When I was working on the second edition of my book Securing SQL Server this was a major problem for me on several of the chapters in the book as I wanted to put new screenshots for SQL Server 2012 into the middle of the chapter, or there was some new feature that I was going to be talking about in the middle of a chapter, so new code samples were needed.

As I was going through the chapter I was thinking, “wouldn’t it be nice if Word would handle all this for me?”  I was able to find a way to do this, using the native bullet point feature within Word.  It took a little tweaking to my Word docs to make this work, but here’s what I did in case you run into this same problem.

In my case I needed three different numbering systems.  One for Images, one for Examples and one for Tables.  To do this I had to create three new list styles within Word.  To create a new list style you first need to click on the multilevel list button in the ribbon at the top of the document and then select “Define New List Style…” from the menu as shown below.

This will open the new list style editor.  From here you can give the style a name, “Figures” in my case.  Then click the format button at the bottom and select “Numbers” from the menu that opens.  On this new page, shown below, you can setup the formatting that will be used for the list.  In the “Enter formatting for number” section like I’ve done in the screenshot below.  Don’t forget to set the “Number style for this level” option.  In the formatting level you’ll see that I’m only changing level 1 as we won’t be using the child levels.  In my numbering I’ve got it setup for Chapter 3 which you can see because the first figure number will be “Figure 3.1″.

Click OK on this screen and then OK on the next screen as well.  Now when you click on the multilist option in the ribbon you’ll see the Figures style as an option as shown below.

I then repeat this exact same process for Examples and Tables.  Now when I’m doing my writing I can simply use the native feature to handle the numbering with the official number next to the caption.  The end result looks like this.

To setup the reference to the figure we use the Cross Reference feature which can be found on the “Insert” tab of the ribbon.  Simply put the cursor where you want to reference the number then click the cross reference button.  This will pop up a list of all the Figures, Examples and Tables which exist within the document.  Select the correct one and click the “Insert” button then the “Close” button.  This will insert the reference into the document.

Once all your figures, examples, and tables are setup this way when you put one into the middle of the document everything will number itself correctly.  If you need to insert a figure, example or table into the middle of the chapter all of the markers will be updated automatically, however the labels will not update automatically, so you’ll need to update them.  Thankfully this isn’t all that hard to do.  Simply do a select a (CTRL+A) then right click somewhere and select “Update Field” from the context menu.

Now if your publisher is like mine, then want [CAPTION] in front of the actual caption, but not within the actual chapter, so just before I send in the chapter I’ll edit the style and put the [CAPTION] in front of the Figure, Example and Table number.  This is done by bringing up the menu shown in the first screenshot above, then right clicking on the style to edit.  Then select the “Format” button at the bottom right and selecting “Numbers” from the menu that opens.  Just put the change needed in front of the caption so instead of reading “Figure 3.1″ it would read “[Caption] Figure 3.1:”.  When you OK out of these windows, the actual image captions will be updated for the references won’t be updated.  As long as you don’t do an update field (from the prior paragraph) then everything will look like you expect it to.

Hopefully you can use this trick when you are doing your writing.

Denny

Now normally on a book project like this you’d be an author or an editor.  I got to play both roles giving Jason Strate an assist with the editing duties (obviously Jason did all the tech editing on my chapters).

As always you can find this book listed on my books page over on my website (www.mrdenny.com) so you can find it and all the other books which I’ve worked on over the years over there including some handy links over to Amazon where you can check out the books via the “Look Inside!” feature that Amazon offers where you can check out the books before actually purchasing.

Hopefully you get a copy of the book and enjoy it.  It was a bit of a painful process for all of us, but it was great to be working on the project with such a great group of people.

Denny

I’m pleased to be able to announce that the 2nd edition of Securing SQL Server is going to be available soon.  It’s just been made available for pre-order on Amazon.com.  The second edition comes in at about 350 pages (according to Amazon, I don’t actually have a copy of it yet) while the first edition came in at about 270 pages so there has been a LOT of material added to the book.

While a lot of the new information is focused on SQL Server 2012, there is also a lot of new material which relates to older version of SQL Server including chapters on SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services, information on Instant File Initialization, EXECUTE AS, Database Firewalls, SAN Security, Actual Data Security (no idea how this got missed the first time around, but that’s to Brent Ozar for pointing it out).

As far as the SQL Server 2012 information you’ll find updated information about the SHA2 hashing algorithms, Securing AlwaysOn Availability Groups, Security and SQL Server Clustering, Security and Contained Databases and a lot more.

If you already have a copy of the 1st edition I encourage you to take a look at the second edition as well.  I know that it’s really soon for a second edition of a book (the first edition just came out February 2011, but this new edition comes on the release of SQL Server 2012.

Hopefully you pre-order you copy today.

Denny

P.S. Yes this edition will be available for the Kindle as well, that takes a little time.  As soon as I know that it’s been posted for the Kindle (usually happens a little after Amazon gets the physical books) I’ll post another announcement here.

P.P.S. If you visit my SecuringSQLServer.com site I’ve updated everything there for the new edition.  You can always find the old edition listed on the Other Books page on that site or on the Books page on mrdenny.com.

