Haven't written in a while. I've been back from Hong Kong for a few weeks (had a fantastic time, thanks folks), and, a few days later, contracted the (American) flu that's been going around here. Just getting over it. Also, I've been busy working on some whitepapers that will come out (relatively) soon. I'll announce it here when they are available.

I'm headed off to Barcelona in a few weeks to TechEd and ITForum. I'll be speaking about SQL Server 2005, on some topics that folks ask about in class often (now that they've heard of the features). But there usually isn't time to go over these in as much detail as I'd like. These talks are an effort to make the time. At TechEd, I'll be speaking on:

Plan Guides and Plan Forcing
Query Notifications / Cache Sync
Error handling on server and client
Implementing a Service Oriented Database Architecture application
MARS, transactions, and SQLCLR (for a preview of who uses MARS, read back a few blog entires)

and a chalk talk on maintaining your system with SMO. Ought to be fun.

For the IT Professional folks at ITForum, they'll be:

XML for the DBA (because the list of SQL Server DBA items in XML format is about a mile long now)
Troubleshooting Service Broker (even DBMail uses broker)
Security Account and Key Management

Hope to see you there. Stop by and say hi.