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Milano: Linux Day 2005 in Cinisello Balsamo

Open Labs is organizing Linux Day 2005 Saturday 26/11 in Cinisello Balsamo. There are several presentations as well as a Demo Area and an Install Fest.

Be sure to bring empty CDs/DVDs or have a free partition if you want a hand from the experts at installing a linux flavor on your laptop. To be safe and can make sure that nothing goes wrong with your laptop, you can use the free VMPlayer and a base Virtual Machine.

Thanks for the tip Andrea!

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Phase 1 of migration over

Mail, blog and web sites are all happily running on my laptop.

My server used a free MSDE DB but decided to try the SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition I got at the Italian Visual Studio 2005 Launch Event when I moved it to my laptop.

I was really impressed with the "Copy Database" feature in SQL Server 2005. It can copy the data using the standard SQL data management objects present in SQL Server 2000, but it can also attache a SQL Server 2000 database directly. I took my old MSDE DB offline, copied it to my laptop, attached the DB in the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and was up an running in less than a minute. It just worked.

Impressive.

Phase 2 (re-installing my server and moving everything back again) will take place tomorrow night.

Let me know if you find any problems.

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A rough weekend ahead for my sites

The hard disks that started giving problems last year are giving up. Logging in on the server takes forever and posting fails sometimes so I have avoided posting the last few days.

I have already migrated mail services to my laptop and the blogs are next. The total downtime should not be more than a few minutes unless I find any unexpected compatability problems moving the blog from Win2k to Win2k3 and the DB from a MSDE to Microsoft SQL Server 2005...

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Nokia 6630 Bluetooth virus; pw9w3ozl.sis?

I was in a shopping center in Milano when I received a file called pw9w3ozl.sis via Bluetooth:

I did not, of course, install the application on my Nokia 6630 but I am dying to know what the heck it is. Google and Google News returned 0 hits so I guess it is either something "customized" for Italy or a virus/trojan uses a random file name while replicating.

I have the file in the inbox on the phone but I have been unable to transfer it to my PC for further analysis. Any suggestions on how I can get the file off the phone without installing it, or what it is???

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Italian Visual Studio 2005 launch event

There was a lot of good contents during the Visual Studio 2005 launch event. The presenters did a great job with the translated slides and demos from the US launch. As usual I loved the presentation by Fabio Santini which participated in the demo during the keynote.

The best part of the Visual Studio 2005 event? Meeting up with a lot of colleagues and ex colleagues; Andrea C, Andrea V, Luca M, Luca Q, Marco P, Marco T, Massimo L, Michele B, Samuele R, Fausto S, Rajesh V. 

Some "random" notes on Visual Studio

• Microsoft claims there are more .NET developers than Java developers and a lot more SQL than Oracle databases. I work with both "worlds" and I am always amazed at how these numbers can be twisted/adopted depending on who sponsors the presentation
  
• SQL Server is a lot more secure than Oracle. I have subscribed to the bugtraq mailing list for years and the number of security issues in Oracle the last few years are scary. Oracle had 20 security patches last year, 14 so far this year. SQL Server on the other hand had one security patch in 2004 and -zero- in 2005.
  
• If you didn't know already: Visual Studio Express and SQL Express are FREE and downloadable via internet.
  
• I was seriously impressed by the "data views" in Visual Studio 2005. I worked with PowerBuilder last millennium and just loved it's datawindows. Visual Studio 2005 is a step in the right direction but they still have a long way to go to catch up with the PowerBuilder datawindows which now can be integrated in Visual Studio

Some "random" notes on Server 2005

• The statistics and DBCC functions have been refactored to be more consistent. Internal statistics are now made available via a large set of "Data Management Views" (sys.dm_*) and internal tables like sys.syscacheobjects. A lot of information that allows you to understand and tune your database like you never have before.
  
• Lesson to self: query execution plans are cached by case SENSITIVE sql statements
  
• The Execution times in seconds as measured on a reference machine in Microsoft labs. It is not the real CPU time on the hardware where you run the query.
  
• Try this for fun
   Set statistics io on
   Set statistics profile on
   -- your query here
   Set statistics io off
   Set statistics profile off
  
• Less on to self:  DB statistics are out of date if estimatedRows very different from Rows
  
• Queries with "like '%abc%'" may work on 2005 due to improved statistics
  
• Index on calculated columns
  
• Asynch refresh of statistics, does not block execution

Some "random" ASP.NET and .NET 2.0 notes

• Templates, templates, templates :-)
  
• New hosting interface and a lot faster IIS integration.
  
• > 40 new controls
  
• 200x faster cross domain remoting
  
• Reflection working-set lower, memory leaks fixed
  
• Exceptions are expensive and some .NET 2.0 methods help you avoid exceptions
  
• Implementing asynchronous pages are a lot easier than it was in 1.1

The "loot"
The loot was impressive for a free conference:

• Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition
  
• MSDN library
  
• SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition
  
• It's Showtime!. Loads of great presentations by some of the best minds in the industry
  
• Visual Studio Team System (Virtual PC)
  
• SQL Server 2005 Resource DVD
  
• SQL Server 2005 (Virtual PC)
  
• SQL Server 005 - Visual Studio 2005 Labs (Virtual PC)
  
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, BizTalk 2006: documentation by Microsoft and partners
  
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 overview

(P.S. I am too busy with a major release to play around this weekend, but do not be surprised if there is some downtime this weekend as I upgrade my sites to .NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 :-)
(P.P.S It was too cold during most of the event to take of my jacket so I only manage to show of my blogger t-shirt during the last presentation

Edit: added two additional DVDs I found hidden in the bag :-)

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Installing Visual Studio.NET 2005 over an old beta

My upgrade to Visual Studio.NET 2005 went without problems

Ah, the sweet smell of success :-)

I am very glad to report that the Visual Studio.NET 2005 beta uninstall tool worked like a charm. I was worried before starting as my laptop has had several Visual Studio .NET 2005 betas installed. Other versions of Visual Studio (6.0, 2003, C++ embedded etc) are also installed on the same machine for various projects. The uninstall tool is a provided on a "best effort" basis by the Setup Team
.
A fresh install is always better, but this setup will have to do until my next major software release is out the door later this month.

See you at the Visual Studio 2005 launch in Milano tomorrow? I should be pretty easy to identify with this t-shirt :-)

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Sydney grows up and lifts the leg

Time flies and Sydney is growing up to be one big dog. For the first time this week he lifted the leg:

(sorry for the out of focus picture taken on a rainy morning).

I thought male dogs lifted the leg from the start but it turns out they only do it when the get older and wants to mark their territory. He is "calming down" a bit but the "downside" to growing up is that the walks take a lot longer as any smell is worth investigating. As all teenage boys he shows an increased interest for females. Sunday morning was the first time he "ran way". They gate stayed open since the previous night but he stayed inside until the female Labrador next door passed by on her -early- morning walk. What a way to wake up: the neighbor frantically pushing the doorbell.

Trust me; you would ring the bell when you see "the wolf" sneaking up on you as well:

(taken while picking chestnuts with my ladies earlier this autumn).