I’m afraid Windows 8 isn’t soup yet. I was as anxious as a hungry teen when it came to the official launch of Windows 8. I had heard so many stories about its marvels that I wanted to be one of the first to try it. No, I didn’t try the betas or “nearly ready” versions because I didn’t have the time to build up a separate system or a Hyper-V to host it. I’ve been working with pre-released software for too long to install it over a functioning OS. So I guess I must take part of the blame in Windows 8’s shortcomings.

As I said, I’ve been working with Windows for a long time—since Version 1 when it was delivered on floppies and ran as an application on top of DOS. That was in ‘86 when I first joined Microsoft and worked with the Windows Developer Liaison team. Windows has come a long way since then.

So what happened? Well, there’s a laundry-list of stuff that worked and didn’t work, but I’ll get to that. First consider that I know how complex operating systems can be. I’ve written new OSs, modified other company’s OSs and taught developers how to program to them. I’ve also installed early versions of every version of Windows since the early days—many, many times. Windows 8 is following the same pattern as all of the others. Too bad it seems more like Vista than Windows 3 or Windows 7.

If you don’t want to read the list of issues and just want my recommendation, here it is: Wait. Wait until SP1 comes out. By this time, the hardware and software companies that are still alive (they fall by the wayside faster than old runners in the Boston marathon) will have released updated Windows 8 drivers, application updates and patches so their stuff works. By that time Microsoft will have released Media Center and added a “What happened to my XXXX in Windows 7” help topic.

The Hardware

As a point of reference, my hardware platform is a i7 980x with 12GB of RAM, SSD drive and dual monitors being driven by a NVidia high-performance video card. The system profiles at 7.6 (it’s fast).

My references to the “unmetro” user interface address the copyright debacle caused by Microsoft’s inability to find a name that someone else isn’t using (again). Might I suggest “Google” before picking a name? I’ll just call it “UM” for reference sake.

Surprises and Disappointments

Here’s what I found (or didn’t find).

My Plans

Because of these serious issues and the host of not-so-serious-issues that I’ve discovered just in the last 48 hours, I’m going to have to take the following steps:

Restore my Windows 7 system if I can. If I can’t, I plan to do a clean install of Windows 7 on this system. It will take a week to do, but I can’t have an unreliable system that’s not ready for production. Sure, a year from now, I might try again. By then the video hardware and software companies will probably have sorted out their Windows 8 issues. Until then, I’ll be sticking with Windows 7. It’s too important to me. I expect it is for you too.

Apparently, none of this experience helps get one recognized as a competent writer in the young adult world. That’s understandable—very few teens read Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition), and they wouldn’t get the jokes anyway. That’s fine. I know how to restart my career on a new path. I’ve had to do it many, many times over the last forty years. Anyone who’s worked in the personal computer industry also knows how to file for unemployment.

So I had an idea for a novel. I wanted to tell a story about our turbulent times. I saw political corruption, corporations buying their own laws and media spigots to dump their propaganda on the public. I saw many social problems ignored or glossed over by the books impressionable teens were reading. I was convinced that our future leaders needed another 1984, Animal Farm or Alice In Wonderland. Ambitious? Of course. I expect that Don Quixote and I are cut from the same cloth.

I spent about three years and a bunch of money on classes, books, editors and illustrators to create The Owl Wrangler. On the surface, it’s a young adult story about tiny forest elves. No taller than a pinecone, they live in the forests around the Northwest. They have parents, teachers and village elders that expect and demand quite a bit from them. They’re faced with many of the same hormonal and social pressures that my own kids faced when they were in their teens. But these elven teens are special. Many of them have fledgling magical powers that they’re just learning to wield.

The result? Tepid sales but 99% 5-star reviews—but only 9 of them. I thought it was time to start marketing in earnest. I found a publisher that was “very interested”, but communicating with them is like standing in the back of a busy bar trying to get a drink on a Friday night. I’m still looking for a sincerely interested publisher. Sure, I’ve been racking up rejection letters, but my ego can only take so much rejection. I’m not as frail as George McFly, no experienced author is, but given the state of the publishing industry, does it make sense to keep prodding publishers that only want best sellers? One of the blog articles that clog up my browser like malware pop-ups, suggested that the only key to success for a new author was to write—and keep writing. So I did.

