What's new on the SQL Server Tech and Developer Centers - Nov. 26, 2007

I was off last week for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, where I spent some time in the middle of Kansas mostly off of the Internet. I wasn't totally off, but due to a mis-aligned antenna on a grain silo eight miles away, dialup would have been faster. It was a great reminder that there are still several places, even in the "developed" world, where Internet access is spotty or non-existant and that keeping page load times low is important.

How fast do the SQL Server pages seem to load for you?

A couple of goodies last week on the sites -

The SQL Server 2008 CTP (November 2007) was released and is available for download from TechNet and MSDN. We know many of you have been waiting for this public CTP and the "bits" as we call them, are now available.

We've added an Events pane on the right column of SQL Server TechNet home page and on the Developer Center as well. It should be displaying all Microsoft live, local events, live and on-demand webcasts and virtual labs. How do we know what's local to you or why do the "local" events appear to be in a different city than you're in? Our system looks at the IP address that you are connecting from, matches it against a list of where IP addresses are being used and then does a SQL Server query (of course!) to find all the events for that area.

If your local events aren't local, it means that either our list is wrong or you are connecting through some sort of gateway with a location different than where you are. You can change your location by clicking on the "change city..." link in the pane. We hope that you will be able to attend some of these events, as they are a great way to learn more about SQL Server.