Blog ala Vidar

I’m never going to get used to Øystein waking me up. We had some breakfast before we headed over to CCIB. First session started at 10:45:
DAT307, Best Practices for Optimizing Procedural Code and Queries in SQL Server 2005 and Beyond with Bob Beauchemin.

This session was not about query-tuning. It was more about understanding the execution plan, and what other things that’s going on when you press F5. Pretty interesting!
Rating: 3

Arriving late means early lunch. Pasta, sausages and potatoes are actually an ok mix! In the lunch we decided to go to something which seemed fancy. Not work related at all, but seemed very interesting after all:
MED03-IS, Microsoft Robotics Studio Demonstrations with Oliver Bloch
Admit it! It sounds really fun! Well, I’ll tell you. It was fun, but not the demonstration in itself. First of all, he is French, so his accent is funny. Second of all, I’m pretty sure he said fuck at least 5 times. He probably said something else, but I couldn’t help myself. I started giggling like a little girl. After about 10 minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. He were just repeating himself, and showing a whole lot of powerpoint slides with TEXT. No code, no screenshots, no demos, no nothing. BORING!
Rating: 9

Still giggling, I went down to the exhibition hall, again and walked around a couple of minutes before Øystein and Jan Leon joined me. They couldn’t stand the French dude anymore! We bought 16 books at a Microsoft-stand. 40% discount on all books from Microsoft Press, and 30% on everything else! Total sum: 442€. That’s 28€ pr book. In Norway, they cost about 60-75€!

After leaving our bags at the hotel, we went shopping. I can, of course, not remember the name of the mall, but it was big! Went to the top floor to get some food, and got the worst service EVER! First the waiters ”didn’t” see us, then when we got a menu and tried ordering, the waiter took the menu from us and just said ”NO FOOD!” and left. We couldn’t get an explanation from them, so we left in anger. Beate (one of Ronny’s little helpers) sais she gets good service wherever she goes. Why do three guys, that look like Rangers supporters, not get good service?! I can’t figure it out… Anyhow, found a restaurant after HOURS of walking, and then went back to the hotel. Next: FOOTBALL!

Today is Champions League. For those who haven’t heard of this (USA-dudes), football is when you only use your feet to kick the ball around, not arms and violent tackles! We followed some Rangers-supporters to the Metro. Scottish people know how to drink, and knows how to entertain themselves! We had fun watching them sing all the way to Camp Nou, and learning how to act as a (brain-dead) Rangers-supporter. I’ve never been to a game this big! 90.000 supporters! That’s more than Haugesund’s poor 4000. I got goose bumps! This is NOT going to be my last match! Anyways, the game ended Barcelona 2, Glasgow Rangers 0. Goals by Henry and Messi.

On our way home, we dropped in at Hard Rock Cafe, where the Norwegian participants of TechEd had a gathering. Free beer! We showed up at about 23:30, and they’d been drinking since 19:00. You think they were drunk. YEPP! We had a couple of beers, tried talking to a couple of people, but no luck. One of my conversations were
Vidar: ”What do you do?”
Norwegian-dude 1: ”I’m developing”
Vidar: ”Ok. What are you developing?”
ND1: ”Systems”
Vidar: ”Oooook. See you!”
I’m not a fan of talking to people that are drunk. At least not when I’m sober!

Tomorrow, there’ll be more interesting sessions. I’ve figured out I’m not going to go to any more non-interesting sessions, since we’re getting DVDs of all sessions in (snail)mail in a couple of weeks.
Quick overview of free things I’ve got from the exhibition hall: Pens (even with lights), stress balls, installation CDs/DVDs, t-shirts, advertisements, caps and even a deck of cards!

Today I woke up by myself at 10am, REALLY tired. After some breakfast we were on our way to get lunch at CCIB. I’ve only been to two sessions today.

DAT313, SQL Server 2005 Security and Innovations in SQL Server 2008 Security, with Sethu Kalavakur.
In this session, he talked much, but had a couple of demos. Including encryption of whole databases and auditing. I think we can use auditing when it comes to SOX, because you can not only log who’s inserting, updating and deleting from tables, you can also log who’s selecting! His language was very understandable, and he knew what he was talking about.
Rating: 4

