I've been doing some security work in Windows 2008 recently for a client, one feature I've really come to like in IIS 7 is Request Filtering.

You can configure Request Filtering at the server wide level, and then override or enhance the filtering at a site / application level.

As you may know on SQL Server a varchar column can hold up to 8000 characters (each row can hold up to 8K, so it depends on the size of other columns), when you need to store more it is common to use the text or ntext datatypes.

I have been writing a lot of T-SQL Scripts for SQL Server for a client to migrate to a new database schema. Whenever I get deeply involved in something like that I find that it is handy to create a cheatsheet for all of the things you have to lookup in the docs.

Have you ever tried to find a DateFormat or date_format function in SQL Server? Chances are you probably ended up concatenating a bunch of DatePart strings to get the format you are looking for.

Have you ever noticed that IIS tends to brand every HTTP response with the header X-Powered-By: ASP.NET - it will do this even if your site is not powered by ASP.

Please add a button to make a column an identity.

You have a button to set as primary key, why do we have to scroll down through 3/4 of the properties, click the plus under "Identity", and then choose "Yes" for such a common operation?

Thank You

Error handling in SQL Server T-SQL scripts is not always the most graceful thing to deal with. With the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 you can now use TRY / CATCH statements.

You may be surprised to learn that Microsoft Internet Explorer has supported a a security feature called HttpOnly cookies since IE 6 SP1.

Firefox 2.0.0.5, which was released just the other day, now supports it.

Just in case you have missed it Microsoft is giving you $200 when you signup and spend $5 on Microsoft AdCenter.

There is some fine print to be aware of. The $200 credit is only good for 90 days, valid in the US only, and you must sign up by Jan 15 07.

I have given up hope for installing SQL Server 2005 Express on my computer. When I run the installer I get this message:

SQL Server 2005 Beta 3 Setup has detected incompatible beta components from Visual Studio or SQL Server.

Microsoft is Expanding their SQL Server 2005 Product Line, with the introduction of SQL Server Workgroup Edition. These new price points are no doubt in response to open source database competitors such as MySQL and PostgreSQL.