Monday 30th June 2008.
On Monday evening we were very fortunate to have Michael Rys present to the UK SQL Server User Group hosted at Conchango's offices here in London. Michael has one of the longest job titles I have ever seen. He's the "Principal Program Manager Lead for SQL Server's Beyond Relational Team". I take that to mean - he's important. An old copy of Michael's CV from Stanford says it all really - just look at some of the white papers he has written. I just about understand the titles :o). I also believe he was at Stanford with one of the founders of Yahoo! too. What a time in technology that must have been.
For my sins I was the MC for the evening representing the UG. I had the warm up slot and did a quick tour of SQL Server in the News followed by a 5 minute focus on the GDR June CTP for Database Edition. I have attached my slide deck.
Michael was responsible for all things XML in 2005 and now for 2008 he's the man bringing spatial data to SQL Server. As of about a day ago I understand that he has picked up responsibility for Service Broker and File Stream. This seems to me to be a significant step. It would seem the consolidation of some of the more eclectic services that SQL Server offers has begun. His presentation to us was a first class grounding in the principles of developing with spatial data. He highlighted some of the key gotchas when entering into this world of development. Use the same source data but with different types and get different shapes (and one will be the right shape and one will not) was a key message as was the insight into how Spatial performs it's indexing.
One feature he talked about but unfortunately wasn't able to demo is a new post RC0 feature for spatial. This is the new visualisation tab in Management Studio. I can't wait to see this. Given the previous gotchas mentioned in the first session I can see why Michael was keen to tell us about this feature. Visualising the shapes you are storing during the development phase will be key to successful project delivery. I know Simon Sabin has had his Spatial Viewer up on codeplex for a while now but to get something tangible into SSMS is a very good thing indeed. I am curious though why it went into SSMS and not Visual Studio given that I expect it to be a 'dev' thing and I guess that is where dev things are supposed to go now. Unfortunately for me this was an 'On reflection' thought and Michael had long since left before it popped into my head. Perhaps it was simply a timing issue; VS2008 has already RTM'ed and SSMS has not yet (roll on December 31 I say). I do hope it makes it across at some point - given the excellent progress Gert Drapers and the Data Dude team have made with Database Edition (check out this post on the GDR June CTP) it would be nice to see the dude get some support from the other product teams.
Michael followed this first session with an extremely candid Q+A covering a wide range of topics in the "Beyond Relational Space". From the deprecation of HTTP Endpoints to the future of SSDS and cloud computing. There were some excellent questions from the floor and it was a shame we had to call time on it. Time had flown by and we had over-run by half an hour. It was one of those rare times when you could ask a question pretty much direct from the source. A bit like a room full of Neo's having the enlightenment from "The Architect".
The event itself was a sellout - one of if not the fastest we have done - 7 hours from first announcement to capacity. I believe we could have sold out two or three times over. I think
So thanks again to Michael for giving up his time on his whirlwind tour of the UK. I do hope he comes back soon and will certainly look out for any of his sessions at future conferences.
If you missed this session but fancy coming to a User Group session then head on over to www.sqlserverfaq.com and register. We have a BI session at Thames Valley Park on July 17 and then we are back in London for the August meeting where Mike Taulty is due to cover LINQ for SQL and the Entity Framework.
Finally, if you want to have a go at presenting yourself then why not submit an abstract for SQLBits III? This is THE community conference for SQL Server and it is held in the UK and is free to attend. However, in my experience the best way to enjoy the day is to present something yourself.
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