adam machanic now blogs at http://sqlblog.com

A Sad Tale of PDC Woe

There I was, standing in front of the Los Angeles Convention Center, about to experience PDC ’05.  The sky was blue and the sun was out, but that was really immaterial, as I was about to spend the next four days in the conference hall, getting my mind filled with technological gems delivered by various top speakers.  Coverage of .NET 2.0, ADO.NET, SQL Server 2005 and many other related technologies.  All of this wonderful content to by absorbed into my gray matter then re-transmitted to the community via this blog, various message boards, Code Camps, user groups, and other communication resources.

Ahh, the utter exuberance I felt!  My inner Geek sung with joy as I approached the doors to the conference center, ready to take in all the content that would be offered.

But suddenly, this utopian vision was snatched from me, shattered like a wineglass overrun by a steam roller, distorted into an ugly vision of... My bedroom.  Alarm clock bleeping.  Grasping at the sheets, I tried to re-enter my golden dream state, but alas, I was denied. 

I’m just not certain I can do it.  Can I really live out my existence having not attended PDC ’05?  Having not experienced many useful sessions, and not sharing their content with the community?  I think that would be a truly Herculean task!

Therefore, I request that the Channel 9 team let me live out my dream.  Send me to PDC ’05!

Thank you for reading.

October 22: SQL Server Mini-Code Camp

Just announced on Thom Robbins' blog, I'm doing a SQL Server Mini-Code Camp on October 22 at the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA. This will be a full day of content.

The morning session will focus on data fundamentals and set-based thinking. This will include a study of First Normal Form and some brief discussion of higher normal forms, a very basic intro to referential integrity, and an introduction to 3-valued logic and NULLs. I'll then proceed into set-based vs. procedural thinking, and show how to write better queries without using loops or cursors.

The afternoon session will be a deep dive into SQL Server 2005 CLR integration. I'll cover primarily how to program--and best practices for using--CLR UDTs, UDFs, aggregates, and stored procedures. I'll also briefly discuss triggers, but honestly I don't see much value in that feature so I'm going to spend very little time discussing them.

I'm very excited to be doing this! Let me know (soon, please) if you have any specific areas you'd like covered and I'll see if I can work it into the content.