So, a couple of weeks ago I decided to post my first bug to Microsoft Connect, an issue which I had discovered in SQL Server 2012 RC0.  Because this process took me more time than I’d expected, I‘m now blogging about my experience.

The hardest part about the whole experience was finding the actual page that needs to be used to enter and submit the content.

Submitting Content To Microsoft Connect

Are you in for a ride on the Connect site?  Here we go!

Step 1: Search For Your Product on The Connect Home Page

On the Home page, enter a search term with which you can locate your favorite product.  If you’re not signed in yet, do that first.

Step 2: Click To Participate

Once the search engine has produced the output, locate your favorite product and click the Participate action next to it.

Step 3: Submit Product Feedback

After clicking Participate, the following overwhelming screen appears.  The link that you’re looking for is called Submit Product Feedback.

Step 4: The Feedback Center

After clicking Submit Product Feedback, you end up at the Feedback Center.

Looking at the screen above, you’d think that the yellow Submit Feedback button can be used to open the page where you’d need to enter the bug details.  Well, it doesn’t…

You need to search for your issue first, to ensure it doesn’t exist already.

Step 5: The Submit Feedback Button Has Been Found, Eureka!

After you’ve performed the search for your issue, you get to the following page above.  Finally, on that page you can click a real Submit Feedback button that will bring you to the Select Feedback Form page.

Step 6: Select Your Feedback Form Of Choice

On the Select Feedback Form page, select SQL Server Bug Form to file a SQL Server issue, or select SQL Server Suggestion Form to enter a suggestion.

Step 7: Fill Out The Textboxes

Finally, the page we’ve been trying to locate when we started the adventure, quest accomplished!  With this new knowledge, we can now skip directly to step 6 through the following link: Select Feedback Form

Disclaimer: please ensure that you’re not creating duplicate bugs or suggestions, but use whatever search engine your prefer to achieve that goal!

So, here’s my New Year’s present to all of you!  And remember: have fun!

Valentino.

References

Microsoft Connect

Feedback Center

Select Feedback Form

For starters, I’ve been enjoying some holidays in the south of France.  But that wasn’t all.  This year the “holidays” were a bit different than usual as I spent them with a broken shoulder. No driving, no biking, one-handed typing, ….

That broken shoulder, more precisely the tuberculum majus, was the result of a bad crash during a mountain bike tour in Stavelot about a month ago.  Sixty kilometers of rocks, mud, roots, trees, …, all no issue.  Then at the end there was some asphalt.  I wanted to slow down a little because I didn’t trust the surface but my disc brakes did their work a bit too well.  Rear wheel locked, started slipping, well, let’s just say that asphalt is not my favorite substance to ride on :/

At this moment my shoulder is still hurting with certain movements, but the break is practically gone!  I’m also slowly starting to pick up the stuff that I couldn’t do anymore, such as typing.

What else am I up to?  Well, the installation procedure of Denali CTP3 is currently running in my virtual environment, gives me something to play with in the coming weeks…  Really interested in getting a peek at the new data quality functionality!

Besides playing around with Denali, I’ve got several screens of emails to go through. If you’ve tried to contact me and I haven’t gotten back yet: sorry about that, a reply will be coming soon!  How soon will depend on my ISP though.  Thanks to their wonderful upgrade of my modem, I’ve been out of internet/phone/digital TV for over three weeks now!  What a service huh.  Tomorrow one of their technicians is going to come over again, and I tell you, I will not unlock the front door before he gets this fixed!

So, I’m back!

Now, let’s see if I can get a connection to my neighbor’s router to get this published.  (Yes, he knows, I’ve kindly asked permission.)

Addendum: I couldn’t get connected to my neighbor’s router, so the “tomorrow” in the earlier paragraph is now “today”.  Which means my internet connection is operational again, woohoo!  The issue?  Well, apparently the previous technician wasn’t aware that the splitter hanging on my wall was an old model, which does not support the range needed for the new modem…  Takes them almost four weeks to figure that out, oh boy.  I don’t think I’ve ever worked on an issue that took me more than a couple of hours to figure out what was going wrong.

Anyway, have fun!

Valentino.

Ordina is hiring talented people!  Get a new challenge and a free iPad on top of it, or a travel cheque worth 500 euro. What more do you want??  Note that the extra gift is only valid until February 15.

If you decide to send your resume and you end up with a new contract, don’t forget to post a comment here!  Alternatively, you can also comment as you read it now, but I don’t think that you want your current employer to know that you’re on the lookout.

