Last night's NIMTUG SQL Server 2005 Demo: Slides, Samples, Quadraphonic Babies

Being the moose-loving Canuck that I am, I occasionally chew my knees on flights between Dublin and my home and native land of Canada. 

On one such flight, I found myself flanked by not one, not two, but four young families. Two in the row in front of me, and two behind.  All with young ones.  For the duration of that sleepless 8-hour flight, I was treated to a live performance of Quadraphonic Babies.

The experience reminded me that when something goes wrong enough, it can somehow transition from being painful to being hilarious.

In a way, last night’s SQL Server 2005 talk at NIMTUG was a little like that.  Murphy’s laws don’t even begin to predict the technical hilarity that ensued when I tried to run Virtual PC on my old laptop. 

Thankfully, since SQL Server 2005 itself behaved perfectly, we managed to pull ourselves out of the Virtual PC tailspin, and explored quite a few developer features that are new in this sequel to SQL.  We saw some enhancements to T-SQL, explored CLR integration, worked with the XML data type, and even built a web service endpoint in SQL Server 2005 that we consumed with a WinForms application.

Damien has kindly hosted the slides and code from the presentation on the NIMTUG site. 

If you’re interested in learning more about SQL Server 2005, and exploring its new features hands-on, don’t forget to check out the SQL Server 2005 Webcasts and Hands-On Labs that are going on this month.

Thanks to everyone who came out – for your kind words, and your thoughtful questions!  And thanks to Damien and the NIMTUG crew for hosting the event so professionally.  As always, I really enjoyed the night. 

…and come to think of it, wouldn’t Quadraphonic Babies be an awesome name for a band?! (And now, opening for Iron Maiden, it’s…)