So far the SQL PASS 2009 summit has been a blast. I arrived on Sunday afternoon and the fun started shortly after that. There have been a couple of parties to go to, and we did a great photo walk Monday morning.
Monday afternoon was all about talking with other attendees, and meeting new people. And I met a log of great new people.
Monday night ended with a massive karaoke session at Bush Garden in China town. There were probable about 30-40 people there which was a massive turnout. For now check out my twitter stream
Tuesday morning starts with the keynotes (where I’m at currently). During this years keynote a lot of great information was presented. When it comes to pass it self attendance is down just slightly from last year which is thanks to the economy. But while most conferences are seeing 20-30% loss, pass is only down about 5-10% from last year. We had 2200 registered conference attendees at this years event which is a fantastic turnout.
This years session has over 160 technical sessions over the week. In addition you can talk with the CSS and SQLCAT teams at their booths. You can check out the hands on labs and the ask the experts lounge. Another great event today is the Birds of a Feather lunch where 50 MVPs will be camped out at tables talking about a variety of topics. Find a topic you want to talk about, and get some good lunch, and some great information all at once.
The SQL Server release code named “Madison” has been branded as SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse. This will allow you to spread your data warehouse’s load across way more physical resources than before. In the demo from today we shows 192 CPUs on the system. The new platform supports up to 1024 CPUs which will allow some absolutely massive applications to be deployed against Microsoft SQL Server.
A new CPT of SQL Server Madison, which has now been branded as Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter edition and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse will be available later this month with an RTM release turning the first half of 2010.
More to come…
Denny
