Microsoft have announce the next wave of Microsoft Office and related products. Designed to deliver a unified experience across the PC, phone and browser, this wave includes Microsoft Exchange 2010, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010.
Next Wave of Microsoft Office Products Will Redefine How People Work
Microsoft will begin releasing new versions of Office-related products this year. Exchange 2010 will be the first product in this lineup, entering beta for customers to download today. Exchange 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009. Office 2010 – including Office Web applications, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 – will enter a technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and will release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.

Mark Harrison

Office 2010 announced

Microsoft will release a beta of Exchange Server 2010 on Wednesday, the first product that enterprise customers will see from the next version of Office.

Microsoft is also going public with the official branding of its next productivity suite — Office 2010. Until now Microsoft had been referring to it as Office 14, but the new name had been widely expected.

Exchange Server should be in full release by the end of the year, but the rest of the products in the suite won’t be out until early 2010, said Julia White, director of the Exchange product management team.

Microsoft will release technical previews of other products in the suite, including Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010, in the third calendar quarter. A technical preview is tested by hundreds of thousands of users, while millions of people will have access to the Exchange 2010 beta, White said.

Another of the Office System products, Office Communications Server (OCS), is on a different schedule. The latest version, OCS R2, was released only in February, and Microsoft has not discussed plans yet for the next big upgrade.

Microsoft will begin the process of upgrading its hosted version of Exchange, Exchange Online, at the same time it ships the Exchange 2010 on-premise product. Exchange Online customers will have the ability to determine when their users are upgraded to the new Exchange 2010 capabilities in Exchange Online, starting in the first half of 2010.

Continue At Source

Send via e-mail | Submit to Digg | Add to Live Favorites

Microsoft Brands Office 2010, Releases Exchange Beta

Mike Swanson hizo una excelente compilación de lagunas sesiones del MIX09, claro esta que aun pueden ir a la Pagina donde están todos los videos del MIX09, pero esto les ahorrara mucho trabajo.

KEY01

Day One Keynote (Bill Buxton, Scott Guthrie)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

KEY02

Day Two Keynote (Deborah Adler, Dean Hachamovitch)

WMV

B01M

Scaling a Rich Client to Half a Billion Users (Steve Zheng)

PowerPoint

WMV (High)

B02M

Software Entrepreneurs: Go Big with BizSpark (Julien Codorniou)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

B03M

Copyright Laws for Web Designers and Developers (Jonathan Zuck)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

B04M

Enhancing Large Windows Media Platforms with Microsoft Silverlight (Robert Ames, Matt Smith)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

B05M

Exposing Web Content to a Global Audience Using Machine Translation (Dr. Neil Roodyn)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C01F

Sketch Flow: From Concept to Production (Celso Gomes, Christian Schormann)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C02F

Improving UX through Application Lifecycle Management (Chris Bernard, Christian Thilmany)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C03F

Microsoft Expression Web: No Platform Left Behind (Steve Guttman, Tyler Simpson)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C04F

The Future of Microsoft Expression Blend (Douglas Olson, Christian Schormann)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C05F

C# for Designers (Fred Gerantabee, Jennifer Smith)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C06F

Ten Ways to Ensure RIA Failure (Anthony Franco)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C07F

Deep Zoom++ : Build Dynamic Deep Zoom Applications with Open Source (Ken Azuma, Allan Li)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C08F

Using Total Experience Design to Transform the Digital Building (Paul Dawson, Daren May)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C09F

A Website Named Desire (Nishant Kothary)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C10F

Design Prototyping: Bringing Wireframes to Life (Dan Harrelson)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C11F

Escaping Flatland in Application Design: Rich User Experiences (Peter Eckert, Jeff McLean)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C12F

Go Beyond Best Practices: Evolving Next Practices to Prosper in the 21st Century (Lou Carbone)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C13F

Interaction Techniques Using the Wii Remote (and Other HCI Projects) (Johnny Lee)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C14F

Interactive Prototyping with DHTML (Bill Scott)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C15F

Touch and Gesture Computing, What You Haven’t Heard (Joseph Fletcher)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C16F

The Way of the Whiteboard: Persuading with Pictures (Dan Roam)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C17F

Web Form Design (Luke Wrobleski)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C18F

Wireframes That Work: Designing (Rich Internet) Applications (Aaron Adams)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C19F

How Razorfish Lights Up Brand with Microsoft SharePoint (Tony Jones)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C20F

State of the Art in Web Site Design on Microsoft SharePoint (Chris Auld)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C21F

User Experience Design Patterns for Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 3 (Corrina Black)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C22F

Creating a Great Experience on Digg with Windows Internet Explorer 8 (Joel K. Neubeck)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C23F

