Top 10 New Features in SQL Server Denali

I will be writing on SQL Server 12 or Code name Denali in the coming few posts.

The next release of Microsoft SQL Server 12 or code-named Denali, is the buzz now a days. Microsoft has just released Denali CTP3, and the final release is expected by the end of the year. Denali continues SQL Server's efforts into the enterprise with a number of important features. Here are the top 10 most significant new features in the SQL Server Denali release.

10. SQL Server Developer Tools—One of the most obvious improvements in SQL Server Denali is the new development environment, SQL Server Developer Tools, coded-named Juneau. Juneau uses the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)–based Visual Studio 2010 shell, and it unifies development for Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) and Visual Studio. One goal for Juneau is to make the development environment consistent for both SQL Azure and the on-premises version of SQL Server.

9. Contained databases—Contained databases make it easy to move databases between different instances of SQL Server. With Denali, login credentials are included with contained databases. Users don't need logins for the SQL Server instance because all authentications are handled by the contained database. Contained databases have no configuration dependencies on the instance of SQL Server that they're hosted on and can be moved between on-premises SQL Server instances and SQL Azure.

8. Project "Crescent"—The new data visualization tool, code-named Project "Crescent," is Closely integrated with SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight. Microsoft has called the Crescent feature "PowerPoint for your data." Crescent makes it easy for users to create great-looking data pages and dashboards by using data models that are built using PowerPivot or from tabular data from SQL Server Analysis Services.

7. Data Quality Services—Valid data is critical for making effective business intelligence (BI) decisions. Data Quality Services lets you set up a knowledge base that defines your metadata rules. You can then run Data Quality Services projects to apply those rules to data stored in a SQL Server data source. The Data Quality Services projects cleanse the data and allow viewing of good, invalid, and corrected rows.

6. User-defined server roles—An important security-related feature in Denali is the addition of user-defined severs roles. Earlier releases had fixed server roles that were predefined by Microsoft. These roles covered most situations, but they weren't as flexible or granular as some organizations wanted. The new user-defined server roles give organizations more control and customization ability over SQL Server's server roles.

5. Change data capture (CDC) for Oracle—CDC lets you keep large tables in sync by initially moving a snapshot to a target server, then moving just the captured changes between the databases. With the SQL Server 2008 release, CDC was limited to SQL Server, but many organizations also have other database platforms they want to use CDC with. A big improvement in the Denali release is the addition of CDC for Oracle.

4. T-SQL enhancements—Two of the most important T-SQL enhancements in Denali are the addition of the Sequence object and the window functions. Unlike the similar Identity column, Sequence lets you tie unique row identifiers across multiple tables. The new window functions apply to sets of rows using the new OVER clause. You can read more about window functions in "Window Functions (OVER Clause)—Help Make a Difference."

3. Columnar store index—The columnar store index or, as it is sometimes called, the column-based query accelerator, uses the same high performance/high compression technology that Microsoft uses in PowerPivot, and it brings that technology into the database engine. Indexed data is stored according to the data of each column rather than by the rows, and only necessary columns are returned as query results for columnar indexes. Microsoft states this technology can provide up to 100 times improvement in query performance in some cases.

2. Support for Windows Server Core—The ability to run SQL Server on Windows Server Core has been missing from previous releases of SQL Server. Server Core is designed for infrastructure applications such as SQL Server that provide back-end services but don't really need a GUI on the same server. Denali's support for Server Core enables leaner and more efficient SQL Server installations and at the same time reduces potential attack vectors and the need for patching.

1. AlwaysOn—Without a doubt, the most important new feature in SQL Server Denali is the new SQL Server AlwaysOn feature. AlwaysOn is essentially the next evolution of database mirroring. AlwaysOn supports up to four replicas, the data in the replicas can be queried, and backups can be performed from the replicas. Although it's still early, AlwaysOn seems more complicated to set up than database mirroring because it requires Windows Failover Clustering, but the advantages appear to make it well worth the extra effort.

Windows Phone 7 development my thoughts..

I was anticipating Windows Phone 7 development to be promising for me.

But, after investigating the whole range of missing features in Windows Phone 7 and its API, I have to rethink again for it.

Can you imagine you can’t access the Phone book programmatically in windows phone7!

… These feature limitations certainly minimizes the usability of the expensive phone hardware on which Windows phone 7 runs.

This also limits the possibilities for a developer to author creative and featured mobile apps.

List of missing features in Windows Phone 7:

· The only dev platforms supported to author Apps for Win Phone 7 are- Silverlight and XNA. No support for Dot net Compact Frame work or native / unmanaged code

· The Silverlight App you right runs in a sandboxed environment and limits the a lot of functionalities

· Cut, copy, and paste is missing

· No support for peer to peer gaming

· The Calendar app no longer has a 'Weekly' view

· The list of past phone calls is now a single list, and cannot be separated into inbound, outbound or missed calls

· Full multitasking for apps is not available

· Does not support for Adobe Flash and NOT even supports the Silverlight in the browser

· Windows Phone 7 supports upgradable storage via an SD Card; however the SD card memory will be merged with the phone's internal storage,

And changing the SD card will make the phone reset to factory settings L huh  CRAZY…

· Windows Phone 7 does not support connecting to Wi-Fi (wireless) access points which are hidden or have a static IP address

· Video-calling

· VoIP calling

· USB mass-storage (no USB drive mode)

· Universal email inbox

· Universal search

· Turn-by-turn navigation

· A system-wide file manager

· Bluetooth file transfers

· USSD messages

· Custom ringtones

· Windows Phone 7 devices only support syncing with Exchange ActiveSync over the network. There is no support for syncing with Exchange ActiveSync using a cable or cradle

