BCM version 4

Business Contact Manager for Office 2010 now in technical preview. The BCM team blog has the details.

How to restore a database the hard way

This is for when the regular backup through BCM doesn't work. Be sure to change domain, user, database, and paths to your circumstances.

You have a backup file c:\temp\foobar.sbb of your database MSSmallBusiness.

Rename the file to foobar.zip.

In Explorer double-click on it to go into (like a folder). Inside you will find an xml file and a file named like en-US#3.0.5625.0. Copy the second file to c:\temp\en-US#3.0.5625.0.

Open a cmd window (On Vista+ as administrator).

Use sqlcmd to connect to the master database: sqlcmd -E -S .\mssmlbiz -d master

Run this command to restore the database:

RESTORE DATABASE MSSmallBusiness  FROM disk = 'C:\temp\en-US#3.0.5625.0'
with replace,
move 'MSSmallBusiness_dat' to 'c:\users\luther\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\MSSmallBusiness.mdf',
move 'MSSmallBusiness_log' to 'c:\users\luther\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager\MSSmallBusiness.ldf'
GO
EXIT

If you've moved to another machine (e.g. you are restoring because the machine you created the backup on is no more), you will probably need to take ownership.

Connect to the database: sqlcmd -E -S .\mssmlbiz -d MSSmallBusiness

Then:

sp_changedbowner 'wuming\luther'
GO
EXIT

Now you can restart Outlook/BCM. If you were not using database MSSmallBusiness before, you will need to select that database. If you run into errors, try restarting Outlook.

If you run into trouble with the SQL, here are the docs for RESTORE.

Have you seen the movie?

Office 2010

New sync solution for Palm

CompanionLink'll sync it.

EU wants guaranteed software

This is amusing.

Licensing should guarantee consumers the same basic rights as when they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions.

Software generally works when installed on a clean machine with the configuration it was built to work with. If it crashes there's usually something on the machine that the software wasn't expecting. So when software ABC doesn't work, because software XYZ changed something about the machine (e.g. used up all the free disk space), who's fault is it? ABC's or XYZ's? The one with the deepest pockets? I'm sure this law will provide much work for lawyers.

BCM 2007 SP2

Descriptions of the Business Contact Manager problems that are fixed in the 2007 Microsoft Office suite Service Pack 2.

AKA KB957324. Download.

Disapearing tech

Salesforce.com's Director of Platform Research, Peter Coffee, explains how to make better tools.

Today, a Dell Adamo or a MacBook Air competes for the distinctions of being thin, light, and long-lived on battery power: in short, for making its technology as nearly invisible as the world's best technologists can manage.

As Martin Heidegger said in The Origin of the Work of Art, the proper tool is one that disappears into its function; as Alfredo Ruibal further observed, "The less one notices the tool, the better it fulfils its function as a tool."

I remember talking to Peter Coffee, at some CASE conference years ago, when he was reviving Aristotlian taxonomy as a basis for Object-Oriented Analysis.