Direct Reports : TechEd

When I Was Born for the 7th Time (Thoughts from TechEd)

bwelcker — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:46:00 GMT

Last week I attended TechEd in Orlando, Florida . Here are my thoughts on the event. This year was TechEd's 15th anniversary. I realized on the way down that I was attending my 10th consecutive TechEd. When I started attending, TechEd was about 2,000...(read more)

Perfect Prescription (OneNote is Really Cool)

bwelcker — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:56:00 GMT

I think that you might be surprised how long it takes people within Microsoft to adopt new software. While there are some software that we are "strongly encouraged" to adopt <g>, what applications we use on a day to day basis is generally up to each one of us. I'm usually so busy trying out the latest features of my own product that I don't have time to try out the other stuff that is coming out from around the company.

Take OneNote, for example. Although it has been in Office for two versions, I never gave it a try. My original reluctance was basd on the mistaken assumption that it was primarily for tablet users. After that, I just never had the bandwidth to learn how to use it. So I stuck with Outlook, Word, or Notepad for taking notes. Since Office 2007 was released, several of my team members started calling me a luddite for not giving it a try so I took the dive. And you know what? It's really cool. I'm sure I'm not using half of the features but just the ability to not worry about where to save stuff makes taking notes a lot easier.

So, I'm on my way to TechEd writing the notes for my presentations in OneNote. Even this blog entry was written in OneNote then pasted into Live Writer (which is a very nice tool in itself). Now if domestic flights only had Internet connections...

Dreamy (Reporting Services at TechEd)

bwelcker — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:28:00 GMT

Unlike previous years, I decided not to attend the first day of TechEd. This means that I missed BobMu's keynote but you can read about the details from many of the TechEd bloggers.

If you read the press release from TechEd today, we announced the official name for the next release of SQL Server - SQL Server 2008 (so long, Katmai). You can also download the first CTP. While I would encourage you to try some of the new features in the CTP, you are going to be a little disappointed if you are looking for new Reporting Services features. We have scheduled our first set of new features for the next CTP - so stay tuned for a few more months. If you attend one of our TechEd sessions, you will get a preview of what is coming.

Our second big announcement from TechEd was that we have acquired the data visualization products of Dundas Software. Many of you have been using the enhanced chart for Reporting Services along with the gauge and map custom report items. We realized the importance of data visualization components for reporting so we purchased this codebase for inclusion in future versions of SSRS. We are working on the integration right now so I can't promise how much will make it into SQL Server 2008.

As for TechEd itself, I'm heading out tomorrow. Feel free to stop by the Business Intelligence part of the Learning Center and say hi. If you are looking for some Reporting Services related content, try these sessions:

BIN 305 - Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
DAT 201 - The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Overview
BIN 202 - Third Annual Business Intelligence Power Hour
BIN04-TLC - Reporting Services Rendering Tips and Tricks
BIN 306 - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services: Advanced Report Design
BIN 318 - Reporting Services Futures: Report Authoring for Information Workers
BIN05-TLC - Integrating Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
BIN15-TLC - Reporting Services Programmability
BIN 306R - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services: Advanced Report Design