Bill Baker is visiting Atlanta this week for the Microsoft Global Business conference, and he graciously volunteered to come speak before the SQL Server User Group for the second year in a row, although this is the first time I’ve seen him speak. Bill Baker is the program manager for the SQL Server Business Intelligence products, including Analysis Services, Reporting Services, Integration Services (DTS), and more.
Bill is an extremely entertaining person to watch – complete with Steve Ballmer imitations. We talked about SQL Server 2005 in general and how the new release is going to really help everyone out with some really cool new features. We talked about the new licensing SKUs – Enterprise, Standard, WorkGroup (a new SKU), and Express (MSDN). The cost has gone up a bit, from $20,000 to $25,000 for the Enterprise Edition. Standard now costs $6000, Workgroup costs $3,500, and Express is free. Special note – the Developer Edition, which is the Enterprise Edition with a single connection license, costs a mere $49!
I can’t really tell you what Bill talked about because he was all over the map – the presentation was entirely question and answer. This was the first technology presentation I’ve been to in years where the speaker didn’t even use a computer. Not even a projected My Name Is slide! No props at all. We did cover lots of cool ground. For example, did you know that the most requested feature from the community (submitted through the Ladybug system) was a bell at the completion of a query? Who thinks of that stuff? Did you know that when Beta 1 of SQL 2005 came out, that the favorite feature of the community was the new SQL Management Console tool that replaces Enterprise Manager? Can you guess what the least favorite feature was? That’s right – the new SQL Management Console! Talk about a schizophrenic user community! We apparently will not be getting hashed indexes. We ARE able to run SQL 2000 and SQL 2005 side by side. Database mirroring is a great cool new technology that requires three computers – a primary, a mirror, and a monitor that votes which system is the primary and which is the mirror. Did you know that you could potentially have all three systems in the same box? Sure, why not? Hardware is way more dependable these days than software. That’s job security for us! We covered so many topics – ETS, OLTP, building cubes as a background process, etc, that I can’t even remember everything we talked about.
We had some great sponsors – Microsoft, Unisys, ProClarity, and Doug McDowell himself (or whomever reimburses him) – who brought in some incredible barbeque for the meeting. Thanks guys!
Quick note #1 – when you have SQL or technology questions, be sure to post them to the MSN groups. Doug was telling me that before the meeting he was hit with 10 technical questions and he didn’t have the time to sit and really think about the answers. By posting to the MSN groups, you have a much wider community than just Doug looking at the questions and suggesting answers.
Quick note #2 – There is a SQL Server Road show $99 one day training event occurring at the Cobb Galleria hosted by Windows IT Pro magazine and the SQL Pass organization. There will be three tracks – DBA, Dev, and BI. Register through the www.AtlantaMDF.com banner and you’ll get a free $25 AMEX gift card. If 25 people register through the AtlantaMDF banner, the AtlantaMDF organization will receive a donation that will help us continue to provide pizza and beverages to the members.
-- Matt Ranlett