A number of years ago, I worked for a company that was developing internal applications with SQL Server 2000. We didn't have any real database administrators. I was given that responsibility, but I was really a developer, one of many in fact. The problem with this arrangement was that all the developers had high-level rights to SQL Server. Each one could make whatever changes seemed appropriate to him at the time, and they could do this without consulting me. This often resulted in data incompatibilities that caused a bit of downtime, but lots of irritation. One day, however, my frustration reached a peak when some developer accidentally deleted a table that was used by a large number of applications.

SugarCRM Inc., the world's leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the beta release of Sugar 4.5, the fastest- growing CRM solution in the market today. Sugar 4.5 introduces powerful new functionality such as personalized views, internationalization and support for Microsoft Windows Server products to meet the increasing global demand for its solutions.

The fight against spam just got easier today for ISPs, Web Hosts, Universities and anyone who manages multiple domains. Roaring Penguin Software Inc., makers of the acclaimed CanIt-PRO anti-spam solution, announced the release of CanIt-Domain-PRO an anti-spam solution designed specifically for organizations managing multiple domains.

Fiorano Software, provider of SOA platform and enterprise middleware solutions, announced the release of a native, fully-managed .NET runtime for its Enterprise Service Bus and SOA platforms. With this release, Fiorano becomes the only ESB to provide native support for C, C++, Java and all languages in the .NET framework, including C# and Visual Basic among others.

'Unified communications (UC) ? the term we use to describe the convergence of all forms of business communications into a single, intelligent and intuitive experience ? is a long-term initiative for Microsoft that will involve waves of new products, services and product updates over time,' said Jeff Raikes, President of the Microsoft Business Division. 'The market for unified communications is just beginning to emerge and we think it?s a big opportunity, upwards of $40 billion, where software will be a key driver.'

Winternals was established in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, who are recognized industry leaders in the areas of operating system design and architecture. Russinovich will join the Microsoft Platforms & Services Division as a technical fellow, working with numerous technology teams across Microsoft, and Cogswell will join the Windows Component Platform Team in the role of software architect.

EC antitrust chief Neelie Kroes suggested Wednesday that making Vista comply with the EC 2004 antitrust decisions was one of the reasons why Microsoft pushed Vista's launch into 2007. Apparently Microsoft is making some changes based on a letter Kroes sent Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about Vista back in March.

Microsoft expects a complete version of the 'bi-directional' Word translator by the end of the year, with add-ins for Excel and PowerPoint next year sometime. The 'free downloadable add-in' will cover the recently - and yet again - delayed Office 2007, which will also support other formats like PDF and the XML Paper Specification, letting Microsoft position it as otherwise interoperable.

'The Atlas features of ASP.NET are not just another AJAX script library for writing client-centric Web applications,' writes Matt Gibbs in the current issue of MSDN Magazine Online. 'Atlas builds on the .NET Framework 2.0 and adds support for better utilizing the capabilities of client-side JavaScript and the XMLHttpRequest object.'

'Group 1 is a leader in geocoding and high-definition data solutions, and we're very excited about this announcement to fully leverage the Microsoft .NET technology,' said Stephen Lawler, general manager, Microsoft Virtual Earth Business Unit. 'By working together with Group 1, Microsoft will be able to enhance the geocoding performance of Windows Live Local and other applications built on the Virtual Earth platform.'

'I could go through the history of how we got here; just count on it, we will never have this kind of gap again. But what we have is absolutely a phenomenal set of products, and frankly really together the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts.'

Microsoft has announced plans to roll out Office Live internationally and release a new Microsoft Office Live Developer Guide, which supports partners in extending the Microsoft Office Live platform. Microsoft Office Live, currently available in beta form in the United States with over 100,000 subscribers, will be released as a beta later this year in four additional countries: France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference conference includes three days of keynote presentations by Microsoft executives and industry experts, product- and service-specific sessions, and opportunities for structured and unstructured networking with other Microsoft partners and Microsoft team members. There are approximately 7,000 partners in attendance. The event was kicked off by Allison Watson, corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft, who introduced Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer. Ballmer's keynote highlighted how partners are a critical link in delivering on Microsoft's vision for building people-ready businesses and described new partner opportunities across a range of Microsoft products planned for the coming year.

