Joe Jones and I headed out to
Los Angeles the night of February 24, 1998 with Jak Lenert for the SQL
Server 7.0 "Sphinx" Workshop, a grueling event for SQL
Server die-hards from around the world. The contents of the Workshop
sessions themselves were held under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) but
there is enough non-NDA material about Sphinx to fill a book, so here's
an early look at the product and our experiences in L.A. Best of all, we
got permission from Microsoft to talk about Visual InterDev 6.0 as
much as we'd like!
Tuesday, February 24,
1998
Joe and I met up with Jak Lenert in the
dismal Terminal 2 at Phoenix's otherwise excellent Sky Harbor airport,
where we spent about two hours waiting for our flight to leave. It's been
the weirdest winter here in Phoenix because of El Nino, and we've had
lots of rain and cool weather. Apparently, this messes with the airline
schedules in a big way and the sudden hail storm (!) we got earlier in
the day wasn't a good sign. In any event, we rolled into Los Angeles
hours behind schedule and missed our chance to pre-checkin for the
conference, which ended at 10 p.m. Jak rented a car, which worked out
well since we also missed the last free shuttle bus to the hotel.
Sometime around 11 p.m., we finally made it to the Westin Bonnaventure
hotel, where we were staying and the conference was held. Folks, this
hotel is gorgeous, with exterior-mounted elevators, a revolving
restaurant on the 35th floor, and views to die for. In fact, you may have
seen it before: the hotel has been pictured prominantly in such films as True
Lies, In the Line of Fire, and Lethal Weapon 2.
Well, around midnight we got settled and
promptly headed up the revolving restaurant for a late dinner. No dice:
it was closed, as was the bar one floor down and all the restaurants on
the fourth floor. We asked around for a good place to eat and were lucky
enough to find out about local favorite The Pantry, a diner that
hasn't been closed once since 1933; it's open 24 hours a day, seven days
a week. We set out on foot for the place, which was supposed to be four
blocks away (it was actually eight) and discovered why nobody walks in
L.A.: everything is just to damn far away. In any event, none of us
were prepared for the Pantry: it featured bizarre pre-meal plates such as
celery, tomatoes, and radishes on ice and a pile of cole slaw. The waiter
was classic, though he never would have believed it; he spoke about three
words all night. We ate everything in fear of the repercussions, but the
food was excellent, and it was clear that this place was there for those
in the know, not us. Highly recommended if you're ever in downtown Los
Angeles.
Given our pathetic waking schedule at
recent industry events, we warned Jak that the chances of us getting up
on time were slim and asked that he try and call us if he didn't see us
in the morning. Pre-reg was at 7:00, as was breakfast, and the conference
was to begin at 8:00.
Wednesday, February 25,
1998
The alarm went off approximately ten minutes after my head hit the
pillow, or so it felt, but I leaped up in anticipation of some serious
geek fellowship. I wouldn't be disapointed: over 2,000 people from all
over the globe were present to soak up the latest details about the
next version of SQL Server. And to get the free T-shirt. Let's not forget
that.
We headed down to the third floor to
sign-in, NDAs in hand, and get our badges. Happily, T-shirts were made
available immediately, but we had to wait until Friday for the Beta
CD. Like an idiot, I had brought the laptop down just in case, and I
ended up lugging it around for half the day. But Microsoft provided all
kinds of Microsoft-logo goodies over the course of the week, including
huge binders, notebooks, pens, stress balls, and the like.
We met up with Jak who had been up since
four and was surprised to see us (no more than we were, really). We went
to check out breakfast. Microsoft is generally known for their spreads
at these events but in this case, their layout left a lot to be
desired. You can usually cout on the Big M to come through with huge
buffet table-fulls of food but here they only had a sort of lame
continental breakfast. Lunch and dinner turned out to be equally
disapointing and we started heading out for meals after the first day.
Finally, 8 a.m. rolled around and we headed in for the show. I'm sort of
happy with the fact that we got in early each day and made it to the
front row for all the events we participated in. As I mentioned, we had
been pretty pathetic lately.
Now, the content of the sessions is
protected by an NDA that I won't violate, but there are some things I can
tell you, including the general schedule of the conference and some
details that have already been released to the press. Microsoft's NDA
specifically states that I can discuss any topic that has already been
made public and I intend to do just that.
The schedule for Wednesday and Thursday
was identical: there were general sessions from 8 a.m. until noon in the
huge California Ballroom. Lunch was noon until 1 p.m. From 2 until 6
p.m., there were break-out sessions in smaller meeting rooms (well, a
couple were held in the California Ballroom as well) about specific
topics such the Transact SQL language and Web development with SQL Server
and Visual InterDev. All day long, until 10 p.m., you could also go to a
hands-on lab and play with SQL Server. At night, they had "Ask the
Experts" sessions where you could meet with the architects and
developers of SQL Server and get help with specific problems. All in all,
it was a tremendous event and a great effort by Microsoft to get the SQL
Server message out.
So, on Wednesday, we attended the
general sessions (which included "Sphinx Product Overview" and
"Sphinx Storage Engine") in the morning and tried out the
Microsoft freebie lunch for the last time. Like breakfast, it was a
serious disapointment, though their hearts were in the NAVY place: it was
held outside on the roof of one of the smaller buildings in the hotel. In
other circumstances, it would have been nice, but after four straight
hours in a dark auditorium, outside in the direct sun was the last place
any of us wanted to be. After lunch, Joe and I headed for the Visual
InterDev/Web development breakout session while Jak headed over the
Visual Basic one.
Visual InterDev 6.0 is it, folks.
It basically makes up for all of the shortcomings in the first version
while adding some cool features we never would have even thought of. The
visual editor is actually usuable. The text editor can be configured to
auto-capitalize HTML tags (as it should, rather than the auto-lowercase
used in 1.0), and it even supports HTML AutoComplete. The new Design-time
ActiveX controls that replace the weak versions in the first InterDev are
truly visual and interactive, and they actually work. Visual InterDev
users will recognize that the Visual Database Tools (VDT) from version
1.0 are the basis of similar tools in SQL Server 7.0, but the new VDT is
incredibly more powerful and auto-detects the version of SQL Server
you're using, thus presenting the NAVY datatypes and features at all
times. I've never found a visual HTML editor that I could actually use,
but VI 2.0 make make me a convert. I'll know as soon as the next beta
comes around (it will be publicly available by the end of April,
according to Microsoft), but this tool may very well dramatically change
the way I develop Web sites. It's that good.
After the breakout sessions, Joe and I
headed up to the restaurant on the 35th floor while Jak met with some
friends of his that live in L.A. Joe and I try to eat the biggest steak
we can find in any given city when we're on the road, and this was the
best we could do. Not bad, especially given the view, but
