Keeping up with SQL Server Connect Items Marked Closed as Fixed

Earlier this week, I was trying to determine people's feelings about Microsoft Connect by looking through social media. A few scrolls down, I noticed that Aaron Bertrand mentioned how easy it is to stumble across a Connect item years later and not know when it was finally closed as fixed. That resonated with me.

That gave me the idea to make a small bot, which I called “Closed as Fixed,” that searched Microsoft Connect for items recently marked as Resolved or Closed as Fixed and posted a short update.

For example, one update highlighted a fix for a syntax error in sp_readrequest that could halt Database Mail. The idea was to surface real, recently fixed items so folks could keep up without manually polling the site.

Basically, it scraped the website every 30 minutes (their feed rarely got recompiled, so it wasn’t useful) and posted one update. It seemed to be a hit at the time, gaining nearly 50 followers in a day.

Here's my scraping + posting code if you'd like to roll your own :)

Note (2025): Microsoft Connect was retired years after this post; the bot is no longer active, but the approach and code are preserved here for historical reference.