The story continued with Guardians of the Sacred Seven. This took another couple of years, more classes, editors, copyeditors, conference fees and thousands of hours on Facebook, Twitter and countless blogs and reading similar fantasies. Two years later, volume two of The Owl Wrangler trilogy is done. I’m happy with it. Taking my own advice, I’m writing the third. Frankly, the characters are calling me now to come back and listen to their stories.

Sure, I keep getting the occasional request to consult on SQL Server or Reporting Services projects, but I’m having too much fun. I’ll keep writing and until my arthritis locks up my hands entirely, I’ll keep doing so.

Follow me on @vaughnwilliam or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/OwlWrangler.

SMTPAuth (Settings panel does not appear)

Tomorrow (July 12th) I’ll be presenting my monthly webinar. It’s been updated to include more information about SQL Server Reporting Services (R2) and Visual Studio 2010. This high-impact series of six 90-minute webinars held over three mornings (Pacific time from 09:00-12:30) is for anyone who wants to leverage Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS), SQL Server and Reporting Services best practices—learning what works, what doesn't and why. These sessions are for developers, architects and managers who want to know how and (more importantly) when to leverage the power and benefits of SQL Server and Reporting Services. The fee also includes both of my Reporting Services and Visual Studio books.

Incidentally, Progressive does not care how many people sit in on the sessions so you can fill a meeting room or the local theater if you want to. These are also designed to be interactive—that is, I encourage the attendees to chat in questions anytime or ask over the phone at the end.

Want a front-row seat in my next Webinar? If so, I’m accepting applications for the live studio audience. All you need to do is send me an note saying why you would like to attend. I can comfortably sit about four people so get your application in early. Let me worry about the conference $999 fee, but if you bring doughnuts for everyone... I’ll pick the audience the Friday before the next talk.

What issues are exposed when using SSPI authentication? How does one avoid these issues?

There were lots of answers that almost universally said that using SSPI authentication was the way to go. A number of folks cataloged many of the problems associated with SSPI including having to implement Kerberos when using multiple hops. I’m no fan of Kerberos as it can make a fairly simple client/server or Reporting Services site unmanageable. But everyone missed the point. Consider this scenario:

The question for the month of June seems deceptively easy:

What issues are exposed when using SSPI authentication? How does one avoid these issues?

When I initially wrote this question, I was thinking about SQL Server Reporting Services reports and the data source connections they establish, but the question also applies to applications of all kinds that connect to data sources. As you (should) know, SSPI (or “trusted”) connections use the currently logged in Windows system credentials to pass along to the data source. The trusted approach precludes the need to use hard-coded (or generated) data source-dependent login names and passwords. With SSPI/trusted authentication, if the Windows user has a login account on the target SQL Server (or other data source), the connection is permitted to be (further) authenticated. No, the data source might not authenticate the connection if the user does not have rights on the initial catalog (default database), or if the server is too busy to take on additional connections, but that’s another issue.

• The question is, do you know what issues are exposed when you use this trusted connection approach?
• What are the alternatives and why should they be considered?
• What are the downsides to these alternatives?

Want a hint? Check out Chapter 9 of my 7th Edition.

Note that you are not permitted to post answers to this question until June 1st. 2011.

Bill Vaughn

Postscript:

So, it seems that most responders to this question think that SSPI is the way to go. Here is another hint: Consider that SQL Server permits an application to submit any number of TSQL operations in a single query.

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharedviewbetahelp/threads

This is pretty sad. I leaves me and many other trainers and support professionals in the lurch. Now I have to find a suitable (non-Microsoft) replacement, test it and learn how to use it as well as update my course materials. I expect this is not nearly as expensive as the costs incurred by others that depend on SharedView on a daily basis.