A large number of the MVPs submitted topic ideas and those who’s ideas were accepted (they didn’t want 10 chapters on PowerShell for example) were asked to write a chapter on that topic.  My chapter was on Storage (shocking I know) and got put in as Chapter 5.  You can see the chapter list over on Manning’s site (they are the publisher).  Currently you can’t pre-order from Manning, but you can from Amazon.  If you wait until you can get the book from Manning directly the charity will get a few extra bucks, but if you don’t want to wait we all totally understand.

Rumor has it that there will be another SQL Server Deep Dives book signing at the PASS summit this year.  If you are interested in getting your book signed by a large number of the authors this is your chance.  There aren’t that many times when this many of the authors are in the same room at the same time.  There hasn’t been any announcement about where or when it will be, but you should be able to pick up a copy of the book at the PASS summit book store so you don’t have to lug a copy from home then back home again.  I know that when the MVPs did the last MVP Deep Dives book the book store did sell out and they had to do a rush overnight over to get more copies for everyone.

I’ll see you at the PASS summit, and hopefully you’ll be carrying around a copy of the new SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Volume 2.

Denny

My sqlmag.com blog is all about helping you solve your storage problems, so the blog will work best with your questions, issues and problems.  So please post your questions on the blog, post them here, or email them to me and I’ll get them answered (I will only include your name and/or company if you ask me to) so that not only can we get your questions answered and your problems fixed, but we can help other peoples problems solved in the process.

Denny

The prizes which they announced are:

• Bronze Member Badge: Sticker and ITKnowledgeExchange t-shirt
• Silver Member Badge: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Gold Member Badge: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Platinum Member Badge: $100 Amazon.com Gift Card

• Nerd Cog: $10 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Genius Cog: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Brainiac Cog: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card

• Certified Nerd Cog: $10 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Certified Genius Cog: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Certified Brainiac Cog: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card

Not surprisingly there are some rules which are also posted.

• Must be active within the past six months to qualify for initial prize.
• For prizes that must be shipped, allow 2 to 4 weeks for delivery. Shipping only permitted to United States, Canada, and Europe.
• For further TechTarget contest rules, please see the official contest rules.

But that’s a pretty slim set of rules, for the chance to get some pretty major cash in Amazon gift cards.  (Don’t forget that you can use these Amazon gift cards to pick up a copy of my book “Securing SQL Server“.)

But it is sort of true.  I was grabbing the URL for my book to send to someone today, and I noticed that the Kindle version had a price listed.  The book is $39.96 at the moment (I don’t set the price), so all of you that were waiting for the Kindle version, your wait is over.  Amazon does have the paperback in stock again ($32.64 at the moment) if that is your preference.

Denny

This means that either Amazon either ordered just enough copies to cover the pre-orders,  or they ordered a heck of a lot of copies and the SQL Server community bought them like crazy.  Personally I’m hoping for the second reason and not the first.  But when I look at the sales graph that Amazon shows me, it might actually be the second.

If you look at the graph to the right (I’m a DBA, we love data) you can see how the book has been ranked on Amazon’s best seller list over the last month.  What I really like is that yesterday, on my birthday, the book breached the 100,000 mark for just the second time.  The first time was back on October 22, 2010 which the book was ranked #99,971 overall.  Well the rank yesterday was #49,111.  And unlike every prior spike, this wasn’t a one day spike.  There were actually two days of positive climbing in the rankings.  Does this tell me that the book has been selling like crazy?  No, well sort of no.  The book rankings are based on daily sales, and as you get closer to being #1, it takes more and more sales to move up the rankings.

There’s no specific sales data available for the book yet that I can see, that all comes from BookScan (a company that gathers sales info from all the major retailers) so it’ll take a week or two for data to show up, but at least I can see some general info about the book so I’ve got a general idea.

Now I get to move into another party of the book writing phase that I like to call “Please tell me you liked it”.  Now I have to sit around and wait for the revues to be posted about the book.  Personally I’m pretty proud of it, I should be proud of it I wrote the thing after all, but I hope that you the SQL Server community at large like it, and more importantly that you (or someone you know) find it useful.  If just one (or maybe two) people are able to better protect their SQL Server data because of the book I’m going to call it a success.

I think I’ve rambled enough for the day.  I’ve got to get back to my MCM study.

Denny

This 50% off code is only good today Feb 1, 2011 so ACT NOW.

Denny

UPDATE: To order the paperback, click the “Buy Now” link with the arrow under Paperback and select “Elsevier” from the list.  On the new page add the book to your cart, click the cart in the upper left and use the code there.

UPDATE2: I’ve been told that if you use Chrome, it will say the site is not secure. This is apparently because some stuff isn’t protected by HTTPS even after you change the URL to HTTPS.

This is what I’m guessing is one of the last steps before the book is actually shipped.

Just a couple of days ago I got some marketing material in the mail (front, back), which I’ll be bringing to SoCal Code Camp, as well as the next few SQL Saturday’s (at least).

Now for those of you that are going to wait for the Kindle edition, you’ve got a little longer to wait.  While it is available to view on Amazon, you can’t purchase it yet.  I’ve been told by the publisher that it’ll be about 3 months behind the print version.

Denny