Rockford IL TechNet Briefing Questions (and Answers)

Hi!

Wow… I haven’t blogged in awhile.  But yesterday at my TechNet Briefing in Rockford, IL I got some great questions and I thought I would share them (and the answers) with you:

Q: I want to roll out SQL now, but if I get SQL 2000 installed – what happens when 2005 comes out? Will the upgrade be difficult?

A: No.  Great effort is going into making sure the upgrade will be as painless as possible. 

Q: What about the price? Will there be a time after which I can buy SQL 2000 and be assured of a free upgrade? Will I be forced to pay full price for 2005, or some upgrade price?

A: The way the purchases will go will depend on whether or not you purchase Software Assurance along with your purchase of SQL 2000.  If you buy (or are already covered by) SA, you will get the SQL 2005 upgrade without any additional cost.  If you purchased SQL 2000 without Software Assurance, then you will have to purchase SQL 2005 at it’s full price.  (Note: I’m not privvy to any inside information on discounts or other programs that may or may not be offered.  I’m just giving you the standard official policy in these matters.)

For answers to licensing questions, as well as how Software Assurance works, check out the main Microsoft Licensing web site.

UPDATE: Here's a brief description including an example of what Software Assurance is, and how it can benefit you.

Q: Relating to RPC Authentication (new feature available in SP1 for Windows Server 2003); How do you set up that authentication for, say, something like Outlook 2003 communicating with Exchange?  

A: This one is worth trying out.  I’m in the process of installing SP1 on some virtual machine images I used in a previous webcast series, and I’m going to make that work.  I’ll document the results here in the blog, either as a post or maybe even as a blogcast showing what I did.

By the way: if you haven’t already, you should consider using RSS in order to be notified whenever there are new posts here on my blog.

Q: Do you have a good resource for Scripting with regard to Windows Backup?  

A: I’m sorry to say I wasn’t able to find any examples of scripting for driving Windows Backup.  But please check out the Windows Script Center for some tremendous scripting resources, including a “Find A Script” section for samples of just the task you’re trying to perform.  (and if you know of any backup scripting resources, please add them as feedback to this post!)

Q: Kevin, you mentioned that OSQL was replaced by the SQLCMD command-line tool in SQL 2005. Does that mean that OSQL is gone?   

A: No.  OSQL is still there (at least in the beta 2 version I was running).  So you shouldn’t have to worry about re-writing your scripts that already use it. 

Do you have additional questions or comments about my answers?  Feel free to click feedback below to continue the discussion.