The good folk at Auldhouse have again scheduled a course for Oracle DBA’s looking to learn SQL Server – either to add it to their current knowledge (and presumably workload) or for organizations looking to make the switch.

The course abstract reads as follows:

Gain the knowledge and skills to capitalize on your experience as an Oracle DBA to manage a Microsoft SQL Server system.

This workshop provides a quick start for the Oracle DBA to map, compare and contrast the realm of Oracle database management to SQL Server database management.  PLUS receive a free copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (Not for Resale) and gain a Microsoft Certification.

5-day workshop includes:
· Course 50068A: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for Oracle DBAs
· SQL 2008 one-day Exam Preparation Boot-camp 
· Measure Up Practice Test
· One SQL 2008 MCTS Certification Exam Voucher mapped to exam 70-432
· One full-license copy of SQL 2008 Standard Edition with 1 CAL

The course costs $3099+GST. Click HERE to register or for more information email Leigh Richardson or phone 0800 835 835.

If you or someone you know is looking to make the transition, this is a good option.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that last week was the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas.  The SharePoint Conference this year was the vehicle where Microsoft unveiled SharePoint Server 2010, and revealed all the new components and other improvements to the product.

I was fortunate enough to be there, so I took the opportunity to sit down with Kiwi ex-pat Chris Johnson – SharePoint Technical Product Manager for Microsoft in Seattle to talk about some of the new features in SharePoint 2010.

This talk is a little longer than we normally take (around 40 mins this time), but we cover off a quick summary of what is new for Web and Enterprise Content management, Standards compliance, Access Services, and a host of other areas where SharePoint 2010 has changed.

If you missed the SharePoint conference and don’t have time to read all the details, this podcast should be useful.

For years Access has been a bad word in the mouths of IT administrators and developers – although for different reasons.  However, it is popular among end users.

The key problem that has come about with the popularity of Microsoft Access is that Access Databases tend to pop up all around the organization on desktops and on file servers around the business.  In addition they are often set up by an individual (or two) who then use them to store information that needs to be properly managed, backed up and secured – but isn’t.  In addition, an organization often has no idea of the information that is in the business that could be useful for more purposes or which could be beneficial for more people to use. Then there is the whole story around storing the database on a network and doing a full data pull over the network to run a query…

Today, many organizations are looking for a solution to these problems.  How do you managed all these databases that just keep popping up at random without controls? When they are there how do you know what they are used for and what is the cost if they are accidentally deleted, corrupted, etc and nobody knows until it is too late to retrieve it? 

SharePoint 2010 may have the solution to these problems.  With Access 2010 you can store the Access database in SharePoint itself, centralising all the data, putting it into a solution that can be centrally backed up and managed, where security can be set and IT is aware of not only the presence of the Access database, but also who uses the database and how much.  This provides the ability to continue to use Access in the organization without compromising security, resilience or manageability of the database.

But wait, there is more.

I referred to Access Services as game changing in a recent tweet. Here is why – this has massive implications for Line of Business Applications.

Today, if you want to develop an application for data entry and reporting you’d probably hire a developer to write the front end (web or windows forms), dump the data into a database like SQL Server (perhaps even just SQL Express) and use something like reporting services to extract the data for reporting purposes.  While this approach is often justified, there are two places where it becomes a problem.  Firstly it won’t work if there are only a couple of users who will use the application and the payback doesn’t pay for itself in a  big way.  The reason why is the second reason - namely that it is usually expensive to hire a developer to do this and then maintain the code, etc – developers are worth their wages, but there is always a price.

So, with that in mind, what if an end user could build a simple Access application for a line of business requirement, and upload it to a central location where everyone can then access it – and it scales?  And only the data you need is sent over the network.  And what about if you could also take it offline and then sync back up too?  Access Services will also do that no problem.  Want to know how many people are accessing the solution?  Just take a look at the usage reports that come standard in SharePoint 2010.  You need to upgrade the app to support a new business need?  No problem, download it, make changes and just upload it again and it is instantly available for everyone.

This changes the way people think about building simple line of business applications dramatically.  It brings creation of these solutions down to non-developers, freeing developers to focus on things which are less verbose and require more thought.  It also speeds up the time to have a Line of Business Application available – going from weeks or even months to literally days or even hours in some cases.

Sound scary? Don’t forget that this is centrally managed, backed up with your SharePoint server (you do back it up don’t you?) and can be secured centrally and governed in line with company policies and procedures.

Access Services for SharePoint with Access 2010 is game changing.  Not only can you centralise the Access sprawl, but you can rapidly build and deploy specialised data oriented applications and share them through the organization literally overnight.

