Steve Ballmer was the keynote today. SteveB talked business and the future of Microsoft. There was a lot of info about how Microsoft is working to enable the information worker and business people to be more productive. He made the comparison to the days before PCs in the workplace, when cut and paste involved scissors and glue! This all seemed a bit ethereal, until the demo. They showed Vista and Office 2007 integration with Sharepoint, SSAS, and SSRS. This appeared seemless and powerful. Let’s hope it’s really that cool, because it would change how we work, today. The final question for Steve and Paul Flessner’s Q&A was if Steve was going to do a DBA dance (see PDC 2006 – “Developers, Developers, Developers…). Steve turned a bright shade of red, then gave his best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression saying “DBAs Baby!”

I saw a presentation on SQL Server for the SOA environment. Marin Mamic is obviously a developer and not a DBA, though his session was listed in the DBA track. He featured HTTP endpoints for exposing SPs as service methods. I like this to some degree, in that it doesn’t require IIS anymore; however, the hard-core DBA in me still has some fears. Marin also displayed Service Broker for some transactions. It was not a deep dive into any of the technologies, but just showing that it is possible. Interesting stuff.

During lunch, I just happened to sit down at a table with Joe Celko.  What an incredible guy!  I love SQL For Smarties, and it was great to talk with one of the fathers of our industry.  I tried not to ask questions, but just listen to what things interest him and how he attacks problems.  He was conversing with a developer from MSFT who had questions about a programming problem.  I thoroughly enjoyed just listening.

Gert Drapers presented Schema management in DataDude (VSTS Database Professional Edition). This is an interesting new tool for compare and schema management, making source code the definitive source. I would like to see a data modeling tool on top of this, but Gert was adamant that he will not develop it. CA apparently is taking that up as an add on for ERWIN. Hopefully other software vendors will jump in to add to DataDude modeling tools (remember, I’m not an ERWIN fan!).

Dave Fackler presentations of Attribute Hiearchies was great. I met Dave at the Detroit Launch event last year. He does a great job, especially making relevant demos. I’m really catching the bug for SSAS. I’ve not spent a lot of real work time on AS, but I’m itching!

Ted Malone’s TDD for SQL developers really appealed to me. I like the ideas behind agile development. I also like that Microsoft is investing in it with DataDude.

For dinner, Jeff Mayer and I went to Benihana.  While we were talking geek stuff, the guy next to us made a couple of interesting faces.  I asked him if he was a technical person.  He said no, but he works for Microsoft in the areas of business products (Office, Great Plains, etc.) He asked about the demo in Ballmer's presentation, which of course we told him was great.  I mentioned one of my customers was looking at GP to replace a home grown accounting system.  He was interested, since the customer has a famous brand (can't share, sorry). I asked him for a card, and Jeff Raikes, President of Microsoft Business Products kindly did!  How cool is that!!!

I think my brain is getting full here at the conference. Not sure how much more I can stand, especially since I’m really distracted due to the OSU game this weekend. GO BUCKS!!!!