Report from TechEd ’98

I attended the Microsoft Tech-ED conference June 1 – 5.
Mostly I concentrated on SQL Server 7.0
stuff, but I also attended all the general sessions. This report summarizes what
I learned, with the exception of information about PLATO, AKA Microsoft Decision
Support Services. I’ll write a separate summary of that, as I have a lot
of new information. This is an often-biased report and includes my frank
opinions, not a strictly objective presentation. I also spent some time in the
“lab” playing with a close to beta 3 SQL Server 7.0. The hands-on
exercises they wanted us to evaluate were dreadful: no objective, no significant
learning achieved. My colleague Jamie said he talked to one of the guys in the
lab and that the exercises were for sales folk! But I did get a very cool
T-shirt! (Part of my “mission” at Tech-Ed is to collect as many free
T-shirts as possible; I got four this year.) I did attend one session on
Microsoft Transaction Server performance, which was extremely interesting. If
anyone would like info about that, please send me e-mail. I’ll not
describe it here because it’s outside the SQL Server focus of this group.