TechEd
This year Builder AU will be updating the latest happenings from Tech.Ed 2004 live from Canberra. We will be covering the latest news, exclusive interviews, related tutorials and blogs from readers, attendees and speakers at the conference.

Tech.Ed 2004 is a three-day event designed for software developers and IT professionals interested in Microsoft and .NET technologies. The event is to be held from August 3-6, 2004 at the National Convention and Exhibition Centre in Canberra.

So, if you are attending Tech.Ed 2004 or cannot make it and want to know the latest news, stay tuned to this page for our complete coverage.

Check out the official Tech.Ed website for the full agenda of the event.


Microsoft kicks off TechEd

Developers from around Australia have gathered in our nation’s capital for Microsoft’s eleventh annual TechEd Conference. Read more

Microsoft AU retracts XP SP2 manufacturing release



update–A red-faced Microsoft Australia has backflipped on a statement issued earlier today that said Windows XP Service Pack 2 had been released to manufacturing.
Read more

Microsoft AU guarantees 99.9 percent uptime for MapPoint



Microsoft Australia has today announced the local launch of MapPoint Web Service 3.5 with the bold guarantee of uptime of 99.9 percent.
Read more

VMWare virtually not there at AU Microsoft Virtual Server launch?




Microsoft yesterday gave TechEd attendees a preview of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 after conference organisers apparently strong-armed an exhibitor to reduce exposure for VMWare, the main competitor to the new product.
Read more

MS delays Yukon and Whidbey — again




Microsoft has said the forthcoming release of its SQL Server database and Visual Studio.NET development tool will be delayed–again.
Read more


Interview with Brian Goldfarb

Brian Goldfarb, product manager at Microsoft for ASP.NET talks to Builder AU about the upcoming ASP.NET 2.0 release, why open source developers would want to make the switch and the future of the Web Matrix Project. Read more

Interview: Bob Muglia on Longhorn

Bob Muglia may have one of the hottest seats in all of Microsoft. He is is tasked with building Longhorn Server, likely the most complex operating system ever designed. What’s more, Muglia must keep a long train of updates and service packs for older versions of Windows rolling off the production line.
Read more

Interview with Brian Randell

We caught up with Brian Randell from MCW Technologies at TechEd/Canberra to talk about some of the new features in SQL Server 2005 and it’s role as an -Access Killer”.
Read more


This year we will provide up-to-date links with some of the latest blogs from Tech.Ed 2004. Check out what other developers, attendees and speakers are saying from the conference:

Tips on SOA

Nick Lothian writes “I didn’t go to many product demos today, but I saw so many SOA talks it got pretty tiring…I did pick up a few tips, though – mostly things that seem obvious in retrospect, but were expressed quite nicely ”
Read more.

New Controls Ease Pain in ASP.NET 2.0

Andrew Parsons writes “Whereas last year he was only able to demo a couple of the controls and talked about the rest, today saw almost everything that has been mentioned in the last year shown off and impressed a lot of people. Being able to simply drag and drop not only a login control, but also a user registration wizard, end-user layout and presentation customisations and role based security is awesome and makes me really feel the pain I went through of creating ASP.NET web applications with all that stuff.”
Read more.

Combating Social Engineering

Bernard Oh writes “Stevel Riley was talking about how to recognise and combat social engineering. This is so true, I am constantly aware of how easy people can give out their information. This presentation just open my mind to even more avenues. ”
Read more.

Meeting with Architects

Harry Pierson writes “After my presentations, I attended an architect dinner with local architects. I had some fascinating discussions with some of the attendees, saw a presentation on EDRA (i.e. the project formerly known as “Shadowfax”) and participated in a great panel discussion.”
Read more.

SQL Server Debugging

Niels Berglund writes “There has been quite a few discussion on some of the beta newsgroups about how to debug CLR methods, running in SQL Server 2005 (S2k5) as stored procedures, functions, etc. (actually there are some questions about how to debug T-SQL code as well). I thought therefore that it’d be a good blog post, discussing debugging.”
Read more.

Venue a Let Down

Andrew Parsons writes “Generally, this year feels a bit of a mess compared to previous years. I don’t believe this is Microsoft’s fault as such – more a case of the venue letting down the requirements of attendees, media and exhibitors and vendors. ”
Read more.

Using Virtual Server for NT Migrations

Sean Kaye writes “Michael talked about the three main uses of Virtual Server 2005 that Microsoft see: Server Consolidation, Testing and Windows NT 4 migrations. I found the numbers he cited on the current volumes of NT 4 pretty interesting…”
Read more.

Windows Applications Tips and Tricks

Mitch Denny writes “Adam Cogan’s session on 15 (19 actually) tips and tricks for developing windows applications was very interesting. While I didn’t necessarily agree with everything I also saw a few really cool ideas that I would love to try in applications that I build in the future. Specifically, using URL Monikers to act as IM’able links to applciation data was cool. We can already see an example in Outlook (outlook:\\).”Read more.

How Events Work in VB

Paul Vick writes “Mike asked me what event properties are, but before I can really talk about them, you need to understand how events work in VB and .NET. Rather than write up a whole new, long entry, I think I’m just going to reprint an email…Then tomorrow or so, I’ll talk about what we’re doing new in VB 2005. So, the following is what I wrote, with some minor clarifications and corrections”
Read more.

New .NET Compact Framework Poster

Peter Foot writes “Its been a bit of a moving target but I’ve finally released a current version of the .NET Compact Framework Versions poster. The aim is to show a fairly detailed view of the functionality available in .NET Compact Framework v1.0, that which is expected in v2.0, and the functionality available in the next version of Windows Mobile. This is contrasted against the functionality available now in the OpenNETCF Smart Device Framework v1.2. ”
Read more.

Intro to Smart Device Programming Links

Jonathan Wells writes “Here is a pointer to an article with a list of links to material relevant to this Tech.Ed 2004 session in New Zealand and Australia this week…”Read more.

For a full list of all blogs from the conference check out TechEd Bloggers.

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