TechEd is just SO amazing!
Last night's keynote was interesting, but I felt they tried to cover too much information in too short a period of time. Chloe from 24 was entertaining with her rattling off techno terms like she actually understood what she was talking about. (And the three guys she pulled up on stage will not forget the hugs they got from her any time soon.) I wanted to get some detail on the new VS Team System for Database Professionals, but they only touched on it. It was a 2 1/2 hour keynote, and it felt like they just barely had time to touch on each feature they wanted to highlight. I don't know how you solve that, but it didn't work for me.
This morning Dave Campbell and his team gave a great overview presentation on the vision for SQL Server moving forward. Between the features of ADO.Net 3.0, which will include support for LINQ, the BI tie-ins for Excel and the features planned for revs 2 and 3 of VSTS for Database Professionals, they had a lot to look forward to. We got to see small pieces of these technologies - enough to know that Microsoft isn't sitting pat on SQL Server 2005.
Richard Campbell, the Dot Net Rocks guy, gave a great talk on SQL Queries, focusing mostly on the enhancements in Transact-SQL in SQL Server 2005. His presentation was both informative and entertaining. I got a real kick out of every time he asked the crowd to "ask me WHY I know about this".
Speaking of Dot Net Rocks, I attended the live webcast of that program during lunch, and they had a great conversation with Cameron Skinner and Gert Drapers about both the development of the VS Team System for Database Professionals product as well as the future plans.
I see from other blogs on SQLJunkies that Kent Tegels and Rick Heiges are here as well, and in some of the same presentations. I chatted with Tony Mann and Brian Knight just before lunch, then got to make a couple of comments during Don Vilen's security presentation about my experiences with SQL 2005 in a clustered environment. During the Expo party I got to renew acquaintances again with Fernando Guerrero and with Kevin Kline as well. The networking here is just as great as the technical sessions.
More tomorrow.
Allen