My list of Highs and Lows from Tech·Ed 2007 Orlando (the fifth Tech·Ed I've attended):

Highs

• Conference Content - Some of the best content yet. Among the sessions there seemed to be plenty of material for just about everyone. As is typical of Tech·Ed, there was so much information that it was like trying to drink from a firehose. I focused on SharePoint (MOSS) 2007, WSS 3.0, SQL Server Reporting Services, IIS7, PowerShell, Windows Server 2008, and the next version of SQL Server (code-named "Katmai")--and I was not disappointed. There were sessions and networking events going on from 8am until late into the evening each day.
• Conference Location - Orange County Convention Center in Orlando is a great meeting place, IMO. Yes, there is a *lot* of walking, especially if you have to travel from the third-floor of one end to the third-floor of the other end. One of my fellow attendees clocked 5.1 miles on his pedometer after just the first day. Considering how much is going on, however (things like the location of the hotels, the relatively nice-weather, the local attractions, the restaurants, etc.), there are few cities that can match Orlando.
• Hotel Location - My hotel was directly across the street from the convention center, thereby avoiding the 30-minute bus trips I experienced during Tech·Ed 2005.
• Keynote - Bob Muglia did a great job, IMO, and the "Back to the Future" skit with Christopher Lloyd was clever and well done. Bob had large expectations to fill; a lot of attendees were hoping that Bill Gates would offer the keynote, prior to his stepping-down from day-to-day activities with the company.
• General Organization - Other than the lack of 'signage' concerning the odd location of the keynote, the organization and the personnel were top-notch.
• Feeding - It's amazing to see how fast the personnel can seat and feed over 10,000 people. Of course, serious Tech·Ed attendees take their meals in carry-out containers so that they can attend lunch-time sessions. :)
• Quality of Food - Good offerings this year.
• Attendee Party at Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure - Great food and rides. The weather was threatening, but held off for most of the night. Dueling Dragons at The Lost Continent is the best roller coaster I've ever been on. Ride in the front seat if you can; you'll have absolutely no idea what is coming up next.

Lows

• Keynote Location - The lack of signs meant that many of us walked far into the main convention center on Monday morning only to realize that we had to back track and then walk what-seemed-like-a-mile to get to breakfast and the keynote. And then after the keynote, it took a very long time to get back to the main convention center for the first session. Many of us had no choice but to arrive late for the first session. I'm just glad that there weren't any scheduled sessions in that other building during the rest of the week!
• Backpack - Much better design than last year's pack, but the zippers on it were awful. Three of the many zippers on my backpack either didn't work or broke within the first day. Very poor quality, IMO. It went into the trash as soon as I got home--after using it to bring back user group swag. [UPDATE: Someone from Microsoft read my blog, apologized for the inconvenience, and graciously offered to send me a replacement backpack. Great to know that the company is interested in this kind of feedback!]
• Lack of Snacks - When the snacks were available, they were great; too often, however, there were none to be found. Between meals, snacks should have been more plentiful.
• BlueCasting - This was advertised as: "Receive valuable (and just plain cool) content on your Bluetooth-enabled mobile device". I wish I could say that I experienced this, but they never really seemed to get it working properly--even though my Windows Mobile phone was set to Discoverable.
• Wireless Inaccessibility - The signal strength was great in the hallways, but poor to non-existent in the session rooms. [UPDATE: Someone from Microsoft read my blog and informed me that wireless is not meant to be available in the session rooms. I have mixed feelings about this. Some of us have need to be online from time to time to monitor a particular problem back in the office, but we don't want to have to step outside and miss the content being presented. Also, there were times when I wanted to download the corresponding PowerPoint presentation while the speaker was presenting. If I sat near the back or near an open door, I could occasionally get wireless access. Why is wireless access purposely not made available in the conference rooms? Is it distracting to other people? Cell phone use would be distracting, but wireless access? Microsoft, please re-think this for future events.]
• Attendee Party at Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure. There were awful, hot, stuffy, very long lines on some of the rides that had enclosed waiting areas--including the Dueling Dragons at The Lost Continent ride, mentioned above. Why the facility doesn't supply air-conditioning--or even just fans blowing fresh air--is beyond me. Some people almost passed out from the humid conditions. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be there during the day--with a regular, full-size, crowd!

Bring on Tech·Ed 2008! (to be held in Orlando again, BTW)

At TechEd, attendees can take any Microsoft certification exam at a discounted price. I had been studying for exam 70-431 (Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Implementation and Maintenance) for the last few weeks and am happy to say that I passed it just a few moments ago! This is the most difficult Microsoft certification exam I have ever taken. 220 minutes. 40 multiple-choice questions followed by 15 scenarios.

With this year's TechEd coming to an end, it's nice to end the conference on a personal high note.

Just finished attending the Microsoft Internet Information Services 7 and Security session (at TechEd), hosted by Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec and Robert McMurray. I spoke with Robert the other day; he was very knowledgeable and helpful.

