Blog ala Vidar

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!