The versions 4.1 of MSF for Agile Software Development Process and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement contain updated guidance for Data Dude (VSTE for Database Professionals). In addition to this, be sure to check out David Anderson's interview on Channel9: Thoughts on Visual Studio Team System and "Dark Matter" Iteration Forecasting. In this interview, he is talking about MSF backgrounds, and why he is interested in scaling agile to the enterprise level - and he has a new blog post up on this very topic. So if you are interested on why the software 'guys' should be playing on the team, be sure to check out the interview, really great background information in there (oh, and don't miss out on the lean project management slide deck).

Another week, another ATE (Ask the Experts) assignment. Aside from the keynote, I got around to watching to these sessions:

• ARC202: Design for Operations using VSTS and MOM 2005
• DAT309: SQL Server Analysis Services 2005: Integration with 2007 Office System
• WCL403: Windows Vista System Integrity Technologies
• CSI401: Microsoft.com Operations: Solutions for Highly Available and Secure Web Sites
• MGT310: Microsoft System Center Essentials (SCE): Technical Overview and Drilldown
• ARC301: Microsoft, Open Source and Interoperability
• INF303: How to Virtualize Infrastructure Workloads
• IAM403: Monitoring Active Directory (AD) Security with MOM 2005
• MGT320: Using Application Virtualization to Decrease Your Application Management TCO
• DAT401: SQL Server Always On Technologies: Disaster Recovery Strategies for Isolated Damage and Human Error
• SEC402: Securing your Certification Authorities (CAs) Private Keys
• WCL402: Windows Vista Kernel Changes
• CSI303: Building a Custom Log Analysis Solution with Log Parser 2.2 for Internet Information Services (IIS) 6
• DAT402: SQL Server 2005: Advanced Indexing Strategies
• MGT311: Performance Modelling: A Powerful Tool for Planning Deployments

The dud-of-the-week award goes to IAM403 which didn't live up to its level. Enjoyable as ever was Steve Riley in his security sessions. I didn't get around to watch "Windows Vista User Account Internals" by Mark Russinovich because of ATE duty, but will do so once the conference DVDs turn up in mail!

In today's pre-lunch session at IT Forum the speaker used a term I had never heard before: stiffware. And I have to agree - stiffware does pose a serious problem when you cannot 'call' (other means of 'communication' might be unreliable to say the least <g />) the guy who wrote that piece of software so you can properly configure or even install it.

Speaking of the session itself, Microsoft SoftGrid is a really cool technology. The client - which contains more than the SoftGrid client - called the Desktop Optimization Pack, is equally interesting.

Read the release announcement in the PS blog. The English download is here. Now that is a CLI!

The final SQL Server-related post for today: Working with tempdb in SQL Server 2005.

Another noteable tidbit from the "Achieving High Availability with SQL Server 2005" preconference session: the whitepaper Partitioned Tables and Indexes in SQL Server 2005.

Currently listening to the half-day preconference session "Achieving High Availability with SQL Server 2005" by Kimberly Tripp. Interesting tidbit for decreasing downtime for operational tasks (like create database or restore): Instant File Initialization. The figures really point to huge time savings! Quite a selling point for Enterprise Edition of SQL Server.

Namely Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals. This needs either SQL Server Enterprise or Developer Edition. Of course I had Standard and Express on my machine only...

A book store at a conference always adds weight to my luggage and back home gets me into trouble with my already (again) limited space on the bookshelf. So this time I 'restrained' myself and got myself 'only' four books: Hunting Security Bugs, Microsoft Solutions Framework Essentials, Dynamics of Software Development 2006 Edition and Pro VSTS 2005 Application Development. I'm especially looking forward to Hunting Security Bugs.

This Q&A item is part of the current MSDN magazine's Security Brief's column by Keith Brown. I am pretty sure that this problem will rear its head sooner or later on every developers machine, that's why I am 'pinning' the link in my blog for my own reference too.