DAT01-IS, Tell Us Where it Hurts! SQL Server Product Feedback Discussion, with Micael Rys, Steve Lasker, Carl Perry, Cristian Petsculescu, Sethu Kalavakur and my hero Bob Beauchemin.
This was actually a pretty fun (interactive) session. No demos, only Q&A. All of the speakers are employees of Microsoft, except Bob. But, he seemed to be the one with most knowledge. He answered questions about EVERYTHING from Reporting Services to hard-core memory handling. He is without doubt my hero! I think I’m going to start “Bobs fanclub”. Anyhow, I got to ask a question I’ve been dying to ask for a while: “When is row level security coming inside SQL Server”. Mr. Kalavakur told me they actually had it in the first CTP of SQL 2005, but it got too complex to finish till the end release of 2005, so they removed it. But he ensured me it was number two on his list of things to come in the next release of SQL Server AFTER 2008. He added that this could easily be done by using views, just like we do, so we’re probably doing it “by the book” ? This was a very informative session, because we got to know how the development process worked in Microsoft, very detailed answers on difficult questions etc. I was VERY pleased with this session!
Rating: 2

Before these sessions I was walking around the exhibition hall, again. Tried to ask, not less than 4 people, about an issue we’re having in SQL 2005. This is the new “user must change password on next login” feature. The problem is that you will not be able to log in if you have to change the password. We have to send the old, and the new password in the connection-string, because since we can’t connect, we can’t execute a stored procedure to change the password. I found one solution, I thought, but this didn’t work. So, anyway… I asked two people at the SQL stand with green “ask the expert” t-shirts. They had no idea how to solve this. They pointed me to a guy at the office-stand. By the way, never tell anyone from Microsoft, or any other company, you’re using Access. They do not take you seriously. The office-dude didn’t know either, so I went to a ODBC-stand. You think he knew what he was talking about? Not at all. He hadn’t even heard of SQL Server Management Studio! After a while the people at the “Microsoft Unified Communication” (the once that deal with all communication APIs) showed up so I asked one of them. He knew the answer, but didn’t remember it, so I got his email.

Today’s free material: Windows Server 2008 e-book (on DVD), security development book, a couple of SQL Server magazines, yo-yo, caps, and last but not least one T-shirt (for all MCPs) which pretty much sums me up! On the front it says “Geek”, and on the back it says:
geek (‘gek), noun.
1. Obsessive Computer User: somebody who enjoys or takes pride in using computers or other technology, often to what others consider an excessive degree.
2. Someone with greater than normal computer skills.

After getting back to the hotel, we visited a tapas-place, again. Great food, great beer, great service and beautiful girls!

Search for more information about each session:

http://www.mseventseurope.com/OnlinePub/Public/sessions.aspx?EventId=HbLEvtKcPE4%3d

(yeah, I know.. It sucks big-time!)

Stephen (Forte)’s blog

http://www.stephenforte.net/owdasblog/

Bob Beauchemin’s blog:

http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/bobb/

Øystein, which has a 3 months old baby at home is used to get up EARLY. I hoped he would sleep ABIT longer, but that wasn’t going to happen!
At 07:44 my phone called, and woke me up. We agreed on getting to CCIB before 9 to get to the first session; “The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Overview of SQL Server 2008”.
Met a Belgish guy from Microsoft at the hotel and he told us about a much quicker way to get to the Metro. Of course, this way we had to change lanes, and of course walking around the corridores
between the lanes for HOURS. I guess you’d probably found out I’m not a fan of walking by now… Anyhow, swetty and HOT we arrived at CCIB later than expected; 09:10, so we missed the first session 😥
We sat down at the HOL, and took a couple of exercises there. DAT02, 04 and 05, to be precise. I even managed to fuck up the virtual machine, without purpose, and learned once again that not all
spanish can make themselves understandable. Anyhow, after a “fresh air”-sessions (Lithuanian guys know what I’m talking about), we (me and Nils Arne) got to the second session:
DAT309, Best Practices for Optimizing SQLCLR in SQL Server 2005 and Beyond, with Bob Beauchemin
He’s still a great speaker! I’m not going to bore you with 15 A4 pages of summart, so here’s a short summary of the session; If there exists a function for it in T-SQL do it in T-SQL. If not, do it in CLR.
Of course, you can bend this rule abit, but let’s not go into details. For those who ARE interested in details, contact me on MSN next week!
Rating: 3

After lunch, and a quick walk in the exhibition hall, we ended up in room 112:
DAT312, Programming SQL Server 2008, with Carl Perry
Not the best speaker, but he made at least me understand a couple of the new features. Filestreams, new date/time types and table valued parameters.
I really believed tvp’s was available in 2005. Probably mixing 5 and 8!
Rating: 5

I desided to skip the next session (DAT306) since this was about Compact version of SQL Server, in advantage for the exhibition hall. I really love walking around talking geek-stuff.
I bet I could do this ALL week, but I also want to go to some sessions. Luxus problems! I also had time for a couple of HOL, specifically DAT09 and 18 till the others showed up after a WPF session.
I think Øystein is very just as impressed by WPF as I’m with SQL Server!

