TechEd Australia 2005: Day 1

Missed the keynote speech this morning - too busy reading the paper - oops. Oh well, they never really go over anything terribly important in keynotes, just the usual "Microsoft are great and really advancing" type pep talk.

I went to a couple SQL sessions this morning dealing with XML, rejigging client & web apps built for SQL 2000 to use SQL 2005, and upgrading SQL 2000 itself to SQL 2005. This afternoon I went to a blinder of a session on the anatomy of a network hack presented by Jesper Johannsen; it's all a bit of a blur now - that guy is a freak! He could hack into bullet-proof safe. Needless to say I was impressed (except for his initial point of entry - a pathetically unsecure SQL Server and the 'sa' password in a text file on an open web server). He's just written a book with Steve Riley called Protect Your Windows Network: From Perimeter to Data. I think that's one that is going to end up on my bookshelf...for sure. The late afternoon/evening was back to SQL world with a couple sessions from Ron Talmage on snapshot isolation levels, database mirroring & table partitioning. I think he must have been a little tired - he seemed to lose the plot a couple times.

Not much else happened today, except for the technical details. But that's for a different blog.