The configuration and security changes in IIS are radical, but very impressive. In a nutshell, IIS7 provides improvements and new capabilities that increase security and simplify administration. Specifically:

• Modular Design, Server Core support
• Delegated administration
• Built in anonymous user
• Disable anonymous user
• Integratged pipline
• Request Filtering
• URLAuthentation
• Kernel Mode Authentication and SSL
• Application Pool Sandbox

Throughout the day, Microsoft's Live Search Maps is launching photo-realistic images of New York City and eight other cities. You can 'travel' through the images as though you were really there.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/may07/05-28NYC3DMA.mspx

The demo is really cool! Flying through Times Square, however, seeing cars and people, makes me wonder how long will it be until Virtual Earth and/or Google Earth will let us zoom in in on anyone in real-time?  ;)

LiveSide has some nice captured images here.

Helpful tips for those attending Tech·Ed next week, whether you are a rookie or a veteran:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2007/05/19/TechmiddotEd-for-novices.aspx

Microsoft's Live Search team has developed a web app that lets you create your own search engine, letting you set up a macro that searches up to 30 web sites of your choosing. Very cool!  

I stumbled upon this tool while using the SQL Server 2005 Books Online Scoped Search--a very nice resource, in its own right.

Here are links to helpful posters for Visual Studio 2005--specifically, Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual C++. I stumbled upon these posters a few months ago, printed the VB and VC# versions, and have them taped to my wall. When a pleasant breeze blew them off the wall yesterday, I remembered that I never blogged about them.

The description for these posters reads: "Keyboard shortcuts can help increase productivity when performing certain tasks within the Visual Studio 2005 IDE (Integrated Development Environment). [These wall posters provide] the shortcut and associated description for the default key bindings setup in the [particular product's] profile. The [posters are] provided here in both color and grayscale for you to print locally as a PDF file."

The posters are sized for A3 size paper--so you might have to adjust the print options a bit to make each image fill the page properly. Other than that, however, they are very useful. I hope you find them useful, too!

Visual Basic 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster

Visual C# 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster

Visual C++ 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster

I've been working quite a bit lately with Reporting Services in SQL Server 2005 and wanted to see how much functionality the Express version has--so I installed it on my Windows XP Pro SP2 laptop. Although the installation proceeded without error, I kept getting the following error whenever I tried to browse to the Report Manager interface:

"The report server has encountered a configuration error. See the report server log files for more information. (rsServerConfigurationError)
Access to the path 'Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\Reporting Services\ReportServer\RSReportServer.config' is denied.

I couldn't find the 'report server log files' that the error message referred to--it would have been helpful if the error message included the path and filename!

I searched for this error message as well as for various portions of it. The only relevant match I could find was the Microsoft KB article 910023 - Error message when you use one application pool to run the Report Server Web service and another application pool to run Report Manager: "The report server has encountered a configuration error". The workaround, however, did not seem to apply when running SQL Server 2005 on Windows XP.

To make a long story short, I completely removed SQL Server 2005, re-booted, and then re-installed SQL Server 2005. After doing this, I could browse to the Report Manager interface without an error. So there must have been something amiss with my original installation. When in doubt, remove and re-install!

There seems to be quite a few questions about Windows Vista ReadyBoost: What is it? How does it work? (at a general level and at a technical level) What devices are compatible with it?

Simply put, ReadyBoost is a new feature in Windows Vista that takes advantage of non-volatile flash memory to improve the operating system's performance.

Windows Vista: Features Explained: Windows ReadyBoost provides a good general explanation of what ReadyBoost is, how it works, and how to use it. In particular, that reference states: "The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Windows ReadyBoost relies on the intelligent memory management of Windows SuperFetch and can significantly improve system responsiveness."

Many of us have an increasing number of USB flash-drives, most of which we don't even use. Every few months it seems that the capacity of these devices are doubling in size...and is the amount of space we need on them to back up our important data. So what do you do with an "old" USB flash-drive device? Why not use it as a ReadyBoost device with Windows Vista? With prices falling on 1GB, 2GB, and larger sizes--you might even want to invest in a new USB flash drive so as to get the best performance out of your new Windows Vista PC.

Caveats:

• Before you think about using multiple ReadyBoost devices on your PC, note that the current implementation of ReadyBoost limits a PC to using only one device at a time.
• Not all USB flash-drives are compatible with ReadyBoost. See Grant Gibson's ReadyBoost Compatibility List for details.

So how does ReadyBoost work? Tom Archer, Program Manager for the Windows SDK Tools and Build Environment, has an excellent technical post about ReadyBoost on his blog.

I purchased a 2GB Sony MicroVault (on sale at Staples stores this week for $19.98) for use with my Windows Vista PC. I'm impressed with the performance improvement within Vista--especially when many applications are open concurrently.

So far, I haven't found much information regarding the read/write speed of USB flash-drives and how this affects ReadyBoost's performance. Obviously, the faster the device the better.

A 92-page PDF containing the best MSDN Magazine Visual Studio 2005 coverage from the past two years, updated for the final release of the product. Find out what's new in C#, C++, Visual Basic, Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Team System, security, and C++ generic types. Get your copy now!

http://www.sdmediagroup.com/msdnmag/specialedition.pdf