Have fun, and good luck!

Resolutions

Resolution #1

I will continue to write articles.  Looking at my statistics and the number of comments, I know that the articles are being appreciated.  Which is good to know because they take quite some time to write.

It’s been a while since I’ve written one, because I’ve been occupied on other tasks.  Such as the following.  I’m cooperating in the creation of a book on Master Data Services, as Technical Reviewer.  If you’re interested in that subject, keep an eye on this blog.  Once it’s published I’ll make a post about it!

To finish this resolution, here are the most popular articles in my Top 10 of 2010.  At number one, still an article that I wrote back in 2008: Calling a web service from SQL Server 2005.  I have a feeling that this will be different next year, because two other posts have pushed it to the third spot when looking at “last month” statistics.

A lot of people seem to struggle with the Windows Authentication in IIS 7.5, because that one is at number two.

At number three finally the first real article written in 2010: Retrieving Data From Excel.

Can you guess what posts are pushing the web services article from its number one position?

Other posts that I have in the top 10 are my script to list all SSIS packages deployed on the Integration Server, my post about SSRS 2008 and SSL, and my article showing some Pie Chart Techniques.

Resolution #2

Erm, wasn’t the first one enough?  Well, besides writing articles and shorter blog posts I’ll also keep helping you guys out on the online forums, I will keep posting answers to every question that I get on my blog, and I will even keep answering the occasional personal email that I receive.

Resolution #3

Last but not least: as a Core Member of the Belgian SQL Server User Group, I’ll keep participating in the organization of great events, such as SQL Server Day!

Looking Forward To

SQL Server 2011

I’m definitely looking forward to the next release of SQL Server, currently known as Denali!

Integration Services has gotten some nice improvements to make the developer’s life easier.  Finally CTRL-Z actually does something!!  If you weren’t aware yet, you can already try this out by downloading the first CTP.

What I’m also quite interested in is known as Apollo, a column-based query accelerator.  I’m curious to see if the queries will perform ten times faster, as claimed.

What else?  Well, the BI Semantic Model (BISM) seems to be quite promising as well.  The SSAS team has used the Vertipaq technology, which you may already have heard of when reading about PowerPivot, and integrated it into a new engine for SSAS databases.  So in 2011 you can actually install two different instances of SSAS: one running in the old OLAP mode, and one running in BISM mode.  The OLAP engine still receives MDX queries, and the new server understands DAX!

And the last feature to which I’m looking forward to is Data Quality Services!  I’m quite sure that it will be useful in the context of loading data warehouses.

Conclusion

Happy New Year to all of you out there!!!

References

Top 9 New Features of SQL Server "Denali"

Analysis Services – Roadmap for SQL Server “Denali” and Beyond

The Chores

Let’s start with the though part: the household chores.   These are not really my favorite occupation but sometimes they just need to get done.

Bookshelves

One of the larger tasks at home was mounting bookshelves against the walls in our children’s bedrooms, six in total.  To get a  bookshelf mounted, I first needed to mount a piece of iron on the wall.  This required drilling four holes in the wall, per shelf.  The largest challenge was hanging three bookshelves under each other, all straight and at a similar distance from the wall and each other.  As it just requires math and a spirit level (djeez, what a name, in Dutch it’s just called waterpas, spirits are not involved , that went quite okay using my regular electrical drill and its hammer function.

To finish off I had to shove the wooden shelf over the mounted iron and fix it using two screws that were part of the package.  And that’s were it went wrong, only slightly, just one screw has been messed up, but wrong it went.  Here’s the evidence:

So, what happened?  Well, lazy as I am, I usually use the battery-powered drill shown above to put screws were they need to go.  However, the iron screws that came part of the package were not up to the power of that drill.  This resulted in a total mess for the first screw (indicated as BAD).  The head is totally messed up which means I can’t even get it out of there without possibly damaging the shelf.  So it’ll just have to stay like that.  The remaining eleven screws were fixed using my manual screwdriver, with a perfect result.

The morale of the story here is that it’s important to use the right tools for the job.  The more experience you’ve got in a particular task, the better your initial choice will be.  Just like with SQL Server, you need to think about what needs to get done and then select the tool to do it.  You need to quickly add a couple of fields to a development database?  Hmm, what tool would you use?  sqlcmd.exe?  Or the Management Studio?  Both would do the job and probably with the same result, but which one would be the fastest for you?  I would go for the SSMS, as I usually already have it running anyway.

