Yesterday evening there was a very special SQL Supper hosted at the Microsoft offices in London Victoria. It was an open session with some of the Microsoft Data Platform group, Mark Souza, Nigel Ellis, Conor Cunningham, Hatay Tuna and Ewan Fairweather. So I made my way by foot from the offices here in Covent Garden to London Victoria. Although February in London is rather chilly, with a brisk walk you can make it in half an hour, plus you pass several landmarks such as the piazza at Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square (and it’s controversial 4th plinth sculpture, the Blue Hahn Cock) the Mall, Buckingham Palace and finally, Westminster Cathedral.

Despite making it all the way to Victoria in good time and without any dramas, I got thoroughly lost in the road works that are taking place there. It feels like those road works have been going on forever (and are not due to be completed until l2018), and you find yourself in completely the opposite part you though you were and you realize you cannot cross the road anywhere at all.

Eventually I made my way to the offices and took full advantage of the hospitality provided by the good folks at Violin Memory and made sure that no pizza was wasted.

The evening was slightly different from the one advertised as it was a lot more open, talking about features coming up in SQL Server 2014 and SQL Azure, which is subtly different from SQL Server, as well as a long Q&A on the data platform in general. And let me tell you something; these guys are smart. There was no question asked that they could not answer, Conor Cunningham in particular, would have a story with every single answer about why a certain decision was made. There was also a ten minute “great” session, where people could ask for new features in the upcoming releases of SQL. I’m going to go on a bit of a whinge here; to all those people who requested features that are currently in Enterprise to be available in Standard: just think about why that will never happen. I can give you 7,000 reasons per core why that will never happen. So don’t waste your time. Seriously.

I jotted down some notes which I’m going to bulltet point below: