Cristian's Blog

The 70-432 exam: TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Implementation and Maintenance is in beta between June 9, 2008 and June 30, 2008. If you are an MCT it might be a good idea to read the private newsgroup.

As a side note: our Microsoft Influencers (Diana, Narcis, Andrei, Catalin, Bogdan, Gigi) have received the promotion code with the permission of Ken Rosen and Gerry O'Brien (thanks Ken, thanks Gerry).

 

1. The SQL Server 2008 RC 0 is available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and not only. Use the download center to get yourself a free copy (evaluation of course): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=35F53843-03F7-4ED5-8142-24A4C024CA05.

2. Good things and bad things come in threes and SQL Server 2008 makes no exception: the second thing is the SQL Server 2008 RC0 Feature Pack - a collection of stand-alone install packages that provide additional value for SQL Server 2008.

3. Third, a new certification was announced today: Climbing the Ladder of Success with Microsoft Certification. You can become a Microsoft Master (sounds cool :) ). Read more about it here: Microsoft Certified Master Program!

Bonus: Actually there's one more thing, a new issue of The Data Miner 

If you visited recently the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 homepage yoou may have noticed that it finally has a new logo:

It looks very nice in my humble opinion. If you want to give feedback about it you can do it on Wesley's blog EXEC dbo.LongTermMemory__Archive on this post SQL Server Logo.  

The Specification for TDS protocol is no longer secret. You can read about it on the MSDN site: [MS-TDS]: Tabular Data Stream Protocol Specification or download the PDF version of the documentation (use Save Target As). There are just 124 pages