September 2005 - Mike Taulty's Blog

Registration for the VS 2005 and SQL 2005 Launch Events in the UK is now live on the internet at the URL below; http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windowsserversystem/launchtour/default.mspx One thing that's not mentioned but I have on good authority is that if you turn up to these events there'll be a copy of Visual Studio 2005 and a copy of SQL Server 2005 for you - adds a little bonus to the whole day :-)

I was trying to move some of my older demos of SQL 2005 from the June CTP across to the September CTP builds and had some trouble particularly around deploying assemblies that are using EXTERNAL ACCESS and also around sending/receiving with service broker. Both of these turned out to be new permissions that I needed to have - you can grant EXTERNAL ACCESS and I also had trouble in getting my Query Notification demo to work due to what seems like the new grant SUBSCRIBE QUERY NOTIFICATIONS that I hadn't seen. Along similar lines, the SqlDependency class for doing query notifications has changes as it goes towards RTM - you can read the details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/dataaccess/archive/2005/09.aspx

I came back from the PDC with lots of different software versions which now have me in a bit of a muddle. As far as I can work out I have; 1) VS 2005 Beta 2 which is required by the WinFX build given out at the PDC including Windows Communication/Presentation/Workflow Foundation and will also support WinFS Beta 1. 2) VS 2005 RC and SQL 2005 RC which work together. 3) VS 2005 August CTP which supports WSE 3.0 Beta 1 - not sure if WSE 3.0 will install onto the RC build or not. If you are installing the software bits given out at PDC then take a look at this post ( http://www.longhornblogs.com/rrelyea/archive/2005/09/16/PDC2005Software.aspx ) before setting about it.

On the plane across to the PDC yesterday one of the things I was trying to achieve was to replace my installation of the WSE 3.0 CTP with the newly available WSE 3.0 Beta 1 build. What I hadn't realised was that WSE 3.0 Beta 1 needs a .NET Framework build which is later than Beta 2 of VS 2005 - in fact, it needs the August CTP build of the .NET Framework. I won't half be glad when VS 2005 is released and we've some stability over trying to work with all the other exciting bits that are sitting around it.

I'm writing this from the balcony at the Los Angeles Convention Centre where PDC 2005 is just slowly coming to life with the first of its pre-conference days. It's about 8.20am and I'm waiting for the breakfast to be served :-) I came in with a number of colleagues and other UK folks on a plane from Heathrow yesterday with a door-to-door travel time of about 18 hours. Then there was the beer, the wine and the 4 hours of sleep before I practise my usual trick of being wide awake at 4AM with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Now I'm hungry :-) Downtown LA seems to be hosting a triathlon this morning and a number of the roads are closed meaning that the shuttle bus has to criss-cross streets to get down to the convention centre. Just like the last time I was here, downtown LA on the weekend is eerily quiet both last evening and this morning. What's surprising is the number of people already arriving at the convention center (it's Sunday morning - can no-one sleep?) and wandering around with their PDC T-shirts and...