Microsoft, as previously announed and as expected, has ended its support of Windows 98. The company had tried to do this two years ago, but the apparent threat from Linux caused it to rethink its original intentions. Now that Win 98 support is officially gone, will it drive anyone new to Linux?

Microsoft's current plan was to begin releasing Windows Vista to business customers in November, with a general release scheduled for January. Bill Gates was recently quoted as saying there's an 80 percent chance this will happen, and Steve Ballmer has said there won't be similar delays of new products in the future.

SBS 2003 R2 serves as a key foundation with which partners have the opportunity to attract new customers and deepen existing customer relationships by providing an integrated, affordable platform on which to build a profitable business, Microsoft says. Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition will have an estimated retail price of $599, and Premium Edition will be priced at $1,299 ERP, more than a 13 percent price reduction compared with Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition.

Microsoft Business Solutions is bolstering the offerings partners can provide to customers with two new products: Dynamics AX 4.0, launched last month at Tech-Ed 2006, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live, which is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2007 in North America.

BlueWhale's Beta Program has been designed to solicit user feedback on the features and functionality of BlueWhaleCRM. The BETA of BlueWhaleCRM is for the upcoming release of BlueWhaleCRM 3.0.

A lawsuit filed in a U.S. District Court in Seattle by a Los Angeles resident allges that Microsoft has not adequately disclosed details of its WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) feature when it was delivered to PC users through the company's Automatic Update system.

Microsoft and Motorola have announced a multiyear joint marketing and development alliance to deliver unified communications solutions using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 across Motorola mobile devices and network hardware. The collaboration is intended to enable enterprise customers to seamlessly connect and share information in real time regardless of location, network or device.

IBM and Thomas Cook, a travel group, have signed a contract to develop a new IT platform. In terms of the agreement, IBM business consultants will provide industry expertise and integration knowledge to help Thomas Cook become more efficient, more flexible and respond faster to market demands.

Google will be bringing the Summer of Code (SOC) back this year. College students from around the world will be paid $4,500 by Google to work on Open Source projects, and Mono and DotGNU will be participating again, as will the WINE project (a Mono bridge is one option for a WINE project proposal), OpenOffice.org, GNOME, Beagle, and my favorite, the Mars Space Flight Facility (I spent my summer on Mars!) will also be mentoring projects (Google funds students to work on all the projects).

Microsoft has announced a try it before you buy it program allowing people to take an online test-drive of the 2007 Microsoft Office system release. With more than 2.5 million people already using the 2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 2 since its release last month, it is proving to be the most popular beta version of Office to date. This new online test-drive is designed to help people explore the benefits and enhancements of the 2007 release through their own Web browser without having to download or install Beta 2.

Microsoft has released an updated WGA Notifications package. With this update, the pilot phase of WGA Notifications is complete, and the program will continue with a phased roll-out to Windows XP users worldwide. All English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese users of Windows XP running Automatic Updates will soon be offered an updated package with a new version of WGA Notifications, as per the company.

Today at the Open Source Business Conference in London, Microsoft has unveiled CodePlex, an online collaborative software development portal that is also a vehicle for sharing source code. Microsoft CodePlex is already home to more than 30 collaborative development efforts, including open source software projects that reflect the open community-building spirit of Microsoft?s Shared Source Initiative.

HP has introduced the fastest blade system solution for high-performance computing, which will be on display at this week's International Supercomputing Conference. The HP BladeSystem c-Class enclosure features the world's fastest midplane at 5 terabytes per second of aggregate throughput and the first midplane to support 4X DDR InfiniBand, the industry's fastest blade server interconnect, which delivers up to 20 gigabytes per second bandwidth in each direction.

IBM has announced that it will extend the reach of its upcoming Lotus Sametime 7.5 collaboration platform -- the instant messaging software for enterprise customers -- by providing integration with Microsoft Outlook, Office and SharePoint applications. In addition, Sametime 7.5 will offer direct connectivity to mobile devices from RIM and Nokia, as well as Microsoft Windows Mobile devices.

