Recently in Announcements Category

I'm giving my ever-popular Pragmatic Application Design workshop that's been newly updated to discuss the latest SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 upgrades. And yes, DevTeach is including a copy of my book "Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition)" to everyone signs up. It's a $59.99 value! Well, it's really $37.79 at Amazon, but it's still worth it.

DevTeach and SQLTeach are announcing a rebate for 350$ with your TechDay coupon...
What? A rebate of 350$? How is that possible! Well if you still have your TechDay/DevTeach rebate coupon you can use it for the December Montreal event and you will get a 350$ rebate. Originally the coupon was good for 100$ rebate but we like Microsoft so much that DevTeach changed its database and the coupon you have in your hand is worth 350$! This rebate will be effective until December 2nd. So hurry, don't miss the opportunity to attend a conference with renowned speakers coming from all over the world.

And there’s even more. Just announced …

Every attendees will get Visual Studio 2008 Pro, Expression Web 2 and Tech-Ed DEV set in their bag!

DevTeach believe that all developers need the right tool to be productive. This is what we will give you, free software, when you register to DevTeach or SQLTeach. Yes that right! We’re pleased to announce that we’re giving over a 1000$ of software when you register to DevTeach. You will find in your conference bag a version of Visual Studio 2008 Professional, ExpressionTM Web 2 and the Tech-Ed Conference DVD Set. Is this a good deal or what? DevTeach and SQLTeach are really the training you can’t get any other way.

And yes, I'm not the only speaker. There are a bevy of French and English speakers to bring you up to speed on the latest Microsoft technology.

Folks, if you aren't paying attention you might wake up on November 5th to discover that the election does not reflect your or your neighbor's votes. I think it's a monumental scandal how we as technologists have permitted our states to get into this situation. Take some time and see if you can help or influence your local precinct/county/state election boards to get these issues fixed. I also suggest you keep abreast of the ever-evolving situation by subscribing to the Daily Voting News newsgroup.

I was wrong. Actually, I was mislead and believed what I was told about Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and SQL Server 2008 (Katmai) RTM. Apparently, the Katmai report processor was not incorporated into the ReportViewer (or as they now call it the "MicrosoftReportViewer") control during SP1. While it might look like Microsoft had upgraded the ReportViewer (it has the new "Tablix" control and other Reporting Services 2008 features), the RDL generated by the newly released Katmai RDL code generators is NOT compatible with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 version of the ReportViewer control. This means you can't take that set of reports you've generated with the new Katmai BI tools and import them into VS 2008 like you could take Yukon reports and import them into VS 2005 BI tools. They tell me that it's going to be another 6 months before the updated  ReportViewer control hits the streets. By then we should have plenty of Katmai reports to import!

Sure, you can still run Katmai reports in the ReportViewer Server mode, but you can't expect to import them into your Visual Studio 2008 applications until they are finished with the conversion to the new reporting engine. I also expect this to be implemented as a Visual Studio 2008 service pack which might further delay its introduction.

Frankly folks, this is kinda irritating. If you just bought a new car and got home only to find that it had a hole where the glove compartment was supposed to be, wouldn't you be mad? While it's only a minor feature in the bigger scheme of things, how is one to know what features are not shipping with a new product. One would normally assume that if the feature was implemented with the old version, it would be in the new--but perhaps improved, but included non-the-less. I think Microsoft should have a list of unsupported or deprecated functionality for these products. That's so when we get home, we have somewhere to put our maps and proof of insurance. Well actually, they do. It's here, but it does not include information about Visual Studio tools like the ReportViewer.