The Ashdar Partners Blog

After some bureaucracy, I finally have access to software. I still don't know why it took MS longer to allow me to use my subscription than it did for NewEgg to ship me the physical media, but some mysteries aren't worth knowing. The next odd thing was getting Microsoft's file transfer client installed. It took a few minutes work to find a download site, download and install the client and then allow IE to use the client. Now, I need to download and configure Windows XP, VB 6 and Office 2003, all in a VHD. I've got all of the required ISOs, so I'll be installing up a storm on the train.

...probably. I've been meaning to mention this for a while. If you've read my blog at all, you've probably seen my rages against the lack of 64 bit drivers for common Office data formats. Huzzah . I don't see anything about Fox, dBase or Clipper files, even with some googling.

I've been gigging as a SQL Server DBA for a long, long time -- more than twice as long than I've held any other job. Everyone knows about the economic situation, which certainly seems to have cut back positions, compared to 2007 or so. As others have noticed, it does seem that power is devolving away from DBAs running boutique databases. The "No SQL movement" is one aspect of this, and the marketing push for SQL 2008 R2 leans toward Business Intelligence (BI) features, such as the "self-service" BI features and the older SSRS and SSIS features. Improvements to the data engine, my bread and butter, are minimal and frankly not very exciting. With that in mind, it seems prudent to find a way to not be so much of a one-trick pony. I did a lot of development earlier in my career. Code from that era seems to qualify as "legacy" now, so migration projects might be forthcoming, perhaps there might even be a mini-boom in such work, along the lines of the CO...