June 2005 - Posts

Interaction with SQLJunkies at DevTeach...

Those SQLJunkies bloggers certainly know how to have a good time...

Just who is this party animal?

... We may never find out what came next ...

DevTeach, yet again

I realize that Rick, Kirk, and Roman have already blogged about it already, and anyone reading the SQLJunkies syndication is probably already sick of hearing about it, but I'd like to mention the DevTeach conference as well.

This has been a really fun three days. In addition to attending several interesting sessions and getting to put a bunch of faces to names for various people I've exchanged e-mails with, this conference is in Montreal. There are not many cities I'd rather visit in the summer. It's a beautiful city with lots of great things to see and do.

I presented three sessions here. One on SQL Server 2005 relational engine enhancements, one on debugging stored procedures using TSQLMacro and TSQLAssert, and one on SQL Server Notification Services.

The first two talks went well, but I felt that some audience members were a bit on the shy side. I saw a few blank faces as I was describing some SQL Server 2005 features, but I couldn't coerce these people into asking questions about what they didn't understand. If you were in my talks and have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me via this blog -- I will be happy to clarify anything you didn't get.

My SQL Server NS talk, unfortunately, fell victim to a glitch of some sort -- my laptop decided to lock up for almost 15 minutes in the middle of the talk. That kind of destroyed my momentum, and I'm certain I scared any of the attendees away from ever trying SQL Server Notification Services. I just want to say one last time in case any of them are reading: That has never happened to me with SQL-NS before! Really, it won't crash on you at a bad time!

That about sums my last few days, except for the incriminating photos of Roman on my cellphone. Don't worry, Roman! Those will be posted very, very soon.

Connected Systems Developer Competition

One of the things announced at Tech Ed was a developer competition for applications using SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and/or Biztalk 2005.

The deadline is August 30 -- not a lot of time! So if you're going to go for it, start now. Interesting list of prizes, including $50,000 for the grand prize winner, and a bit less cash for runners up.

Good luck!