Dennis Forbes is a Toronto-based software architect. While focused primarily on the .NET and SQL Server worlds, Dennis frequently ventures outside of this comfort zone into game development and image processing. He has been published in several industry magazines, has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and has been interviewed by NPR.Does anyone know if it's possible to simulate a SAN on a PC? e.g. a VirtualPC session, or even on another machine, mounted as a SAN on the local machine? Whether the server is in Linux or Windows, preferrably the client will be available from Windows machines (e.g. via iSCSI, or a proprietary driver). This is just out of curiousity about a technology matter.
On a completely different note, based upon some feedback I've added a new category - Everything - that all posts will go to (well unless I forget to check the checkbox). To explain - when I post something I choose which categories that it will go to. If, for instance, I'm talking about a weekend outing, I'll send it to Personal but not to the home page. If I'm writing about .NET generally, I'll send it to .NET and the home page, unless it's highly technical (e.g. code) in which case I'll leave it only in .NET. The home page is meant as a more generally readable section, while the categories are more interest specific. Often there will be overlaps - for instance .NET will contain a lot of the same content as the home page section if I've been writing a lot about Microsoft/.NET topics.
However some people just wanted to see everything, regardless of categorization, so that category now exists. I've been pushing stuff there for the past couple of days.
[NOTE: For those who come right in for Launch Event entries and see this first, please jump down to the first post and come forward (up) - I thought that it was a fantastic event, and a great use of the time, and the stars in this entry only apply to the final segment - Q&A]
4:30pm - 5:00pm
If you've ever watched the Daily Show, imagine Jon Stewart saying "awkwarrrrrrd" in that way that he does.
I really don't understand why Q&A sessions continue to be featured in these sorts of events, when they virtually always follow the same clumsy sequence - people ask very domain- and problem-specific questions (the kind that would best be asked in usenet newsgroups or email support), there are communication issues leading to the same wrong answer being provided multiple times and the questioner re-asking the question, and then everyone finally giving up. In the odd case that the question is actually understood, often the prospective answerer dances around it for a while, or gets defensive, because they really don't have a clue (for the reasons covered in a prior post - questioners have an infinite set of questions to draw from, versus the finite knowledge of anyone on the stage).
This one was no exception. Everyone hung around only to see if they won an xbox360 (which they gave out - to be shipped when released - to one person at the entire event who had filled out their evaluation form. They also gave out some Toronto Maple Leaf shirts, but they went over pretty poorly), or to figure out how to get their bounty (previously documented).
As is standard at events with evaluation forms, more than once I heard presenters admonish the crowd with lines like "If you're giving us less than 8 or 9, then please come up and tell us how we could improve the show..." I find these sorts of requests disingenuous and manipulative - the real purpose, obviously, is to guilt people into giving an 8 or 9 (under the guise that if they're too lazy or unmotivated to go up and detail their complaints, then they should suck it up and give a good mark regardless). Event managers should banish these sorts of requests by presenters, because it's basically stuffing the vote and eliminating the value of the feedback - and I'm saying this as someone who gave honest 8s and 9s pretty much across the board.
3:00pm - 4:00pm
Obviously my observations are getting shorter and more terse (I'll probably expand them tomorrow), but this session covered some of the high availability solutions available with SQL Server 2005. For instance the not-yet "released" database mirroring, online reindexing, partial database availability, zero-init improvements, fast recovery, peer to peer transactional replication, snapshot versioning of rows, among other availability improvements. Very exciting improvements that should significantly improve the already impressive availability of SQL Server. The demonstrations were clear and evidentiary of the features, demonstrating a corrupt database, readers simultaneous with writers, taking a server in a mirrored configuration offline, and other new features. Very interesting.
1:30pm - 3:00pm
This session covers the trio of Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services.
After a funny intro video (including some snide back and forth between an "IT Pro" and a "Developer". Not sure what an IT Pro was supposed to be, but it sounds like it's the new Microsoft lingo for administrative type roles. The video included comments like the developer calling the IT Pro a "glorified DJ", and the IT Pro saying about development "A monkey could do that". Quite funny), the session got underway. This was a full house, and covered topics like integration services (formerly DTS - which has seen some huge improvements), including a demonstration of its performance improvements (processing and importing 2 million rows in seconds), data cleansing and "AI" abilities, among other advances.
