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Tuesday, February 2, 1999 NEXT SQL SERVER SIG MEETING: 02/04/1999 ************************************************************ The SQL Server SIG meeting will be held on Thursday, February 4, 1999 at 6:00 PM. This meeting will be hosted at the offices of Solutech, Inc. located in the Lighton Plaza at 7300 College BLVD, Suite 165, Overland Park, KS. See http://home.gvi.net/~spyder/img/solutech_map.gif for a map. Solutech's offices are on the first floor, and parking in the building lot is FREE. Chris Lambert and David Banks will giving a presentation about how enterprise decision support tools provide non-technical business users with access to information stored in various types of database-driven systems, including data warehouses, data marts, and packaged business applications. Business Objects is the world's leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools. Please feel free to print out and distribute copies of the flyer for this meeting. The flyer is located at http://home.gvi.net/~spyder/sqlflyer.html . STORED PROCEDURES DON'T MIGRATE FROM 6.x TO 7.0 ************************************************************ Please note that stored procedures that access system tables do not migrate from SQL Server 6.x to SQL Server 7.0 during an upgrade. According to Richard Waymire of Microsoft, "the inability to migrate stored procedures occurs because the system tables have changed significantly between SQL Server 6.x and SQL Server 7.0. Many system tables are no longer tables; they are views of new system tables. The Microsoft SQL Server team felt a safer tactic than automatically upgrading these stored procedures was to force a reexamination of stored procedures that use system tables directly, when you upgrade to SQL Server 7.0." As a consequence, it would be in your best interest to extract and save the source code for any of your home-grown stored procedures from the 6.x server prior to upgrading. PROBLEMS WITH SP5 AND POWERBUILDER 5.x ************************************************************ Just a word of caution that Service Pack 5 for SQL Server 6.5 can cause problems with programs developed in PowerBuilder 5.x that access SQL Server 6.x using native 16-bit DB-Lib. Specifically, this error prevents you from editing data with the PowerBuilder database painter and causes an error message such as 'Column datatype not supported'. There are at least three ways to resolve this problem: [1.] uninstall Service Pack 5 (however, you will need SP5 for Y2K compliance), [2.] upgrade to PowerBuilder 6.x (the problem does not occur with version PowerBuilder 6.x), or [3.] rewrite the applications to access the database using ODBC rather than with native DB-Lib. BUG FOUND IN SQL SERVER 6.5 SP5 ************************************************** It has been reported that you can receive an error 603 when you attempt to restore a database after applying Service Pack 5 (SP5) to SQL 6.5. This is a nasty bug that slipped through the cracks in SP5 testing/beta's. It is caused when you execute the sp_sysbackuphistory stored procedure. Please note that this stored procedure is invoked is when you use the Enterprise Manager GUI to initiate backups/restores. For more details about the bug, please be sure to read the following docs: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q197/1/76.asp?FR=0 http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q215/4/58.asp?FR=0 You can download the fix for this bug from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/sql/public/fixes/usa/SQL65/Sp5/ . Please note that SP5ax86.exe is the file you will need for Intel CPUs and SP5aALP.exe is the file you need for Alpha CPUs. The updated service pack is known as SP5a (build 416). The 416 build will allow you to load a "corrupted" dump by setting trace flag 3282. Build 416 also contains a number of other hot-fixes that did not make SP5 but were in the base build that MS applied this fix to. If you are already on the earlier SP5 (build 415) then the only files you need to update are sqlservr.exe and opends60.dll. UPCOMING EVENTS SQL SERVER EVENTS ***************************************************************** All Heartland Users Groups meetings are open to the general public. Anyone may attend any of the various monthly SIG meetings and the HUG general meeting. If you are not already a member of the Heartland Users Groups, please consider joining -- an individual membership is only $25.00. Just ask the SIG leader or any Heartland Users Groups officer for a membership form. Your membership entitles you to receive the monthly newsletter and makes you eligible to receive door prizes at Heartland Users Groups events. Thursday, February 4, 1999 at 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Monthly SQL Server SIG Meeting David Banks of Business Objects presentation about enterprise decision support tools At Solutech Inc. 7300 College BLVD, Suite 165 Overland Park, KS See http://home.gvi.net/~spyder/sqlserver.html for details Tuesday, February 16, 1999 at 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM Installing and Configuring Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 (Course No. 685) At Solutech Inc. 7300 College BLVD, Suite 165 Overland Park, KS Solutech, Inc. is offering this course FREE to Heartland Users Groups members TO ATTEND, YOU MUST REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT BY FEBRUARY 3, 1999 To register, send e-mail to Betsy Comer mailto:bcomer@solutechinc.com See http://www.solutechinc.com for more details. Thursday, March 4, 1999 at 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Monthly SQL Server SIG Meeting Chris Miller, author of the new book SQL Server System Administration (The Landmark Series) presentation about SQL Server 7.0 Tips and Tricks At Solutech Inc. 7300 College BLVD, Suite 165 Overland Park, KS See http://home.gvi.net/~spyder/sqlserver.html for details Thursday, April 1, 1999 at 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Monthly SQL Server SIG Meeting Topic and speaker TBA At Solutech Inc. 7300 College BLVD, Suite 165 Overland Park, KS See http://home.gvi.net/~spyder/sqlserver.html for details MICROSOFT NEWS ************************************************************ See http://www.microsoft.com/mcp/certstep/mcdba.htm for details about Microsoft's new Database Administrator certification program. Exams and courseware for this new track are expected to be available by the first quarter of 1999. Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Overview: This is the one-day course that Microsoft is offering for $99. See http://www.microsoft.com/train_cert/sql7/oneday/ for details. Get a voucher worth $500 towards the 5-day System Administration for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 course (course #832). See http://www.microsoft.com/train_cert/sql7/offer for details. MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS ************************************************************ The SQL Server SIG board is looking volunteers to be presenters for future SQL Server SIG meetings. If you or someone you know is interested in presenting a topic of interest to SQL Server professionals, please contact me or any other SQL Server SIG officer. In particular, we are actively looking for a presenter and topic for our April 1, 1999 meeting. The regular meeting time for monthly SQL Server SIG meetings is 6:00 PM on the first Thursday of each month at Solutech, Inc., 7300 College BLVD, Suite 165, Overland Park, KS. The SQL Server SIG's home page is at: http://home.gvi.net/~spyder/sqlserver.html . Please feel free to offer any ideas for improving the SQL Server SIG's page or for adding any links. The Heartland Users Groups' home page is at: http://www.hugkc.org . Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, criticisms, and/or referrals of persons who may be potentially interested in the SQL Server SIG.