Enough about those chores, let’s get to the fun part.

The Fun

Holidays also mean having fun with the kids.

Theme Park

One of our yearly daytrips is a visit to the Efteling, a theme park in The Netherlands.  I’m always looking forward to seeing (and trying) the new attractions.  This year the newest attraction is called Joris en de Draak (George and the Dragon).  It’s a wooden rollercoaster with two trains running simultaneously on two separate tracks.  The blue one represents Water and the Red one is Fire.  And they’re having a battle.  The winning train arrives first.

I had to try out this attraction and was able to convince our oldest daughter – six years old – to come with me.  Luckily she was tall enough to be allowed on the attraction, but only just.  We had to use the carts in the middle part and she had to be accompanied by an adult – no problems there, I’m okay with the middle part

I let my daughter choose the color, and thus we went for blue.  Once the train started, I must admit that I was a bit shocked by its speed.  According to Wikipedia its top speed is 75 km/h (46.6 Mph).  Obviously speed is not the whole story here.  After the first couple of turns, there’s a huge drop down which results in the funny feeling in the tummy (not sure what it’s called) due to the G-force.  And that’s not the only time that G-forces are playing with you.  I can’t remember any other rollercoaster in which the experience was similar.  Again according to Wikipedia, the largest G-force exercised in this attraction is 3G.

If you’re a bit afraid of heights – the coaster is 25 meters high – don’t worry about it.  This thing goes so fast that you won’t have time to even think about how high it goes, plus you’re fixed really tight in your seat.

In total its length is 810 meters (per track) and the ride lasts for two minutes.  It can process 1700 people per hour.

Later the same day, me and my daughter went for another ride, and she again chose blue.  Blue lost the battle this time, and the first time as well.  Ow, and here’s the attraction’s official site.

So, if you have the chance to visit the Efteling, try out this new rollercoaster, the after-effect is just great

Have fun!

Valentino.

In the banner I see a man looking out of a window at a grey, dull world.  Based on that info, here’s my caption title:

SQL Server – Color Your Day!

And here’s another one:

Waiting for that report to finish?  Hire A DBA!

See this post on his blog for more info.

PS: first post from Windows 7 64-bit

Have fun!

first.  Then it will become clear why this post is not related to SQL Server or even IT

Let me tell you this little story about Luke, a bloke living down the street not far from the city center.  Well, it was a Friday night and he was going to the pub, just like he usually does on Friday nights.  It’s his favorite pub, the LNCP, and he has a habit of meeting his mates there.  The LNCP, some people say it stands for the Live Nude Cats Pub because that’s what they’ve seen there after they’d had several drinks too many.  Or at least, that’s what they think and claim to have seen.  Luke wouldn’t know and he doesn’t mind, he’s allergic to cats anyway, nude or not!

LNCP, the real meaning is Local Natural Coffee Pub, which is a beverage that you can get there 24/7.  It’s known for its high level of several substances, including caffeine obviously. But also some other rather undefined ingredients.  The locals have come to appreciate this beverage – just like Luke – and especially in the weekend they consume quite a lot of it.  The pub owner doesn’t want to give away her secret, no one knows how this magical drink is created.  In fact, all that she’s told them about it so far is that the brewing process is done by simply using some magical tool, library or bong.  Which isn’t of much use to those who’ve tried to reproduce it at home.  They’ve searched all local libraries for books containing its formula, nothing.  They’ve asked around if there were any wizards who knew of magical tools that could produce such a drink, no result either.  And let’s not mention the bong – that’s what they’d use after yet another unsuccessful search to temporarily forget about the fact that once again they hadn’t succeeded.

Anyway, Carabella – which is the pub owner’s name – she was quite good-looking.  (Isn’t that always the case with female pub owners in a fantasy story?)  And Luke and his mates, as they were regular customers, they knew her quite well.  And it happened to be that on this Friday night she showed them a special little hidden door at the back of her pub.  She told them, if you drink three of my magical LNCs in less than five minutes time and then walk (or better, crawl, as the door was quite low) through this door, you’ll experience the most magical moment in your life!

So the guys – they didn’t have any other plans that night and they were quite curious after what she’d told them – they accepted the offer.  They went through the door and came in a sort of stable.  Looked a bit like a horse stable, only, it was different.  They didn’t really know why, figured it was probably just some magic playing around with them.  Then suddenly a little white horse came out from under the hay.  It spoke to Luke!  The guys first wondered about what was happening and then they saw: the pony had wings, it was a Pegasus!  And as everyone knows, Pegasus can communicate with humans.

