Business Intelligence "Lights Up" with Office SharePoint 2007 - Grant Paisley (Angry Koala)

Come and see how Office SharePoint 2007 "lights up" Business Intelligence.

What is Business Intelligence? It is simply "turning data into knowledge"

We have extraordinarily powerful quiver of tools for building knowledge from data in SQL Server including:

1. SQL Engine - data storage
2. Analysis Server - multidimensional database
3. Integration Services - move and transform data
4. Reporting Services - creation, management, deployment of reports.

Office SharePoint 2007 gives us the best vehicle to integrate and expose this knowledge through collaboration and document management. In this session we get a whirlwind tour of:

- KPI's / Dashboards
- Server based Excel and data visualization
- Report Centre
- BI Web Parts
- Business Data Catalog

This is the session presented by Grant at TechEd 2006 in Australia and China

About the Presenter

Grant Paisley is the Chief Solutions Architect for Angry Koala, a Microsoft Partner specialising in Business Intelligence Solutions. Grant is a SQL Server MVP, and president of the Sydney SQL Server User Group. With more than 10 years of consulting experience in Business Intelligence and data warehousing Grant has worked on many complex projects and produced a wide range of solutions. Delivered solutions include a Scorecard Reporting System for the Microsoft Australia Enterprise Group, numerous analytical platforms for key performance indicator presentations, and reporting applications for a high volume (14 million hits per day) web server for Soulmates World. He is sought after as a speaker presenting practical Business Intelligence Solutions advice at events such as TechEd and various Australian user group meetings.

Venue: Canberra Microsoft Office, Level 2, 44 Sydney Avenue, BARTON ACT, Australia
When: Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Duration: Pizza & drinks from 5:00 pm for a 5:30 pm start. Finish approximately 7pm
Registration: www.sqlserver.org.au

Canberra ACS 2007 Branch Executive Committee

It's official. I'm now a sitting member of the Canberra Australian Computer Society Branch Executive Committee.

Share or Export Your Outlook 2007 RSS Feeds (or Should this be Searching the Google Help File!)

I have built up a rather large collection of RSS feeds and use Outlook 2007 to subscribe to them. Most of my feeds are associated with my exchange account at home as I generally find the feeds I want while doing some late night surfing. The only problem with this scenario is that by the time I get home from work, I usually have hundreds of updates to read and can never find the time to read them all. Yes I take a laptop to work so I could just read them on that, but what I really need is an easy way to share these feeds with Outlook at work (because they're all work related of course!) so that I can read some of the updates at lunchtime on my dual 20" monitors :-).

Well, today I decided to do something really novel. I typed in "Share RSS with outlook" (without the quotes) into Google and guess what, I got some hits. The most notable hit was called Share or export RSS Feeds located on the Microsoft Office Outlook Online Site. taking a stab in the dark, I navigated to this link and to my surprise, it contained steps of how to export/import RSS feeds between outlook. So now I know how to share my RSS subscriptions with work.

This brings me to the part of my blog title that deals with "Searching the Google Help File".

The stupid thing about my RSS sharing scenario is if I had just used the inbuilt help system, I would have found this function and saved myself a few minutes of web searching. I should have also realised that if I had just clicked on the "Import and Export" option in Outlook, I would have also seen these options. It's not as if I haven't used this feature before for other importing and exporting, so I should have put two-and-two together and realised that that was probably the most logical place to look first up.

So, who do I blame for this total lack of common sense? Google! They have made a tool that I, and most other people I know, turn to for answers to the most simplest of questions. Google search has become so entrenched into our lives that most people would turn to it before ever considering consulting product documentation or doing a little bit of self -investigation into the problem. To me, Google search is like one massive Help File dealing with every conceivable topic and cross-indexed on every conceivable word. It is one of those tools that I cannot live without.

So, is this good or bad? Is Google teaching people to be lazy by providing the answers for them? Am I just lazy (probably!)? Tough questions to answer.

Yes Google has resulted in people doing a quick web search instead of looking into things themselves, but I have no doubt that it has saved people many hours of misery (as it has done for me) by providing quick solutions to problems. Besides, we all know that Google is the best tool to use when searching Microsoft's documentation or Web Site ;-)

Cheers
Jeff

Beta 70-540 (71-540) Result Delay

According to a post by Howard Dierking (Product Planner, Developer and Database Certifications, Microsoft Corporation), as the beta period for this exam was extended, the live date for this exam will now be around February 2007. For those of us that took the first beta back in September 2006, this means our marks won't be available until closer to February 2007.

