I am just taking a quick show of hands; and maybe some information, if you are willing.  (And if this hasn't happened to you, I apologize for taking up your time.) I have had various problems on multiple installations of Books Online throughout the entire Katmai / SQL Server 2008 cycle.  They have been on both 32 and 64-bit; with / ...

I've had a lot of ''fun'' working the with new spatial types in SQL Server 2008. Fun like your first root canal sometimes, fun like a great first date other times. One of the ''root canal moments'' for me has been around Geographic Markup Language (GML) support. I had spent a good chunk of time generating GML for use in class to subsequently ...

Microsoft has publicly stated that SQL Server 2008 will RTM in Q3.  It is Quarter 3 now.  Where is it?  :-) I'm sure that the final touches will now get taken care of now that Bill Gates is no longer a full-time MSFT employee.  I'm sure that his ''short-timer'' attitude trickled down to the develpers working on the product and ...

If you have systems that are still on SQL Server 2000 and that you are preparing for SQL Server 2005, run the Upgrade Avisor for SQL Server 2008 as well.  So, while you are under the hood of your database and app getting it ready for 2005, get it ready for 2008 too.  There are a lot of new features in 2008, but nothing that was taken ...

Yesterday I drove down from Sioux Falls to Omaha so that I could catch a talk being given by Sudhir Gajre to the Omaha SQL Server/BI Interest Group. I first got to know Sudhir when he, I and Luke Schollmeyer were restarting a SQL Server Users Group in Omaha. Sudhir is a stud at SQL Server performance tuning and helped write one of the best papers ...

But this eye candy is worth waiting for.  What I am talking about? I have spend that last weeks nose down in the Spatial bits for SQL Server 2008. I really believe this is the darkhorse super feature of the product. But a big problem with it has been visualizing the results. Unless you good at mentally visualing spatial relationships, it can ...

SQL Server's new logo has been published:   Courtesy of Wesley.  And I have taken a screen shot of the new splash screen for Management Studio:  

After spending the past couple of weeks at the MVP Summit in Seattle and at SQL Connections in Orlando, I thought I should blog about things that do not change in 2008 (at least partially). One of the reason s to partition your tables is to make it more managable.  Although there has been some enhancements in the manner that partitions are ...

No, this is not a ''funny funny, ha ha!'' April Fool's Day post (though I do find those entertaining, and considered posting one myself).  This is for real, and it almost made me tingle a little.  I saw this comment from Eric Kang in a Connect item yesterday morning:''This is a known issue that we have addressed in a release candidate ...

In SQL Server 2008, you can have what is called a ''Filtered Index''.  What does this mean?  An index may be created for a subset of rows in your table.  For instance you could create a filtered index for a ''state'' column if the value is ''CA'' for California; the rest of the states would not have a value.  When you create ...