Greetings from the damp and cold Pacific Northwest, U.S.! Today, 41 degrees F and raining. So much for Spring. (But the moss is looking gorgeous!) It's the first Monday of the month, and per usual, we have a new monthly theme, Trusted Data Platform . You can learn about the features in SQL Server...

Spring is here in the Seattle area. The cherry blossoms are out and the rhododendrons , azaleas and moss are beginning to bloom. Of course, between the brilliant flashes of light peeking through the clouds which we think is coming from the sun, we're also having the regular mid-40's F and rain going...

Email is a funny thing. It's asynchronous nature makes it easy to postpone a request to a later time, but that can come back to bite you later, as it did me, today. I had received a request from a member of the SQL Server Engine team to add a link to their blog, SQL Server Storage Engine , to the...

Yes, the home page changed again and there are some new SQL Server 2008 pages. :-) What pages are new/updated? · The home page ( TechNet / MSDN ) o The top panes are redesigned utilizing a Featured Resources RSS (headline) feed, and the Downloads and How Do I? sections use content rotators...

I've just completely rebuilt the blogs page, organizing it by SQL Team, MSFT employee, MVPs and other. One of my colleagues sent me a list of MVP blogs and I realized I needed to do something to the page as it was getting unwieldy. I also pruned a few stale blogs. Any others to add? Chris

Ack! Has it been a month already? Bad Site Manager! Bad! Lots of new stuff in the past month: Site search now includes Events and Errors data! A common request fulfilled. Example: http://search.technet.microsoft.com/search/Default.aspx?brand=technet&query=sql+server+error+18456&refinement...

One new white paper has been posted on the Best Practices page: Database Mirroring and Log Shipping Working Together. You can view the link on the TechNet or MSDN Best Practices page. I've also been doing some clean-up on the site after the site re-launch last week. Nothing you'd really notice too...

The U.S. Pacific Northwest was slammed by a winter storm last week, and soggy misery spread across the entire region . My heart goes out to those who have lost so much in such a short time. No matter where you live, it is always a good idea to be prepared for the worst. The storm reminded me to get...

I was off last week for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, where I spent some time in the middle of Kansas mostly off of the Internet. I wasn't totally off, but due to a mis-aligned antenna on a grain silo eight miles away, dialup would have been faster. It was a great reminder that there are still several...