The discussion then moved on to Analysis services, XML/A and unified dimensional model, data mining (such as the demonstrated associative model), key performance indicators, and the dashboard. Very informative.
It then moved to reporting services, demonstrating how developers could create and deploy reports, and how even relatively untrained users could do the same.
12:00pm - 1:30pm
Back in the big room again. This was a fairly good session, giving an overview of a huge project lifecycle and integration suite in far too short of a time. The presenters, whose names I unfortunately didn't catch, were a study of contrasts - one seemed poised and prepared, while the other seemed disjointed and constantly at a loss for words. I'd be nervous in front of a crowd like that too, but it was the contrast that made it so evident.
VSTS is far too big of a product to give it justice in a short presentation - or a short blog entry - but the demo was impressive, and if it works as well as it looks in the real world then it will definitely be a marketplace winner.
10:30am - 12:00pm
Either through a technical glitch, or an oversight when I was signing up, but I was registered and confirmed for both tracks (despite impossibly concurrent times for several of them), so I went straight through from keynote to 4:30pm, catching all of the SQL Server track, and one of the Visual Studio events. Obviously I'm intently involved with Visual Studio, however I thought the SQL Server track would be more focused and interesting.
For this session we moved over to the other room - a smaller room, half filled with chairs, featuring 2 large, albeit unfocused, ~9'x11' screens and 2 smaller ~7'x9' screens, and a beautiful, tattered green carpet covering. After some very annoying intro music the session got underway, competing with the sounds of transport trucks and low flying aircraft.
This was a great session. Presented jointly by Barnaby Jeans and Damir Basinick, it was a great overview of some of the new administrative features and changes with SQL Server 2005. From the transition from Enterprise Manager to Management Studio, to a side talk about the Toronto SQL Server Users Group, to examples of some of the new administrative reports available in Management Studio, it was a really great crash course in the advantages that SQL Server brings. Strangely the crowd was largely non-responsive, and Barnaby's attempts at getting feedback largely fell to the floor with the thud. Quite a few in the crowd were playing with their cellphone (one I believe was using the new live video functionality). The banter between Barnaby and Damir was awkward and forced, and often out of sync.
At one point Barnaby asked who in the crowd had looked at the technet blogs, and the response rate was enormously low: While this could be attributed to the malaise of the crowd, I think it was actually a pretty valid response - Most corporate developers and IT workers aren't involved in blogs, online forums, or some of the other things that many of us think are the norm nowadays. I don't say that judgementally or derisively, but as a simple matter of fact: For many this career has stabilized to being more like traditional careers, and few accountants, as a similar example, are out reading the KPMG or government auditor blogs every day. Or ever, for that matter.
Some of the other great examples were the xml showplans, filtered views in Management Studio, shared xml profiles, the database engine tuning advisor. The changes in the profiler look fantastic, including the ability to display time synchronized performance monitors (so you can correlate events with CPU saturation, for instance), and xml plans in profiled events, integrated SMTP mail (rather than the infernally terrible MAPI), sqlcmd. Great stuff. Even if you've played with it yourself it still gives great context and focus to know where to really pay attention.
Remarkably very little was said about .NET integration, and some of the other easily abused elements - integrated xml and web services - were downplayed and pragmatically presented.
One thing about the presentation that I thought was odd was the impression given that the occupants of the room were "IT Pros" or DBAs, in contrast with the "developers" in the other room. As a software developer, I bemoan the lack of database knowledge amongst many developers (which leads to an endless cycle of terrible databases), and I wish more of them were in sessions like this.
As is the norm for events like this, they gave out goodies to entice the uninterested. To ensure that people didn't get their software and flee, they didn't do the give-outs until the end (apart from the notepad and crappy branded pen that they gave out at the beginning), handing out the bounty in plastic bags as you returned your nametag necklace. This technique worked well, as several times throughout the event I heard people comment on the "carrot" that was keeping them there "if they could stay awake", which really is sad. It's sad because there was a tonne of fantastic content, but people have become so acclimated to the goody bags that they focus far too intently on it.
I laughed to see that there was the standard $5 t-shirt, not surprizingly in the size XL (why do computer/software shows always give out XL?).