I'm also presuming that the delay in receiving results will apply to 70-500 (71-500) as it appears that its beta period has also been extended.

Guess this means I should stop checking my exam history on VUE and Prometric everyday ;-)

Canberra SQL Server User Group Meeting - November 2006

Last night Nicholas Dritsas (Program Manager, Microsoft SQL Server Customer Advisory Team) delivered what can only be described as a rip-snorter of a presentation at our User Group. As one member put it, "Nicolas's presentation yesterday afternoon was perhaps the best I have ever seen - either at SQL Server User Group, seminars, Tech-Ed etc." (Jeremy Selby, Data Management Section, Department of Education, Science and Training)

Nicholas's presentation was titled "Design and Implementation Best Practices for Large Scale DW Systems in SQL Server 2005" and covered the following topics:

• Overview of SQL Server 2005 Data Warehouse Enhancements

• SQL Server Relational DBMS

  Table and index partitioning

  Online index maintenance

  Piecemeal backup & restore

  TSQL Analytics

  Pivot, Unpivot, Rank

  NUMA awareness and scalability

  x64 support

  Shared Scalable Database

  Read Committed Snapshot Isolation

  SQL Server Reporting Services

  Enterprise reporting against RDBMS and AS

  End-user query tool – Report Builder

• The Relational Data Warehouse

• Data Warehouse Design

• Data Loading, Deleting, Backup

• Hardware and Storage

• SQL Server Integration Services

• Analysis Services

I would like to thank Nicholas for his informative and professional presentation; and for providing us with a copy of his deck.

Cheers
Jeff

Mobile and Embedded DevCon 2007 - Call for Papers

MEDC is the premier event for developers, device makers and IT Professionals to get a firsthand look at the future of mobile and embedded platforms. At MEDC, you will learn how to build devices and bring to market applications, content and services for Windows Mobile, Windows Embedded and Tablet PC platforms.

MEDC 2007 organizers are inviting people to submit proposals to speak in their conference breakout sessions. They are looking for session proposals in the following 5 areas:

• Application Development
• Enterprise Application Architecture
• Building Embedded Devices
• Business, market opportunity, and partners
• Managing Windows Mobile Devices

Session proposals are due by December 8th 2006 and can be submitted at https://medc2007.mscorpevents.com/CFP/CallForPapers.aspx.

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - The End

Well, Tech-Ed Developer 2006 has come to an end. On one hand I'm sad as I'm going to be leaving some great people, but on the other hand I'm glad as I'm really exhausted.

The photo to the left is of the people mainly responsible for running the HOL environment. Ronald (far right) had the task of organising the proctors for the labs and the Ask-the-Experts booth and Carl and Howard (left to right - F1) were responsible for the smooth running of the labs. My thanks go out to them for making my trip a really enjoyable experience.

Today I had the luxury of attending 3 presentations as I was only scheduled on for 1 proctoring session. I was actually meant to have the whole day off, however I volunteered for an additional session as a number of proctors were unable to attend the event due to visa restrictions which caused a couple of gaps in the schedule. We also had a few proctors turn up on Sunday to get their free shirts and conference entry and then disappear; never to be seen again. Guess what guy's; you're in for a rude shock. Hope you've got a few dollars stashed away for a rainy day as it's about to start pouring!

The first session I attended today was "DEV403 - Optimizing Performance and Scalability of Distributed .NET Applications" and the presenter, Ingo Rammer (thinktecture), showed us how to optimize, tune and troubleshoot our distributed applications built on ASP.NET, .NET Remoting, Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) or the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF); and how to quickly isolate and remove problem-spots in our application, and which free tools and techniques would allow us to get to these results in the quickest possible way. Here is his deck.

My second session for the day was "DEV410 - Building Enterprise Mobile Applications with the Patterns and Practices Mobile Software Factory" and Andy Wigley gave away another fully licensed version of VSTS. Needless to say, I didn't win (again). Looks like I'm destined to never get a copy of VSTS, unless of course one of my loyal readers feels sorry for me and sends me a copy (hint hint).

