TechNet Magazine January • February 2006

From the Editor:cc161032(v=msdn.10).md In this issue of TechNet Magazine, we are taking an in-depth look at two key products that our readers use at work every day: SQL Server and Exchange Server. Even the smallest companies need to store and track data, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an organization that doesn’t use messaging as a vital part of its daily business. Joshua Trupin	Toolbox:New Products for IT Professionals Overseer Network Monitor Greg Steen	Utility Spotlight:WMI Code Creator As a systems administrator you’re surely no stranger to Windows®Management Instrumentation (WMI), which gives you access to a wealth of management information and allows you to automate administrative tasks. Chris Scoville
SQL Q&A:Clusters, Isolation, and More Your queries answered by Microsoft IT professionals.Nancy Michell	How IT Works:POP3 Delivers In the last issue, I discussed SMTP, the most common protocol for sending e-mail across the Internet. Now I’d like to discuss the other Internet protocol that almost all mail clients support: POP3, which lets users access the e-mail on their mail server. R'ykandar Korra'ti	Blog Tales:Introduction to Excel XML With the soon-to-be released next version of Microsoft® Office (currently code-named "Office 12"), there will be new default file formats for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint®, and Excel®. These new formats, called the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats, will open up a whole new world to Office developers. Brian Jones
Hey, Scripting Guy!:Yes, Another One... Greetings, everyone. In one of their classic Halloween episodes, the Simpsons became rich and famous. Their faces were everywhere: on billboards, on T-shirts, you name it. Not too surprisingly the people of Springfield quickly tired of seeing the Simpsons everywhere they looked. The Microsoft Scripting Guys	Security Watch:Why You Should Disable the Administrator Account I’ve fielded a lot of questions recently about how to manage the built-in administrator account. I am referring specifically to BUILTIN\Administrator, also known as NT AUTHORITY\Administrator, the account with relative identifier (RID) 500. Jesper M. Johansson	Serving the Web:Configuring Application Pools in IIS 6.0 One of the best improvements in IIS 6. 0 over earlier versions was the introduction of Application Pools (often called App Pools for short). When IIS 6. 0 is running in Worker Process Isolation Mode (the default in a new installation of Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003), every IIS 6. Brett Hill
How IT Works:NTFS Permissions, Part 2 While security is essential in today’s network, unfortunately some administrators think they are secure if they just have a good firewall. Various studies suggest that up to 65 percent of all network compromises happen from inside the firewall.Richard Civil	Legal Briefs:Breach Notification Laws It’s almost impossible to read the news these days without running into a piece about computer security, compromised personal information, and bills written to protect consumer rights. Confidential information being inappropriately accessed and used is not a new problem. Don McGowan	Inside Microsoft.com:Making the Move to x64 For many years, one of the biggest challenges faced by the Microsoft. com Web site engineers was the virtual memory limitations of the 32-bit operating system. With hundreds of different applications running on the site, there was often contention for the 2GB address limit that the front-end Web servers had to deal with. Chris St. Amand
Field Notes:Don't Lose the Manual I have been mucking with computers since I was in the 5th grade. I built microcomputers on breadboards, wrote assembler programs, manually linked network drivers, assembled computers from piles of boxes—all those really old school techie things. Mark Scott	TechNet Update:The SQL Server Ecosystem It is fascinating to watch the ecosystem grow up around market-leading products. A walk through any computer hardware or software section highlights the fantastic variety of products built upon and for the Windows® platform.Graeme Bennett	Windows Confidential:The Resourcefulness of Annoying People Windows isn’t as open as it used to be. In the earlier, simpler days, Windows® was designed in a more trusting manner. Internal file formats were documented, and programs could manipulate the system in a wide variety of ways. Raymond Chen

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