The Pegasus said to Luke:

Could I assist you in any way?

Luke thought about it for a while but answered negatively.  Although they are strong creatures, he wouldn’t know why he would need assistance from a Pegasus.  But the little pony insisted and said:

Are you sure?

But yeah, Luke was sure.

One of his mates shouted out that there was a door at the other end of the stable and suggested they should go and have a look.

Behind this door there was a magical landscape: a huge valley filled with large fruit trees singing all kinds of song, birds in many colors looking like rainbows all around, animals in all kinds of shapes.  But there’s one problem.  A huge problem.  They are located at the top of a very steep mountain!  When Luke will look out the door the first time, he will appreciate the gorgeous landscape but as soon as he looks down he’s going to be very sad about the pony, or better, about the fact that he refused the pony’s help!  Because after all – as everyone knows – Pegasus can fly, even the small ones!

Then Luke woke up, all sweaty and reeking of something, he didn’t immediately know what it was.  When he looked down he noticed that he was in the middle of some horse dung in a stable he didn’t recognize.  He heard something move behind his back and turned around to face a small horse.  He vaguely seemed to know this animal.  Suddenly it spoke to him:

As I’ve started, so I’ll finish!  Would you require my help?

Luke thought about it for a moment and replied:

Sure, I’ll take your help.

Then the horse said:

Well done young Skywalker!  Just ask George “Let’s Have Padme Die Of A Broken Heart Instead Of Anakin Crushing Her To Death” Lucas what on earth LNCP stands for next time you see him.

And the little white horse took off its mask, or better, her mask.  Luke didn’t know what was going on but heard her say:

Shall we have a shower?  You really need to get rid of that smell!

Luke didn’t need to think twice this time!

Morale to the story: any man given a second chance should think twice about it before answering!

In total I have now six articles published and four of them are EE Approved.  What does that mean?

EE-Approved is a designation awarded by the Page Editors to show that your Article is of superior quality: either it discusses something new, or provides a unique and original solution to a particularly interesting problem. If your article is selected as EE-Approved, you will receive 1,500 points.

When I published my first article back in September, getting an article EE Approved earned me 1,500 additional points on top of the 500 for getting it published.  This was recently changed to 4,000.  Which I really appreciate and I think was needed to make this a success.  When comparing the effort that goes into writing a good article with the effort to decently answer a 500 points question I think it is still not comparable.  A question can earn me 2,000 points (when the answer gets A-graded, most of my answers do) in just a couple of minutes – which doesn’t mean that all questions are solved this easily,  believe me.  But an article always takes several hours to write and publish.  Just to give you an idea: for my last article it took me one hour just to get it converted from my version in Live Writer to the tagged format expected by the “Write a new article” feature.  But then again, the minimum length requirements for an article is 300 words while my last article counted close to 2,500 words.

What should I conclude from the above paragraph?  That I should learn to make my articles shorter?  Or that Article Points and Expert Points received by answering questions are not comparable?  Well, probably both.  What I should learn is to split articles up when possible, but I will still keep mentioning the necessary details which in my opinion increases the quality indicator

Anyway, it seems that I’ve been doing a good job because this is what the situation looked like on November 23, 2009.  Following screenshots were taken while filtering on Microsoft articles.

Not only did my articles control the Top 3 of most popular Microsoft articles,  they were also at position nine and ten, so in total I had five of my articles in the Top 10.

(The filter on Microsoft articles is highlighted in green btw.)

Highlighted on the left you can see one of my articles being featured.  This is a result of it being EE Approved.

As the next two screenshots show, it wasn’t the only one.

And here’s number three:

On that same page we can also see the Top 25 of Microsoft Contributors.  I was at position 7 with almost 15,000 points.  (Today I am at position 6, with about 20,000 points.)

So, why am I doing this?  Let’s see, I have several reasons:

• I hope people will find them useful, which means I have been able to teach them something
• It helps to improve my writing skills
• It encourages me to explore details about certain topics that I wouldn’t need to explore otherwise
• It brings me into contact with interesting people
• I found out that writing can actually be a fun thing to do!
• Points == T-shirts

Right, so I started this post by thanking someone, let’s finish it the way it started.

