SVFPUG: Never, ever demo beta stuff

I had a rather frustrating time at the Sydney VFP UG this week.

I had foolishly put myself down to give an overview of SQL Server 2005 based on the Beta 2 version (July CTP I think).

It has been sitting on my notebook for a few months now and all seems OK. In fact I have been doing most of my coding for an existing SQL 2000 project using the Management Studio – hey I just like the abililty to have solutions – very handy.

But on Wednesday morning (UG was that night) strange things started happening. I can’t remember the exact order of things but by late afternoon I was in a position where I could hardly do anything in SQL 2005 or SQL 2000.

SQL 2005 would not allow me to create or view any SQL 2005 databases (I just couldn’t connect at all) but I could see SQL 2000 databases. Which was lucky because I couldn’t see them in the SQL 2000 tools. SQL profiler tools in both 2000 and 2005 refused to work, and the only thing I could do in Business Intel Studio was a new Report project (but only against a 2000 database).
You get the picture. Complete disaster, and due to present in an hour or so.

Well then another disappointment that kinda turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Due to the fact that the UG meeting had been postponed from the week before, and the venue had changed, all the apology calls started coming in. End result: hardly anyone turned up.

I presented anyway. Luckily, since the meeting was at our office Scott helped me set up connections to a VPC image he had on a server which had the entire beta 2 (something he picked up at TechEd) and I used one our dev Terminal Servers to demo the SQL 2000 stuff (for comparing to SQL 2005).

Rick talks about having policies in place, and I couldn’t agree more. But, I’m a fool. I’ve publicly bagged out people who give demos on beta versions before. Perhaps this was poetic justice. Never, ever, again.

And no, I don’t know what caused it. It is all still broken and I couldn’t be bother reinstalling the beta now. Perhaps foolishness will kick in again in a few days and I’ll download the latest CTP and try to get it all working again. Joy.

But now onto something really cool that happened at UG. For those who bothered reading right to the end here, check out Scott Scovell’s presentation on one of the utilities going into VFP Solution Explorer.