DB2 9.7 & PL-SQL Compatibility

Hi Everyone...

This is the first post in a too long time, but you know how the work consumes the time, anyway I wishing you a Happy 2010.

The new DB2 9.7 engine, supports PL-SQL as a new feature and aggressive strategy of IBM to down the selling of Oracle products. The support is simply simple to manage and use, here a little table of the features that I have tested of the DB2:

Oracle Database Feature	DB2 9.7 Support
Concurrency control	Native support
Data types	Native support
SQL dialect	Native support
PL/SQL	Native support
PL/SQL packages	Native support
Built-in packages	Native support
JDBC client with extensions	Native support
SQL*Plus scripts	Native support

This is a little preview, in other post I’ll show some examples of many different difficulties of common problems and features that DBA’s uses in a real environment.

Hope it helps…

Paul

Microsoft Deprecates Its Oracle Data Provider for .NET - Now What?

Microsoft announced it is deprecating Microsoft OracleClient, a Microsoft-built .NET data provider for the Oracle Database because third-party providers, such as Oracle, offer superior ADO.NET providers.

If you have been using this provider with your applications, ask yourself: “What do I do now?”

For existing Microsoft OracleClient developers, this is an opportunity to take a fresh look at the Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET), which is free to download from OTN. In recent years, Oracle has added new features to ODP.NET for performance tuning, user-defined types, advanced queuing, RAC connection pooling, and supporting multiple ODP.NET client versions simultaneously on the same machine.

Check out the ODP.NET for Microsoft OracleClient Developers page to learn why developers are choosing ODP.NET for their Oracle .NET projects, and how using ODP.NET makes .NET applications for Oracle Database more stable, flexible and faster.

The page will also provide a step-by-step Microsoft OracleClient to ODP.NET migration tutorial in the near future.

Hope it helps...

Paul

End of free support for some Microsoft products…

This April, 14 marks the end of free support for Windows XP and Office 2003, so in the same way to Windows Server 2003 SP1, “meaning it will no longer provide support for that four-year-old release”.

Microsoft is offering paid, extended support for XP Professional users (who also have Software Assurance licensing contracts) until April 8, 2014. It also will provide paid, extended support for Office 2003 through August 4, 2012.

In case you’re wondering about support deadlines for other Windows and Office products, here is the link.

So according some calculations of Mary Jo Foley, about the support deadlines, the following list is a good start if you’re interested:

Windows 2000: Free support ended June 30, 2005; paid support ends on July 13, 2010. Service Pack 3 was retired on June 30, 2005. No more SPs planned.

Windows XP SP2: Service pack will be retired on July 13, 2010.

Windows XP SP3: Service pack due to be retired two years after SP4 (if there is one) releases or in  April 2014, whichever comes first.

Windows Vista Business: Free support ends on April 10, 2012; paid support ends on April 11, 2017.

Windows Vista SP1: Service pack will be retired two years after the release of SP2 (which is expected in April 2009), so likely in April 2011 (?).

Office 2003 SP3: Service pack will be retired one year after SP4 (if there is one, which is doubtful) is released or in August 2014, whichever comes first.

Office 2007: Free support ends on April 10, 2012; paid support ends on April 11, 2017.

Office 2007 SP1: Service pack will be retired a year after SP2 debuts, so likely in April 2010 (?).

Windows Server 2008: Free support ends September 7, 2013; paid support ends October 7, 2018.

This month also marks the final release for Vista SP2 and Office 2007 SP2.

Among the new features slated for Office 2007 SP2 are previously announced file-format changes — specifically support for Open Document Format (ODF), Microsoft’s own XML Paper Specfication (XPS) and PDF. SP2 also is expected add improvements to Outlook calendaring reliability and improved Outlook performance overall; improvements to Excel’s charting mechanism; the ability for Visio to export UML models to an XML file compliant with the XMI standard; and an uninstall tool for Office client service packs.

Vista SP2 is anticipated to include a new capability for recording data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista; the addition of Windows Connect Now for simpler wifi configuration; fixes for DRM issues from WMP upgrades; the Vista Feature Pack for Wireless; functionality for reducing resources required for sidebar gadgets; and more.

So I hope this information extracted of a post of Mary Jo Foley should be interested for you…

Best regards…

Forcing Sharepoint Server 2007 Uninstallation

Hello everyone...

This is a hot post...a few minutes ago I was trying to forcing a SharePoint Server 2007 uninstallation, the reason...well the farm totally crashes...well I have all the responsibility over the fault, because I detach the ContentDB for the Central Administration Site, I tried to attach it again, but with no success.

So in my test environment I decided to restart the process, but for my surprise I can’t remove the MOSS installation, well the reasons are so clear, I destroy the farm, but why the uninstallation program fails...?

Surfing over the internet, I found a post a little strange for my, but after a while of thinking on it…is so logical, the way to force the uninstall…

To force the uninstallation of both products to get back to a stable state, this is what I did.

I had no data to save, this was only a test environment, I’m so lucky!!

I renamed the DSN in the registry for a moment:

HKLM >> Software >> Microsoft >> Shared Tools >> Web Server extensions >> 12 >>Secure >> ConfigDB >> DSN to DNS1,for example…the name is not important.

Then you can:

- Uninstall MOSS 2007.
- Delete the web applications and their respective AppPools.
- Delete the SQL databases.

After this you can rebuild the farm as you desire.

As a little note related with this, in some cases this problem occurs after the installation of KB 932091, update to WSS 3.0. The system was rebooted (by mistake) before the update was finished.

After that the system was unstable:

- I could not run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard (Upgrade in progress).
- I could not uninstall Project Server 2007 or MOSS 2007, they both failed.

Log files indicated that the operations could not be completed because an update was in progress…

I hope that this helps, as I tested this procedure works in any case that the program fails or the system becomes unstable.

Best regards…

Paúl…

Office 14, will be available in 64 bits version

Anyone who made the change to a 64 bits operating system, can told you, that most of the applications still don’t have native support for this kind of systems.

However during the last years, the number of people who made the change, is still growing. The computer manufacturers offers 64 bits systems with more and more RAM and Microsoft expects that the most of Windows 7 installations will be of 64 bits. Is for this reason that the company has decided to take this road with these applications.

As we saw in previous Office applications Microsoft will offer 32 & 64 bits editions with their respective upgrades from Office 2003 or 2007 with a single installation package.

This Office version surely will be available in the first months of 2010.

MVC Pattern for ASP .NET RC2

Hello…

So a quickly post, a few weeks ago I told about Oxcite an open source CMS, ASP .NET & MVC based solution.

Well now Microsoft releases the RC2 with a little corrections and enhancements for design and developed large business sites.

Give an eye on this…

Bye…

Internet Explorer 8 is finally here…!!!

Well an older post said…IE 8 was coming up, but I leave you with some questions, like IE 8 was part of Seven…?

Well apparently is true, Windows 7 Beta, already have IE 8 as default browser, and of course as a separate download for XP, Server 2003 & Server 2008.

Is so fast, more secure, and many improvements that are most welcome for this version of the popular browser.

But that doesn't mean users and developers are satisfied. Instead, many are champing at the bit to get Microsoft to commit to their favorite missing features for IE 9.

Well the updates maybe include some improvements….

Regards…

Paúl