Keeping up with my blog is hard. Other things come up and I forget to post. So, I'm chastizing myself in this entry but at the same time I wanted to talk about my experiences at VSLive, where I just presented. As for posting more often, I'm a reformed blogger and will start to try posting more often.
Anyway, on to some observations from VSLive:
- SQL 2005 is hot. I did the What's New for Developers overview and it was standing room only. Folks were very interested in seeing the new SQL 2005 feature set such as SQLCLR, web services, XML support, T-SQL enhancements, Reporting Services, full-text search, etc.
- The weird thing about SQL 2005 is that it's so big for many customers. It's like putting a cold splash of water on your face. It's a little bit of shock to see all the new functionality. If you find it hard to digest, I'd love to hear your feedback. We're planning a set of roadshows to get out into the field to help kickstart your understanding of the release. Check it out at http://www.windowsitpro.com/roadshows/sqlserverusa/ I'll be at the SoCal event so stop by and say hi if you're there.
- My RS session was well-received. Lots of folks want to know how to do advanced things in RS. The RS newsgroup is a great place to get advanced tips and tricks on RS. Also, Chris Hays blog - aka the RS sleazy hacks blog - is a great place to go as well - http://blogs.msdn.com/chrishays
- As for sleazy RS hacks, I talked with a gentleman and made his day when I showed him how to do end user, column header sorting using RS 2000 (It's included natively in 2005). RS is very powerful, especially with its support for VB .NET expressions and ability to add custom assemblies. You can hack almost any functionality together than we haven't thought of in RS.
Well, that's it. I'll try to post every week going forward with some new and interesting SQL tidbits :)
Tom