· In the enterprise, Windows Phone 7 does not support Office documents with security permissions

· IPsec security on-device encryption

· Strong passwords

· Internet sockets

· While the older Windows Mobile phones supported the full range of Microsoft Exchange Server policies, Windows Phone 7 only supports a small subset of Exchange features. So this kills a whole set of possibilities for creating enterprise E-mail apps

· No replacement of the default apps – while Opera will be allowed, it could not be the default browser

· No 3rd party shells

· Marketplace is the only way to install apps, except for developers, beta versions and enterprise

· No internet tethering support

And did you know that the minimum hardware requirements for Windows phone 7 are-

· Minimum 1 GHz ARM better processor (And that’s the highest processor speed available in smart phone segment )

· DirectX9 rendering-capable GPU

· Minimum 256 MB of RAM with at least 8 GB of Flash memory

So, it’s high on resource requirements making phones to be much costly.

But there are some good news also-

· Few of the missing features have been confirmed to arrive in the near-future

· I wish release of at-least programmatic access to phone’s contact list soon…

What do you think ? Put your thought ahead!

No Major Application implement DEP and ASLR for preventing unauthorized programs for taking over your PC

Big-name Windows applications neglect security

Two important security technologies, Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), go a long way toward preventing unauthorized programs from taking over a PC. And Secunia Research just published a white paper with a disturbing analysis of popular Windows programs that don't use either. Windows XP Service Pack 2 introduced DEP back in 2004. It's is a technique that uses both hardware and software to keep a PC from executing programs that sit in areas that should be holding data. Historically, one of the easiest and most fruitful ways to take over a PC involves a buffer overflow - where an attack routine sticks a malicious program inside a data area and then tricks Windows into "running" the data. When a program asks Windows for DEP protection, and the hardware supports DEP, buffer overflow attacks are considerably more difficult. Not impossible, mind you, but DEP does pretty well blocking the most common and straightforward attacks.

ASLR arrived with the release of Windows Vista in 2007. When a program tells Windows that it wants to use ASLR, Windows sticks pieces of the program in randomly assigned parts of memory. If an attacker tries to access a specific location in the program, the attacker has to guess the location of the pertinent piece of the program, which can be quite difficult. Together DEP and ASLR aren't invincible, but they're formidable. In Windows 7 (and to a lesser extent Vista), turning on both DEP and ASLR is reasonably easy if the program is written properly and doesn't use certain undesirable coding techniques that fell out of favor years ago. That's why it's so shocking that many of the programs you and your users run every day don't support either or both.

Secunia tested sixteen applications - the most commonly used Windows apps as reported by Secunia's PSI scanning program. Each of the tested programs has been used as the vector in a real attack in the past two years. As of last month, none of these programs use DEP: Sun's Java JRE, Apple's QuickTime, Apple's iTunes (running on Win XP), OpenOffice, Google's Picasa, Foxit Reader, VLC Media Player, AOL's Winamp, and RealPlayer. Secunia determined that if a program doesn't use DEP, there's no reason to check for ASLR - kind of a security crawl-before-you-can-walk situation.

Read full story here : http://www.codeguru.com/daily_news/article.php/405208

360 degree view in video

I found a really amzing technology today in which you can view any video in 360 degrees. You can rotate, tilt or zoom your view just by your mouse movements.
You can understand what I am telling about, just by watching 360 degree view of this haiti earthquake video.

http://us.cnn.com/interactive/2010/01/world/haiti.360/index.html

From many years Britanica encyclopedia has been providing 360 angle view of stattic Images. Lately in last year (2009) Google and Microsoft had provided same feature in its online maps [ maps.google.com and maps.bing.com ]

But both the maping technology has 360 degree view data of only certain places.

But the same techniologyin moving videos is really exciting...
Immersive Media is the Company behind all these 360 degree technology.

http://www.immersivemedia.com/

I really loved it.
Its really worth thinking- how the coming years will be in the web technologies...

Microsoft patterns and practices

Microsoft patterns and practices provides .NET developers with guidance,

tools, libraries, and frameworks to help them build better applications.

Development teams adopting patterns and practices achieved greater

developer productivity and improved ongoing application management and

application performance.

Microsoft patterns and practices helps software architects, developers, and their

teams leverage the Microsoft platform to build better applications. Patterns and

practices guidance, tools, libraries, and frameworks help to simplify the platform,

provide guidance to common problems, and help development teams build looselycoupled

applications. Key components of patterns and practices include:

􀂃 The Enterprise Library is a collection of reusable software components that help

developers with common development needs such as logging, validation, data

access, and exception handling. They can be used “as is” or extended or

modified by developers as needed.

􀂃 SharePoint Guidance helps architects and developers design and build

SharePoint intranet applications.

􀂃 Composite Application Guidance for WPF (formerly code-named Prism) helps

developers build and evolve modular Windows Presentation Foundation and

Silverlight client applications. These applications typically include multiple

screens and role-determined behavior and are designed to change over time

based on business requirements.

􀂃 Web Service Software Factory are patterns, models, and written guidance

integrated with Visual Studio 2008 that are designed to help developers build

Web services.

􀂃 Microsoft ESB Guidance for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 is designed to help

developers leverage the Microsoft BizTalk Server platform to build an

enterprise service bus (ESB).

Read more here

What i am reading these days..

I have not posted an entry in my blog from a long time, SO thought to share what I am reading these days...

These days I am much interested in reading about the researches going around in the Computer Sciences.

Thease are the few links of the articles I have recent read:

Research Projects Gong on in MS Research Silicon Valley:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/siliconvalley/groups/web.aspx

Bundling Features for Large Scale Partial-DuplicateWeb Image Search

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=80803