The past two days I have attended the preconf sessions. I must say I learned allot on SQL server. The past year I did not take the effort to dive into new SQL 2005 stuff, but to catch up I decided to attend the two preconf sessions on SQL 2005.
Attending these Sessions taught me some stuff I would like to share, because I thing there are many people that might have the similar background I have coming from Sybase. I always applied rules I knew from that timeframe, but I found that I have to reset my defaults in certain areas.
E.g. did you know that when selecting a clustered index for your tables you can best select a clustering key that is: Selective, Unique, Static and ever increasing. I learned in my Sybase time that you could best select e.g. a range like date for clustered indexes so you also avoid hotspots. Now I learned that Hotspots are not so bad anymore. Because of row level locking this is way a less problem as in the days of page level locking.
Have a look at the blog of Kimberly Tripp she has some great posts on indexes that can be very helpful.
Tomorrow the PDC really starts with the keynote session by Bill. I hope we get some great announcements tomorrow. I will post my findings if I get some more info on e.g. the workflow services they will announce tomorrow and the Atlas project. Those are sessions I will definitely attend.