Back for the final day at TechEd and I’m in good spirits – it has been a good event.
Web futures (Mixed panel)
Sorry folks, this was just too disorganised and ill-informed opinion for me. Seemed as though the panel hadn’t been prepped on any of the questions, and there wasn’t any overview or structure for where the discussion was headed. I left pretty quickly. FAIL.
T-SQL Tips and Tricks (Rob Farley)
[UPDATE: Make sure you get Rob’s scripts from here.]So, I headed over to Rob’s session on T-SQL. This was excellent. Tips on using indexes, how to analyse in the Execution plans and even some nice little tricks to play on friends (eg just replace the Batch command word in Options :-)). This is the first session where I thought I must definitely get the code samples – there were some gems there that I will want to implement.
Hardcore LINQ to Entities (Adam Cogan)
As usual, a highly useful session covering the how and why of LINQ to entities. Everything from gotchas with how connection strings are stored, through to the limitations some methods expose in their LINQ providers. Adam has a nice way of categorising people (eg the data guy, the .NET guy, and the ‘other’ guy) and explaining which method suits each type (eg LINQ to Entities is a much harder sell to a data guy).
Closing Locknote (Miha Kralj, Andrew Coates)
This locknote presented it self as covering the IT changes coming the next 10 years. A big task to tackle. But delivered admirably. I’ll post my thoughts on the locknote separately.
Summary
TechEd 2008 was a big success. See you there next year.
