Microsoft has posted a free book on VB.NET 2005. It looks like you can download the chapters in .PDF format. You can get the book at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/whidbey/introto2005/.

Here is the description from their web site:

Get a focused, first look at the features and capabilities in Microsoft Visual Basic 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and .NET Framework 2.0. If you currently work with Visual Basic 6, these authors fully understand the adoption and code migration issues you’ll encounter. They’ll step you through a quick primer on .NET Framework programming, offering guidance for a productive transition. If you already work with .NET, you’ll jump directly into what’s new, learning how to extend your existing skills. From the innovations in rapid application development, debugging, and deployment, to new data access, desktop, and Web programming capabilities, you get the prerelease insights and code walkthroughs you need to get productive right away.

There is a short review of SQL Server 2005 by Gartner at http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=129042. It is mostly favorable to SQL Server 2005. My favorite quote is "Gartner believes SQL Server 2005 will, overall, have been worth the wait." There is not a lot of technical depth but still it is good to see some positive press.

I just realized that in all the excitement and business that is coming home from TechEd I didn't blog about my last day there.

I only made it to 1 session. That was WEB 327 - Best Practices for UI with ASP .NET 2.0.
Using XHTML and CSS will make your pages easier to create and maintain.
ContentPlaceHolder goes onthe master page, ContentControl goes on the detail page.
When you declare the master page in the web.config you loose some intellisense support and some designer support.
Change the master page file in the preinit event.
Use themes to change visual appearance, use master pages to change content.
You can use a menu with only static display, images, and CSS to make a tab bar.
Themes can be set a t the page or web.config level. You can swap the theme in the preinit event.
StyleSheetThemes show up in the designer, themes do not.
csszengarden.com is a good example of changing display using CSS

If you have listened to a TechEd talk and thought you might want to have some time to ask more questions this might be your chance. A bunch of the RDs and other TechEd speakers have donated an hour of their time to be auctioned off on E-Bay. The proceeds go to the continuing releif efforts in south east asia and you get a chance to ask questions of an industry leader and very smart person.

Check out the auction at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5587400881

We finished filming the last of the GrokTalks. It has been a lot of hard work and I think that the hardest part, translating the video and sound from the camera and the video capture of the presenter's screen into a single, professional looking video.

We had a lot of good sessions. There were talks about reporting services, master pages in ASP .NET, code snippets, and XAML, to name a few. We had another session in spanish on reporting services. Even though I don't speak spanish I was surprised at how well I could follow the demos.

I hope this becomes a tradition for the RDs to create these little talks anywhere and everywhere that we can get together. For me I felt like I was getting to see "the best of TechEd" in little 10 minute chunks. The best thing was that with only 10 minutes there was little chance of suffering from "death by PowerPoint slide" like you sometimes feel after sitting through 3 or 4 hour long PowerPoint sessions.

The attendee party at Universal Studios Florida was a lot of fun. It is always great to be able to see friends and people you have worked with in the past.

I spent most of most of my day in the Regional Director booth helping out with the GrokTalks. It was a great day. From hearing Billy Hollis preach to us about our code addictions, to seeing Scott Hanselman go through 10 utilities in 10 minutes, or Vishwas Lele telling us the secrets to AJAX programming they were all good sessions.

I even got to do my GrokTalk session. It was a lot harder than I had thought trying to look at the camera and not at the people behind the camera doing their own thing. I went a little long but hopefully with editing (I messed up one demo and went back and started from scratch on it) I will be under 10 minutes.

A great big thanks goes out to J. Michael Palermo IV who took over my duties on the production crew part way through the day so I could both do my session and take a break.

Scott Stanfield is working feverishly to edit the video and get it out there. We tried posting some of it but it looks like the firewall at the convention center is blocking us.

I had an experience with the people who "really run TechEd", the guys who let you into the meal hall and direct you to the appropriate line to get your food. (There was an article about it a while back that was very funny but I can't seem to find it right now). Scott Stanfield and I went to lunch but he forgot his badge in the booth. The guy at the door actually ran to catch up with us and tell us that Scott couldn't come in without a badge. I know the guy was just doing his job but for crying out loud, would Microsoft have missed one free meal? And besides, how was Scott supposed to get in the building without a badge?

In the evening I went to a Birds Of a Feather (BOF) session on developing as a non-administrator. It actually had a lot more discussion than the one I hosted last year. It seems like there are more people trying to use least privilege accounts.

The day ended with a party for "influencers" at a local night club. I am not sure this was such a good idea given the fact that there were about 200 men for each woman so there was very little dancing going on. When I walked in and heard the loud music I realized that I had turned into my dad complaining about the young people and their music. Oh well, I guess it was bound to happen some time .

