The Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB) of BCS (www.bcs.org.uk/iseb) instigated the Foundation Certificate in Software Testing in 1998; since then over 40,000 Foundation Certificates have been awarded. An intermediate level qualification was introduced in 2007 as a step towards the more advanced Practitioner...

ITIL® and IT service management have been practised successfully around the world for more than 20 years. ITIL® is a framework for IT service management and provides best management practice to meet ISO/IEC 20k. This guide introduces ITIL both to Foundation Examination candidates and to people simply looking to gain a practical...

The sequel to the bestselling memoir Blood, Sweat & Tea. Tom Reynolds is an ambulance worker. On any given day he can be attacked by strangers, sworn at by motorists, puked on, covered in blood and other much more unpleasant substances. He could help to deliver a baby in the morning and witness the last moments of a dying man in the...

Welcome to the Ultimate Workout Plan, your one-stop training programme for building bigger, stronger, better-balanced and more powerful muscles. With this 12-month, primarily weights-based, plan we'll take all the hassle out of your training, as we identify what exercises you need to do, what weight you should be lifting and what...

Every day, out in the various discussion boards devoted to Microsoft SQL Server, the same types of questions come up again and again: Why is this query running slow? Is my index getting used? Why does this query run faster than this query? My response is the same n in each case: have you looked at the execution plan? Execution plans provide a...

When information is exchanged in XML format, there needs to be an agreement between the sender and receiver about the structure and content of the XML document. An XSD (XML Schema Definition Language) Schema can be used to enforce this contract and validate the XML data being exchanged and, given that a lot of applications exchange...

Phil Factor is a legend in his own runtime. Scurrilous, absurd, confessional and scathing by turns, Confessions of an IT Manager targets the idiocy, incompetence and overreach of the IT management industry from vantage point all the way up and down the greasy pole. Phil Factor (real name witheld to protest the guilty) has over 20 years...

My first exposure to a...

For the day-to-day DBA, there are dangers around every corner; monsters waiting to strike down the unsuspecting database with a resource-hungry query, an inefficient data load, or even outright data corruption. When the worst happens, and SQL Server is down, or performance is suffering, customers are quick to complain.. During such difficult...

These...

Editorial Review As the backbone to so many commercial communications infrastructures, Microsoft's Exchange Server technology has become a critical component in many an IT department. With the latest incarnation of Exchange Server on the horizon, and indeed almost upon us, it is becoming increasingly urgent that SysAdmins get to grips...