I hope everyone was able to keep up with my flurry of teched posts. In fact, you may have been wondering if I got eaten by Shamu or something. Well, one thing that I grossly underestimated was the time I actually had at teched. Being in the convention center from 7:30 to 10-11 every night doesn't leave alot of time, so I didn't really get a chance to blog.

I have been slowly putting my notes up on the wiki, though. I'd like to get all my notes up by the end of the weekend if possible. I'm also trying to collect links to others experiences in the same sessions. I hope to expand those wiki pages after we get the conference DVD, and I get a chance to go through a few more sessions. You can take a look at my teched notes thus far here. So far Monday is almost done (just need to finish the last session).

Teched was an amazing experience, though, and I really appreciate the chance I had to go. This was the first developer conference I had ever been to, and after reading alot of the pre-teched banter on how it's not worth it, I was a bit skeptical. After going, though, I feel it was definitely worth it. Alot of the material is made public both during, and after the conference, so getting to the materials that are presented is pretty easy. But, being able to take a week and just immerse myself in learning, and talking to others was well worth the time/expense. Being a corporate developer (no billable hours here), it's very difficult to get time to learn. There is no "bench" time. Even when we are in a research cycle (like now), there are fires, and business problems to deal with, which makes immersion pretty much impossible. I'll get 25% through a paper on xsd, and get pulled off for the rest of the day. Not the best way to learn, but effective nonetheless. Being able to focus for a complete week, though, I was able to learn much more then if I tried to grok most of that content on the clock, or even after hours. Plus from my companies perspective, they get a more informed developer, who really appreciates the fact they were willing to send him. Win win in my opinion. I will highly be suggesting we send at least 1 developer next year, which of course I would love to go, but I doubt it will be me next year :)

I've still got more teched stuff to post, but since it's kinda late now, I'll try to keep it at a minimum. Watch the wikipages if your interested in my session notes, and feel free to comment or add new links if there are other notes that I have missed. Now I can return to normal posting :)

This afternoon I had the pleasure of attending Kimberly Tripp's pre-conference session on Taming the SQL Server 2005 Tools. I don't think there are too many better ways to get acquainted with SQL Server 2K5 then 5 hours with Kimberly, she is amazingly familiar with 2K5, and not afraid to be enthusiastic about it, which if you have heard her on dnr (show1, show2), is quite obvious (some of the best DNR's ever).

The session started off discussing installation/upgrade, and some thoughts on setting up a secure server.

• ALWAYS set an SA pwd.. even if you are going to use strictly windows auth. You never know when you may need a backdoor in, and even though 2K5 will generate a random strong SA password for you if you don't specify one, good luck guessing it when you need to get into the server after the domain or your user accounts go belly up.
• SQL Server password policys filter down from the domain.. very cool
• She suggests running SQL Server in a low privilege local windows account. Hadn't thought about that, but certainly makes sense.
• NEVER use the local system account for your SQL Services on a domain controller. The account has access to alot more then whats needed for SQL. Of course this is only if you MUST put it on the domain controller in the first place.
• Upgrading may cause some pathing issues.. If you upgrade your databases, and they are in the default program files folders, your sql 2k5 files may be in mssql.1, while your data is ..\mssql\data. Not the end of the world, but ugly, and difficult to remember 6 months down the line. I'm sure your data files aren't in program files anyway
• We went through detaching and attaching a few databases. Remember, if you detach from 2k, and attach to 2k5, there's no going back. Make a copy, or do it from a backup. Also, upgrading your databases doesn't set the compatibility to 9, which is nice for your old software, but don't forget to keep upgrading on your mind.

Then we started to dig into the tools a bit. Kimberly is very excited about sqlcmd.exe, and rightfully so.

• sqlcmd.exe replaced osql.exe. It adds parameters (killer), initialization scripts (think constructor), and multiple connection handling ("go" those batches though!). Params can come in from the cmd line, environment variables, or good ole inline code. Management studio has full support for sqlcmd, also, giving syntax highlighting for the sqlcmd specific syntax, and the ability to run the scripts right in the IDE. sqlcmd.exe is very cool..
• The SQL Configuration Manager replaces a number of screens, including the server properties dialog from Enterprise manager, the client network utility, while also allowing for service management. Seems like a nice way to combine the management, but nothing earth shattering here. Oh, and the April CTP has a bug where it eats memory, but this has been fixed in the next CTP (rumor has it, we will see it very soon.)
• SQL Server 2K5 is now more Windows 2K3 like, borrowing the off by default concept. This means SQL Server will ship secure, and only you can unsecure it (minus any yet to be found vulns). To manage this, SQL Server Surface Area Configuration tool provides a means to view, and change these "off by default" settings. In other words, your xp_cmdshell code will fail, until you go in and remind the server, yeah, I really do want that.
• The management studio is a night and day change. If you are a vs.net developer, expect your SQL Server experience to feel more at home. If you are not, though, expect to get used to a whole new IDE, thats nothing like the past. Projects, solutions, and source control built right in, this isn't your Daddy's enterprise manager/query analyzer. You really just need to play with it to see. I've been using it for a while now as my primary way to manage SQL Server, and although there are still some issues, I see that this tool will make SQL Server much easier to work with. Of course, I spend most of my life in vs.net anyway, so anything that gets it closer is cool with me.
• Want just query analyzer? Check out the management app that comes with SQL Express.. It's free, and light, just like the old Query Analyzer.

