Jackie Goldstein's Weblog

Community Technology Previews (CTPs) of new versions of SQL Server 2005 Express are now available from here.

One of the questions/issues that comes up periodically is "Is Microsoft using its own platform/tools (.NET) to develop its own products ?"   While we could have a great discussion about the correctness of writing an Operating System totally in managed code, there are many elements and products from Microsoft that do already incorporate alot of .NET code. 

Here is an interesting, and quite humerous, opinion on the question of software factories, posted by Benji Smith on Joel Spolsky's discussion forum.  I think that like most things, especially engineering, it is a matter of using good judgement to pick the tool / technology / architecture that best needs the requirements and constraints. 

Another great, extensive post by Scott Guthrie.  We have already done work with the ASP.NET 2.0 Membership and Roles, both in Winforms and Webforms, but I sure wish I had this list of resources when I started !

J.D. Meier's (from the MS Patters Practices PAG team) blog entry points to some short and useful security videos given by Keith Brown.

You can now take online SQL Server 2005 courses for free - here.

Since 1999, I haved looked forward to attending and speaking at the annual TechEd EMEA at the beginning of July.  It normally took place either in Barcelona or Amsterdam - both fun places to visit.  Well, the format of the show is being changed and moved to November.  The official announcement is here.  You can read Hans' take on it over here.