Despite my best intentions, I failed to post here the entire week of TechEd. My schedule was absolutely packed, and I spent very little time staring at the computer (for which my eyes thanked me!)
All in all, it was a great week. I spent most of my time hanging out in the Database Development and Administration Technical Learning Center, talking with attendees as well as soaking up loads of knowledge from all of the SQL Server product team members who were on hand. I love talking to people about SQL Server, so I had a very good time. As part of my TLC duties, I did a chalk talk on Thursday morning, on SQLCLR UDFs. Although it was very early in the morning (8:00 a.m.) and I was exhausted from a party the night before, the session went pretty well and I think those in attendance learned a bit about how and when to use UDFs (and why UDFs are much better than stored procedures!)
In addition to the chalk talk, I led a BOF on Friday, on ORM vs. stored procedures. Most of the people in the room were users of ORM systems, and showed up to have a discussion about various issues they've seen with the ORM systems. There were also a few stored procedure fans in attendance. We had a great discussion on the pros and cons of each access paradigm, and I think could have kept going for quite a while longer -- the session was scheduled for only an hour and fifteen minutes, but I think we could have kept discussing for another hour and still not reached any real consensus! None the less, I learned a lot about ORM systems and although I'm still not a fan I am beginning to understand better why people want to use them.
I also spent a large amount of time during the week video blogging with Chuck Boyce, host of The WHERE Clause, SSWUG's podcast. Chuck filmed me interviewing a wide variety of SQL Server people on hand for the conference. I'll post a link to the videos as soon as they're up. Some good material there, I think!
I unfortunately attended only one breakout session the whole week, which was Roger Wolter's session on Service Broker. Great session, and I learned several tricks. I also bought a copy of Roger's book, and it seems like an invaluable resource. In addition to that session, I peeked in on several chalk talks in the TLC. Roger did one on using Service Broker as a scheduling tool (very interesting, but I'm not sure of how to apply it to real-world projects), and various members of the storage engine team did some great talks on topics such as DBCC CHECKDB and various DMVs. I learned some interesting tricks in those talks, some of which will hopefully be turned into future blog posts. The highlight for me was Ron Talmage's session on SNAPSHOT isolation, which I sat in for only about 15 minutes -- I took away so much new information in that short period of time that I decided the talk was way over my head and that I should go back and read up more on the topic. Great job, Ron!
The remainder of the week was spent drinking beer. Every night at TechEd there were a few parties to attend, and I of course made my way to some of them. Hopefully the drinking did not blur too much of the technical knowledge I absorbed!
So that's my week in summary. I'm still catching up on sleep, and am now dreading the next week, during which I must crawl back into my cage and catch up on all of the missed work and e-mails... A small price to pay for such a great week at TechEd.