Next session was in room 117:
DAT315, T-SQL Querying: Tips and Techniques, with Stephen Forte
This must be the most energetic speaker, EVAH. Not only was he speaking about something very interesting for me, he even got Sidsel (one of Ronny’s little helpers) who is NOT interested in computers, interested in SQL Server!
THAT’S impressive! As a wanna-be-some-day-speaker-for-TechEd I’m not only watching the slides, I’m also looking for ways to interact with the people listening, and I think he were VERY good at this!
Enough about Stephen (yeah, we’re on first-names, or at least I am!). He introduced me to a couple of new things I already knew abit about, but had not tried. Common Table Expressions which is almost the same as derived tables,
XML with XQuery and Pivot. I have to locate him this week and have a chat! Also got a question prepared for him 🙂 What’s the difference between CTE and derived tables? Anyone?

Rating: 1.5

After almost 10 hours, we found out it was best to get back to the hotel. Tried finding an ok restaurant, which I thought should be pretty easy. Turns out, it’s very difficult, unless you’re near Hard Rock Cafe. Everything else looks “shabby”.
We eventually found a place, which very very cheap and then headed back to the hotel to debriefe (read: have a beer before bed).

My day started at 8am, when Øystein called; “Nå gidde eg ikkje å gå ront aleina lenger. STÅ OPP!” (English: I don’t wanna walk around alone anymore. GET UP!)

We went down to have breakfast, egg and bacon, and then waited till 9 for the hotel-pool to open. We had packed our bikinies (shorts, for those of you who don’t like the sight of me in bikini), and were READY to take a swim, but when we got to the pool we got disappointed!

It wasn’t big enough for a walrus like me! But, we moved on. Got a shower, woke up Jan Leon and headed for CCIB. Now we knew which metro-station to get to, and where to get off!

We started with lunch (right after breakfast you might ask? Well.. To get as big and strong as me, you have to eat like a horse!) at 11:30. After lunch we had a couple of hours to kill, so we got to the HOL (Self-Paced Hands-on Labs), where they have set up computers in areas for learning different things. The SQL-area was full, so we sat down at powershell. Also VERY interesting, since I’m used to Linux (and console) before starting in Omega. Finally you can start scripting almost like in bash! I’ve missed this. The great thing about HOL is that the computers are set up in a way you can’t do anything else than you’re supposed to (working with powershell), and you’ve got a bunch of experts in all areas!

After about an hour in HOL, we desided to find the auditorium where the keynote speak with CO Vice President of the Developer devision in Microsoft; Mr. Somasegar, were starting at 14:00. He’s probably from India or something. We had some problems with understanding his accent, but understood the point of “welcome to TechEd 2007”. The auditorium was filled with geeks like ourself. I’d guess about 500-1000 geeks! That’s more than we’ve got in Ølen!

After the keynote speech, a couple of smokes and a cup of coffee, we got to the first session:

DAT308, Best Practices for Optimizing Service-Based Code in SQL Server 2005 and Beyond, with Bob Beauchemin (from SQLSkills).

Great speaker! I’d love to have a couple of words with him within this week! He were talking about the Service Broker “tool” in SQL Server, which is like a queue. You can use this to run queries asyncronous. FINALLY WE CAN GET RID OF DO ADMIN JOBS!

Rating: 2.5 (1 till 10, where 1 is best, as always 😉

After a smoke, I got “down to earth” again and we managed to get to another session:

SEP203, Introductory Walkthrough of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) using Visual Studio 2008, with Steve Maine

He was more of a kind of nerd. Didn’t have 100% control over presentations (when error appeared, he got silent and just tried to fix everything asap zulu, instead of starting next topic.

This was not to interesting for me, as I’m more of a database-dude, but I had at least my eyes planted on the big-screen, trying to understand everything.

Rating: 7

When SEP203 were finished, we went to the opening of the exhibition hall, where we (finally) got some snacks. Got to speak with a girl in MSDN, which actually had norwegian grand-parents. Her last-name was Olsen. Same as Øystein 🙂 Got some free caps and some other stuff, and then went home. We were only three at this time; me, myself and …  No. Øystein and Jan Leon. All of us thought we had sense of direction, but we were proven wrong! We walked in all directions, because each person we asked for directions pointed in different directions! After a while we found out that trying to find the way to Hard Rock Cafe was much easier than trying to find the way to the longest street in Europe! Who would have thought that?! Ended up at the hotel after a couple of hours walk, got a couple of beers and now I’m off to bed! Good night!