She covered alot more then this too. Here are a few more nuggets I picked up..

• Fast file initialization will help speed up many formally slower operations, such as restores, growing filesets. This is turned off by default, but is a service setting. You can turn it on by adding your service user to the Perform Value Maintence Tasks item in the local security settings. In Kimberly's tests, she was able to take a restore that took 12 hours down to 6.
• The dedicated administrator connection allows an admin to connect through some reserved resources, no matter what the system is up to. By default, this is only allowed from localhost, but can be changed in the (you guessed it) Surface Area Configuration tool.
• Detaching a 2k5 database also brings catalogs. It's been a while since I've worked with a full text catalog, but I'd imagine this would be a lifesaver if you need it.

Now I just feel like I'm rambling. It's late, I'm tired... Teched day 0 done... More to come...

So starts the onslaught of teched posts. I'm sitting in a conference room waiting for Kimberly Tripp to start up her session, just too much to carry to walk around.

Flight was painless, although I get a little lost on the highways, and then stuck behind a toll that only took exact change (while the change lane was closed), with a 20$ in my pocket. So after abotu 10 minutes of steaming about that, some very nice passer by gave me 50 cents. I should of just driven through it, but I am on company insurance ;) I quickly bought a lemonade, and got back on the highway (the right way this time), where the tolls had attendants more then happy to break my bills. Thanks again to the random stranger in an explorer, although I doubt he'll ever read this.

The onslaught of swag has started already. The bag they give you is nice, and quite heavy. I haven't popped mine open yet, but have gotten some glances at others ruffling through the stuff. Looks interesting. I like the long stand of magazines, grab 1 or 2 of pretty much any tech related mag. The exhibit hall isn't open yet, so really the only thing publiclly going on that I can see are the pre-cons, and lots of people walking around, grabbing snacks off the many many tables of snacks, or sitting at one of the hundreds of random PCs setup around the conference. Oh, and that doesn't include the huge "communications center" which must have another 2-300 pcs for people to use, complete with printers and everything.

Well, have about 30 more minutes to waste. Guess I'll hit up newkingdoms, and maybe pop open that bag soon. Sorry if there are any spelling mistakes here, too far away from the access points to use my lappy here.

I get there Sunday morning, and will be in Kimberly Tripp's Effectively Using and Understanding SQL Server 2005 tools... Then.....

I think I'm a bit overbooked. :)

With teched a week out, I'm starting to think about what to bring. There are of course the obvious things...

• Some clothes. Prolly not too much as we are all geeks, and no one will notice if I wear the same shirt. :)
• Other livelyhood items. Toothbrush, floss, shampoo, etc.. I'll prolly shower at least once, but since I'm c# at heart I gotta have greasy hair at least one day. :) (ok ok, that's a lie,, I'll shower every day, I promise)
• Nintendo ds.. After long hours of nerding, I'll need to unwind with some advance wars 2.
• My ancient camera.. Oh the geeks will laugh, but I'll want pictures.
• Laptop.. The universal toolbox.
• Rails/Channel 9 videos.. Mainly for the flight.
• My notebook and pen.. I don't expect to have enough battery power to actually take notes on the laptop.
• My h320 mp3 player.. gotta have music, plus I might record a bit of teched.. I've thought about snagging a microphone too, but probably won't. Oh, and I'll have a bunch of old podcasts to catch up on.
• Phone

Things I won't be bringing

• Any books/magainzes/paper other then notebook.. just too heavy..
• Pocketpc.. Honestly, I never use the thing anyway.
• 2 bags.. I hate checking things at all, but I know I'll need to check at least 1 bag

What am I missing? I'm hoping to travel quite light, but I'm sure there is something I am forgetting.

I was thinking about how I was going to schedule my week at teched a couple weeks ago, and yesterday I saw a post from Julia Lerman about the same thing. Fantastic, glad to see others are thinking along the same lines, and with an RSS feed it should be easy (Hell, I could even bring all the items into rssbandit, and delete the ones I don't want).

Then, I saw last night that Christopher Bowen had pointed to the official "schedule my week" teched link from MS. Fantastic. I'm the guy at code camp with the sheet of all the sessions and colors outlined for my first second and third choice, so this will be a great way for me to indecisivly stare at the screen for hours.

I'll be there. After months of persistance, I just got word that my request to go to teched this year was approved. Excellent. I have wanted to go to teched for many years, but never had the chance. This year, though, I'll get to be at the geekfest, and now I'm counting the days.

I haven't added myself to the techedbloggers list yet, but will in the next couple days. And of course I'll need to add the purty image that reminds me everyday that I'm going. I'll make sure to post a picture up (like Dave and Sahil) so if you see me there, make sure to say hi.