This is my first PASS conference after a few years of absence. A few thoughts and impressions:

1. It was good catching up with a few friends. There are still a few old friends I missed, and a few that I really would have liked to talk longer.

2. Microsoft’s Hekaton announcement is interesting. A few years back I saw VoltDB demos and that was impressive. Microsoft’s announcement will accelerate in-memory transactional database developement and help bring this technology to a wider audience.

3. Solid state disks see more adaption but they are still pretty expensive. Hopefully its wider adaption will help to drive the cost down as time goes on. There are a few vendors that uses some creative ways to squeeze the most out of the investment by pairing mechenical disks with solid state disks, such as algo-based data movement: when it detects some data on spindle disks are “hot”, it moves them to solid state disks. That sounds interesting if done well.

4. It was really nice meeting a number of Chinese-speaking attendees. Great networking and fun discussions!

5. The mojito and bloody mary from Edge Grille is not very good in my opinion. Beer from Gordon Biersch is ordinary, nothing to write home about, ymmv.