February, 2012

…THE NEXT BYTE

The Next Byte is our series of posts about the relationship between SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft SharePoint, written by database administrator Don Conrad. Missed the last post? Please read “Microsoft SQL Server: The Database Behind SharePoint”.

Up for discussion:

• A high-level description of SQL Server
• What are the major components of SQL Server?
• What are the core functions of SQL Server?
• What do I have after installing SQL Server?

SQL Server is a database server product. It’s arguably one of the three most popular ones on the market (the other two being ORACLE, manufactured by the ORACLE corporation, and DB2 by IBM). All three provide very similar functions albeit on three different hardware platforms. SQL Server runs on Microsoft Windows servers, ORACLE primarily on Unix/Linux platforms and DB2 generally on IBM mainframes.

While all three perform mostly similar activities, Bill G. and I can probably agree that SQL Server is the premier product. After all, administering SQL Server has helped me pay most of my bills these past years!

(This is Part 2 of a 3-part series on upgrading to SharePoint 2010.  Please find Part 1 here.)

Welcome back! Thank you for patiently awaiting part two of my three-part upgrade process.

As you read in Part one, there is a lot of planning that needs to go in to upgrading your SharePoint environment. We’ve discussed the hardware requirements that must be in place before upgrading, and I also covered what needs to be done with your current environment to ensure a smooth upgrade.

There are a few unique methods for upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to 2010. The two most popular methods are Database Attach and In-Place. In this post, I will briefly describe both methods and list a few pros and cons of each. In the final post of this series, we will go into much greater detail of each method.

This is the fourth in a series of articles documenting the Sharing the Point South America 2012 Tour, sponsored by Fpweb.net and AvePoint.

“Your plane has crashed down. We have had to cancel the flight.”

These were the words we heard when reaching the checkout counter at the airport, before leaving from Montevideo, Uruguay for our flight to Santiago, Chile. It seems there was something lost in translation. Fortunately, “Your plane has crashed down” only means “There is a mechanical failure and the plane has been taken off the schedule.”

While it was a relief to get that worked out, the dilemma was now how are we going to get to Santiago? Option one: Rent a van and drive 12 to 14 hours through the mountains at night. Not a great choice, but available as a last resort. Option two: Find a private plane and charter the flight. Not viable at all on our budget. Option three: Stand at the counter, holding up the entire line at the airport until the attendant found us seats on the next available flight.

At first, that didn’t look like it was going to work, but we were persistent and with the blessing of a group of nuns standing in line right behind us, we were able to book a late night flight, arriving in Santiago about 1:00am.

The European Commission recently put together a new draft of their outdated Data Protection Laws. In our previous post in this series (EU Commission and Data Protection, Part 1 of 2), we outlined the key changes to the original 1995 directive. This final part of the series will focus on the U.S. response.

The EU Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, and the European Commission have announced their controversial new directives and left the world asking a fundamental question: How much control should each individual user have over their online identity?

The reforms make it clear that web sites, search engines and social networks are being held accountable for what they do with personal user data. And while EU is setting the pace, many major U.S. enterprises with European users are sucked into the mix.

(This blog is a follow-up to our previous post USA Patriot Act and Cloud Hosting: What You Need to Know. It focuses on the recent draft of data protection directives set forth by the European Commission in response to their outdated data privacy laws.)

Background

As discussed in a previous blog, the USA Patriot Act reaches far beyond its own borders. The Patriot Act makes any data kept by a U.S. company, both within or outside the U.S., susceptible to a possible U.S. Government seizure or unwarranted search. So, regardless of where it is stored, any data can be turned over to the government for inspection since the company storing the data is governed by U.S. law. As expected, this is a concern for European users who have data stored in a server that falls under U.S. law. This applies to most major cloud services like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

The blog finished by reminding readers that the European Commission would meet in January 2012 and clarify the Patriot Act’s reach within EU’s jurisdiction. A 15-year-old Data Protection Directive would be revised and every effort would be made to let EU data remain in EU jurisdiction with EU law taking precedence. This is the result of that meeting:

… THE NEXT BYTE

A high-level overview of what databases are, and how SQL Server fits the mold.