Anyway, the patterns and practices Mobile Software Factory helps you to build mobile applications using architectural best practice by providing application blocks, guidance, tools integrated into Visual Studio 2005 and a reference application implementation. This session explained some of the common architectural mistakes that software engineers often make when building applications for mobile devices and how the patterns and practices Mobile Software Factory helps you to avoid these problems and create modular, extensible and high porformace mobile applications.

Many of the application blocks in the Mobile Software Factory are ported versions of the desktop application blocks contained within the Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0. There are also a few specific to the needs of mobile applications, such as the Disconnected Service Agent for handling Web Service requests whether there is currently a live network connection or not. Here is the deck.

The last session I attended, and the last session of the conference, was presented by Pascal Belaud (Developer Evangelist, Microsoft France) who is the creator of OlyMars Refresh (a truly brilliant piece of software) and was titled "DEV366 - Boost Your Data-Driven Application Development Using SQL Server Centric .NET Code Generator (OlyMars Refresh)".

This session showed us how the SQL Server centric .NET code generator (OlyMars Refresh) is both a flexible and powerful generator based on database modeling and how it provides instant generation of both SQL and .NET code providing a complete library of stored procedures, .NET classes and ready-to-use custom Web and form controls related to the database model. It also includes add-ins to produce full database documentation. You definitely need to check out this little beauty. Here is his deck.

Well that's it for now. Time to network!

Cheers
Jeff

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - Day 3

Today I met Ken Rosen (Microsoft MCT Worldwide Program Manager) and had a chance to discuss the new certifications, based around Vista and Sharepoint, being announced at Tech-Ed: ITForum on Monday 13th November. We also spent some time discussing my experience with proctoring at Barcelona and the MCT program in Australia.

One thing I've noticed over here is that MCT's are treated on about the same level as MVP's and are greatly appreciated. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the way we are treated in Australia. I have felt for a long time that Australian MCT's got a raw deal when it came to support and recognition from Microsoft Australia and attending this event has just confirmed my suspicions. It only took a few hours at this event to see that Microsoft EMEA, and the community in general, really appreciated their MCT's and will bend over backwards to ensure that they get due recognition.

There; I've had my whinge so I'll get off soap box and stop complaining.

Today I was able to attend two sessions, "DEV337 - Extending Windows Mobile 5.0" and a Microsoft Focus Group on "Occasionally Connected Systems" which was an invite only event. Both sessions were really good and I'll provide an overview on DEV337 in a minute, but at the moment I want to concentrate on the focus group.

The focus group was run by Philip Vaughn (Group Program Manager, Data Replication and Synchronization, Microsoft Corporation) and Moa Khosravy (Program Manager, Windows Media: Mobile Platform Solutions, Microsoft Corporation) and was about the new technologies that Microsoft will be releasing to assist people developing occasionally connected applications.

I must admit I felt pretty chuffed, and a little bit nervous, at being invited to join this focus group as there were only 7 of us there and we got to talk one-on-one with the owners of the product about what we believed was essential to making it work. This was a completely new experience for me as I usually don't find out about these things until they go live :-). I'm really looking forward to future involvement with this product as it will definitely change the way applications are developed. Ok, now back to reality.

In DEV337, David Goon (Application Development Consultant, Microsoft UK) talked about the Windows Embedded Source Tools for Bluetooth Technology, Message Queuing support from the Redistributable Server Components for Windows Mobile 5.0, SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition and the new Managed Direct 3D Mobile libraries from .NET Compact Framework 2.0. His session introduced us to a host of new technologies available to the managed developer and provided information on options to enable even more capable and innovative solutions on Windows Mobile 5.0. A copy of his deck can be downloaded from here.

Apart from that, the rest of my day was spent proctoring HOL's, eating chocolate donuts and collecting kit (merchandise).

Cheers
Jeff

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - Hands-on-Labs (HOLS)

These are the labs that I've been proctoring during my shifts at Tech-Ed. Each link contains the instructions and supports files required to complete the labs. All you need is Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition.

As per my previous post on SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition, you will notice that the lab documentation for the SQLHOL's still refer to SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition.

Enjoy!!!!