Windows Internet Explorer 8 in the Real World: How Is Internet Explorer 8 Used (Paul Cutsinger)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C24F

Measuring Social Media Marketing (Jason Burby, Ryan Turner)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C26F

Designing the Windows 7 Desktop Experience (Stephan Hoefnagels)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C27M

Creating Interactivity with Microsoft Expression Blend (Peter Blois)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C28M

Integrating Microsoft Expression Blend with Adobe Creative Suite (Joanna Mason)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C29M

Effective Infographics with Interactivity (Joshua Allen)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

C30M

User Experience Design for Non-Designers (Shawn Konopinsky)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T01F

A Lap around Microsoft .NET Services (Todd Holmquist-Sutherland, John Shewchuk)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T02F

Simplifying Distributed Access Control with Microsoft .NET Services (Justin Smith)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T03F

Connecting Applications across Networks with Microsoft .NET Services (Clemens Vasters)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T04F

Mesh-Enabled Web Applications (Arash Ghanaie-Sichanie)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T05F

Live Framework and Mesh Services: Live Services for Developers (Ori Amiga)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T06F

What’s New in Microsoft SQL Data Services (Nigel Ellis)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T07F

Overview of Windows Azure (Manuvir Das)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T08F

Windows Azure Storage (Brad Calder)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T09F

Building Web Applications with Windows Azure (Steve Marx)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T10F

RESTful Services for the Programmable Web with Windows Communication Foundation (Ron Jacobs)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T11F

Developing RESTful Services and Clients with "M" (Douglas Purdy, Chris Sells)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T12F

Principles of Microsoft Silverlight Animation (Jeff Paries)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T13F

Working across the Client Continuum (Laurent Bugnion)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T14F

What’s New in Microsoft Silverlight 3 (Joe Stegman)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T15F

High-Speed RIA Development with the Microsoft Silverlight Toolkit (Shawn Oster)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T16F

Building Microsoft Silverlight Controls (Karen Corby)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T17F

Deep Dive into Microsoft Silverlight Graphics (Seema Ramchandani)

PowerPoint

T18F

Delivering Ads to a Silverlight Media Player Application (Nicholas Brookins)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T19F

Creating Media Content for Microsoft Silverlight Using Microsoft Expression Encoder (James Clarke)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

Zune

T20F

Using Microsoft ASP.NET MVC to Easily Extend a Web Site into the Mobile Space (Jared Eischen, John Stockton)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T21F

Running PHP on Microsoft Servers and Services (Shaun Hirschman, Michael Joffe)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T22F

Using Dynamic Languages to Develop Microsoft Silverlight Applications (John Lam)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T23F

Choosing between ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC (Rachel Appel)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T24F

The Microsoft Web Sandbox: An Open Source Framework for Developing Secure Standards-Based Web Applications (Scott Isaacs)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T25F

Web Development Using Microsoft Visual Studio: Now and in the Future (Jeff King)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T26F

<3 the New Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit for Social Websites (Steve Gordon, Keiji Kanazawa)

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T27F

Protecting Online Identities (Jorgen Thelin)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T28F

Standards for Aggregating Activity Feeds and Social Aggregation Services (Marc Canter, Monica Keller, Kevin Marks, John McCrea, Dare Obasanjo, Luke Shepard)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T29F

Adding Microsoft Silverlight to Your Company’s Skill Set (Noah Gedrich, Ken Martin)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T30F

Advance Your Design with UX Design Patterns (Ambrose Little)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T31F

Microsoft Xbox "Lips" and "Fable II": Multi Channel Experiences (Charles Duncan)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T32F

Cloud Computing: What’s in It for Me? (John Keagy)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T33F

Customized Live Search for Web and Client Applications (Alessandro Catorcini)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T34F

Introducing the Microsoft Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control CTP (Chris Pendleton)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T35F

Building a Rich Social Network Application (Miho Heo, Gilbok Lee)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T36F

Modeling RESTful Data Services: Present and Future (Pablo Castro)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T37F

Extending Your Brand to the Desktop with Windows 7 (Yochay Kiriaty)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T38F

See through the Clouds: Introduction to the Azure Services Platform (James Conard)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T39F

What’s New in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 4 (Kevin Gjerstad, Mark Wilson-Thomas)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T40F

Building Amazing Business Centric Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 3 (Brad Abrams)

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T41F

.NET RIA Services – Building Data-Driven Applications with Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft ASP.NET (Nikhil Kothari)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T42F

Consuming Web Services in Microsoft Silverlight 3 (Eugene Osovetsky)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T43F

Microsoft Silverlight Media End-to-End (Alex Zambelli)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T44F