Time to get ready for another exciting day of GrokTalks and other TechEd mayhem.

I did a lot of work today in the Regional Director booth helping to film the GrokTalks. It was a lot of fun. The only session that I can talk about today is the keynote. I am sure that there is a lot of coverage and you have heard the news but just in case you live under a rock and only read my blog here is what I got out of it.

SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006 will launch the week of November 7.

Microsoft is jumping into the RFID space with some tools or support in the OS or something. It wasn't really clear what exactly they were going to do.

"The Finalizer" is a battle bot built with the .NET Compact Framework. It was pretty neat to see it "destroy" a network switch on stage.

If you happen to be looking for something to do tomorrow and don't have any breakout sessions that you want to see you can drop by the Regional Director booth in the community paviliion area and watch us film a GrokTalk.

If you want to know about the new ThinkPad TabletPC from Lenovo or other "real news" you will have to check out a "real news" site but here are the impressions that I have from day 1 of TechEd.

Steve Balmer Keynote
The theme seems to be that there is a "New World Of Work" based around the information worker.
He displayed a chart showing percentages of directories being used in enterprises. I didn't write down all the numbers but it seemed to add up to something like 150%. He didn't give an explaination.
With Exchange 2003 SP2 and Windows Mobile 5.0 you can push out e-mail to a PocketPC just like RIM is able to do with a BlackBerry now.
There is a new service called "Virtual Earth" that seems to be a "take that Google Maps" kind of site that has a lot of the same functionality but with a cool overlay feature.
WS-Management allows management through MOM and web services. They demonstrated managing a SUN box with MOM. Steve seemed to enjoy pulling fans out of the SUN box.
Microsoft Update will now update the entire MS Product line with a single agent.

DAT 382 - SQL Express
SQL Express gives you a full engine but limited to 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, and 4 GB database size.
Version 2.0 of the framework is required for SQL Express.
The default instance of SQL Express installed with VS is SQLEXPRESS.
If SQL Express is already installed on the machine you can XCOPY deploy the .mdf and it will run.
Tools
   Express Manager
   SQL computer Manager
   Command Line Tools
New DataSet designer. No XSD Editor. Extensibility through partial classes.
TableAdapters - wrap data adapters with new capabilities
Smart Defaults means that when you drag and drop data onto a form it will create labels that break at an underscore, capital letter, or other "break" characters.

ARC302 - Building and Using a Software Factory
Authors Note: This session was not at all what I was expecting. I was thinking the factory design pattern, they were thinking wizards, design documentation, and building blocks. It seems to me that this is just Enterprise Templates with a little more guidance and a .msi to install it. I was very dissapointed.
Software factories are a "process" or grouping of reusable code that implements a patter to build an application.
Almost all of the factory is delivered in source or XML format.
Designer and .wizdef file are used to design a factory.
Factories (Factory Templates) allow you to build "like" applications by automating use cases, guilding the development project, and providing reference documentation.
Factories provide guideance in the development tool and not in a book.
Factory building needs to be based on experience and from the bottom up.
In the future there will be integration with VSTS.

DBA 304 - Advanced Querying Techniques
Use a CTE to find minimum values and delete duplicate values.
CTEs will perform about the same or worse than views or temporary tables.
Use a temp table to stage data for range queries.
SQL 2005 has statement level recompiles.
Use > in a slef join to get a "round robbin" result.
OPTION (MAXRECURSION n) returns an error but the data as well.
Use subqueries or the Rosenshtein method to get cross tab reports.

Press Reception
This was an invitation only event that I attended. I just have to let you know my favorite part. There is a panel discussion going on with a moderator and 4 CIO types from large and influential companies. Someone at our table noted that it looked like an old episode of "The Dating Game". When they opened up the questions, Tim Huckaby, got the mike and started his question with "Bachelor number 2...". I was laughing so hard that I didn't really hear the end of the question.

Well time for me to get ready for my GrokTalk. It has been great talking to all of the people that I met today and that I haven't seen for a long time. Beyond the great technical content this has to be the best part of TechEd.

Scott Hanselman has a write up on the Grok Talks at Tech Ed this year. You can read it over here. The basic idea is to distill down the best of a long presentation into something that you can "grok". It reminds me of what a high school teacher of mine used to say about tests. "They should be like mini-skirts, long enough to conver the subject but short enough to keep them interesting". There will be several talks during the break out sessions so if you have a few minutes and want to drop by to see what these are all about and how much fun it will be to "grok" a topic or two.