After a week of geeking out, PDC 2008 is over. It was an intense week with a bunch of interesting announcements and promising technologies.

The highlights:

“Dublin”: an application server build upon IIS 7 (Win2k8) hosting WCF and WF 4.0. But it’s more! Besides hosting WCF and WF, it also includes tooling (in the IIS management interface and Power Shell commandlets), templates in Visual Studio for deploying and a database filled with management information. (See also: BB18).

“Geneva”: an STS (Security Token Server) which allows you to extract the authentication from your applications (making it the problem of the IT professionals ). Using the Geneva Server and the Geneva Framework federation, extracting metadata about your users from diverse sources (age, shoe size etc.) becomes a matter of configuration instead of a matter of fragile hardcoded queries. (See also: BB42).

C# Futures: dynamic types, a little love from the dynamic languages for their static cousins. (See also: TL16 and TL10).

Boku: the best presentation from MSFT research, a ‘game’ which allows you to program using an Xbox controller.

“Oslo”: a language “M”, a visual modeler “Quadrant” and a repository. Everything is data, the quadrant visual modeler is stored as data in the repository. “M” (and MGrammer and MSchema) allows you to define your own DSL for your problem (e.g. music library with songs), build a grammar for it and create an object graph in memory. Quadrant is a visual modeler for your Visual DSL, which gives your end users a very rich editing experience. I did a hands on lab with “Oslo” and Dublin, modeling a WCF and WF solution and deploying it all from Quadrant, very slick! (See also: TL23 and TL31).

Windows Azure: making hosting easy and cheap. Combined with all the announced services (.NET Services, SQL Services, Access Services, Workflow Services etc.) this is a very compelling story for hosting your websites and –applications without the headaches of scaling and maintenance. (See also: ES16 and BB01).

CodeContract class: the new CodeContract class in .NET 4.0 allows you to defined pre- and post-conditions for the parameters of your methods (should never be null) and uses static analysis to verify those conditions. (This and more changes to the CLR in 4.0 see: PC49).

Expect more detailed posts about these and other subjects after my vacation.

See you at PDC 2009 (17 November 2009 – 20 November 2009).

Last week the timeline for PDC08 was posted on the PDC site. All the sessions you previously selected, to help make a better schedule, are already added to your personal schedule. This is my schedule, based on the sessions I selected. As you can see, I have a small challenge, with 2-4 sessions at the same time, so I’m going to have some difficult choices to make.

Last week the final (25) sessions were added to the PDC Session list, making it a total of 178 sessions. I’m not sure which sessions are new or updated, so this list will not be unfamiliar to regular readers of this blog (all 5 of you).

The sessions I will try to attend, if they can schedule around my wishes, are: sessions about “Oslo”, “Zermatt”,  CLR Futures, some language sessions (C#, F#, Dynamic Languages, XAML), “Dublin” and the Parallel Symposium.

Update: I had another look at the session list today and 10 more sessions were added, making it a total of 188.

55 more sessions have been added to an all ready full schedule making the current total 139 sessions and still more "secret" session will be announced at the PDC.

Highlights of the (new) sessions:

• Parallel Symposium:
• Addressing the Hard Problems with Concurrency
• Application Opportunities and Architectures
• Future of Parallel Computing
• Services Symposium:
• Enterprise Grade Cloud Applications
• Expanding Applications to the Cloud
• Projecting On Premises Applications to The Cloud
• Service Bus Building Blocks: Connectivity, Messaging, Events, and Discovery
• "Zermatt"
• Deep Dive
• Enabling Next Generation Identity
• Windows CardSpace "2": Under the Hood

With the focus on "The Cloud", Parallel Computing and "Oslo" this looks like it will be a very interesting PDC. For more information about what "Oslo" is see both Don's and Doug's definitions.

[Current PDC08 Session List]

Last Friday another batch of session for PDC2008 was posted, increasing the count to 84. Still missing are sessions about the next version of Office and MOSS (v14), but there are plenty of other interesting sessions; it will be hard to choose from all the sessions. The highlights of the new sessions (also see this and this earlier post):

Concurrency Runtime Deep Dive: How to Harvest Multicore Computing Resources
Parallel Programming for Managed Developers with the Next Version of Microsoft Visual Studio
With multi-core processors and cloud-computing becoming mainstream, concurrency and parallel computing will become a requirement for more performant software.

Modeling Data for Efficient Access at Scale
Scalable, Available Storage in the Cloud
SQL Server Data Services: Futures
Storing data in the cloud has a number of unique challenges in availability, security and efficient access.

A Lap around "Oslo"
"Oslo": The Language
There has been a lot of buzz around "Oslo"; it will be interesting to see how the vision translates into a product.

Windows Workflow Foundation: Futures
Extending Windows Workflow Foundation v.Next with Custom Activities
Workflow Services
The future of Windows Workflow Foundation and the ability to run processes in the cloud should be very interesting.

16 more sessions have been announced for PDC2008, including some sessions about (the future of) languages:

An Introduction to F#
Learn about Microsoft's new language, F#, a typed functional programming language for the .NET Framework. F# combines functional programming with the runtime support, libraries, tools, and object model of .Net. Understand how F# asynchronous workflows help tame the complexity of parallel and asynchronous I/O programming and how to use F# in conjunction with tools such as Parallel Extensions for .NET.

The Future of C#
In this talk Microsoft Technical fellow and C# Chief Architect Anders Hejlsberg outlines the future of C#. He will describe the many forces that influence and shape the future of programming languages and explain how they fit into C#.

