HttpCode

I was going through the US Tech-Ed DVD's that we got last week, anyway I came across an interesting session where Microsoft announced that they had licensed the Dundas reporting services charts and gauges for SQL Server 2008. This is great news, I haven't used the Dundas controls personally, but I've seen and heard good things about them. Its a shame they couldn't extend the licence back for 2005 users.

The new tablix control and new designer look great, lots of good things coming with SQL Server 2008, I still think my favorite is the MERGE statement, it will really make loading our data warehouses a lot easier. 

Well Tech-ed is over for another year, this year was fantastic, learnt a lot stuff that will benefit the things I'm currently working on.

I focused my time on:

BI / data mining

SQL Server

ASP.NET AJAX

Then on the WPF stuff, even though I find WPF extremely interesting, I can't justify spending valuable time on it yet, when it is unlikely that I'll be doing any serious development with it in the next 12 months.

So much was going on at Tech-ed, it was a great atmosphere.

It was unfortunate timing that my uni exams landed in the same week as tech-ed, I also elected to take an upgrade exam for the MCSD certs that I have. I haven't found out how I did in my uni exams (I'm confident) but I did pass the 70-553 upgrade exam. I've started looking at the next 70-554 exam, it doesn't look like fun. Only 2 more uni subjects to complete and I should have my masters.