legi, intellexi

I had to create a new test environment and to make it a true representation of the production one I had to install all the service packs, hot fixes, cumulative updates, etc. as in production. So I decided to collect all essential information. And the simplest way (for me) was to use WMIC. To collect information about OS: WMIC OS GET BuildNumber, Caption, CSDVersion, CSName, OSArchitecture, OSLanguage, ServicePackMajorVersion, ServicePackMinorVersion, SystemDirectory, TotalVisibleMemorySize, Version, WindowsDirectory about all installed software (and be patient because it takes a couple of minutes to complete) WMIC PRODUCT GET Caption,Version About Windows domains WMIC NTDOMAIN GET Caption, ClientSiteName, DCSiteName, DnsForestName, DomainCOntrollerAddress, DomainControllerName, DOmainName about disks WMIC DISKDRIVE GET BytesPerSector, Name, SerialNumber, Signature,Size about partitions WMIC PARTITION GET BlockSize,Bootable,Name,Size,Star...

Microsoft has released on CodePlex a SharePoint adapter with demos ( http://sqlsrvintegrationsrv.codeplex.com/ ) The adapter uses public SharePoint Web services and have several features that enhance their performance and their ease of use: ·         -  Only the fields that you want are returned from SharePoint. ·         -  Large lists are not transferred all at once. They are paged in batches, with a configurable batch size. ·         -  Column type information from SharePoint is used for mapping to Integration Services data types ·         -  CAML queries can be added to the query to filter the rows to be returned. ·         -  Update and Delete operations from an Integration Services package are simple. ·         -  Important custom properties of the source and destination can be set by using Integration Services expressions. ·...

 Data and log files are first initialized by filling the files with zeros when you perform one of the following operations: Create a database. Add files, log or data, to an existing database. Increase the size of an existing file (including autogrow operations). Restore a database or filegroup. File initialization causes these operations to take longer. However, when data is written to the files for the first time, the operating system does not have to fill the files with zeros. Instant file initialization is only available if the SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service account has been granted SE_MANAGE_VOLUME_NAME . This permission is granted by adding service account to the  Perform Volume Maintenance Tasks  security policy (in GPEDIT.MSC).  Instant file initialization is not available when TDE is enabled. To check if the SQL service account has this permission granted, run the following script: EXEC sp_configure 'Show Advanced Options', 1 reconfigure; EXE...