Sql Server 2005 Roadshow
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Note: This post is based on notes I took during the sessions.
The drive to Dearborn was good until I got to Ypsilanti; at that point the traffic really picked up and it was a lot of stop-and-go. I had planned on arriving at 8a, but due to traffic, didn't arrive until 8:30a. I was just in time to check-in and listen to the keynote.
The keynote was good, but the presenters acccent was a bit thick and difficult to understand at times. He did a great overview of the new features - some of them look really cool. I can't wait to dive in and play with the service broker, database mirroring, SSIS (was DTS), snapshots and encryption.
The first developer session I went to was "Programming SQL Server Using the Hosted .NET Runtime". I had high hopes, but the presenter was disappointing. He's a T-SQL guy that didn't appear to have any recent
development experience. All his samples were C#, but he admitted that he wasn't a C# guy. Overall, I found him to be a putz. He skipped most of the slides and instead spent time going over new T-SQL features.
I did manage to get some good information like:
1. The .NET runtime hosted in SQL Server will not be loaded if none of the runtime features are used.
2. When loaded, it will only consume between 10-30MB of RAM.
The DBA can restrict the CLR functionality that's exposed. Even in the "restricted" mode, there is still a lot of good functionality.
SQL Server 2005 ships with a "Surface Area Configuration" tool that let's you restrict (enable/disable) parts of SQL Server (like CLR Integration).
The restricted CLR cannot crash SQL Server or leak memory (?).
Safe and external access - cannot call unmanaged code.
Unsafe - well...
His answer to a lot of questions was one of the following:
1. I haven't tried that yet
2. Read my blog
3. Buy my book
Hosted applications have an intrinsic connection object (sounds a bit like Access).
You can run assemblies side-by-side, although he seemed pretty against the idea.
Assemblies are added directly to the database (they are actually stored as varbinary data), so they get backed-up just like any other SQL Server object.
CREATE ASSEMBLY foo FROM 'c:\bar\foo.dll'
ALTER ASSEMBLY...
DROP ASSEMBLY...
There are new System information views that hold assembly information.
His demo for this session sucked. He spent more time moving and resizing the windows for the demo that actually doing it. Once he arranged everything, the demo didn't work until someone pointed out he was trying to exec code in the wrong database. :-\
One of the cool new features in T-SQL is the ability to have triggers on DDL statements - you can run a trigger on a CREATE, ALTER or DROP.
The same guy is doing all of the developer sessions. Bummer. I'm not sure if I can take much more of this guy.
The second session was:
Intro to SQL Server 2005 Service Broker
Basically, a queueing system built into SQL Server. It looks cool, but this guy is still a putz. The demo was weak. He spent a few minutes talking about HTTP EndPoints (allowing you to create a web service directly in SQL Server), but he didn't do a demo because he wanted to get back to his "What's New in T-SQL" demo.
It's 1:10p and the next "real" session doesn't start until 2:30. All of the vendors are doing presentations now. I'm a bit tempted to skip the next dev session and go to the admin session since it sounds more interesting.
The final dev session is "Introducing the Xml Data Type and XQuery".
The final admin session is "Building Highly Available Systems with Sql Server 2005"
Those sessions run from 2:30 until 3:45. There is a full session from 4 until 5, but I'm thinking about bailing before that to try and bypass some of the traffic.
The 'Building Highly Available Systems' session was great (although I did leave early). The speaker (Rick Heiges from Scalability Experts, Inc.) was dynamic and he kept my attention. He really knows what he's talking about. In this session, he talked about DB Mirroring which looks like a very cool feature. The group asked great questions which he was actually able to answer! :-)
It's 8:43p, I'm tired and I'm going to bed now.