Just in case any of my old Senior High School classmates stumble onto this blog, we're having a class Reunion July 8th and 9th (2005, like, duh!) in Fremont. If I'm understanding things right, activities begin -- as they typically did for us -- with binge drinking on Friday night. See ya at the Holiday Lodge bar around 18:30 I guess.
Not Kirk Haselden's article so much, which is interesting in and of its own right, but the title...
February CTP : Variable mappings in the ForEachLoop...
Hummm... might be time to start watching for another bit drop me thinks.
But I could be completely wrong. Wouldn't be the first time I've misguessed a date.
A frequent question I see on the various news groups goes something like this one: "Is it possible to download SQL Server 2005 for practice? Is there like student edition available for nominal fee? Subscribing to MSDN is very expensive for an individual."
Actually you can get all you need for "free.*" I'll point you at the most current stuff. As a reminder, this is unsupported beta software. Do not install it on a machine that you care much about being able to not uninstall it cleanly from (think FDISK, ok). It is best to install it to a virtual host (like VirtualPC), or make a really good backup first. Why? Uninstalling this software -- while not hard -- is order of component removal sensitive as talked about here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66120BE8-826A-482A-8264-B1836F28FD79&displaylang=en
First, make sure you are running on an OS and hardware configuration that meets the minimum requirements:
- Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Professional Edition , Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional Edition , Windows XP Service Pack 1. Note that Windows XP Home, Windows NT, Windows Me and Windows 9x are not supported at this time.
- Intel Pentium III or compatible 550-megahertz (MHz) or higher processor (1 gigahertz or more recommended). Certain non-Intel processors like the Transmeta and some odd-ball AMD chips have been problematic in the past.
- 256 megabytes (MB) of RAM (512 MB or more recommended for sure.)
- 405 MB of available hard disk space.
With that said, I normally recommend installing these bits in this order:
- The .NET framework version 2.0.40903 from http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/A/4/9A47D72B-9D98-46CC-87F3-B92E97888E4B/dotnetfx.exe
- The SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (SSX) bits, version 9.0.0981 from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66120BE8-826A-482A-8264-B1836F28FD79&displaylang=en
- Express Manager (XM) from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=8F92556A-6C3B-47D2-9929-ECDC5A4D25AE&displaylang=en
- The SQL Server 2005 Books online from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2adbc1a8-ae5c-497d-b584-eab6719300cd&displaylang=en. The downloads are at the bottom of that page.
- You may also want to download and install the AdventuresWorks database to work with. There's a long posting in blog covering that. See http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/ktegels/articles/installawdbssx.aspx
While I think using the December CTP is "the way" to go for most folks, you may and to use the less current but more stable Beta two bits. Those are at:
Note that this version is pretty much stand alone. If you want/need a rich "developer's environment," you may want to look at using one of the Visual Studio Express products instead (see http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/.) They ship with and install their own version of the .NET runtime and SSX, so there's no need to download and install them separately.
* Note that SSX isn't the full version of SQL Server 2005 and those differences are covered in the Express White Paper at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnsse/html/sseoverview.asp. That said, SSX is a great way to get started. By free, I mean that there's no charge to download or license to buy.
I've been seeing that the PAGer's are well are their way to filling my wish list for the Enterprise Library by putting on a number of Webcasts. While you can get more information here (see bottom of the page), Ohad Israeli already has a nice list of direct links.
We're engaging on our first few projects that will be based on these and hopefully I'll have some useful things to say about it here.