It has been a little dark here at the blog site due to the arrival of our second daughter.  Things are great and we are starting to get to know the sweet little kid that joined our household.

While I get my data legs back under me check out the new whitepaper written by the highly esteemed Paul Randall on High Availability strategies in SQL Server 2008.

Also, make sure you check our user group at ALEMUG for the coming October meeting.  Should be a great time.

If you are doing any project work where you are responsible for moving data objects through multiple environments you will want to check out the post today on Gert Drapers blog.  You can get the slides from his recent presentation at the New England SQL Server Users Group.  Very interesting reading.

If not, you need to start.  As Aaron Bertrand mentions in his blog today this will become mandatory in a future version (hopefully vNext) of SQL Server.

If you are looking at this post with a puzzled look I am referring to ending SQL statements with a semicolon.  In SQL Server 2008 these terminators are only required with CTEs, MERGE, and Service Broker. 

I have been a fan of them for a long time.  They add to the clarity of code as well as now making your code future proof.  Double win!

I am very excited to announce the creation of a new user group for the Atlanta area.  The group is the Atlanta Leading Edge Microsoft User Group (ALEMUG) and will begin meeting in October.  The focus of the group will be on technologies in the Microsoft stack that are emerging but not yet mainstream.

An additional area of discussion for this group will be how these technologies apply to business today.  I would hope that anyone who has worked in IT for very long has experienced the great feeling of a well implemented project and the effect it can have on a business.  I have been lucky enough to see great advances in several companies prior to my consulting life and it is what drives me today.  I think we have a responsibility within the community to not only show the shiny hot new technology but guide the delivery of said product(s) to a business conclusion.  Otherwise, what exactly is the point of a user group meeting?

I hope you would join us for what should be some pretty fascinating conversation.  With the group of people involved as of now it will be anything but boring.  More to come.