Brian Welcker has announced, that SAP BW (SAP Netweaver BI) support contained in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 SP1 now officially is certified by SAP and that Microsoft is the "first vendor certified on XML for Analysis".

Congratulations! Another step for Reporting Services on the way to enterprise reporting, I think...

These days I came across a post by Jens Süßmeyer announcing that he has done some screencasts to visualize some common sql problems.

Jens has done it with Wink and I think I will also give this tool a try to document some bugs rather by screens than with words... 

Microsoft has acquired Winternals led by Mark Russinovich und Bryce Cogswell.

You should know this company because of Systernals Freeware - I hope that the tools will be also for free in the future...

If you are interested in Mark Russinovich thoughts of this deal have a look in his blog.

Currently my blog is massively spammed with referrals coming from suspicious web adresses...

But using dasBlog means that I am able to activate a referral blacklist and I would like to share it with you:

http://www.oursoccerworldcup.com/; http://www.ourworldcup2006.com/; http://www.yourhomeownersinsurance.com/; http://www.onlycreditcardoffers.com/; http://www.onlysoma.com/; http://www.justdebitcard.com/; http://www.forcreditcarddebt.com/; http://www.thismortgagerefinance.com/; http://www.getholidayinnexpress.com/; http://www.ourautoinsurancequotes.com/; http://www.ourcreditscore.com/; http://www.ourcollegeloans.com/; http://www.playonlinecasinonow.com/; http://www.ouronlinecasinos.com/; http://www.thepokertournaments.com/; http://www.thispokerhand.com/; http://www.itishardmoney.com/; http://www.onlybankloans.com/; http://www.getdiscounthotels.com/; http://www.ourfreecreditreports.com/; http://www.ourmortgagebrokers.com/; http://www.aboutstudentloanconsolidation.com/; http://www.itispartypoker.com/; http://www.yourspharmacy.com/; http://www.radcraft.com/; http://www.loan-account.com/; http://www.rated-mortgage.com/; http://www.just-payday.com/; http://www.mine-betting.com/; http://www.fortexasholdem.com/; http://www.100-casino.com/; http://www.nachunternehmer.com/; http://www.subunternehmer.de/; http://www.subunternehmer.com/; http://www.ourtexasholdem.com/; http://www.onlytexasholdempoker.com/; http://www.yourtexasholdempoker.com/; http://www.uniqueonlinetexasholdem.com/; http://www.texasholdfun.com/; http://www.thetexasholdpoker.com/; http://www.1clickholdem.com/; http://www.ourholdem.com/; http://www.moreholdempoker.com/; http://www.internettexashold.com/; http://www.uniquetexasholdem.com/; http://www.uniqueholdempokeronline.com/

Just mark it, copy it and use it in your configuration - and if you have collected some referral spammers that are not contained in my list, please use the comments... Maybe we are able to get a complete list!

Is anyone able to explain the sense of this kind of spamming to me?

Damir Tomicic has blogged a long and informative list about Developer Ressources for Microsoft Office System 2007.

Kay Giza blogged about two Office developer Posters available for download:

• Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 Managed Object Model Poster
• Developer Map for SharePoint Products and Technologies Poster

and about a strategy briefing by Chris Capossela (Corporate Vice President, Microsoft), which is available as a IT´s Showtime session.

After giving away the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 for free since April this year MS now announced, that MS Virtual PC 2004 will also be available for free now.

Now the nonsense getting the server for free while having to pay for the desktop solution is over...

And if you are searching for tips & tricks regarding the virtual solutions of MS you should look at http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy.

The "Microsoft Architect Insight Conference" was held on 22 - 23 March 2006 and the slides are now available for download.

I would highly recommend that you read the PPT about Service-oriented Business Intelligence (SoBI) by Sean Gordon, Robert Grigg, Michael Horne, and Simon Thurman, which brings up some really good new approaches.
The authors also have published an article, which contains a more detailed descriptions and is available online.

And here are two additional links extracted from the article page:

• Data on the Outside vs. Data on the Inside
• Information as a Service: Service-Oriented Information Integration

You also should have an eye for the slides of Eric Nelson, who tries to explain that there are seven new servers in the SQL world...

You surely know "Project REAL", the SQL Server 2005 reference implementation at Barnes & Noble. It contains information on all upcoming topics in a BI project.

And now...
your are not only able to read about it - you are able to download a whole subset of the project REAL data and the various parts of the implementation

Extract from the website:
"The kit contains:

1. A set of instructions for setting up the environment
2. Guidance on how to explore the implementation
3. A sample relational data warehouse database (a subset of the Project REAL data warehouse)
4. A sample source database (from which we pull incremental updates)
5. SSIS packages that implement the ETL operations
6. An SSAS cube definition and scripts for processing the cube from the sample warehouse
7. Sample SSRS reports
8. Sample data mining models for predicting out-of-stock conditions in stores
9. Sample client views in briefing books for the Proclarity and Panorama BI front-end tools

This kit will guide you through the key points to observe in the Project REAL implementation. Use it to learn and to get ideas for your own implementation. (While we believe it represents a very good design and generally follows best practices, it should not be regarded as the solution for every BI situation.) It will be helpful to see the overview presentations about the BI tools in SQL Server, or read documentation, before exploring the kit. One good source of information is to go through the tutorials that ship with SQL Server (the tutorials are installed when you select “Workstation components, Books Online and development tools” at installation time)."

Chris Webb has blogged about the "Business Intelligence Architecture and Design Guide" downloadable at gotdotnet.

I agree with Chris, this is not really new stuff, but I personally think it is good to have informations like this in a kind of "complete package".

Extract from the website:
"The patterns & practices team is please to announce the availability of Architecture and Design Guidelines for Business Intelligence Applications. This exploratory community project provides prescriptive guidance on how to overcome architectural challenges and design issues when building Business Intelligence solutions using Microsoft platform. This guide is intended for software architects and developers who are developing Business Intelligence applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework using SQL Server 2005 - Integration Services and Analysis Services. Being an exploratory community project - anticipate gaps and scope for improvement. For more information see: http://codegallery.gotdotnet.com/biguide."