THE MOST IMPORTANT BUSINESS intelligence tool in the Microsoft Swiss Army knife of tools is SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). This is because the other tools would be nothing without the cleansing and movement of data into a presentable format. The product can extract, transform, and load (ETL) data astonishingly fast. A 2010 benchmark...

SQL SERVER 2012 REPRESENTS A SIZABLE jump forward in scalability, performance, and usability for the DBA, developer, and business intelligence (BI) developer. It is no longer unheard of to have 40-terabyte databases running on a SQL Server. SQL Server administration used to just be the job of a database administrator (DBA), but as SQL Server...

DURING ITS 27 YEARS OF LIFE, Windows has undergone several big changes. Without a doubt, both users and developers perceive a big leap from Windows 7 to Windows 8! When Microsoft began development of the newest Windows version, it totally re-imagined the operating system. Instead of patching the previous versions and just adding new or...

IN RECENT YEARS, MOBILE DEVICES have gained popularity due to lower costs, small and sleek sizes, and the capability to act as a computer with you at all times. The increased use of mobile devices has created new issues for developers and network administrators, such as how to secure the devices, how to deal with increases in bandwidth, and...

WELCOME TO Ivor Horton’s Beginning Visual C++ 2012. With this book, you can become an effective C++ programmer using Microsoft’s latest application-development system, Visual Studio 2012. I aim to teach you the C++ programming language, and then how to apply C++ in the development of your own Windows applications. Along the way,...

IN 1995, WHEN I WAS IN MY SECOND YEAR IN COLLEGE, I was introduced to UNIX network programming. In C, you could create sockets to open TCP connections to servers and code the servers that accepted these connections. I remember the excitement I felt the fi rst time I created a TCP server: I could accept connections and receive and send...