Bummer. Packed house, no room. I guess more people were interested in this than expected. Same thing happened with the PAG (Prescriptive Architectural Guidance) session this morning.

So I jumped to the SQL Server 2004 Deployment session. Pretty full, but at least there was room. The unified installer looks interesting.

Big changes in instance management. Not managed with setup program, but with SQL Computer Manager. Installation is much more granular, and does include notification services and reporting services. Granular reporting about what's getting installed, including pre-requisites. Patch management is also pretty cool, even allowing uninstalls. All this is more focused on the IT Pro, and while I love SQL Server, I do wish I was able to check out that WSE session :).