Microsoft ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC): Ninja on Fire Black Belt Tips (Phil Haack)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T45F

Building Out of Browser Experiences with Microsoft Silverlight 3 (Mike Harsh)

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T46F

Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 : What’s Next? (Stephen Walther)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T47F

Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 Data Access: Patterns for Success with Web Forms (David Ebbo)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T48F

Microsoft ASP.NET: Taking AJAX to the Next Level (Stephen Walther)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T49F

File|New -> Company: Creating NerdDinner.com with Microsoft ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) (Scott Hanselman)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T50F

ASP.NET MVC: America’s Next Top Model View Controller Framework (Phil Haack)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T51F

The Microsoft Web Platform: Starring Internet Information Services (IIS) and Your Application (Crystal Hoyer, Mai-lan Tomsen Bukovec)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T52F

A Lap around Windows Internet Explorer 8 (Giorgio Sardo)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T53F

Building High Performance Web Applications and Sites (John Hrvatin)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T54F

Securing Web Applications (Eric Lawrence)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T55F

Creating a "Next Generation" E-Commerce Experience (Scott Cairney, Jean-Yves Martineau)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T56F

Delivering Media with Internet Information Services 7 (IIS) Media Services and Microsoft Silverlight (John Bishop, John Bocharov)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T57F

Developing and Deploying Applications on Internet Information Services (IIS) (Thomas Deml)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T58F

Build Applications on the Microsoft Platform Using Eclipse, Java, Ruby and PHP! (Vijay Rajagopalan)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T59F

Building Scalable and Available Web Applications with Microsoft Project Code Name "Velocity" (Murali Krishnaprasad)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T60F

Miss March and Other Distractions (Scott Stanfield)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T61F

Windows Mobile 6.5 Overview (Loke Uei Tan)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T62F

There’s a Little Scripter in All of Us: Building a Web App for the Masses (Rob Conery)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T63M

Building Data-Driven Scalable AJAX Web Pages (Jon Flanders)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T64M

Caching REST with Windows Communication Foundation (Jon Flanders)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T65M

Building Accessible RIAs in Microsoft Silverlight (Chris Auld, Reed Shaffner)

PowerPoint

MP4

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T66M

Building Microsoft Silverlight Applications with Eclipse (Shawn Wildermuth)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T67M

Building an Optimized, Graphics-Intensive Application for Microsoft Silverlight (Seema Ramchandani)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T68M

When Errors Happen: Debugging Microsoft Silverlight (John Papa)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T69M

Microsoft Silverlight Is Ready for Business (Ward Bell)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T70M

Optimizing Performance for Microsoft Expression Encoder (James Clarke)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T71M

Going Inside Microsoft Silverlight: Exploring the Core CLR (Brandon Bray)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T72M

Making XML Really, Really Easy with Microsoft Visual Basic 9 (Alex Turner)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T73M

What’s New for Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Developers in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (Mark Wilson-Thomas)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T74M

Protecting Against Internet Service Abuse (John Scarrow)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T75M

Five Killer Scenarios for the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit (Chris Parker)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T76M

Lighting Up Web and Client Applications with Microsoft Live Services (Gregory Renard)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T77M

Oomph: A Microformat Toolkit (Tim Aidlin)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T78M

Offline Network Detection in Microsoft Silverlight 3 (Peter Smith)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T79M

How’d they do it? Real App. Real Code. Two Weeks. Nothing but .NET (Scott Hanselman)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T80M

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework (Pablo Castro)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T81M

Using the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio to Build Cloud Services (Jim Nakashima)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T82M

Introducing the Microsoft Web Platform (Lauren Cooney)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T83M

Automated User Interface (UI) Testing with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010 (Brian Keller)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T84M

A Shot of Windows Live Messenger and a Pint of Microsoft Silverlight (Jordan Snyder)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T85M

Improving Mobile Experiences with the Microsoft Mobile Device Browser File (Chris Woods)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T86M

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Web Developers (Thomas Deml)

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

T87F

Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF): Sharing Skills and Code (Jeff Wilcox)

PowerPoint

WMV

WMV (High)

Zune

Saludos.

Fernando García Loera

MVP Lead | Community Consultant | Latin American Region

Que es un MVP? Como Logro ser MVP

MIX09 Sessions

Furthering its commitment to deliver communications and collaboration software as enterprise-class services, today at CeBIT 2009 Microsoft announced that the Business Productivity Online Suite, part of Microsoft Online Services, is now available for trial to businesses of all sizes in 19 countries. In addition, Microsoft will release Microsoft Office Communications Online, for instant messaging and presence, and the Business Productivity Online Deskless Worker Suite, an extremely economical e-mail, calendaring and collaboration service for the occasional user.

