends and whatnot.  Still haven't played with it as one may probably want to in order to fully utilize it.  Don't entirely know yet what can and can't be shared amongst friends.

The widget currently displaying on this blog was provided by them... tweaks will be forthcoming.

I will accept pretty much any and all friend invites, as if it is not evident to you by now, books are one of my passions.