Live from DevConnections
Last night the DevConnections conference kicked off in Las Vegas with keynotes by Scott Guthrie and Tom Rizzo
Tom did a quick overview of all the new stuff coming out with SQL 2005 and did a few demos of the new capabilities.
The gambling started early as Tom got an audience member to bet $10 that a using a SQL Server TSQL capability to split a string column would be faster than using the new CLR hosting. The CLR version outperformed the TSQL flavor and I think highlights that there are going to be some interesting times that we see the CLR capability in SQL Server shine.
Tom also did a demo of the new Report Builder that is under development to go along with Reporting Services that would allow an end user (Definition Pending in my opinion) build a report that is based on Report services – and later that report definition will be able to be imported into Visual Studio.
I was impressed with the list of internal use the Microsoft is already doing with SQL 2005 – they have several of their large SQL databases using the new version.
Scott did his usual great job of building a web app in 30 minutes with Visual Web Developer and highlighted a lot of the new features. I think every time I see scott do his demo’s I pickup one or two more tricks.
Both Scott and Tom had similar stories about release times – Beta 2 of ASP/NET and Beta 3 of SQL will be Q1 2005 and RTM will be summer of 2005
After the keynotes everyone hit the expo for drinks an desert. If your at DevConnections drop by the community area in the expo and chat with the speakers and MVP’s that are at the show. I will be there from 12:30 – 2:30 on Tuesday.
I will try to post more updates later – but for now I have to go figure out which sessions I will attend since I’m not speaking today.