Visual Studio 2005

• DEVHOL21 - Building a .NET Compact Framework Application for a Windows Mobile-Based Device Using Visual Studio
• DEVHOL22 - Developing a SQL Mobile Application with Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005
• DEVHOL23 - Writing Device Independent Windows Mobile Applications with the .NET Compact Framework
• DEVHOL24 - Patterns & Practices: Mobile Solutions Guidance

SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition

• SQLHOL21 - Developing an Application using SQL Server Everywhere
• SQLHOL22 - Synchronizing SQL Server Everywhere with SQL Server
• SQLHOL23 - Developing a Mobile Device Application using SQL Server Everywhere
• SQLHOL24 - Synchronizing SQL Server Everywhere on a Mobile Device with SQL Server

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - Day 2

Today I had my first shift in the Ask-the-Experts lounge. I was working on booth # 26 which is the Visual Studio 2005 booth and I partnered up with Maurice de Beijer (VB.NET MVP) so we had lots to chat about.

I thought we had a pretty easy shift as we only got asked a few questions on LINQ, Orca, running VS 2005 SP1 on Vista RC2, Oracle 9 and DataSet creation, Debugging and Crystal Reports vs. ActiveReports; however Maurice advised that this was the bussiest shift he has had so far. Overall it was a great experince

I also managed to attend three sessions yesterday which was great as most of my time so far has been spent working. The sessions were pretty good and were based around Windows Mobile performance and security. The overall message of these sessions was that the most important thing about Mobile development is that you have limited resources, such as memory and processing power, so as developers we need to concentrate a lot more of writing good (efficient) code.

I truly believe that every developer would benefit from developing for Mobile Devices as many of the performance and tuning techniques implemented in Mobile development can, and should, be used in desktop development. With desktops becoming increasingly more powerful, many developers concentrate more on delivering product quickly and don't pay enough attention to writing efficient code. They leave it up to the hardware for performance delivery which IMHO is just plain laziness.

Here is an overview of each of the sessions I attended.

DEV409 - .NET Compact Framework v2.0: Optimizing for Performance

About the Presenter: Andy Wigley is an expert on developing mobile applications using the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework and is the lead author of Microsoft .NET Compact Framework Core Reference (Microsoft Press) and the co-author of Building ASP.NET Applications for Mobile Devices (Microsoft Press); a new book is currently under development on .NET Compact Framework V2.0. He leads the software consulting company, Andy Wigley Computing Ltd (www.wigleycomputing.co.uk), specializing in mobile and small business applications. Andy is a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for mobile application development. He lives with his family in North Wales, where he pursues his passion for outdoor pursuits, in particular rock climbing.

Session Overview: Too many enterprise development teams trip up the first time they design and build a mobile application. Often this is because they fail to appreciate the constrained nature of mobile devices, and make some basic errors that can cripple performance of a .NET Compact Framework application. This session highlights the most common mistakes and shows how to avoid them.

The key to good performance in a .NET Compact Framework application is good memory management. In this session you’ll learn how the garbage collector and JIT compiler work, and the impact of poor design and programming practices. You’ll also learn how to monitor and diagnose performance problems using the new Remote Performance Monitor tools, recently released in .NET Compact Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1). You’ll also pick up lots of tips and tricks on some of the most common performance pitfalls and how to avoid them.

PowerPoint: DEV409

Note: Andy was giving away a fully licensed version of VSTS to the first person to correctly answer his mystery question at the end of the session. He was doing this to ensure that people paid attention to what he was delivering. I don't know who won as I had to leave early to start my ATE session. All I know is that it wasn't me :-(


DEV408 - SQL Server CE and SQL Mobile Performance Tuning, Deployment and Scalability

About the Presenter: William Gunaratne has worked with Microsoft technologies for several years. He attained MCP at age 16. He holds an honours degree in Software Engineering Management, is an MCSE and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Session Overview: This session focuses on optimization tips and techniques for getting the best possible performance from SQL Server CE and SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition. This session also covers optimal synchronization technologies along with hardware recommendations for using SQL Server CE, and explores the new performance enhancements in SQL Mobile.

PowerPoint: DEV408


DEV228 - Windows Mobile Application Security

About the Presenter: See DEV408

Session Overview: This session covers all the things developers need to know about code signing and security. How to ensure that your device runs on the most devices with minimum security warnings or errors. It will also cover the various options (Verisign, GeoTrust etc), and what you can do to lower costs associated with signing.

