SQL Server developer training kit–to useful to be just for developers

One of the few niggles I have about working at Microsoft is the way we try and put you the reader into pigeon holes, and an area where this fails for me is when it comes to SQL Server.  My developer friends won’t go near SQL Server unless they have to and this things like  LINQ / Entity Framework in Visual Studio try and merge these two different worlds.  However there is a lot of good stuff for developers in the later versions of SQL Server, be it new data types , new ways of working with data like FileStream and StreamInsight, or the data tier application for easier deployments.

In an effort to try and get developers to feel a bit more love for SQL Server, my fellow American evangelist Roger Doherty, produced the Developer Training Kit for SQL Server 2008R2.  The good thing about this is that he keeps updating it to reflect each release  and to add more labs and examples, but he’s also left the SQL Server 2008 stuff in there as well if you aren’t on the latest version.  It’s got short punchy videos and more importantly labs for you to work through. 

But back to my point about Microsoft audience segmentation what is a developer?

I think anyone working with SQL or in BI is unless your only job is to back it up then chances are you are changing things, hopefully for the better and that’s a good a definition of development as i have got. So if you’re working SQL Server you’re a developer and so you should have a look at this excellent resource.

On a final note Roger is in the UK for Expedition Denali 29th June in Reading , and is also at the BI Event of the Year the following day in London co hosted by IMGroup