SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide

Microsoft has recently released the SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Whitepaper. This technical guide takes you through the essentials for upgrading SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008 R2 instances to SQL Server 2012. Administrators, developers, business intelligence professionals and project managers planning to upgrade environments and solutions to SQL Server 2012 will find it very useful.

The very detailed and in-depth 454 page guide was written by SolidQ members and technically reviewed and published by Microsoft. I am extremely happy that I was able to contribute to this guide. This is the first time my writing was published and I would like to thank SolidQ and Microsoft for the opportunity.

Congratulations to the SolidQ Authors: Ron Talmage, Nigel Sammy, Allan Hirt, Herbert Albert, Antonio Soto, Danilo Dominici, Régis Baccaro, Milos Radivojevic, Jesús Gil, Dejan Sarka, Johan Åhlén, Simran Jindal, Paul Turley, Craig Utley, Larry Barnes, Pablo Ahumada.

List of Chapters:
Chapter 1: Upgrade Planning and Deployment
Chapter 2: Management Tools
Chapter 3: Relational Databases
Chapter 4: High Availability
Chapter 5: Database Security
Chapter 6: Full-Text Search
Chapter 7: Service Broker
Chapter 8: SQL Server Express
Chapter 9: SQL Server Data Tools
Chapter 10: Transact-SQL Queries
Chapter 11: Spatial Data
Chapter 12: XML and XQuery
Chapter 13: CLR
Chapter 14: SQL Server Management Objects
Chapter 15: Business Intelligence Tools
Chapter 16: Analysis Services
Chapter 17: Integration Services
Chapter 18: Reporting Services
Chapter 19: Data Mining
Chapter 20: Other Microsoft Applications and Platforms
Appendix 1: Version and Edition Upgrade Paths
Appendix 2: SQL Server 2012: Upgrade Planning Checklist

DownloadSQL Server 2012 Upgrade Technical Guide
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Business Intelligence Event

The Role of Business Intelligence in Driving Results
Date: May 24th , 2012
Time: 9:00am to 1:15pm
Venue: Trinidad & Tobago Chamber of Industry & Commerce

The session will focus on how businesses are dealing with the challenge of providing the right information, to the right people, at the right time, and in the right format.

AGENDA:
9:00 - 9:30:  Welcoming Remarks
                       Ms. Frances Correia, GM, Microsoft T&T

9:30 - 10:00: The role of Business Intelligence in transforming business results
                        Mr. Keith Thomas, Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business  

10:00 - 11:00: The many ways you can improve decision making using Business Intelligence tools
                          Mr. David Kam Kin & Mr. Graham Leitch, Infotech Caribbean

11:00 - 11:15:  Break

11:15 - 12:30: Business Intelligence Solutions 2012
                          Mr. Nigel Sammy, Mr. Jason Deyalsingh & Mr. Hasani Holder,  TTSSUG

12:30 - 1:15: Introducing System Center 2012: Mr. Donnell Bhagan, Microsoft T&T

Seats are limited so book your space early! 

To register for this event, please contact:.
Latoya De Freitas: latoya@corbintrinidad.com – 868-625-1801 / 868-625-1803 or
Rose Nath: v-rosen@microsoft.com – 868-632-8488

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T-SQL Tuesday #029 - The After Party

April was an extremely busy month for me but since it was my first time hosting T-SQL Tuesday event I made sure that my first post for May would be the round up post.

My Australian friend, Rob Farley started the ball rolling by looking at a particular aspect of the Analytic functions.

Frank Gill entered with his view of Extended Events in 2012.

Nick Haslam explained why he thinks ColumnStore is faster than a speeding Cluster Index!

Michał Poręba highlighted the usefulness of Analytic functions.

Senior SQL Server Consultant, Tammy Richter Jones brought some insight about Product Update in 2012.

Ami Levin focused on the new features in the installation process to show how they can affect your first interaction with 2012.

Sebastian Meine shared with us the capabilities of the new LAG function with a great example here

Kyle Neier's contribution for this event was 'Treat a TempDb like it is really Temporary'.

Mike Fal introduced  the FileTable in his post.

Wayne Sheffield wrote about the enhancements to the Over clause.

Mike Donnelly talked about the benefits of parameters in SSIS.

John Sterrett, another friend I met at the PASS Summit, focused on contained databases in his contribution.

I decided to participate as well with two videos showing the awesomeness of PowerView!

Last entry for the day came from Carlos Bossy with his POV on DAX functions.

Two other entries came after the time but since I am so late with this round up I decided to add them:

Ashwin Menon wrote about a feature that I like a lot: Recovery Advisory.

Jason Yousef spoke about new and improved Flat File Source.

Thanks to everyone who participated. I really enjoyed reading the posts and I definitely learned some great things about SQL Server 2012.

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