For those of you enjoying the festival of lights, here's wishing you a safe, warm and happy celebration.
I just wanted to see if I could cut down on some of the confusion about the December 2004 CTP releases that happened last Friday. Here's my understanding of the situation along with recommendations.
- The version of SQL Express issued Friday (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=8f92556a-6c3b-47d2-9929-ecdc5a4d25ae&displaylang=en) is considered stand-alone. At this time, there is no suitable VS distribution for it. There may be in the future. This version requires CLR build 2.0.40903.27 which is available from http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/A/4/9A47D72B-9D98-46CC-87F3-B92E97888E4B/dotnetfx.exe. This build is useful for learning more about XM and explorer fixes in the October CTP, but -- at least today -- its not very useful beyond that.
- XM, which is currently available from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66120BE8-826A-482A-8264-B1836F28FD79&displaylang=en, is known only to work with CLR 2.0.40903.27. It may work with CLR 2.0.40903.18 (AKA, October CTP) but that is not a suggested configuration. It does not work with CLR 2.0.40607.42 (AKA beta two). The key point to note here is that December CTP version of either SQL Server 2005 Express Edition or SQL Server 2005 Developer edition is required to only install xm. Once installed, XM can be used to
manage any version or SKU of SQL Server 2005.
- What's on both Betaplace and MSDN subscriber downloads for Visual Studio as of this morning are still the October 2004 CTP Bits
> (2.0.40903.18). These should not be used with the new version of SSX. However, as Bob Beauchemin pointed out, you can use the December Developer Edition CTP with the October Visual Studio 2005 CTP bits provided you follow the work-arounds in the ctpnotes.mht file.
- Its clear to all of us now that various product teams are free to ship whatever version of SSX they wish since they are doing the testing. Therefore, Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer Express et. al. may ship a different version of SSX that requires a different version of the runtime. You should not mix and match releases on the same machine. You should verify what versions of the runtime are required before installing. Several of the MVPs are maintaining lists to help you with this. My list is at: http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/ktegels/articles/4895.aspx Note that SSX install will fail if you have an incompatbile version of the CLR install, so treat that as an indication that what you have won't work. The easy way to look at this is would be always use the version of SSX that ships with the Visual Studio SKU are are using. Once the products hit RTM, issues like this should be resolved.
- An appropriate release of Visual Studio 2005 that works with the SQL Server 2005 December CTP may be forthcoming this year or next. The best place to learn about its release is in the SSX blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlexpress
YOUR PATIENCE IS APPRECIATED! Please understand Microsoft is in a difficult place here. They want to get bits out us as quickly as possible, but that means that coordination between release teams is harder. They decided, at least for now, that they'd rather get the bits out than make us wait. Yes, I understand that this can lead to confusion, that's why we are here to help. At the same time, please understand that the more you complain about the process, the more likely MS becomes to shutdown this very valuable approach. If you want to vent, fine, send me your emails. Frankly, this is about 100x easier than dealing with some open source "dev" distros, IMHO. We've got it easy and I appreciate that. I hope you can too.
In today's WinInfo Daily Update, Paul Thurrott writes:
Microsoft Issues Second SQL Server 2005 Public Beta
On Friday, Microsoft issued its second Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and gave public testers a new beta release--SQL Server 2005 Express Manager, a new, free database-management tool. The SQL Server 2005 CTP is available to all Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and Microsoft BetaPlace subscribers, the company says.
Not quite. The December Community Technical Preview is not considered a beta. It's not tested as strongly as a beta before it goes out to the public. The XM release also isn't called a beta either. Finally, these bits are available to the public from the SQL Express Web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/express/sql/.
Paul does somewhat clarify this later in the item, but if you don't read it all, you might get the wrong impression.
To quote Hawk from the Road Warriors, "ohhhh, what a rrrrusssshhhh!"
Joe Olsen, the Man behind HDC rode up to Des Moines on Thursday to make sure all was good and for the reception. Philip "Rocks" Rieck did the driving the same frigg'n day he had an operation on his back. That's what I call impressive. The conference site was good, I thought, because of its location, but unlike Matt, I thought the facilities were pretty good. Of course, I had the Party Room again. It was funny to see the room full of geeks we had a one point: yours truly, Sam Gentile, Adam Kinney, Joe, Philip and Phil Wolfe were all huddled in my room typing away and a have some "warm-up" brews.
After a quick run to Cheddars for dinner, we came back to the reception. I didn't actually listen to much of the discussion between Sam and Rocky Lhotka, though, mostly because I knew I'd find myself agree with Rocky too much. Instead, I hung out with the other attendees and heard some really good stories about what folks are doing with .NET and what they are looking forward with the next version. I don't know that I really came away with anything more than a great sense of anticipation for the new bits!
The alarm clock rang Friday morning so I could be ready to help with check-ins at 6:00 AM. After Rocky's keynote, I went back to my room to check on the status of a DTS job. That was a mistake, since I spend the next two hours fixing that and missed presentations. I really liked Rocky's talk though and found myself very much in agreement with it: the jury is still out on what SOA is -- it needs time and investment to mature. Frankly, the implications of it from a dev's prospective still have my head spinning.
I did get to see cool Robert's Service Broker demo. While SB isn't my particular cup of tea, Robert does a really good job of breaking it down to the basics and really helped me understand it. I also got to watch Scott Colestock talk about BizTalk 2004. Scott also does a great job of breaking down the complexity into bite sized chunks.
I especially want to recognize Joe for all the work he did -- while I helped a bit with the speakers, the sheer amount of time and effort Joe put into this was amazing. I'm proud be part of his user group and circle of friends. Joe won the first HDC UG Leader of the Year award. Well earned, I say.
By the end of the show, I was exhusted and happy to be heading home. I feel like it was a great event over all. Really solid technical content and great networking opporunities. I'm really looking forward to HDC'05 now!