Thursday, April 28, 2005

The Munich Peer Festival

I have just managed to get myself fixed up with flights, hotels and registration to this years SQL pass Europe conference in Munich in May.
Very kindly my employers (Edenbrook) have offered me the opportunity to go. This years event will have a certain degree of spice as it will be the final one before the release of SQL Server 2005.
So if anyone reading this wants to buy me a beer out there, I'll be happy to oblige :)

Constructive Success

Rather than the full on introduction to myself I've decided to let Information about myself slip out in smaller chunks. This in turn presents me with my first opportunity totell you what I'm doing with myself at the moment.
I am currently in the process of evaluating the production capabilty of SQL Server 2005 for a client. Whilst I've been using the tools In various capacities for well over a year I haven't had the opportunity to play much with the Report Builder functionality in Reporting Services.
I like Reporting Services and have done since I first played around with the beta some years back. It is the very essence of a Microsoft product, Simple to pick up but very powerful under the hood.
In the next version you're now given the ability to build your own reports and deploy them to the central server. This provides some great possibilities and moves the platform up a gear. I saw an early demo of the ActiveViews technology in Redmond shortly after Microsoft acquired it last year and it looked good then but after some hands on research I really think a lot more people will take a look at the Business Intelligence offerings from Microsoft.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Morning

Welcome to my "normal" blog. Normal being the description I like to allocate to the more standard rants and comments I want to put on here. These will be in areas of interest such as......
Family - I live with my wife-to-be and our 2 children in a pleasent area in a pleasent town in the UK...
Work - I'm a consultant at Edenbrook, you can get more information from their website about the things we do and the services we provide...
Gaming - I was born of the Sinclair Spectrum (48K with the rubber keys, you know the one) generation and I've never really been able to get it out of my system. My current tools of choice are a Sony PSP and a Xbox.
Music - I've really got more and more into my music and for the last few years have been a regular camper at the VFestival in Hylands Park, Chemsford...
Film - I love watching them and I always wanted to have a go at making my own short. 1 day perhaps.
Anyway, that's me.
Enjoy