PowerPoint: DEV228

Cheers

Jeff

SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition

Sorry Alexander, it appears that I was wrong about the new SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition. It actually replaces SQL Server Everywhere Edition and there was even an announcement about it yesterday (http://www.mseventseurope.com/downloads/teched/livedev/vt_MarkJewett.wmv). RC1 has also been released to coincide with the name change and can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=85e0c3ce-3fa1-453a-8ce9-af6ca20946c3&displaylang=en

Not sure when this decision was made, but as a MCT/MCITP SQL and someone who has been playing with the Beta for quite a while, you would assume that I should have known about the name change earlier. Suppose I shouldn't complain too much as we've just had to rename all the labs at Tech-Ed Developer to reflect the name change so it appears that I was not the only one kept in the dark!

You've gotta love those marketing guy's!

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - Making My Day

This photo really made my day (as you can see from the smile on my face) as I finally got to meet Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal (Mr DBCC) in person.

Kimberly L. Tripp is a SQL Server MVP and a Microsoft Regional Director and has worked with SQL Server since 1990. Since 1995, Kimberly has worked as a Speaker, Writer, Trainer and Consultant for her own company SYSolutions, Inc. (www.SQLskills.com). Kimberly writes for SQL Server Magazine, was a technical contributor for the SQL Server 2000 Resource Kit and co-authored the MSPress title SQL Server 2000 High Availability. Kimberly lectures for a variety of events such as Microsoft Tech*Ed, where she is consistently a top rated speaker. Currently, Kimberly is lecturing for SQLskills SQL Immersion Events as well as creating SQL Server 2005 content including labs, whitepapers and workshops. Prior to starting SYSolutions/SQLskills, Kimberly held positions at Microsoft including Subject Matter Expert/Trainer for Microsoft University and Technical Writer for the SQL Server Development Team. You can reach Kimberly at: Kimberly@SQLskills.com.

Paul started in the industry in 1994 working for DEC on the VMS file system and chkdsk equivalent, eventually moving to work on prototype kernel-mode, fully-transactional file system for Windows NT (they got the core of it running in 30000 lines of code...) In 1999 he moved to Microsoft to work on SQL Server, specifically on DBCC. For SQL Server 2000, he wrote DBCC INDEXDEFRAG, DBCC SHOWCONTIG, and parts of DBCC CHECKDB. For SQL Server 2005, he rewrote the majority of DBCC CHECKDB and repair, through the end of 2003. Paul then became the lead developer/manager of one the five dev teams in the Storage Engine, Access Methods. This team is responsible for DBCC, allocation, indexes & heaps, DML, text/LOB storage, snapshot isolation, index DDL, bulk load and sort. Paul did this until late 2005 when he changed engineering disciplines to lead the Program Management team for the core Storage Engine so he could become more engaged with customers.

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - Day 1

Today was my first day at proctoring HOL's at Tech-Ed. I had two sessions, 8am-11am and 1:30pm-5:30pm, which basically chewed up any time I had to attend sessions. Bit of a bummer as I was really looking forward to attending the "Maximizing Application Compatibility for Windows Mobile 5.0 and Beyond" and ".NET Compact Framework (NETCF) for Desktop developers" sessions so will have to rely on the Powerpoint slides instead. That said, proctoring was great fun.

People here are so friendly and I spent quite a lot of my spare time chatting to people about mobile development and how Australia is going whip the poms in the cricket and bring home the Ashes :-)

This afternoon I also had a chance to chat with Alexander Duggleby (who found out about my blog on Beta Exam 71-540 and blogged about it) about mobile development and SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition which I didn't even know existed until today. This is a direct quote from Microsoft's flyer on SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition:

"Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition extends the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition technology by offering a maintenance free, compact embedded database for single-user client applications for all Windows Platforms including Tablet PCs, Pocket PCs, Smart Phones and Desktop Computers. In addition, SQL Server Compact Edition is free to deploy and free to redistribute."

Just what us developers need. Another version of SQL Server to confuse the issue! Anyway, it was pretty cool meeting someone half way round the world who actually reads my blog. If you get a chance, pop across to his blog as it's well worth the read.

Well, it's time to go and socialise over a few drinks at the welcome party so I'll leave you with a picture from Kimberly Tripp's closing session titled "Performance Now and the Road Ahead".

