Sorry I'm so late getting these posted:

  I was a bit late to the meeting on Monday so I missed the very beginning of Rusty’s presentation. However, I didn’t seem to have missed much. Rusty presented a tool he developed to ease the installation of websites across multiple servers. While I have no experience with the problem of having to create multiple virtual directories, but I can easily see how that could quickly turn into a huge pain.

After showing us the tool he made, Rusty gave us a whirlwind tour of creating installer projects in visual studio. My only personal experience with creating install packages is with InstallShield.  I thought InstallShield was pretty easy, but I didn’t  like that I had to write my code in the installer script. I like that I can now use familiar C# or VB.

After Rusty sat down, Paul Lockwood gave us a presentation on Reporting Services.  I’ve seen a few demos on the basics of the Reporting Services concepts before, but this is the first time I’ve seen a demo where a report was actually put together and deployed in front of my eyes.  Kudos to Paul for a great job.  If I ever work on RS, he should expect me to call him for help.  Him or Keith.  Or Brendon.  In fact, it seems like I’m the only one with no Reporting Services experience around here.

-- Matt Ranlett

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