Last year, our local .NET User Group held a four session .NET University to cover the 3.0 Framework (WPF, WCF, WF, and CardSpace).

Now, thanks to Karl Rissland (special thanks to Doug for sharing the information), there are sessions for BizTalk.

You can get all the information over at the .NET University Site (Power Points, videos, labs, etc…).

If there is anyone that would like to present the material at our Pee Dee Area User Group, please let me know!!!

For those that have never heard of this product… You should check it out. Microsoft recently released a new version (FREE) downloadable here.

What is it you ask…

The SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) gathers data from Microsoft Windows and SQL Server configuration settings. BPA uses a predefined list of SQL Server 2005 recommendations and best practices to determine if there are potential issues in the database environment.

It provides a great deal of information about your servers. I ran it on my local SQL Server so I could show an example and it found this.

Apply Cumulative Update to Improve Query Performance

On versions of SQL Server before 9.0.3171.0, a known issue can degrade query performance on 32-bit and 64-bit systems with 2 gigabytes (GB) or more of memory. When you execute queries under the context of a login that is not a member of the sysadmin fixed server role, you might encounter performance degradation symptoms that arise from a large and growing Security Token cache. These issues can include performance degradation of queries, high CPU usage for the SQL Server process, and a sharp increase in worker threads and SQL user connections. Systems that have less than 2 GB of memory should not experience these issues because normal memory usage requirements keep the Security Token cache from growing too large.

Best Practices Recommendations

Apply the latest cumulative update package or cumulative update package #3 from the SQL Server Support page to SQL Server versions before 9.0.3171.0. Alternatively, you can apply the following hotfixes, which are all included in cumulative update package #3.

1. KB article 927396: Queries take a longer time to finish running when the size of the TokenAndPermUserStore cache grows in SQL Server 2005
2. KB article 933564: FIX: A gradual increase in memory consumption for the USERSTORE_TOKENPERM cache store occurs in SQL Server 2005
3. KB article 937745: FIX: You may receive error messages when you try to log in to an instance of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server handles many concurrent connections

Kinda interesting stuff. Other items listed (for more examples). Keep in mind, this is my local SQL development server… don’t be too critical

• Sysdtslog90 Table is found in [msdb] database on Server [slowMachine]. Do not create the Sysdtslog90 table for logging in the [master] and [msdb] databases. This is not a security related concern but could be a performance issue since SSIS can generate a lot of logging data. We recommend creating a separate database for logging.
• Login [goodUserBlah] on Server [slowMachine] has Password Policy set to [True] and Password Expiration set to [False]. We recommend that both Password Policy and Expiration must be enabled for SQL accounts.
• Service [MSSQLSERVER] on host [slowMachine] is found to be running under LocalSystem account. We recommend that SQL Server services should not run under LocalSystem account.
• Database [awesomeDatabase] on server [slowMachine] does not have PAGE_VERIFY option set to ‘CHECKSUM’. We recommend setting PAGE_VERIFY option to ‘CHECKSUM’.
• It’s found that DBCC CheckDB for database [awesomeDatabase] on server [slowMachine] has not executed ever since the database created. We recommend you to check the database for integrity at least once in 14 days.

Anyway… you get the idea…

SQL 2000 Version here.

NOTE: You will need registry access to scan the SQL Server.