I’d like to thank mark_wills for his enthusiasm and support.  He’s the Page Editor that has reviewed my articles and selected several for the EE Approved status (in cooperation with mwvisa1 I believe).  Just to make sure I haven’t missed anyone, I’d like to say thanks to all Page Editors that have approved my articles!

If you’d like to have a look at the articles, they are mentioned in my profile at Experts Exchange.  While you’re at it, if you like them I wouldn’t mind if you clicked that little YES button

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some articles to write.  (In an attempt to control the Top 5 – erm, yeah right – just kidding of course.)

Happy reading!

Valentino.

Ow, I like Numb3rs btw.  I guess that’s one of the prerequisites to be a professional in the Business Intelligence zone of expertise.

Some General Statistics

Let’s start off with this interesting graph:

What the chart shows is the number of visitors for a whole year, starting at nothing and nicely going up to about 100 per day.  In case you’re wondering why the drawing looks like an irregular sine graph, every cycle represents one week with the lowest parts being the weekend.  Which means that my blog is not as popular during off-time periods as it is during working hours.  Looking at its content that’s normal and acceptable.

Taking a more detailed look, the first few months are good for the lowest amounts of visitors.  Which is logical of course as my blog was built up from scratch.  In 2008 a peak day was 31 visits on November 26.  After New Year’s day, visits started increasing.  This is explained by the fact that the most popular article until now was posted on November 11 (more on that later) and that more and more posts are being added every month.  Some other peak moments were February 23 counting 54 visits, May 28 having 80 visits and July 21 with 108 visits, currently the record!

Some more general numbers

Articles: 41 (well, 42 after I post this one, what a coincidence )

Comments: 36

Visits (whole year): 8,898

Unique visitors (whole year): 7,322

Pageviews (whole year): 10,931

Highest number of visits in one day: 108

Countries where visits came from: 118

The Visitors

Following is some information about you, the visitor.

Geography

Where are you coming from?

Most visitors, 35% to be precise, came from the US.  Here’s the top 5:

Belgium is at second place with almost 10%.  In most cases this would be weird for such a small country but as I’m Belgian it is quite normal and just a matter of social connections.

Browser, Operating System and screen

What are you using to read my blog?

The most popular browser is Internet Explorer, with almost 62%.  Firefox is second with 31%, followed by Chrome with 5%.

Taking a closer look at browser versions for Internet Explorer we see that 7.0 is the most popular with 61%, followed by 6.0 at 22% and 8.0 at 17%.

For Firefox this statistic is a bit harder to read.  Let’s just say 3.0 is the more popular one when looking at the whole past year.  Here are some details in graphic form:

When looking at the figures of last month we see that FF 3.5 was picked up quite well with 3.5 good for 19% and 3.5.1 counting 17%.

As for operating system the numbers are not very challenging: 98.45% is using Windows, followed by Macintosh with 1% and Linux with 0.5%.  Apparently my blog had 2 visits from an iPhone as well.

Now, a closer look into what version of Windows is being used.  Almost 70% uses XP, followed by Vista with 22%.  Windows 7 is not mentioned at all although I’ve used it to visit my blog.  Hmm, I wonder what happens with pre-release versions of OSes in Google Analytics…

The resolution at which you’re reading my blog is very diverse, 102 different screen resolution settings were used in this one year of visits.  The most popular are these:

The lowest one in this list would be 1024×768.  The template that my blog currently uses is 720 pixels wide.  I’ve been wanting to make the detail part a bit wider, this now confirms that I can do that without disturbing too many users.  Now it’s just a matter of finding some spare time

Traffic Sources and keywords

How do you get on my blog?

The source that gives me the most visitors is Google with 72%, so no contest here either.  10% of you is going directly to my blog, without any search engine and another 10% is reaching my blog through blog.n-technologies.be, which is Ordina’s blog where some of my posts are being duplicated.

Bing is at position 6 with 0.86% but this number is not fair because Bing didn’t exist when my blog started.  If we look at the statistics of last month we see Bing at the fourth position with 3%.  Although still no competition for Google, it’s the second search engine in the list.  I’m interested to see how this will evolve.  Only time can tell

Concerning the keywords used to find my blog the story is not that easy.  In total 5,120 different key phrases have been used during this past year.  Looking at the global list does not tell me that much except that “kb948109” is the most popular one with 1.18%, obviously leading to the article about this particular KB.

The Content

What are you reading the most?

