Rick Heiges

O'Hare was in th news recently. I really do not travel that much, but I now know why the article was front page news. My flight to O'Hare was delayed and then cancelled. I was rerouted through another city and arrived about 2.5 hours late. This really wasn't too bad. But my flight back was delayed so much that I would have missed the connection home. Rerouting to a different city saved me another night away from home. O'Hare still got me though as the connecting flight I was going to catch was delayed due to the traffic at O'Hare. I got home at 3am! This is 4.5 hours after I was originally scheduled.  There are events that happen which add to the pressure of a somewhat overwhelmed system, but lengthy delays and especially cancellations tell me that something needs to be done.

This got me to thinking about Bottlenecks. We all run into them somewhere. On our computers, there seems to be some limiting factor that affects the overall performance of the entire system. There are steps that can be taken to minimize this in our computers. Perhaps the airlines will figure out this bottleneck too.

Antoher crazy thing about airlines that does not make much sense to me is the fare structure.  I'll leave that one for another OT rant.

Installation Success on my VPC!!! In my unscientific method of changing more than one variable at a time, I was able to get Yukon B2 installed on my VPC. Here are some things that I changed as I tried to install it about 6 times (each time took forever!).

Made sure that IIS was installed for RS. I forgot about that the default install of XP doesn't enable IIS.

Since I Named the instance on my laptop, I wanted this to be a Default Instance on the VPC. I however changd my mind after I had typed in an instance name in the field. Instead of cancelling or deleting out what I had typed, I clicked on the Radio Button for "Default Instance" and went on. I don't know if this is a bug or not because I didn't want to take another couple hours to repro a bug that may be caused by something else, but I think it may have had an impact.

Login into a Domain - even if it is just connecting a drive and not a member of a domain. There were several posts in the ng that stated an error may be avoided if you login to a domain. Don't know why, but I did this anyway.

Hop on 1 foot and pray - I'm positive that this was not a factor, but you never know! ;-)

Installation - I installed Beta 2 of Yukon on my laptop with little problem. I got to the point where I wanted to start playing with one of the coolest features in Yukon, DB Mirroring. On my test server, I decided to get VPC going and install Yukon Beta 2 there. I thought it should be a snap, but I have attempted installation 4 times so far and have failed at various points along the way. The newsgroups for setup issues have really been helpful in making progress, but it is taking much longer than I would expect on a VPC with a clean install of Win XP Pro SP1 and all patches. I will say that it is going better in Beta 2 than in Beta 1 did last year.

Continuing on in the "Where that go?" thoughts. The Query designer is also not to be found in Beta2. Again, Access 2003 can be used to build a query graphically. The same warnings show up that stating that the work cannot be saved. The really nice thing is that you can expose the SQL view and copy the SQL statement and paste it into the SQL Managment Studio work area to run a query or to create a view. This seems to be part of the same area of responsibility that DDs fall under at MSFT.

Where are some of the things I was used to in SS2k? The very first thing that I checked out due to rumors I had heard earlier in the year was the Database Diagrams were not going to be supported. DDs were a nice and quick way to work with the physical model of the db.  I know that I used it in my classes to help teach concepts of Relational DBs and how it was implemented in SQL Server. It didn't have all of the bells and whistles of Visio or ERWin, but it was good for what it did. DDs are not in Beta 2. MSFT is looking into possibly adding this functionality for a later Beta release.

Access 2003 is the version that I have installed on my PC. I was able to use the trusty DD tool in the Access Project (ADP file) to create a DD, but this could not be saved. Access did give me warnings when I tried to create the DD, but it let me through it anyway. If you need something like this quick, it works; it just can't be saved.

In the newsgroups recently, there seems to be concern over this feature and other Visual Data Tools not implemented.  DDs is one of those things that you may not miss until it isn't there.  Like Coke Classic, DDs aren't around currently in Beta 2.  If there is enough demand for them and the other visual tools, they may just reappear with a “Classic” label.

Let's take a look at SQL Server Express (SSE). First, I like the name change. SSE is somewhat self-explanatory. It is simlar to Outlook and Outlook Express in that both are e-mail clients, but Outlook also does a bunch of other things and OE has a newsreader. MSDE seemed to always have the phrase "SQL Server Lite" or some other modifier when speaking about it to others unfamiliar with it.

SSE has limitations built in because it is really targeted at moving Access applications to a different Storage Engine. if you look at the specs for Access 2003, SSE is closer to thos specs, but adds a little more bells and whistles from a management point of view.

I hope that there is still the Access Project (ADP) files that can act as a front end to SSE. I have not tried it out yet with Express, but Access 2003 does work as a front-end for SS2k5b2 from just a quick connect test.

In a recent newsgroup post, it appears that ADPs are not being pushed as much as they have been in the past few years.  This probably has a lot to do with all of the BIG changes in Yukon.

Hello, my name is Rick Heiges. I currently teach IS classes at High Point University in High Point, NC. I specialize in DB courses especially the course featuring SQL Server. I am under contract currently to produce a college textbook for SQL Server 2005. I have been a part of the Beta 1 testing and have just downloaded the bits for Beta 2. I will be recording my impressions in this blog of the product and hw it could be used to learn SQL Server products easier. I will also hit some related areas like the other Express products.