What's new on the SQL Server Tech and Developer Centers - 10 Dec., 2007

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 my disaster kit out of the garage and into the house, and to update my backups. This sort of best practice can save major headaches, discomfort or outright loss in the future. In the same vein, we have a new technical whitepaper on the SQL Server Best Practices page, "The Impact of Changing Collations and of Changing Data Types from Non-Unicode to Unicode". If you haven't stopped by the Best Practices page, I'd recommend it - there is a wealth of knowledge documented there waiting to assist you.

We have also updated the MSDN SQL Server Support page to look more like the TechNet SQL Server Support page - it is our goal here to have consistency between the SQL Server sites and among all of the TechNet and MSDN sites.

Next week I hope to be able to unveil the re-organized Tech and Developer Centers! I have a lot of work this week left to do on the staged sites, but a large milestone was passed last week on the production. Stay tuned...

Update: I forgot to mention that the monthly theme for December and January is Upgrade.