MDX Studio is worth a look If your using Multidimensional Expressions(MDX) in your SQL database.

Just for some background here is links to MSDN's MDX Reference.

Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) Reference

Key Concepts in MDX (MDX)

Max row size in SQL 2000 8060 bytes.
Max row size in SQL 2005 more then 8060 bytes if the table contains Var* or XML columns.  This is due to SQL 2005 Row-Overflow, this will affect performance of the database. ( the Varchar... will be moved to a separate page and a 24-byte pointer will be inserted into the original page.)

SQL database page size is 8KB or 8,000 bytes.
SQL data types    2000, 2005, 2008

char (N) = 1 * N bytes
varchar (N) = 1 * N + 2 bytes
nvarchar (N) = 2 * N + 2 bytes
DateTime = 8 bytes
Float = 8 bytes
ntext/text is being replaced with nvarchar(MAX)/varchar(MAX).  MAX = 2^31 - 1 bytes.
ntext/text is stored in separate page

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Storage Engine

Inside Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005: The Storage Engine

Maximum Capacity Specifications for SQL Server 2005

SQL 2005 Fragmentation Information

I am now running windows vista 64.  Which has been surprisingly simple how ever I have run into a few issues.  Windows Explorer went insane and ignored the open in same window setting (note open in new process option was set to false.) resulting in a new window pre directory.  I find life impossible in that situation.  After numerous attempts to correct this via registry edits, I failed.  Having given up I installed xpore2 as a replacement. ( great program I always wanted to filter my directory to only one file type) I now find after a reboot Windows Explorer works correctly and recycles the the window when displaying a new directory.

I have also found that you cannot just install sql management studio 64bit.  you need to run(as admin) dvd drive:\Tools\Setup\SqlRun_Tools.msi otherwise you go through all the motions but nothing gets installed.

Check out the TechNet Webcast

TechNet Webcast: The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Overview

 4GuysFromRolla is offering a nice walk through of getting up and debugging with SQL 2005  using the Visual Studio IDE.

Debugging SQL Server 2005 Stored Procedures in Visual Studio

Stop SQL Injection Attacks Before They Stop You

I was having some trouble figuring out how to use the new ado.net entity framework in the last March Orcas CTP, but leave it to Scott to have all the answers.  Scott has posted a nice video covering

• new asp.net WYSIWYG HTML designer.
• create classes's from the ORM designer.
• Intellisense for LINQ.

full detailed blog post.  And you can find the video here.

I found this query on Google Groups,

          select
          sum(length) from syscolumns where id
= object_id('Table Name')

After numerous articles about MySpace's scalability it would appear the camels back broke today.

Perhaps not  the best message to great hundreds of thousands of teenagers after school. 

I have seen a few people point out that along with SQL 2005 SP2 there was also a update to the online book documentation.  It looks to be a nice set of documentation maybe when I have a free week I'll read through it all.

SQL Server 2005 Books Online

From Irena Kennedy:

SQL Server Enterprise Edition customers, and I quote, “only need to purchase one license per physical processor regardless of the number of virtually deployed instances. “

In other words, “when a customer licenses all of the processors in a server, they can run an unlimited numbers of SQL Server instances on an unlimited number of virtual operating system environments, at no additional licensing cost. “

This is going to be an important step in fostering the virtualization software.

Virtual PC 2007 has been released download here.

Also Microsoft has released SQL 2005 sp2 and you can download it here.

One more reason for to support SQL 2005. 

Link to Jon Galloway : Passing lists to SQL Server 2005 with XML Parameters

I seem to run into this problem far to often

Link to How to configure SQL Server 2005 to allow remote connections

One of my coworkers sent me note regarding pagination and Nettiers.

Saw your post:

  Easy server side pagination

If you haven’t noticed, Nettiers does automatic pagination at the stored proc and middle tier levels

This is true and I have noticed this before(all be it on a back-end web-server that didnt need paging), but there are still some projects that are not using Nettiers were the SQL stored procedure will help and there are always the cases that Netteirs doesn't write stored procedures for you. 

If you like to write client side pagination because its so easy, its time to change that.  Irena's stored procedure for Easy Pagination in SQL