What is a database?
Why do we need one?
How does SQL Server fit the mold?

In my last blog, I outlined the series of discussions I want to have about SharePoint and SQL Server. I said I would start at the beginning, which is ‘what is a database?’ (To complicate life,”Database” often refers both to the management program and to the data itself. Hopefully my usage will indicate which we’re referring to.)

The best generic definition of a database I’ve found is in Wikipedia. I’ll copy it here as it is succinct and spares me the trouble of trying to say in many of my own words what is already stated in fewer words:

This is the third in our series of articles documenting the Sharing the Point South America 2012 Tour.

It was an early wake up call to get to the ferry for the trip to Montevideo, Uruguay. We had all agreed to a short night the night before because we were going to have to catch the 7:30am ferry, with a mandatory 6:30am check in.

That’s not how things roll, though, in the Oleson/Noel family tour. They still hadn’t actually seen a real Argentinian tango club. Joel, Paul, Ricardo and Michael went on the hunt and found a place where locals go to tango in the evening. Only hitch? It seems like tango is only for the over-60 crowd nowadays. Even with those restrictions, the guys had fun talking to the clientele and learning a couple steps.

(This is the second in a series of articles documenting the Sharing the Point South America 2012 Tour sponsored by Fpweb.net and AvePoint. In case you missed it, please check out the Sharing The Point 2012 South America & Antarctica Travelogue, Part 1)

By coincidence, four of us routed our travel through Washington DC and ended up on the same flight down to Buenos Aires. This was a long haul, but relatively easy because of the 10:00pm departure, allowing us to get some sleep before we arrived.

The first shock of the trip was having to pay $140.00 as an entrance fee into Argentina. The pass is valid for 10 years, but it still felt like getting hit with a “tourist tax”. Dan Holme had flown in a couple days earlier and warned us to negotiate a taxi fee before we accepted a ride. We were able to get that done through the taxi info center at the airport and headed into downtown Buenos Aires.

It has been a week since my return from the Sharing the Point Tour of South America and Antarctica, and yet the aura surrounding the event has not dissipated.

In fact, it gets stronger each time I view the pictures or talk with people about the trip. Even this morning while walking the kids to school, neighbors were surrounding us, asking questions and listening in awe as I described some of the scenarios of the journey through South America and Antarctica. My six year old’s first grade class is studying foods of the world, so I’ve even been invited to give a presentation at PS 41 in New York City, showing our food pictures from the trip.

I was able to visit six locations near the “end of the world”, as they call it in Ushuaia, speaking with people about their use of SharePoint, what their projects look like and what their plans are for the future. Along the way there were food adventures, unexpected changes in travel plans and hospitality that made us feel welcome wherever we went.

This is the first in a series of articles reliving moments from our tour, explaining why we do what we do and talking about future plans for Sharing the Point.

In our final post for National Green Week 2012, Fpweb.net‘s Lead SharePoint Engineer Andy Milsark offers another benefit of using SharePoint to “Go Green”. Missed the last post in this series? That’s okay, please see Going Green with SharePoint (Part 2)

#3 Benefit to Using SharePoint 2010 to Go Green:
Reduce Travel by Your Sales Team and Partners

The collaboration capabilities in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 are changing the way people work. With a SharePoint environment, it’s becoming easier than ever to collaborate remotely with team members and stakeholders hundreds or thousands of miles away. Online collaboration in SharePoint can enable remote meetings and presentations or automate workflows to reduce the amount of paperwork involved. And your organization can leverage these rich collaboration tools to cut costs and drive “Green” initiatives.

The time has come to consider new measures and new business practices aimed at reducing environmental impact while simultaneously reducing expenses. We all know automobiles and air traffic contribute significantly to air pollution and global warming. So… are there ways to utilize SharePoint to cut down on the travelling that’s typically required to host a meeting? Let’s take a closer look.