Microsoft has announced the upcoming release of its new command line tool application Windows Terminal. This application for PowerShell and WSL users is currently available for download at GitHub and is also available the Microsoft Store.
More information about Windows Terminal can be found at devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-build-2019-faq.
Microsoft announced the September 2018 release of Azure Data Studio, formerly known as SQL Operations Studio (preview version). Azure Data Studio is a new open source desktop environment for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse data that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Microsoft has made available many free downloadable apps for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse, including:
A list of most of these SQL tools and utilities can be found at the SQL tools overview and command prompt utilities pages.
Kodi is a free open source media player and entertainment center for multiple platforms, including Android, Linux, MacOS X, iOS, Windows, and Xbox One. It is also available as a downloadable app from Google Play and Microsoft Store.
Kodi was originally known as Xbox Media Center (XBMC) and developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. It plays audio, video, and image files, and third-party plugins are available to add additional features. The Kodi Wiki page lists more details about configurations and options for this app.
Fedora is a free open-source set of Linux based operating systems and is sponsored by Red Hat. Versions include:
More information can be found at docs.fedoraproject.org.
On January 10th 2018, Microsoft announced the release of a new product: PowerShell Core 6.0. PowerShell Core is open-source, built on top of .NET Core (CoreCLR) and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
More information is available here.
Two recently detected security flaws currently named “Meltdown” and “Spectre” are causing Apple, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and others to release security updates to fix any potential problem. The flaws potentially affect all recent computers, smartphones, and tablets that use a CPU performance feature called speculative execution. There is no evidence that the flaws have been exploited at this time. The general recommendation is to download updates for all devices.
Current Apple products may have the security flaws with the exception of the Apple Watch. Apple is continuing to work on updates and released a statement at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394.
Microsoft issued guidance for Windows users, SQL Server, Windows Server, and has updated most of its Azure infrastructure and will continue to do so. Security update KB4056890 also updates Internet Explorer and Edge browsers. Microsoft also issued update KB4056892 for various Windows versions but notes that some AMD processor machines to stop working after installing it.
Google recommended that Chrome users should turn on site isolation. Google also responded with these blog posts:
https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7622138
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html
Mozilla is working on updates and a fix is available in Firefox 57.0.4 version.
Amazon has updated its servers already and will continue to do so.
Intel released a statement as well and is releasing updates. It also reported some systems rebooted more frequently after the updates. AMD also released a statement on their CPUs and speculative execution.
Oracle issued updates for MySQL, Java, PeopleSoft and other products that it maintains.
The CERT Vulnerability Notes Database has logged this issue as Vulnerability Note VU#584653.
eWeek reported that Linux 4.15 was released with Meltdown and Spectre patches and that further patches would be made for this issue.
More information can be found at https://spectreattack.com.
SQL Server 2017 is available to run on Linux. This makes SQL Server a viable database competitor to Oracle on Unix-based operating systems. More information about SQL Server on Linux can be found at these links:
Microsoft has announced the Preview release of SQL Operations Studio, a free database development and operations tool for SQL Server and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.
This tool allows users to performing routine database tasks without using SQL Server Management Studio. Command-line tools such as Bash, PowerShell, sqlcmd, bcp, and ssh can be run in the Integrated Terminal window. Customizable dashboards can be created for performance monitoring.
This preview version can be downloaded from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-operations-studio/download. Versions include Windows, macOS, and Linux.
A document of common questions and answers can be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-operations-studio/faq.
New functionality can be added to SQL Operations Studio using extensions.
Additional information and downloads can be found at GitHub – SQL Operations Studio.