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - Agile Development and Team System

My "Agile Development with Team Systems" session has just finished and I'd have to say that it was the most informative and entertaining session that I've been too in a very long time. About the only thing that put a sour note on the whole session was the fact that the hand-outs were not available and won't be available until Friday. This was not the fault of the speaker, but the support staff.

The speaker, Roy Osherove (http://www.teamagile.com/), is a man of many talents. Not only was he very knowledgeable about the subject being presented, he was also a comedian and a musician. His sessions contained plenty of technical content and humor to keep the audience’s attention and at the end of each session, Roy performed self-written songs containing witty and hilarious lyrics about key points of each session. If today's session is any indication of what the rest of the conference will be like, then all delegates are in for a real treat.

I'll post more content, including the slides, once they become available on Friday.

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - Strange Happenings

This day has started out very bazaar. One of the biggest problems I'm facing in Barcelona is trying to keep contact with my family back in Australia due to the time difference. This is being made even more difficult due to staying in a flat and not having any internet access. There are a few wireless connections around, but they are all secured so I can't even use those.

Anyway, I couldn't sleep this morning so decided to get up early and type out an email to my partner. So, I'm typing away and my wireless connection is popping on and off and driving me crazy so I decided to switch it off. Just before I did, I thought I'd check what connections were around just in case there was an unsecure one. Well, you're not going to believe this, but there were eight connections and one was unsecured so I connected to it and gained full access to the internet which mean I could send email's and use MSN to chat to my partner.

So, you're probably thinking "So what, it happens all the time!” Well, the freaky thing is that the name of the unsecured connection was called "Lillinet" and Lily is the name of our 3 month old baby girl.......Now if that doesn't send shivers down your spin, nothing will. What are the odds of waking up early, finding an unsecure wireless connection when none have been available for the last 3 days and the SSID of the connection is the same as your daughter’s name......I'm wondering if this had anything to do with my visit to "La Sagrada Familia" (www.sagradafamilia.org) yesterday!!!

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - BC Day 2

I'm currently sitting in the Hands-on-Labs area giving the Mobile labs a bit of a run through. It's all part of our 3 hour training session which is meant to provide us with an insight into what we will be doing over 4 days as proctors. Don't know what I was so worried about the other day as there are only 4 labs I'm scheduled to proctor which makes my job far more easier than I thought.


(Hands-on-Labs area)


The labs I'll be proctoring are:

• DEVHOL21 - Building a .NET Compact Framework Application for a Windows Mobile-Based Device Using Visual Studio
• DEVHOL22 - Developing a SQL Mobile Application with Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005
• DEVHOL23 - Writing Device Independent Windows Mobile Applications with the .NET Compact Framework
• DEVHOL24 - Patterns & Practices: Mobile Solutions Guidance

DEVHOL24 looks very interesting and it's a new one for me as it wasn't available at Tech-Ed 2006 in Australia.

I've also just found out that the labs will be open for us tomorrow at 8am which is great because my tight schedule doesn't provide me with much free time during the event to do any labs and now I can do the following labs prior to my VSTS Deepe Dive which starts at 12:30pm:

• SQLHOL15 - Build and Deploy you SQL Server Database Schema with Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals
• SQLHOL21 - Developing an Application using SQL Server Everywhere
• SQLHOL22 - Synchronizing SQL Server Everywhere with SQL Server
• SQLHOL23 - Developing a Mobile Device Application using SQL Server Everywhere
• SQLHOL24 - Synchronizing SQL Server Everywhere on a Mobile Device with SQL Server

The group of MCT's put together for proctoring the HOL's are a great bunch of guy's (I say guy's because no female MCT's put their hands up to assist, not because none were chosen) and it's already obvious that we're gonna have a great time and form some great friendships.

Cheers
Jeff

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - BC Day 3 (Continued)

It's now 10pm (EDST), we're about 3 hours from Singapore and I'm ready to say good night.

It's been a great trip so far, I've watched a really funny movie (don't know what it was, but it had the gardener guy from desperate housewife’s in it) and listened to MOS (Ministry of Sound) Classics which has sort of got me in a party mood (They really need a disco floor on these flights).

