Joseph Hinkle at MyITForum.com

I just saw a pointer to this MyITForum forum thread about the upcoming SMS 2003 exam from Microsoft.  It isn't really all that definitive, but its a start.  Something new to study for.  Woo hoo!

Via The Blogcast Repository

I just saw this article discussing the upcoming changes to Microsoft's certification exams over at Computer Weekly.  Multiple choice exams are apparently gone and will be replaced with exams using Microsoft's Simulations Positioning Framework.  The SPF will simulate real-world scenarios for the test take to solve.  There isn't any real detail about how it will really work in the article.  Have any of you seen it, even in a demo or beta format?  That is, if you can talk about it of course.

I'm interested to know how it is really going to work.  It sounds like a lot of folks will be buying new practice tests if they want to simulate the test taking experience.

The Exchange team posted an article (here) that details some guidelines for determining mailbox size limits.  Essentially, the idea is that the number of items in the basic folders will affect Outlook performance the most, so don't clog them up. 

I've been installing some software for some of our mobile user base and I've seen the difference in Outlook performance for users with a few hundred messages in their Inbox.  I can say without a doubt that Outlook is much more responsive on that laptop compared to a similar one with thousands of messages.   I'm an clean Inbox junkie, so Outlook performs great for me.  It seems like a common sense assertion, but sometimes we need to see it in print. 

One of the more interesting things mentioned is a Sysinternals utility named Contig, a file-level defragmenter.  The suggested use is for the Outlook OST, but I can see many other uses for it.  Contig is a freeware utility, so don't feel bad if you use it repeatedly.

In case you missed it, mainstream support for VB6 ends March 31, 2005.  The details are here.  This is in line with the six years of mainstream support that Microsoft pledged then.  The new policy, extended lifecycle, is ten years.  The details of the news policy, including what is covered, are here.

Scoble points out that a lot of the MVPs are pretty upset it in his post here.

I personally don't care, but I didn't invest the last six years of my life writing code in VB6.  I have some affection for it, since that was what I learned VB with (yes, I'm young), but I see the value in .NET and the flexibility it provides. 

End of support doesn't mean companies will stop using a product.  I still fight with a few Windows 95 PCs, so it doesn't seem unusual for old tech to hang around for a long while, even after the manufacturer says they don't want anything to do with it.  Most companies won't replace or upgrade until they see real value in doing so, considering the extensive costs most upgrades bring.

I just noticed that WPS 5.52 was released on March 2nd.  The release notes are here.  I'm downloading it now.  I hope it corrects the compilation problems introduced in 5.51, but since I haven't heard anything from support, I don't have high hopes.

Update:  Didn't fix the installation exe bug.  Bummer.

Most people know it was easy to change which HAL Windows 2000 is using by reinstalling the computer system device in Device Manager.  A brief look around Windows XP shows that the Windows 2000 method is no longer valid.

Francois Racine pointed out in this thread in the MyITForum forums that it is a simple matter of replacing the two core files, NTOSKRNL.EXE and HAL.DLL in %windows%\system32.  A more detailed explanation is here.

Arul Kumaravel has posted an MSH scripting primer.  MSH is the next generation/replacement of DOS that will be included in Longhorn, at least until Microsoft cuts it.  Start learning now so what you already know can be rendered obsolete. :)

The primer is here.

I ran into an interesting problem yesterday installing Windows XP SP2 on a laptop running SP1.  The user was an admin, but the install failed with an 'access denied' error in the system event log.

%windir%\setupapi.log shows what generates errors in setup.  In this case, administrators had read-only access to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main and all of its sub-keys.  After modifying the permissions for it and its children, the install went fine.

Sounds easy, right?  That's what I thought until I whipped up a query for a new report.

If you are using the SMS Client Health Monitoring Tool, you know that the default configuration is that the data is stored in a separate SQL database named SMS_Healthmon.  Microsoft provides a nifty Excel spreadsheet that queries the data to give you a view of what is going on.  As great as that is, it would be infinitely more useful if the data was integrated into web reporting.

Just building the query isn't enough for this task because of the way web reporting accesses SQL.  If you look at your SMS database, there is an application role named Webreport_approle.  As this article reveals, an application role does not use the user's permissions to access the database.  Those permissions are ignored and the data is accessed in the context of the application role.  An application role is limited to the database it exists in, so how do we get around it?

Go to the database that will be queried in the web report and add a new user named 'guest' (you can start cringing now).  It isn't tied to a Windows or SQL user account, so just enter guest as a user name with no login name.  Of course, the user needs to be limited to read access to the tables it will be querying, so choose the permissions wisely.  This obviously would be a bad idea for sensitive data. 

Other creative solutions might include a scheduled DTS of data to a table in the SMS database, if policy allows it.  Personally, for things like client health data, guest access is OK.  Employee data would be a very different story. 

If anyone knows any other way to access the data in another database, I would be happy to hear it!  Leave a comment if you have a better solution.

I've added a few links to the information bar on the left.  For now, all that is there is my blogroll and my link blog. 

I won't be posting every little tidbit I find via RSS here.  Things will only be posted here if I have something significant to say about it.  Everything else I find interesting, but not interesting enough to comment on will go to the link blog. 

For the folks who care what I'm reading right now, there are 90 or so feeds in my blogroll.  There is mostly tech stuff in there, but a few entertainment things and other random stuff I've found. 

I'll be adding a few links periodically, but it won't be overwhelming.  I'll probably drop a post for everyone who reads via RSS so they know to drop by for some new linkage.  I know I always appreciate it, since I rarely venture from my aggregator when I'm reading.

Since this is my first post here at MyITForum, I suppose I should introduce myself.  Hi, I'm Joseph.

Now that that's out of the way...

I'm a three and a half year lurker at MyITForum, except for the small stretches where I popped into the forums for a quick peek.  Oh and the time I helped Doug Steinbrecker with an update to his web reporting article.  It goes without saying that I'm due to pitch in a little around here.

I'll be focusing on SMS and SQL with a few other deployment odds and ends thrown in for good measure.  It will mainly be things that I have to look up from day to day, but I promise it will have some purpose.

Oh, and just in case you didn't see the other twenty posts, no patches this month.  I finally recovered from the 25k I deployed last month, so I think zero is fair and just.