Access 2007 Bug

Access 2007 breaks previous text import specs if you deal with dates (at least of format yyyymmdd) in the text file.

The specs imported these fields properly in Access 2003. In 2007, you get an error

"The specification XML failed to validate against the schema. There is an error in the following line of the XML document: ."

Those specs that have no date fields seem to import without problems.

I posted a question about this on the Microsoft newsgroups, which should be the right place to post. No answers.

Then I moved on to the Joel on Software forums, where I often have better luck. Albert D. Kallal, MVP for Access, was able to reproduce the issue and filed a bug report.

My guess is that this is not very high priority for a bug fix, since I don't see anyone else complaining about it on any forums. Is it really that unusual to import text files? I would have thought thousands of people would be affected by this...

Finally!

The Vista Disk Management tool has a parition resizing tool built in. It's about time. This is not a feature I've heard anyone talking about, but this is a great step as far as I'm concerned.

New machine

I guess I come from Jeff Atwood's school of thought on PC purchases. Dell has some pretty nice deals for most people, but if you want to know exactly what you're getting, build it yourself.

Here's the one I just built:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
ASUS P5B-E Motherboard
2GB OCZ Special Ops
PC2-6400 DIMM Dual Channel
HIS Radeon Isilence II X1650 XT
Antec Solo
Quiet Mini Tower
Antec Neo HE500 High Efficiency 500W
Seagate Barracuda
7200.10 320GB

I don't have the budget of Jeff Attwood or Scott Hanselman, but I think this machine will serve me well.

It's certainly a step up on the Duron 700 I've been using! The power supply fan died on that machine and for the last month, the case has been open with a big floor fan blowing into the case!

So here are my reasons for the parts. I wanted Core2 for obvious reasons. I just went with the cheapest one that isn't crippled in some way.

The ASUS motherboard and the OCZ RAM were based on the Anandtech midrange article.

The Radeon Card - no gamers in our house, I just wanted something that will give a decent Aero experience. I chose the HIS ISilence card because it's passivly cooled, and I wanted a quiet machine.

Likewise the Antec case and power supply. These are relatively quiet parts. The high efficiency power supply was important to me - we're treehuggers in this house.

The Barracuda came from the Anandtech article. I really wanted a Raptor after reading Jeff's article, but I was trying to do this on the cheap. Might be a nice upgrade someday.

I get a Vista score (Windows Experience Index) of 5.0, limited by the processor. The next lowest score is 5.5, for gaming graphics.

By the way, Jeff's article generated a lot of comments about wasting time building machines instead of software. But if you order your parts from the right place, they will put it together for you and test everything. That saved me a few hours of headaches.

GMail issues

GMail has been giving me this error for a couple of weeks now:

Oops... the system was unable to perform your operation (error code 717).
Please try again in a few seconds.

I have no idea how many people this is affecting, but I am not the only one.

The problem occurs after I log in, when I try to open an email. Usually the problem really does last only a few seconds, but this is no consolation because it happens all the time.

Guess 'Beta' is the excuse?

SQL Server ‘Katmai’ testing to begin in June

Mary Jo Foley tells us a bit about the next release of SQL Server. Not much here, but enough to let us know this thing isn't right around the corner. And that's fine with me, I've got too many new technologies to figure out as it is.

SQL debugger

Paul Neilson posts about the missing debugger in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). The comments here are quite informative, with Euan Garden giving us the inside scoop on why it was omitted. Hugo Kornelis points out the place to send Microsoft feedback on the issue.

Nobody seems to be jumping on Paul's other complaint, which is that the Team System for Database Professionals Product is not integrated with SSMS. For those who don't know, SSMS is new with SQL Server 2005, and is based on Visual Studio. So at least to those of us outside Microsoft, it would seem the Database Professionals toolset should be available to the environment that 'Database Professionals' actually use.