November 2007 Entries
While trying to install the SQL Server 2008 November CTP onto a fresh Windows XP VPC image, I came across this error:
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Setup Failure
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Setup has encountered the following error: Unable to find an entry point named 'MsiSetExternalUIRecord' in DLL 'msi.dll'..
Per Allen White's workaround posted on MS Connect, all that you need to do is manually install Windows Installer 3.1 before running the SQL Server setup.
You can find the Windows Installer 3.1 setup on the CTP DVD (ISO image) in the following directory:
D:\Servers\redist\Windows Installer
(Assume that drive D is your DVD-ROM)
Thank God! The new Zune separates podcasts from music. Not that I don't love listening to Carl Franklin or Scott Hanselman talk for hours on end, but when I play my entire music collection on shuffle mode, I don't really want to hear a talk show.
Since I kept scores of DNRs and Hanselminutes on my Zune, I found myself needing to skip tracks all of the time before now... That manual interaction proved to be quite the distraction when all I was trying to do is concentrate on a programming task.
The Problem
The new Zune firmware is out! Yay!
The Zune software still uses BITS as the only means to download the firmware. Boo!
BITS doesn't like being behind a HTTP proxy server that requires authentication. In my particular situation, I must authenticate against a Microsoft ISA Server using Integrated Security (i.e., NTLM authentication) before my machine is permitted to receive files from a remote webserver.
But, by default, BITS doesn't automatically provide your domain user information to the proxy server. So, when the Zune software attempted to use BITS to download the firmware, it failed, and I only got a "C00D11CD" error...
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a huge step forward from its predecessor, Data Transformation Services (DTS). One thing that they have in common, though, is that there is no one simple method to allow a database user to execute a SSIS package on demand.
SSIS is THE centerpiece of Microsoft's ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) offering. In lay terms, SSIS is the tool that you use to import data into your SQL Server database from any number of sources, and it's a fantastic tool for doing so... so long as your environment doesn't change often... and you execute the package from Visual Studio or the...
Taking a cue from the European version of TechEd, Microsoft will be breaking the 2008 version of it's annual flagship conference into two parts: One for developers on June 3-6, and one for IT Professionals on June 10-13.
http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2007/default.mspx