{"id":165,"date":"2005-11-09T01:56:04","date_gmt":"2005-11-09T00:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=165"},"modified":"2005-11-09T22:02:46","modified_gmt":"2005-11-09T21:02:46","slug":"visual-studio-2005-sql-server-2005-and-biztalk-2006-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=165","title":{"rendered":"Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006 launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/presspass\/exec\/steve\/default.mspx\">Steve Ballmer<\/a> delivered the launch speech via satellite from San Francisco where he shared an auditorium with 3000 or so guests (developers).  The UK launch was held at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.londonstockexchange.com\">London Stock Exchange<\/a> yesterday.  There&#8217;s an on-demand web cast available <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/winme\/0511\/25332\/VBS_launch_Keynote_56K-100k-300k_mbr.asx\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The key launch message that came across revolved around: <strong>better decisions, faster results, better insight<\/strong>.  These are values\/principles that guided the individual product development (Visual Studio, SQL Server, BizTalk) and the broad <em>platform<\/em> development (encompassing SharePoint, Windows clients, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Dynamics, developer tools, management tools, XML web services, ind std and Microsoft own .net innovations)<\/p>\n<p>Steve went on to highlight some statistics from IDC.   Platform momentum, five years after the launch of .NET &#8211; when asked what platform are you using for mission critical applications: 35% of customers are using .NET whereas 25% using Java.  &#8220;35%, number one clearly is .NET&#8221;.  In calendar year 04, SQL Server out-sold DB2 and Oracle.  And with the sheer power provided by Intel and various hardware vendors, the combination of hardware and Microsoft product sets, Steve came out with this quote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;There is no job that is too big to run on entirely on the Windows and Microsoft platform&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The launch speech saw a student and <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/bgold\/default.aspx\">Brian Goldfarb<\/a> extol the virtues of the Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Express Editions.  What&#8217;s important to note about the Express Editions is that fact that they are free.  Obviously the Express Editions don&#8217;t have all the features of the full product versions, but the projects you create with them are upwardly compatible and they&#8217;ll give you great exposure to the Visual Studio and SQL Server family.  Aimed at hobbyist and students, the Express Editions are a good way of getting that much needed product experience that will put you in good stead in your first job.  Download your Express Editions <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/vstudio\/express\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There seemed to be some arm waving surrounding the introduction of &#8220;My&#8221; &#8211; something that has been introduced into the Visual Basic.net language.  I&#8217;m not sure what all the fuss is about, but will take this opportunity to remind everybody that Juval Lowy has gone ahead and implemented in C#.   There&#8217;s some good stuff about the Visual Basic.net version over <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/msdnmag\/issues\/04\/05\/VisualBasic2005\/\">here<\/a>.  There&#8217;s more about &#8220;My&#8221; for C#, this and that, over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.softinsight.com\/bnoyes\/PermaLink.aspx?guid=3cf9b424-16af-4535-a8af-db27b83109da\">here<\/a>&#8230;or you can just download it from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.softinsight.com\/bnoyes\/ct.ashx?id=3cf9b424-16af-4535-a8af-db27b83109da&#038;url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.idesign.net%2fidesign%2fuploads%2fThatDemo.zip\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I also got to meet <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/\">Tim Anderson<\/a> &#8211; I shook his hand and that&#8217;s about it: three weeks of &#8216;flu, cold, coughing and sore throat cost me my voice&#8230;I was sipping Lemsip all day!<\/p>\n<p>My voice eventually returned&#8230;Microsoft&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/uk\/technet\/team\/Phil_Cross.mspx\">Phil Cross<\/a> put up with me for the best part of an hour &#8211; we seem to share the same ideas about the concept of <em>feedback<\/em>.  Feedback is important, if you (as a &#8220;vendor&#8221;) ask your customer(s) for some feedback, e.g. a restaurant owner asking guests for feedback after their meal, please take the feedback and do something with it: don&#8217;t turn it back on the customer and make them feel guilty.  Towards the end of the evening IT Week&#8217;s Martin Banks passed by to say &#8220;hello, goodbye&#8221;&#8230;I shook his hand too!  Of course, all this hand-shaking is <em>nothing <\/em>in comparison to Richard Costall&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.costall.net\/blog.aspx?BID=1141\">experience<\/a> in this department! (I shook Richard&#8217;s hand before I knew where his hand had been&#8230;may be something will have rubbed off on me?)<\/p>\n<p>Sign up for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/uk\/windowsserversystem\/launchtour\/default.mspx\">Ready To Launch Tour<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>Information Week&#8217;s take on the launch is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/story\/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173500490\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite being ill, I attended Microsoft&#8217;s product launch yesterday&#8230;and met a lot of interesting folks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-net","category-developer-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}