Santosh Benjamin

SQL Server 2005 April CTP Issues

I'm still around. The folks at CodeBetter dont seem to want to give me a blog, so I'm going to stick around here for a bit. Donny has disabled some file that deals with comments so the spam has reduced now (only 2 yesterday - or maybe that was before he disabled it.)

So I finally hit the Whidbey and Yukon trail and am stumbling a bit now. I'm using the DVD set i got at the DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper event.

Using the install guide I managed to get the base products installed. My config is : DELL workstation (1 GB RAM) running XP and Virtual PC 2004 running Windows Server 2003. TFS is on the VPC and the VS 2005 tool and the client are on the main workstation.

The problems are

(1) There is not enough documentation (or not enough GOOD documentation , more accurately) on how to get started. The Install Guide is just that, an install Guide. After that you have to connect to Team Foundation Server (if you want the team stuff), but it does not tell you how to handle the errors and problems there. Luckily i found this post that deals with connection problems to the TFS. My problem was that my VPC 2004 instance (running the servers) was logged in with domain user X and the parent workstation which had the client was logged in with domain user Y. Both were admins on the machines, but that didnt help.

(2) The SQL Server Management Studio is corrupted. It gives some horrible interface registration error messages and refuses to launch.

(3) AdventureWorks sample database doesnt get installed, even when explicitly chosen. By the way, you have to go into the ADVANCED option and into the Books/documentation option to get at the sample databases. So beautifully intuitive (not). Apparently it just puts an MSI into the Tools/Samples folder and then you have to run the MSI.

(4) You cannot REPAIR an installation. I dont remember if we could do this in SQL 2K but this time its really bad. I wanted to reinstall Management Studio but the install application wanted to reinstall the lot. These things have a mind of their own. Unfortunately for me, im rather stuck now since I cannot reinstall without overwriting the TFS stuff.

(5) Not enough RAM. This is not Microsofts problem. They recommend a machine with 1 GB RAM for the server. Added to this, VPC is slow so the install , esp SQL, just crawls like a dying animal.[I tried installing SQL on the base machine and it went quite quick] I can only give 600MB to the VPC. Generally this VPC thing is beginning to look very dodgy indeed. Im going to need 4GB of RAM on the workstation if both are going to be running simultaneously.

(6) How do you test the installation? Nothing around to tell you, try out so and so application which will exercise the suite completely so you can know its fine. In an era of TDD is an installation sanity checking app too much to ask?

As a side note, I got a bit of a fright when I tried to create a web service and couldnt find the project template to do that. I finally found it under the 'Web Applications' option. Whew!!

Has anyone come across problems with the Yukon April 2005 CTP? Drop me an email through the Contact link and let me know.

Anyway, I got my first assignment on this. I have to do a presentation  comparing and contrasting MSBuild with NAnt/CC.NET.