Outlook 2003 Business Contact Manager served by SQL Server 2005

When you install Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update , a named instance of MSDE is installed (under %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL$MICROSOFTSMLBIZ ). If you are the only one to work with your contact database it will be fine, but if you plan to share the database with your coworkers in a workgroup or domain, either you need to leave your computer permanently online or need to move the database files to a real server. In this document I explain how to move your contacts database to a remote server running SQL Server Express 2005 so that you could benefit from not being overloaded with having to manage and run MSDE on your computer, being able to restart or turn off your computer without advising your collegues, scheduled backups and, in summary, all the benefits that you could achieve having your data served by a dedicated computer instead of your personal one.

1. On the computer that will be used as server, install a named instance of SQL Server Express 2005 called SERVERNAME\microsoftsmlbiz, enable it for network access and make it listen to tcp port 56183 (tcp port 1433 is the default)
2. Stop your local MSDE instance (net stop MSSQL$MICROSOFTSMLBIZ from your command prompt)
3. Copy your MSBusinessContactManager.ldf and MSBusinessContactManager.mdf files along to the server that will be hosting them. The files on your computer are located under: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Program Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\ The destination directory on the server that will be hosting the database depends of your configuration, but it can be something like: %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\MSSQL\Data
4. Once you have those two file on the destination server, attach the database to the server and grant proper permissions to users.
5. For every client that was connecting to your MSDE instance, open Outlook and configure it to use the remote server instead.
6. Restart Outlook.
7. You can safely set MSSQL$MICROSOFTSMLBIZ and SQLAgent$MICROSOFTSMLBIZ services startup type to Disabled or Manual for all computers that are conecting to a remote database.

Since you can only create new databases on the local computer (Using Create or select a new database menu), if you want to create the database from scratch (no data) using SQL Server 2005, you will need to disable/stop MSDE service, install SQL Server 2005 (or Express) on your local computer (a named instance called MICROSOFTSMLBIZ and listening to tcp port 56183), and then you can use Outlook wizard to create the new database on your local server that will be SQL Server 2005 (or Express) instead of MSDE. You can then move that database file (using sp_detach_db y sp_attach_db to the final server).

Remember that database files created with the newer versions of SQL Server 2005 cannot be attached to older engines (i.e. SQL Server 2000 or MSDE), they are not backwards compatible. If you try to attach a MSBusinessContactManager database created with SQL Server 2005 to a MSDE engine, you will get the following error (in ERRORLOG file):

In spanish:

Error: 602, Severity: 21, State: 50
No se encuentra la fila en sysindexes de la base de datos con Id. 7, Id. de objeto 1, Id. de índice 1. Ejecute DBCC CHECKTABLE en sysindexes..

In english:

Error: 602, Severity: 21, State: 50
Could not find row in sysindexes for database ID 7, object ID 1, index ID 1. Run DBCC CHECKTABLE on sysindexes..

This is important because if you ever need to upgrade to Office 2007, you will need a way to move the database back to the local MSDE engine to allow the upgrade procedure reuse your existing data as part of the upgrade.

Process Explorer for Windows

Previously developed by Sysinternals (acquired by Microsoft in July, 2006), Process Explorer for Windows v10.21 was released last November 1st, 2006. This is a must-have-tool for admins. Whenever you need to know which process has open which files or what DLLs are being used by whom, you will need it.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx Simple to download, install and run: a single file sized 3.5Mb (1.5Mb zipped).

SQL server 2005 publishing views to SQL 2000 subscribers

If you are in the process of migrating your SQL Server 2000 scenario to SQL Server 2005 and you have replication configured, here is a hint that you must have in mind before changing the publisher to be a SQL Server 2005: SQL Server 2005 has changed the syntax for SELECT clauses (when ORDER BY is used) in the following way:

SQL 2000: SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT Field1, Field2 FROM Table1 ORDER BY Field1
SQL 2005: SELECT TOP (100) PERCENT Field1, Field2 FROM Table1 ORDER BY Field1

Please note the parentesys. This newer syntax is not recognised by SQL Server 2000 engine, thus giving you errors when the initial snapshot is tried to be applied. If this is your case and you need to set up SQL Server 2005 as a publisher to SQL Server 2000 subscriber(s), you will need to change those views that need to be published to remove the ORDER BY so that no TOP [n] PERCENT is needed (and also be removed), and modify your application accordingly. Besides, according ORDER BY Clause (Transact-SQL)(in BOL):

When ORDER BY is used in the definition of a view, inline function, derived table, or subquery, the clause is used only to determine the rows returned by the TOP clause. The ORDER BY clause does not guarantee ordered results when these constructs are queried, unless ORDER BY is also specified in the query itself.

In other words, it is useless to do a SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT... ORDER BY FieldX in a view (let's say View1), since all records will be returned, but not granted to be ordered as expected, unless we do a SELECT * FROM View1 ORDER BY FieldX from the view itself. See also: SQL Server 2005 Ordered View and Inline Function Problems from OakLeaf Systems' blog.

Microsoft SQL Server Search Engine using Google co-op

Google has recently launched a beta service called Google co-op. According their overview:

Using it you can create a highly specialized Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and interests.

Since it seemed to be a good idea, I gave it a try and created a customised search engine for specialised content on Microsoft SQL Server. This search engine allows you to use the power and knowledge of Google and refine the results of your queries, according additional keywords, giving a higher weight to those sites you consider to be more interesting, in order to return more precise results. In summary, all I have done is customise the search engine with websites related to SQL Server (Microsoft, blogs, usenet groups and so on). Feel free to give it a try and suggest me more sites to include to refine the searches further. It seems to work fine.