Why is SharedView important? Yes there are other programs that purport to do the same. The SharedView advantage is that it's a MICROSOFT desktop sharing solution. You don't have to convince a customer that this free program is going to do anything but do what it's supposed to do. It's very lightweight, installs in seconds, is virtually pain-free and is brutally simple for each end to use. We have lots of sites where remote desktop is not an option--especially in my webinar classes. Consider that SV lets me view the system while the customer demonstrates a problem. I can take over his mouse and keyboard but only if he lets me and all he needs to do to take control back is move the mouse or press a key. It gave the customers a lot more confidence in their own system's security.

Wonder why the Microsoft stock is flat or falling while other companies continue to grow even in this economy? Now you know.

My wife and I just (barely) endured a long trip to London from Seattle and back via American Airlines. They (and the airports) could have done quite a bit more to make the trip more comfortable (or at least more tolerable) but mostly, they could have done so more quietly. 

My new webinar/lab class launches next week on February 8-10. It’s the premier edition of a series of lectures and lab exercises that walk report developers through the process of learning enough Visual Basic to create serious report expressions for use with Reporting Services reports.

We follow the introduction to Visual Basic with an in-depth discussion of how to add code-based expressions to your reports, but more importantly, how to share the code between reports. The final session shows how to create managed-code DLLs that can be developed in C#, VB.NET or any .NET CLR language and leveraged by the report processor when rendering your report.

The mentored lab exercises walk you through the process of creating a Visual Basic test-harness, coding and debugging complex code expressions and finally, you’ll create your own sharable managed-code DLL that can be used in all kinds of deployed reports.

Here’s the link to the Progressive site.

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You're a 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle somewhere in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It's  November 11, 1967.   LZ (landing zone) X-ray. Your unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 yards away, that  your CO (commanding officer) has ordered the Medevac helicopters to stop coming in. You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you're not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter. You look  up to see a Huey coming in. But ... It doesn't  seem real because no Medevac markings are on it. Captain Ed Freeman is coming in for you. He's not Medevac so it's not his job, but he heard the radio call and decided he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway. Even after the Medevacs were ordered not to come. He's coming anyway. And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 3 of you at a time on board. Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses and safety. And, he kept coming back!! 13 more  times!! Until all the wounded were out. No one knew until the mission was over that the Captain had been hit 4 times in the legs and left arm. He took 29 of you and your buddies out that day. Some would not have made it without the Captain and his Huey.

Medal  of Honor Recipient, Captain  Ed Freeman, United States Air Force, 
died on August 20, 2008  at the age of 70 due to complications from Parkinson's disease.   He was buried with full military honors at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery in Boise.
 
May God Bless and Rest His Soul.

I bet you didn't hear about this real hero's passing,  but we've sure seen a whole bunch about Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods and the bickering of congress over Health Reform.

______________

I’m also a Vietnam Vet. I flew for the 7/17 Air Cavalry for 9 months in II Corps (the Central Highlands) in 1969. I'm no Ed Freeman--not anywhere near it. But Ed was a member of our Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association here in Washington State and I was proud to have known him.

By far, most of my missions in Vietnam were a walk in the park compared to so many others that flew back into danger to help others left behind. Those that came back returned as different people. Some still suffer today. And America didn’t learn the lessons of Vietnam. Our military is still fighting the longest war in its history, for reasons that we now find to be clouded, in a country with corrupt leaders, where our technology cannot win the hearts and support of the families that struggle for existence. Like Vietnam, the Afghan war cannot be won with bombs and bullets (according to our own generals). Like the Vietnamese, the men, women and children in the middle-east just want peace. So do nearly all Veterans. It’s why we fight and die and come back wounded only to find our jobs are gone and our families and marriages forever scarred. And we commit suicide at an alarming rate. So yes, tell a Veteran “Thanks” but remember him when you go to to polls to vote. Too many of the candidates wanted to cut funding for Veteran hospitals, clinics and counseling. There are lots of ways to support the troops—even if you don’t believe in the current war.