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This page displays an up-to-date listing of changes to our customer support web. We'll also place notices here regarding product updates, scheduled releases, or problems and work-arounds that may affect all customers. When bugs reported by our customers get fixed, we'll place a notice here, along with an estimate of when the fix will be shipped.

Wednesday, July 26th

bulletcustomer support web placed on-line

Wednesday, August 2nd

bulletComponentName made available for FTP download
bulletDocumentation (Getting Started and Release Notes) made available for FTP download

Monday, August 7th

bulletComponentName Patch #1 made available for FTP download
bulletTech Note #1 published

 

 Last Update: 04/10/07  

COM+: Components in the Middle Tier and how it compares to Enterprise Java Beans and CORBA.

Systems Management Server 2.0

Installing SMS 2.0 site systems
Installing SMS 2.0 clients via automatic and manual methods
Upgrade SMS 1.2 environments to SMS 2.0
View software and hardware inventory
Create collections, packages and advertisements to perform software distribution
Use remote control tools
Setup software-metering database

Microsoft said Tuesday that it has finalized what versions of Windows 2000 it will offer and how many processors they will support.

No less than four different versions of Windows 2000 and will be out by "the end of 1999." All four versions are heavily slanted to corporate uses.

Windows 2000 Professional is aimed at mainstream business desktops and laptops and will support up to two processors.

Windows 2000 Server will support up to four processors and will serve as the replacement for NT Server.

Windows 2000 Advanced Server will fill "business-critical" web and application demands and will support clustering, and load balance up to eight processors.

Windows 2000 DataCenter Server will be the ultimate in NT scalability and will cluster up to 32 processors.

Not on the list of course, was Windows 2000 Consumer. W2K Consumer was going to be based on the Windows 98 kernel but Microsoft scrapped those plans and decided to go with a product called "Millenium." Pricing and minimum system requirements were not available.


Windows 2000 Active Directory will push network power and performance up to a new level. Office 2000 will automate and accelerate office workflow beyond what you've ever imagined. ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), Programming forms and reports, Developing multi-user applications, Shared Office models and Automation, Access database replication, Web development techniques, Client/Server design with MSDE, SQL Server, and Access Projects, and Microsoft Office 2000. Delivering immediate ROI. 

AMD Athlon  

It's superscalar, meaning it can execute more than one instruction per clock cycle (actually, nine, compared to five for the Pentium III), and superpipelined, meaning it has multiple, parallel paths for simultaneous, out-of-order execution of instructions. The Athlon has a 128KB level 1 cache (compared with 32KB for the Pentium III), and a unique, frequency-programmable level 2 design. Initial Athlons will have 512KB of level 2 cache, matching the Pentium III, but level 2 cache can scale all the way to 8MB, four times that of Intel's Pentium III Xeon chip.

With a 200MHz frontside bus (vs. 100MHz at present for the Pentium III), a new slot for the processor that is mechanically similar to Intel's Slot One (though electrically identical to Compaq's Alpha EV6 bus) and multiprocessor capability, it's easy to see that AMD is swinging for the bleachers. The Athlon also includes an "Enhanced" version of the company's 3DNow SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) instructions, with 24 new instructions. Nineteen of these instructions bring 3DNow's functionality to parity with the Pentium III's SSE instructions, and five are DSP (digital signal processor) instructions to improve the performance of soft modems, soft ADSL, MP3 and AC-3 decoding. The latest video drivers from 3dfx, Matrox and nVidia are already compatible with Enhanced 3DNow. ATI and S3 will roll their compliant drivers shortly, and you should expect compliant versions of DirectX and OpenGL in short order.

AMD is introducing the Athlon with an AMD chipset, but chipsets are currently being developed by ALi, SiS and VIA. American Megatrends, Award and Phoenix are all providing BIOS support, and motherboards are being introduced by ASUS, FIC, Gigabyte and Microstar.

First out of the gate with Athlon-based systems are IBM and Compaq (though Compaq's Presario 5861 won't be available to customers until September). AMD points out that nine of the top 10 worldwide PC vendors are shipping AMD-powered systems (No. 2 Dell is the lone holdout). Skeptics would point out that AMD has had problems shipping in volume with the introduction of new processors. AMD has responded to these fears by rolling out the Athlon in its proven, 0.25-micron process. The company is also trying to minimize support infrastructure problems by sticking with 100MHz SDRAM upon launch, though faster memory architectures will be introduced for the Athlon later on.

In fact, though the Athlon uses different motherboards and chipsets than Pentium III systems use, this is already the case with its K6-2 and K6-III processors. All other system components are identical to existing Pentium III PCs.

Intel demonstrated a 1GHz version of its Pentium III processor earlier this year, but the company is not expected to roll out its next iteration of the Pentium, code-named Coppermine, until late October. Coppermine is expected at 667MHz and 700MHz. Intel has demonstrated repeatedly its ferocious competitiveness, however, and is expected to respond to the Athlon's introduction through a series of moves to blunt the new challenge from AMD. Price cuts and early rollouts of processors and chipsets to make the Pentium III and Pentium III Xeon chips more competitive are the likeliest responses.

AMD chose to introduce the new Athlon brand (rather than using the code name, K7) to mark a break with its past policy of undercutting Intel's pricing by 25%, a policy that has left the company vulnerable to aggressive pricing strategies by Intel. AMD's new pricing strategy is to "offer a superior product at a fair price." Announced pricing for the Athlon at launch (in quantities of 1,000 chips) are: 650MHz, $849; 600MHz, $615; 550MHz, $449; and 500MHz, $249. Intel's 600MHz Pentium III sells for $669 in 1,000-chip quantities.

AMD plans to extend its Athlon brand with Athlon Ultra processors, aimed at enterprise server and workstation markets; Athlon Professional, aimed the enterprise high performance PC market; and Athlon Select, aimed at the value PC market.

