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Training is going good. Information Overload. I have learned more in the last three days that I have in a long time. I need time to digest it!

Well, this is my first post from a Linux machine. I installed VMWare and I am running a redhat virtually on top of Windows XP. Pretty cool if you ask me. BTW, I am at “Hacker Training” all week, so hopefully I learn something!

I started reading a magazine today, and inside the front cover there was an ad for “Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Remote Web Workplace”. It is like a portal web page you can log into from anywhere on the internet and get to your corporate network. You can check you email, browse your intranet, [...]

If you have ever browsed the Dell website, maybe you have seen this, it really doesn’t make sense to me.
Everywhere on their site, they say “Dell recommends Microsoft Windows XP Professional”. But here is the catch, for all home PC “customize” links, it defaults to XP Home Edition. I just don’t understand why they do [...]

Rebuttal on the API War article!!
This is from Joshua Trupin’s weblog. He’s the executive editor of MSDN Magazine. He answers Joel Spolsky’s now famous “Microsoft lost the API Wars” post.
MSDN Magazine has a CAMP?

The next version of SQL Server is going to be released in 2005. We saw a preview of the IDE and some features that will be available.
One major point is that the IDE is integrated into one program (SQL Workbench) instead of two in SQL Server 2000 (Query Analyzer and Enterprise Manager). The new IDE [...]

We got to preview Whidbey, which is slated for release in 2005. We went over some of the cool new features. For one thing, it loads faster than VS.NET 2003. Some highlights:
1) IDE Interface: The design is little nicer, and when you move a “docked” box, it is translucent and there are some options that [...]

Application Code Blocks are little “parts” of programs that Microsoft has created that you can install, and then include the assemblies in your program. The code has been tested and was created with best practices in mind.
We went over:
1) Configuration Management Block : Allows you to set up app.config files easily and encrypt and sign [...]

SQL Server Reporting Services is sort of an add on to Microsoft SQL Server. It allows you to develop reports within Visual Studio (or any other editor that can create report definition language files (RDL))
and then the reporting services talk to IIS with web services to publish reports. You can also set up subscriptions to [...]

Today, I attending an MSDN event in town. We went over four topics:
1) SQL Server Reporting Services
2) Application Code Blocks
3) Visual Studio “Whidbey” 2005
4) SQL Server “Yukon” 2005
I gained some good knowledge from this event, and in the next four posts, I will go in depth on each topic.