Key Functional Enhancements
- SharePoint Web parts enable you to explore and view reports located on a report server by using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server.
- Reports can now be printed directly from within Internet Explorer. A Microsoft ActiveX control is provided to support a rich client-side printing experience including full page preview.
Go get it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=502C0D89-1308-4662-8F58-CEC55EF1235B&displaylang=en
Yep, during one of recent repaving of my laptop, I managed to permanetly delete my OPML. So if you have suggestions for SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and other blogs I should be reading, please send 'em off to me using the “contact” link to the left.
So I’m sitting at gate C11 at O’Hare Airport waiting for my final flight of the week – back home to Omaha. Having a few minutes, I thought I’d crank out a quick post about these events and my experiences at them.
The nice thing (at least from the presenter’s point of view) is that we have both a fixed list of content and times -- I do ~75 minute talks on SQLCLR, Service Broker and SQLXML in SQL Server 2005 -- as well as an hour of “as the experts” Q&A as the show wraps up. We’ve had some really good questions in the Q&A part, like:
- Can one call a UDF on a linked, remote Server with SQL Server 20005, which no, doesn’t appear to work.
- Can a function based on a SQLCLR hosted assembly query data on a linked-to server, which, yes, does appear to work.
- Have there been any improvements to calling T-SQL-based UDFs in terms of performance, which I’m still testing out.
Bill Baker emcees the Q&A session and he’s thrown out a few interesting answers of his own:
- On Thursday he mentioned that we should see SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2 released and available for download by Monday.
- The SQL Server Team is working on an enhancement to the networking layers of Service Broker that will let you interact with it using the “Indigo” technologies as well as the traditional SNAC and HTTP Endpoint features of SQL Server 2005.
- He mentioned that he believes the plan is to allow SQL Management Studio to be used against instances of SQL Express, which is a big improvement over what we have with MSDE and Enterprise Manager today.
- Reporting Services 2005 should be able to consume an Integration Services package as a Data Source.
Following these sessions, we’ve been having a SQL PASS function, which has been good chances to meet with other SQL Server User Group Leads like Rick Heiges (who is quite a character himself) and Joe Lax in New York, as well as other SQL Server addicts. If you are coming to event in other cities, it’s very much worth staying for this IMHO.
For Boston, we did the event on Tuesday at the Marriott Copley. I arrived Monday afternoon. That was fine, but I overlooked that the Boston Marathon was being run that day. Well, okay I though, no big deal, it’ll just take us longer to get to the hotel. Well, I right about that at least – however, the path to the hotel intersected last mile or so of the Marathon route and the rest area. Bad news. Turns out that I got to lug about 50 pounds of luggage the last two miles to the hotel... on foot. Oh well, its not like I didn’t need the exercise, right? That was enough of a marathon for me!
The next day we started off with our Executive meeting breakfast and I got to meet Raj Gill and Stacia Misner – the other presenters for the event, as well as Bill Baker, the keynote speaker (and MS Executive who owns the BI parts of SQL Server). All three of them really make quite and impression! Following breakfast, I hooked up with DevelopMentor’s Mike Crowley out our exhibition booth. Eventually Adam Mechanic and Andrew Kelly – SQL Server MVPs – wandered by. I heard that Aaron Bertrand was at the show too but I didn’t get to see him. After the show, Aaron and I wandered over to the hole in the wall bar and grill called Bukowski’s and enjoyed their amazing selection of beers. Adam had an Imperial Porter (oddly in an unlabelled bottle) and this amazing looking Dunkelwiesen. Selection was a no brainier for me – they have AS Urbock Rauchbier!
Wednesday morning I took the United – err US Airways Shuttle – to New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Just a note about that if you ever have to do: don’t go to Terminal “C” expecting to fly United if your itinerary says terminal “B” since it’s a pretty good walk between the two and I’m lead to believe its always going to be a US Airways flight. After arriving in New York, I had a few hours to work on the presentations (it seems I’m always fine tuning them and working on improving the demos), then met up with DevelopMentor’s Martha Garron, Scott Deadrick, Jon Flanders and Mark Thompson for dinner. It was indeed a fun group to be with. We went to a place called Dawat (pronounced like Du-vat) on 58th street. I had the Goat Briyani which was good and some Kulfi. Jon suggested getting Naan and I’m glad he did! That place has the Best Garlic Naan I’ve ever had. The dinner conversation focused on folks catching up and current events within DevelopMentor.
As usual, the New York Road show event started with the Executive Briefing breakfast. My friend and fellow SQL Server MVP Hilary Cotter joined us and it was good to catch up with him again. He talked about some of his current writing projects like a follow-up to his Transactional Replication book – this time talking about Merge Replication. He’s also reaching materials for a SharePoint Portal Searching Service book.
Well, they just called my seating zone and since I’m way at the back of the bus, I’d better get going…