There are so many things I envisaged doing on this flight; like finishing off the NZ Post software packaging instructions for my colleague back at work, finishing the installation and deployment instructions for NZ Post, finishing Assignment 3 for ITC518, starting Assignment 2 of ITC543, finishing Part 3 of my SQL and XML post, viewing the 13 part series of a VSTS Webcast I downloaded 3 weeks ago and reviewing the Smart Client HOL's I acquired from Tech-Ed 2006 AU in preparation for Barcelona. I know this is a long flight, but I was obviously in La La land when I put together this schedule. All I've done so far is watch TV, sleep and drink wine! I know I'm going regret it later, but that's life! Gotta have some fun......

BTW, I found out this week that I got 72.5% for ITC543 (Patterns) Assignment 1 and 90% for ITC518 (C#) Assignment 2. I'm pretty happy with these marks, which means I'm on track for a CR in ITC543 and a DI in ITC518.

I'm starting to get a bit nervous about my role at this event as I'm not quite sure what's expected of me. Yes, I know that I'm proctoring Hands-on-Labs (HOL's) and helping out at the Ask-the-Experts booth, but looking at the format of this event, it appears to be way more technical and organised than the Australian event and I'm starting to worry that people are going to expect that I'm some sort of .NET/SQL Server/Smart Client/Windows Mobile guru that can answer any question they throw at me! This is heighted by the fact that I'm coming from OZ. Yes, I know my stuff and have a number of years experience in these fields and a heap of certifications, bit people tend to think of the most obscure questions and scenarios for these events and expect you to provide an answer in 3 seconds. Maybe I can just baffle them with my accent :-)

Well, it's about time I signed off as I'm finding it really hard to stay awake and concentrate on what I'm typing. Catch you tomorrow.

Cheers
Jeff

Tech-Ed Developer 2006 (Barcelona) - BC Day 3

Well here I am sitting in the Canberra Qantas Club lounge waiting to commence the first leg of my trip to Tech-Ed Developer 2006 in Barcelona. Can't believe I've still got 26 hrs of flight time left and I'm already feeling stuffed!

The first leg of my flight, which is only 45 minutes, takes me from Canberra to Sydney where I have a 4 hour wait before I board a flight to London. I then have a 24 hr flight to London with a 1hr stop-over in Singapore for a sanity break (refueling). Once I reach London, I have a 2.5hr wait 'till I board another flight to Barcelona meaning that I eventually arrive at my destination at about 9pm on Saturday 4th November (EDST). This conference better be worth the pain :-)

Apart from proctoring Hands-on-Labs and helping out at the Ask-the-Experts booth, I have some great sessions lined up for my free time and hope to be able to provide you with on overview of each session on a daily basis. For now though, here are the session titles:

Monday 6th - Agile Development with Team System Deep Dive

• Session 1: Introduction to Agile Concepts and Methodologies
• Session 2: Test Driven Development and Unit Testing Tools with VSTS
• Session 3: Continuous Integration with Team System
• Session 4: Implementing Scrum using Team System

Tuesday 7th - Day 1

• Embedded CE 6.0 - What's new for Embedded Developers?
• Maximizing Application Compatibility for Windows Mobile 5.0 and Beyond
• .NET Compact Framework (NETCF) for Desktop developers
• Windows Embedded for Point of Service (WEPOS) & POS for .NET Software Development Kit

Wednesday 8th - Day 2

• .NET Compact Framework V2.0: Optimizing for Performance
• Developing Client and Mobile Data Solutions with SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition
• Synchronizing Data with a Server in SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition
• SQL Server CE and SQL Mobile Performance Tuning, Deployment, and Scalability
• Windows Mobile Application Security

Thursday 9th - Day 3

• Extending Windows Mobile 5.0
• Smart Client: Offline Caching and Synchronization with a New ADO.NET Sync Framework
• Selecting the best Windows Mobile technology for your solution
• .NET Hidden Treasures
• The Mobile PC Roadmap
• Microsoft Focus Group - Occasionally Connected Systems

Friday 10th - Day 4

• Optimizing Performance and Scalability of Distributed .NET Applications
• Designing Zero-Code Adaptive User Interfaces (UIs) for Windows Mobile
• Building Enterprise Mobile Applications with the patterns and practices Mobile Software Factory
• Boost Your Data-Driven Application Development Using SQL Server Centric .NET Code Generator

For those who can't make this event or just want to view some additional content, check out the Virtual Side which is a cool idea and something Austrlian should adopt for next year.

Cheers
Jeff