This is as far as I’m concerned the more interesting part because it tells me what articles are the most popular and thus gives me an indication what people are looking for.  It’s also satisfying to see a new article go up in the list.

Let’s have a look at the most popular articles since I started my blog.  One article is far ahead of all the others, with almost 23%.  That article is Calling a web service from SQL Server 2005.  This is one of my longer posts.  It will be no surprise that this article is also the one with the most comments, 10 in total.  When examining the entrance sources for this post I noticed that 5% are finding this article through Stack Overflow.  With some Google magic I indeed found two threads that are referencing my article!

The second most popular article is the one mentioned earlier about KB948109, with 4.5%.  It seems that quite some people are experiencing this issue, just like I did.

Position number three goes to Excel Automation: the CultureInfo bug with close to 4%.

As you’ll agree, the above statistics are not treating my newer articles fairly.  So let’s now take a look at the same list whilst only taking last month into account.

At number one it is still the same post of course, but it’s losing ground.  This time it’s scoring 17%, 6% less than over the whole year.  Actually, “losing” is not a correct statement, it’s just that the competition is getting tougher.

Second most popular post: Reporting Services 2008 and SSL with 5.6%.

Third most popular post: SSRS and MDX: Detecting Missing Fields scoring 4%.  Interestingly, this one was posted less than a month ago.  It’s also one of my longer articles.

Some Analysis Fun

Firebox

A while back I posted an article about good customer service from the people at Firebox.  This was on May 30, 2009.  The same day I emailed their customer service just to let them know that all was received in good order and to say thanks.  This email did not mention that I posted an article about their service on my blog but in my signature I do have a link to my blog.

And indeed, through Google Analytics I can see a result of that email, more precisely through the Network Locations page.  This shows a list of internet providers, but for companies it usually shows the name of the company.

Hmm, number 3 is an interesting one   But that’s not what we’re looking for here.  This is:

There were 19 visits from the people at Firebox!  Drilling down on this we get the following interesting graph:

As expected, this happened the days following my email to them.

We can now slice our data using another dimension, Browser for instance:

I guess this is no surprise either, Firefox differs only by one letter from Firebox

Operating System is another dimension showing interesting results:

It seems that the people at Firebox are quite free as to what OS they use.

The Screen Resolution dimension shows that maybe it’s time to get them some new screens

And lastly, guess what Landing Page shows?

Right, as expected.

Microsoft

Out of curiosity I’m now going to slice the data related to the visitors coming through “microsoft corp”.

Guess what OS?

Browser?

And now a really interesting one: Source!

See that number one?  It’s not Live, Bing or MSN, it’s Google!  Looks like there’s still some work to be done.

Where are they located?

Conclusion

The above shows that the longer a post, the more visitors it attracts.  Which is quite normal obviously.  And that Google Analytics can be used to have some fun.

To further conclude I would like to thank everyone who has visited my blog and/or posted a comment.  If you keep on visiting, I’ll keep on writing

Have fun!

• it helps me to think about technology
• it’s interesting to read other people’s opinion on a topic of interest
• I like looking for a solution to a specific problem, to learn and at the same time help someone else
• it gives a good idea of what technology other people are working with nowadays
• Free shirts!

Subscribing as an Expert is free and gives you a Limited Member account.

Answering questions gives you Expert Points.  The maximum amount of Expert Points that one can score on a question is 2,000.

Earning a total of 10,000 Expert Points and maintaining a monthly score of 3,000 Expert Points gives you access to Premium Services, for free.  Your account status gets upgraded from Limited Member to Qualified Expert.  One of the interesting parts of Premium Services is that you get Unlimited Question Points (i.e. the points that you need to ask a question yourself).

Expert Points are scored in the zone where the question was asked (max. 3 zones per question).  My focus is currently on all SQL Server related zones.  The first rank that can be earned is Master and you can get it by scoring 50,000 Expert Points in a zone.

About a week ago I earned my first rank, Master in MS SQL Server.

Currently I have scored a total of 66,604 Expert Points and I have gained these by answering 53 questions.

As the screenshot above shows, on Experts Exchange I am known as ValentinoV.  See my profile for up-to-date info.

Gaining a rank gives you the ability to generate an email signature:

Another feature is to generate a certificate with your ranks:

Clicking the Create Certificate button will generate a PDF file such as this one.

And finally, you get a free shirt which specifies your rank on the sleeve.  Looking forward to receiving it.

As you see, it earns to be an Expert.