Deep Dive: Dynamic Languages in .NET
The CLR has great support for dynamic languages like IronPython. Learn how the new Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) adds a shared dynamic type system, a standard hosting model, and support for generating fast dynamic code. Hear how these features enable languages that use the DLR to share code with other dynamic and static languages like VB.NET and C#.

And a session about claims-based security:

Claims-Based Identity: A Security Model for Connected Applications
Claims based security is the underpinning of many applications, services, and servers. This model enables security features like: multiple authentication types, stronger authentication on-the-fly, and delegation of user identity between applications. Learn how to use this model in .NET, how it integrates with Active Directory, how it works across platforms, how it works with existing applications, and how we use it at Microsoft.

The complete list can be found on the Microsoft PDC 2008 site.

In his keynote at Tech•Ed today, Bill Gates made a number of interesting announcements:

• Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will be released this week, together with Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview and Microsoft Silverlight Tools beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008 (this version is expected to work with VS 2008 sp 1 beta).
• The first CTP of the Microsoft project code-named “Velocity,” a distributed, in-memory application cache platform.
• Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 v1.2, which will allow developers to use Visual Studio 2008 for SharePoint development.

Especially "Velocity" looks very interesting and was new for me, the other announcements were expected updates to previously released version.

The keynote is available online at the Microsoft Tech•ED 2008 Virtual Pressroom.

A preliminary list of technical sessions has been announced and the registration has been opened for PDC 2008. Some of the interesting sessions:

Architecting Services for the Cloud
From design to implementation, building a scalable, available web service is different from building other kinds of applications. This session will discuss the impact that designing for the cloud has on all stages of the service lifecycle, and how Microsoft's cloud platform works for you to meet the scaling and availability goals of your service

Logical Queuing: Developing Occasionally Connected Clients
With Sync Services for ADO.NET, Sync Framework, etc., what technology should you use to develop applications that enable end-user productivity regardless of network connectivity? The reality is no one technology solves the problem. We will demonstrate how you can build offline-capable rich client applications by combining technologies like ADO.NET and SQL Server Compact Edition with the Microsoft Sync Framework. Next we take an architectural approach for "using the right tool for the right job" and show how many of these technologies actually work best when brought together in a cohesive solution that highlights the values each technology has to offer.

Under the Hood: Architecture of Storage in the Cloud
Get a deeper understanding of the storage architecture and understand how the storage platform can be used to the best of its capabilities. From low-level streams all the way to partitioned tables, cloud storage must be designed and optimized for the scaling demands of the cloud. This session will examine the underlying architecture of each layer of the storage service as well as the data modeling and programming interfaces exposed.

Under the Hood: Building SQL Server Data Services
Learn how we built SQL Server Data Services to address hard distributed systems and operations challenges. We will describe how we solved problems like failure detection, leader election, and automatic failover using a new innovation called Distributed Data Fabric. We will go deep and elaborate on the changes we made to the core SQL Server RDBMS to ship this massively scalable data service. We will also describe the operational systems we use to provision, monitor, and manage SSDS without interrupting the service. Finally, you will learn how we manage and run this service in our datacenters.

The rest of the sessions can be found on the Microsoft PDC 2008 site.

Last week I was at the MS SOA & BP conference on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, the overall theme of the conference focused on the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) and ISB (Internet Service Bus) powered by BizTalk server and biztalk.net respectively. Another theme was the focus on modeling, allowing developers to focus more on business problems and less on the plumbing.

The keynote

The keynote focused on the next wave of products for building Service Oriented Applications, called "Oslo", focused on modeling business processes and exposing them on the service bus. This modeling is currently done by different people using different tools, but the next version of Visual Studio will allow business analysts, architects, developers and operations to work on the different views of the same model using the same tool (Visual Studio).

The products included in "Oslo" are:

• BizTalk Server “6” – Process Server, based on Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation
• BizTalk Services (biztalk.net) – Internet Service Bus, authentication, communication and workflow outside the firewall
• Visual Studio "Rosario"
• System Center “5” – Operations – infrastructure support
• .NET Framework 4.0

Other sessions

Steve Swartz and Clemens Vasters had 4 great sessions (SA 208, SA 209, SA 310, SA 309), using the demo shown during the keynote about event planning, they show how they build it using modeling and the biztalk.net ISB. Since the same sessions are planned for TechEd Europe, the slides or the video should be on the web soon.

Don Smith showed the next version of the Web Service software factory called the modeling edition (Session FT 206). This release allows you to model your WCF services with a tool similar to the current class diagram and generate code based on that, instead of the previous versions, that generated code first. More info and the download on the Service Factory homepage on Codeplex.

Other interesting sessions were the overview session on Biztalk 2006 R2 (FT 309) and several deep dive sessions about WCF adapters (FT 400), testing Biztalk solutions (FT 306) and error handling (FT 201).

Channel 9 coverage

ARCast.TV - App Of The Future: The Internet Service Bus (Part 1 of 2)
ARCast.TV - App Of The Future: The Internet Service Bus (Part 2 of 2)
ARCast.TV - SOA Business Process Conference Day 1 Recap
ARCast.TV - SOA and Business Process Conference Day 2 Recap
ARCast.TV - SOA and Business Process Conference Recap - Day 3

I'm visiting the Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference next week organized by the Connected Systems Division. It promises to be an interesting conference, with 4 talks by Steve Swartz and Clemens Vasters and a number of talks about Biztalk 2006 R2.

More info on the conference site.