I’m hoping to have more on this in an upcoming podcast with product team members, so stay tuned.

This is great news!  In addition to the news that Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is now out for download for MSDN Subscribers, we also announced that we are changing the product offering line up for Visual Studio 2010. 

Team editions are gone and in their place is a single uber-SKU. MSDN Subscriptions as an add on to Visual Studio are gone – integrated instead into a SKU.  Visual Studio Standard is gone (we sold very little of this – most people opting for Visual Studio Professional instead).

So what does this mean for you if you already own Visual Studio 2008 with MSDN?

Good news!  If you have a valid MSDN Premium Subscription as at March 22, 2010, you will automatically get upgraded.

In addition to all this, all MSDN Subscribers will gain access to Team Foundation Server 2010 when it ships.

So – if you don’t have a MSDN Subscription today, go buy one and watch it blossom into a upgraded SKU when Visual Studio 2010 ships!

Today at the SharePoint Conference, we announced the name of Project Gemini would become Microsoft PowerPivot.  Microsoft Powerpivot is an advanced Business Intelligence solution for Microsoft Excel that allows users to work with massive volumes of data (think hundreds of millions of rows) on a standard desktop computer (i.e. 1-2 Gb RAM) at near instant speed.

PowerPivot for Excel is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love—Microsoft Excel. Leveraging familiar Excel features, users can transform enormous quantities of data from virtually any source with incredible speed into meaningful information to get the answers they need in seconds.

Using SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 (delivered thru SQL Server 2008 R2 in SharePoint 2010), end users can effortlessly and securely share their finding with others and work seamlessly in the browser with the same performance and features as the Excel client. PowerPivot for SharePoint even helps IT departments improve their operational efficiencies through SharePoint-based management tool called PowerPivot Management Dashboard. IT administrators can track usage patterns over time, drill down to obtain more details, discover mission-critical solutions, and ensure performance by making sure users have the appropriate resources.

The Microsoft Business Intelligence strategy differs from most other BI offerings in that the goal is not to sell high price per user solutions that are available only to a select few in the organization (due to price).  Instead Microsoft is working hard to integrate Business Intelligence into the core data oriented products that Microsoft already sells and ships to customers – namely SQL Server, SharePoint Server and Microsoft Office.  As organizations tend to license these products for everyone, the Microsoft vision and strategy is to deliver Business Intelligence to everyone in the organization at commodity prices.

The future of Microsoft’s Business Intelligence offering is very exciting, if you are interested in BI, then stay tuned – the world is changing rapidly.

*UPDATE* More information now available on the Gemini team blog here.

Even though I’m a product manager with my own products, the entire Microsoft eco system is somewhat connected so I want to add more than just my products to the line of topics in this podcast.

This week, we start venturing into the wider Microsoft ecosystem with an interview with Alex Payne (Director of Product Management for Microsoft in the US) about Office 2010, and Office in the cloud.

We even talk about that famous “in the cloud” competitor and what is different between Microsoft’s approach and their approach. Enjoy

While at Tech Ed, I took a few minutes to sit down with Emil Velinov who is on the BizTalk Customer Advisory Team for Microsoft in Redmond to discuss whats new in BizTalk 2009, where customers would use BizTalk 2009 and also a little overview of “Dublin”.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve posted a series on Licensing SQL Server.  The purpose of this blog post is to tie the series up with a summary.

So here is a list of the posts in the series and what was covered as well as some other posts that are related.

Part 1 – Server and CAL licensing

Part 2 – Processor based Licensing

Part 3 – Virtualization (also check out this post for more details)

SQL Server and Licensing for redundant servers

Parting comments

I want to leave this series with some guidelines that I recommend you take into account when making licensing decisions around SQL Server 2008.

If you are considering the processor vs Server and CAL models, edition migrations is something to take into account.  This is particularly important if you are on SQL Standard where we are working hard to make the Enterprise edition of SQL Server much more compelling.  I predict that this will be a big consideration for the future.  Watch this space.

Secondly if you are looking to virtualize SQL Server, you want to look at SQL Server Enterprise – as this eases the cost burden in virtual environments because you license the physical hardware, not the virtual hardware – not to mention that you can take advantage of the other benefits of SQL Server Enterprise.

Finally, we’ve just released a new licensing option if you are on an Enterprise Agreement and interested in licensing lots of SQL Servers (good for swapping from Oracle to SQL).  It provides 15-40% off the price of SQL Server, gives you unlimited deployment rights and problem resolution and can be customised for larger customers depending on what you are working to do over a 1-3 year period.  Read more about it in this PDF.

If you have a scenario that you want some help or comments on, send them through and I’ll post answers here.