The Athlon will be produced initially at AMD's Fab 25 facility in Austin, Texas. A new plant, Fab 30, opens in Dresden, Germany, next year, and will double production capacity.

With the introduction of Athlon, AMD for the first time competes with Intel across the company's entire product line of processors. Cynics will give you a dozen reasons why AMD will fail in its attempt to compete, among them the company's history of production problems, or the fact that other competitors have fallen by the wayside, or the fact that AMD has lost money for three straight years. That shouldn't detract from the stunning accomplishment Dirk Meyer and his team of designers at AMD have achieved. For the moment, AMD stands at the top of the heap in microprocessor design, and deserves credit for a job well done.

 

 

W3C XML 1.0 Standard

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a meta-markup language that provides a format for describing structured data. This facilitates more precise declarations of content and more meaningful search results across multiple platforms. In addition, XML will enable a new generation of Web-based data viewing and manipulation applications.

Windows 2000 Active Directory will push network power and performance up to a new level. Office 2000 will automate and accelerate office workflow beyond what you've ever imagined.

Deploying Windows® 2000 Active Directory in Your Organization

Manage key aspects of this core component of Windows 2000 Server: domains, trees, forests, & organizational units; sites & replication; groups and group policy; security services; building an enterprise domain architecture; Domain Naming Services; and migrating your Windows NT® 4.0 domains to a Windows 2000 architecture.

Optimizing the Performance and Security of Your Web Site using Internet Information Server 4.0

Optimize your IIS 4.0 Internet site for high performance and security.  Namely, how to securely configure IIS using both integrated Windows NT security and SSL; techniques to more effectively manage multiple Internet sites on the same server, and how to monitor and tune IIS in order to deliver content to users with maximum efficiency.

Build a user customized team productivity solution using Microsoft Office Developer, BackOffice 4.5 and the Team Productivity Toolkit for BackOffice Server 4.5.  Specifically- create instantiated team work spaces, incorporate tracking applications with workflow, offline, and advanced security functionality using new features of Microsoft Office Developer, and integrate collaboration applications based on Exchange Server into this solution.

Leveraging Exchange Server and Outlook 2000 with Collaboration Solutions

Enhance your communication infrastructure from no-code voting buttons to a web-based Digital Dashboard.  This session will show new enhancements in Outlook 2000, how to set up Outlook Web Access to enable web-based collaboration, demonstrate new forms capabilities and public folder enhancements.  Tips, best practices and resources to get started on your workflow, contact management, information repository and other collaboration projects.  Recommended reading: "Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange" by Thomas Rizzo; Publisher: Microsoft Press.
Microsoft Windows DNA architecture and technologies, such as COM and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

Office 2000 and SQL Server 7.0 offer a breakthrough platform for building great custom solutions that combine the familiarity of Office with the reliability and scalability of SQL Server. Integration between Excel and Access 2000 with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. Excel 2000 includes features specifically designed to work seamlessly with SQL Server, empowering users to analyze data with unparalleled ease and performance. A rich array of wizards and tools in SQL Server 7.0 make it easy for anyone from a novice database administrator to an advanced programmer to easily and inexpensively build data warehousing and analysis applications. Access 2000 and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 provide the tools necessary to meet organizations' relational and multi-dimensional database needs.

7/21/99

Microsoft's Decision Support Services (DSS) is the new middle-tier server for OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP) that is shipping with SQL Server 7.0.
DDS Objective: To make data warehousing and OLAP technology faster, easier, and available to a wider audience.

Using ADO MD to build front-end analysis applications in Visual Basic or for the Web with Active Server Pages. Data manipulation, browsing metadata, send queries to the server, displaying results, drilling down, and taking advantage of advanced capabilities such as updating OLAP data. Build a high-volume, scalable, production OLAP Services environment. Moving metadata server to server; DSO programming for automated maintenance and tuning; managing slowly changing dimensions; handling incremental updates; working with heterogeneous data sources.

The Microsoft Outlook client works with Microsoft Exchange Server to help you:

- Access ALL your company information with the Digital Dashboard
- Improve communication with rock solid electronic mail
- Host meetings without walls with integrated scheduling real-time tools
- Make the Digital Nervous System a reality through electronic forms

5/5/99

Universal Data Access is for providing high-performance access to all types of information.  It provides easy-to-use, programmatic access to all types of data throughout the enterprise. Data driven client/server applications deployed over the Web or a LAN can use these components to easily integrate information from a variety of sources, both relational (Microsoft(R) SQL) and non-relational (Microsoft(R)Exchange, Microsoft(R)Word). Microsoft Universal Data Access consists of four components: ActiveX(tm) Data Objects (ADO 2.1), Remote Data Service (RDS), the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC, and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). Building and using an OLEDB Provider.

DSS is the new middle-tier server for OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP) that is shipping with Microsoft(R)SQL Server 7.0.  DSS's Objective: To make data warehousing and OLAP technology faster, easier, and available to a wider audience. DSS is a new, highly competitive, middle-tier server that allows users to perform sophisticated data analysis on large volumes of relational data with exceptional performance.  Designed to support online analytical processing (OLAP) applications, DSS is poised to become the essential product for a wide array of enterprise solutions, ranging from corporate reporting and analysis to data modeling and decision support.
     · Starting OLAP Manager
     · Setting up a database and data source
     · Creating shared & private dimensions
     · Building a cube
     · Designing aggregations and processing a cube
     · Difference between MOLAP, ROLAP, & HOLAP
     · Creating a partition for a cube
     · Creating and processing a virtual cube
     · Overview of Excel 2000 Pivot Tables
     · Publishing the Pivot Table to the web using Office Web Components


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Last modified: Saturday July 28, 2007.