In application development, one should consider an effective way of creating a standard rule for coding and debugging. For all the information provided in the application code, there's a better way for developers to track down a problem and find a solution.

There are many ways to approach the presentation of a major upgrade to a software platform and how to address its various audiences. O'Reilly has decided that to get seasoned ASP.NET developers up to speed, it has added three new books to its Developer's Notebook series. The idea behind the series is to let existing developers 'look over the super coder's shoulder' and capture this concept on paper. The notebooks are example-driven, aimed at developers, and enjoyable to work through. Each chapter is organized around a specific task with examples reinforcing these new ideas.

Microsoft and HP have announced a joint effort focused on accelerating the transformation of telephony, audio-, video- and web conferencing, and instant messaging into a single unified communications platform. Under this initiative, highlighted at a strategy event in San Francisco, HP will provide enterprise servers and systems integration services for new and enhanced products within Microsoft?s unified communications platform, including Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, Microsoft Office RoundTable, Communicator phone experience and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division has unveiled the company's vision, technology road map and partner framework for unified communications at a strategy event in San Francisco. Microsoft's approach to unified communications will break down today's silos of e-mail, instant messaging, mobile and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephony, and audio-, video- and webconferencing. Through software, Microsoft and its partners will put people at the center of communications through a single identity across all modes and integrate communication into people's everyday work processes, including the widely used Microsoft Office system and third-party software applications.

On the eve of the first anniversary of Small Business Specialist Community (SBSC), there are 7,000 Microsoft partners worldwide enrolled in SBSC with more than 29,000 who have started the enrollment process making it one of the most popular offerings in the Microsoft Partner Program.

This book is divided into three parts. The first part, 'Building an ASP.NET Page,' covers basic Web page development. The second part, 'Adding Data in an ASP.NET Site,' covers data in ASP.NET, including data providers, containers, data binding, grids, and viewing data. The third part, 'ASP.NET Infrastructure,' covers the HTTP request context, state management, caching, and security.

'Microsoft will release fiscal year 2006 fourth-quarter financial results after the close of the stock market on Thursday, July 20, 2006. A live webcast of the earnings conference call will be made available at 2:30 p.m. PDT on the Microsoft Investor Relations Web site at htt p://www.microsoft.com/msf t,' the company says.

The Microsoft Windows Mobile for Automotive platform was named Best Telematics Solution at the Telematics Detroit 2006 conference and exhibition, held recently in Detroit, Microsoft has confirmed. Windows Mobile for Automotive defines the state of the art in automotive-grade operating system software for in-car communications and infotainment solutions.

Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and IBM have teamed up to announce that a new mark was achieved on the world's fastest supercomputer named BlueGene/L (BG/L). This world record for a scientific application was set by achieving a sustained performance of 207.3 trillion floating-point operations per second (teraFLOPS) on the 'Qbox' computer code for conducting materials science simulations critical to national security.

Microsoft has showcased the community technology preview (CTP) of a new Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create robotic applications for a wide variety of computing platforms at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006. In addition, early adopter companies, universities and research institutes offered demos and provided support for the new Microsoft Robotics Studio development platform.

Microsoft has showcased its advanced modeling and trading platforms, the Microsoft Office Excel Services/Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 solution at SIA (Securities Industry Association) Technology Management Conference & Exhibit. Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server built upon a Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 high-performance computing cluster.

Microsoft has announced that Valle del Sol, a Phoenix-based behavioral health and social services agency, has selected Microsoft Dynamics GP as the technology of choice for its new IT solution. The company, which employs more than 200 people in multiple locations, will roll out Microsoft Dynamics GP to streamline its overall business processes, enhance business intelligence and help meet strict governmental reporting requirements.

Sooner or later you'll probably find it useful to be able to create and manipulate combinations programmatically. By far the most useful kinds of combinations are string combinations. A string combination of order (n, k) is a subset of k strings chosen from a set of n strings, where order doesn't matter.