“These services open up new possibilities for businesses to control costs while continuing to enhance the productivity of their employees,” said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division. “Customers can save between 10 percent and 50 percent in IT-related expenditures as a result of deploying Microsoft Online Services.”

Software-Plus-Services Strategy Reaches Worldwide

Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are available for trial in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Organizations worldwide will be able to trial and purchase the entire Business Productivity Online Suite, including Office Communications Online, in April.

In addition, Microsoft is committed to providing opportunity for a global ecosystem of partners that will sell, customize and provide consulting, migration and managed services for Microsoft Online Services customers around the world.

Solutions for Occasional Users

The Deskless Worker Suite, including Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Online Deskless Worker, will also be available to organizations in the 19 countries. The Deskless Worker Suite is a low-cost solution designed for users who don’t have access to messaging and collaboration capabilities today.

The worldwide availability of the Deskless Worker Suite will offer customers an affordable e-mail and collaboration solution for occasional users. By providing a cost-effective subscription rate (currently listed at 2.56 euros or 2.01 pounds per month per user), the Deskless Worker Suite will make it possible for organizations to give all employees access to the same messaging and collaboration systems. Today, in organizations that have deployed e-mail, more than 40 percent of employees do not have e-mail.*

The Deskless Worker Suite will be available for trial and for purchase worldwide in April.

Continue At Source

Send via e-mail | Submit to Digg | Add to Live Favorites

Microsoft Online Services Available Worldwide

Just because Office 14 won’t be fully released until next year doesn’t mean consumers will have to wait that long to try out the products.

In an interview this week Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said that Microsoft will offer more details on the beta "relatively soon," noting that Office has traditionally made its products available to millions of testers well before the final version ships.

"That’s been true of the suite," he said. "That will certainly be true of the suite this time and of the Web apps."

With Office 14, Microsoft has said it will offer desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote as well as versions that can run online in a browser, be it Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox. As previously noted, that means that for the first time Office will also work on both Linux and Apple’s iPhone. CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts last week that Office 14 would not come out this year.

Microsoft has already started testing some of the components that make up the Office 14 wave of products. Capossela wouldn’t go into too many specifics about when Office 14 would ship, but said Microsoft hoped not to be too far beyond its typical cycle which sees new versions roughly every three years.

"I don’t think Office 14 is going to be wildly different," Capossela said. "Office has had a pretty predictable ship rate and I think we will continue with that."

The last version of Office, Office 2007 was finalized and made available to large businesses in late 2006 and had its consumer launch with Windows Vista in January 2007.

As for the new Web-based products, Capossela reiterated that they are already being tested "with a small set of people."

"We will look to expand that number relatively soon," he said. The final version, though he said, won’t come until the desktop version of Office 14 is also done. "In terms of when things will be completely done we’ll take the beta name off when the wave is completely done," he said.

Full Story At Source

Send via e-mail | Submit to Digg | Add to Live Favorites

Office 14 crawls toward beta

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc20081121_382269.htm

Interesting article from BusinessWeek discusses how Microsoft are pulling together huge, cutting-edge new data centres to support their cloud computing strategy.

If you weren’t able to make it to PDC this year, then there’s a great set of Sessions videos available at:

https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx

Definately worth a watch…

Awesome, awesome, awesome…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CD9ZItlZ7Pg&feature=related

Just awesome technology built on top of Microsoft Surface

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fM8sH0A_Hzc

Was fortunate enough to get my hands on SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition yesterday. Installed this last night on my DELL Vostro 1510 alongside Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

First impressions are quite good. The installation was really smooth. Noticed that they now provide an option to configure Reporting Services alongside SharePoint. In SQL 2005 this took a little bit of extra configuration work to get it working correctly so this was the first welcome change I noticed.

Once up and running I was able to get a quick look around, immediately noticing the new inclusion of Spatial / Geography Datatypes and Hierarchical ID Datatypes – again all welcome changes. They’ve also updated the Query editor to include IntelliSense – Hooray!!!

Will hopefully post some more on the subject moving forward. Have got my hands on a new SQL Server 2008 book: Beginning SQL Server 2008 for Developers: from Novice to Professional, published by APRESS. I’m not a huge fan of their books, but is the only one I could readily get my hands on at the minute. Will take a read through anyway.

So much to learn and so little time. Am also studying away at IIS7, W2k8, C# 2008, LINQ, and ASP.NET 3.5 amongst a bunch of other stuff. As well as that I’ve been working away on a personal ASP.NET web app I’m hoping to productise by Christmas this year – which, by the way, I transferred my database into SQL 2008 last night also… using the flawless SQL Server Copy Wizard.