Just thought I'd give a brief rundown of what's going on at PASS. I just attended the keynote address and my first session. The session was Developer Productivity and Server Extensibility with SQL Server 2005. The session covered many of the concepts in 2005 that involve CLR integration and benefits to development from this the extensions to the XML datatype and associated tools.
Each session I attend or book I read just enforces the fact that 2005 is by far the biggest “learning curve” upgrade since the advent of SQL Server and it's migration off the Sybase framework. It will be interesting to see how current DBA's face these challenges and rise to the occassion. It's a great time for new DBA staff to fly ahead using technology as the leaping board to the future.
This week, I'll mainly be focused on SQL Server enterprise database management and SQL Server 2005. I'll try to give everone little tidbits as I find them. If anyone from here or any other group I'm part of wants to hook up, let me know. My email is derrickleggett@yahoo.com.