Microsoft Tech Ed 2010 on the Gold Coast

As a brief introduction, this post is more for my records and to jog my memory about some of the key points to take away from Tech Ed Australia 2010.

Tech Ed was held on the Gold Coast at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre. Tech Ed 2011 will also be held at the same location from 30th Aug 2011 to 2nd Sep 2011.

This year was a little different as the keynote was held on the Tuesday in the afternoon. I actually preferred this as it ‘extended’ the tech ed experience and allowed me to get straight into the content on Wednesday.

Selecting sessions was a little tricky this time around. There was a vast array of sessions and tracks. In total there were 15 tracks containing various content. I largely stuck with Data, Cloud, Development, Web and some Architecture.

Here is a list of the sessions I attended:

Day	Time	Title	Code
Tuesday	4:30pm – 6:00pm	Opening Keynote
	6:00pm	Welcome Reception
Wednesday	8:15am – 9:30am	A lap around Windows Azure	COS301
	9:45am – 11:00am	Migrating Applications to Microsoft SQL Azure	DAT209
	11:30am – 12:45pm	Networking (Rob & Darren)
	1:45pm – 3:00pm	I am a DBA – Why should I care about SQL Server 2008 R2	DAT305
	3:30pm – 4:45pm	Showcase your ideas on Bing Maps	WEB303
	5:00pm – 6:15 pm	Instructor-led Lab “Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Service Bus”	Lab
Thursday	8:15am – 9:30am	Lab “ASP.NET MVC 2 – What’s New?”
	9:45am – 11:00am	Internet Explorer 9 and HTML5 for Developers	WEB204
	11:30am – 12:45pm	The Art and Engineering of Supple Enterprise Applications	DEV426
	1:45pm – 3:00pm	Location Enabling the Cloud – Spatial Data Support in SQL Azure	COS310
	3:30pm – 4:45pm	Expression Blend for Developers	WEB305
	5:00pm – 6:15 pm	In Another (Silver)light – Something Different	WEB306
Friday	8:15am – 9:30am	Spatial BI	DAT311
	9:45am – 11:00am	Master Data Services	DAT315
	11:30am – 12:45pm	The Business of Cloud Computing	ARC206
	1:45pm – 3:00pm	High performance, highly scalable applications on the .NET Framework	DEV424
	3:00pm – 4:00pm	Locknote

Key Points/Resources to Take Away

1. Data Steward / Custodian – A person responsible for the quality of the data across the enterprise.
2. Reactive Extensions for .Net (Rx). See also Eric Myers,  IObservable and IObserver.
3. SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio now includes a map result tab to display spatial related query results. This is the same control used in Reporting Services.
4. Google Earth appears to treat the world as flat (Geometry). SQL Server can treat the world as round – Geography.
5. Migrating data to Azure is relatively easily. There are some caveats. No CLR data types allowed at this stage. the ‘USE’ keyword does not work. Your database connection string should have ‘Encrypt=True’. Database collations cannot be set however more granular collations can be.
6. SQL Server Migration Assistant
7. DAC (Data-Tier Application) packages. Single unit for authoring, deploying, and managing the data-tier objects.
8. Unicode data Compression (for row data) now included in R2. Not for ‘MAX’ types which can be stored off page.
9. Make dependencies explicit when building components as this allows greater composition.

My call to action:

1. Investigate how Spatial BI can improve our Client’s awareness about their customer’s and their habits.
2. Consider how existing services could be amortized through the use of Azure and cloud computing.

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