On entering the Briefing Room all ATE's received their Green color Polo Shirts with "Ask the Expert" on front and ATE logo on the back.  It a great excitement because you've been given an honor present yourself as an Expert in the product domain.

The Briefing started at 18:00 (6:00 pm) with the Microsoft Marketing Team for TechEd, the Marketing Manager TechEd EMEA announced that TechEd 2007 Barcelona is sold out with 4000 seats and still we are receiving requests for registration, since there is no more space in the convention center we are not entertaining any further registration.

We've been briefed how to deal with the audiance, and how important our feedback back to Microsoft staff in order to improve the products. It was a great chance to meet a lot of people from different part of Europe, most of the people i met were Microsoft Regional staff's especially from Croatia, Russia.

It was fun and i learned a lot that how these people are managing this great number of audiences every year and every year the number of audiences are more then the previous so it means its worth attending this event, anyways let see tomorrow what's gonna happen.

Ok, I am off for today and will be leaving to hotel in a while.

Bandagi!

Its weekend here in Spain, you will find people enjoying at the beach, bars, clubs and especially in the cinemas. But

But surprisingly I spent the entire day in the hotel thinking about what to do when i first meet the Microsoft product teams, how i will answer all the developer questions - but I am very much confident that I will tackle all the questions asked as an "Subject Matter Expert" in ATE "Ask the Expert" section.

On the other hand I am preparing to compete in the "Speaker Idol 2007" competition and if I won then next year i would be able to speak in TechEd 2008 Barcelona, Spain. Well I am trying my level best and with the hope that with full concentration and dedication I will place myself atleast in the runners up;

May Allah helps me to get a better mark in any one of the positions.

Bandagi!

Buenos Dias
"Good Morning"

its 6:00 AM. The first thing i did was jumped out of my bed and opened the window - breeze of cold wind entered, thanks GOD this time cold no more hot weather.

I heard some noise started coming nearby gurrr! errr! ohhh its coming from my stomach not from outside the second thing i did was ordered some light breakfast

It's 11:00 I am ready to go out; my plan was to go to downtown and start walking towards the public spots and streets. Like other European cities Barcelona is also crowded but if you come to residential areas you'll be surprise - everything is calm and quite. My first plan failed - to reach downtown its necessary to take the public bus. Same time I am happy as by reaching the downtown using the public bus was an oppertunity to see so not all but few streets and residential areas.

Its Plaze Espana - you can see the this is a main junction where many roads are joining - nice view, especially during morning hours and on top if its cold. From I decided to take tourist bus, "Turistic Bus" as its easy to see the city once with the help of guided tour and rest details on your own. "Turistic Bus" was an excellent choice as I roamed nearly every place in Barcelona. Now i am a lot confident about the roads in Barcelona, the next step is to visit common places including markets, public meeting points but this i am keeping for tomorrow.

It's too late and I think its better to sleep - tomorrow I will wake up early and will continue my mission Barcelona

Bandagi!

I woke up found the plane fighting with the outside wind, I prayed to GOD and slept again "sleeping was the best option to not to feel the swinging effect". A voice came to me we are ready to move to the airport - oeeeee!!! I am in Barcelona - with the spirit of reaching and sleeping for longer hours I forced myself to move towards the arrivals. The airport is quite and constructed like an old place but in reality it was an art to built and to give similar look - as if we are standing in a old spain. After claiming my baggage i move towards the exit - surprising no Immigration process. For everyone's information "If you are already STAMPed in a SHANGAN country then IMMIGRATION process is not required again" - means once you are cleared then you can move on in any other SHANGAN state.

Reaching the exit was very difficult, its a cold night with freezing temperature of 10 degrees, coooool! I decided to take a cab - as it was cold, i am sleepy and hungry. My hotel is very near to the airport "Renaissance Airport Hotel - Barcelona, Spain" so it took 5 minutes to reach.

Check-inn was verrrrrrry easy as I already had a booking. Now I am in my room and trying to sleep.

Please keep privacy - as i am going to sleep

Bandagi!

"Hey Hitler!" - I am in Germany  

I am here to solute him not because I have some feelings for him but because I love this place, because of the people, the hard working and because of the cold weather. Getting out of German airport for the first time is not easy - I went through Police (Polize) investigation for an hour, thought definitly I can loose my flight to Barcelona. Crossing the terminal building and reaching the departure lounge was another hurdle. Inter-connected train "Skyline" gave some hope to reach departure lounge a little fast. When I reached I found another long queue for people waiting for their turn on the ticketing counters. Finally it was my turn - I ran towards the boarding gate but found flight is 45 minutes late - woof "thanks" I got chance to rest my breathe. The boarding announcement was exactly at 21:45 without further delay we reached the base with shuttle - temperature around 8 degree celcius :D with a little fear of getting freezed i jumped out of the shuttle.

Will write more.

Bandagi!

Session Topic: SQL Server 2008 Performance Audit (Level 300)

   Organizer: Adnan Rafik, Techiesonly
   Presenter: Danish Sami, .NetFoundry 
   Session's Date: 28-October-2007
   Session Timing: 1600 hrs - 1900 hrs
   Session's Venu: Microsoft Technology Center, Dubai - UAE

This is one of the session in the technical series of SQL Server 2008, The goal of this presentation is to help identifying any performance related problems with SQL Server 2008. SQL Server 2008 performance tuning can be difficult but with this checklist it’s easy to identify all of the SQL Server 2008 performance problems.

Don't miss, send email to danish.sami@dnfug.com for registration.

Techiesonly - is a IT Pro usergroup running by Adnan Rafik, to find more information about the session logon to http://techiesonly.com/?p=134 or send email to info@techiesonly.com

Bandagi!

Don't forget to meet me at "Ask the Expert" booth

Related link:

http://www.mseventseurope.com/teched/07/developers/content/Pages/Default.aspx

Bandagi!

Often I experienced the connection problem while connecting to SQL Server 2005 on Windows Vista with the message "login failed for user" even with an administrator account - sounds strange. 

Lets trace why this happens:

- In order to connect to SQL Server 2005 your account must be added to 'sysadmin' fixed server role.
- Windows Vista has a new feature called User Account Control or UAC in short which allows admins to manage privileges.
- By default accounts on Windows Vista are not part of 'sysadmin' fixed role.

Let's fix the problem

In order to add ordinary user to 'sysadmin' fixed server role - To add a normal user to the 'sysadmin' fixed role execute this system stored procedure

EXEC sp_grantlogin 'domain\user'
EXEC sp_addsrvrolemember 'domain\user', 'sysadmin'

After executing these stored procedure(s) user who has been granted login and added to 'sysadmin' fixed role no longer receive this error.

My passion to work with the developer community leads me to work closer with the developer platform integration of SQL Server and like before this time also I'm delighted to see the new features in action.

The LINQ - Language Integrated Query, which enables developers to query variety of datasources using C# and VB instead of depending on database specific languages like SQL - Structed Query Language, is now supported by Visual Studio Tools.