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Italian Visual Studio 2005 launch event

There was a lot of good contents during the Visual Studio 2005 launch event. The presenters did a great job with the translated slides and demos from the US launch. As usual I loved the presentation by Fabio Santini which participated in the demo during the keynote.

The best part of the Visual Studio 2005 event? Meeting up with a lot of colleagues and ex colleagues; Andrea C, Andrea V, Luca M, Luca Q, Marco P, Marco T, Massimo L, Michele B, Samuele R, Fausto S, Rajesh V. 

Some "random" notes on Visual Studio

• Microsoft claims there are more .NET developers than Java developers and a lot more SQL than Oracle databases. I work with both "worlds" and I am always amazed at how these numbers can be twisted/adopted depending on who sponsors the presentation
  
• SQL Server is a lot more secure than Oracle. I have subscribed to the bugtraq mailing list for years and the number of security issues in Oracle the last few years are scary. Oracle had 20 security patches last year, 14 so far this year. SQL Server on the other hand had one security patch in 2004 and -zero- in 2005.
  
• If you didn't know already: Visual Studio Express and SQL Express are FREE and downloadable via internet.
  
• I was seriously impressed by the "data views" in Visual Studio 2005. I worked with PowerBuilder last millennium and just loved it's datawindows. Visual Studio 2005 is a step in the right direction but they still have a long way to go to catch up with the PowerBuilder datawindows which now can be integrated in Visual Studio

Some "random" notes on Server 2005

• The statistics and DBCC functions have been refactored to be more consistent. Internal statistics are now made available via a large set of "Data Management Views" (sys.dm_*) and internal tables like sys.syscacheobjects. A lot of information that allows you to understand and tune your database like you never have before.
  
• Lesson to self: query execution plans are cached by case SENSITIVE sql statements
  
• The Execution times in seconds as measured on a reference machine in Microsoft labs. It is not the real CPU time on the hardware where you run the query.
  
• Try this for fun
   Set statistics io on
   Set statistics profile on
   -- your query here
   Set statistics io off
   Set statistics profile off
  
• Less on to self:  DB statistics are out of date if estimatedRows very different from Rows
  
• Queries with "like '%abc%'" may work on 2005 due to improved statistics
  
• Index on calculated columns
  
• Asynch refresh of statistics, does not block execution

Some "random" ASP.NET and .NET 2.0 notes

• Templates, templates, templates :-)
  
• New hosting interface and a lot faster IIS integration.
  
• > 40 new controls
  
• 200x faster cross domain remoting
  
• Reflection working-set lower, memory leaks fixed
  
• Exceptions are expensive and some .NET 2.0 methods help you avoid exceptions
  
• Implementing asynchronous pages are a lot easier than it was in 1.1

The "loot"
The loot was impressive for a free conference:

• Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition
  
• MSDN library
  
• SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition
  
• It's Showtime!. Loads of great presentations by some of the best minds in the industry
  
• Visual Studio Team System (Virtual PC)
  
• SQL Server 2005 Resource DVD
  
• SQL Server 2005 (Virtual PC)
  
• SQL Server 005 - Visual Studio 2005 Labs (Virtual PC)
  
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, BizTalk 2006: documentation by Microsoft and partners
  
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 overview

(P.S. I am too busy with a major release to play around this weekend, but do not be surprised if there is some downtime this weekend as I upgrade my sites to .NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 :-)
(P.P.S It was too cold during most of the event to take of my jacket so I only manage to show of my blogger t-shirt during the last presentation

Edit: added two additional DVDs I found hidden in the bag :-)