We do quite abit of .NET Development here at Perkins Consulting and like to stay on top of current technology, software architecture, and new technology.  I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Microsoft PDC 2009 Conference in Los Angeles, CA.  Below are some notes and details.

Recap

These are notes condensed from 4 days of note taking in OneNote.

Stuff that got announced

• Microsoft Pinpoint - greater assistance in lead generation - http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/ – I didn’t know this existed but it looks like it’s been around awhile
• Microsoft Codename "Dallas" - find, purchase and manage datasets - http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/Dallas - I think this is deployed via Sql Azure Services
• Azure - going live Jan start billing Feb
• IE9 in development
• Silverlight 4 Beta available now
• Office, SharePoint and Visio 2010 Public Beta as of now
• OData - official name for protocol for WCF Data Services (formerly ADO.NET Data Services or codename Astoria or AtomPub) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ee844254.aspx
• SQL Server Modeling Services - Olso, M (textual modeling language), and Quadrant (data-driven applications) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/default.aspx, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ee477952.aspx
• Duet Enterprise for SharePoint and SAP - consume and extend SAP from SharePoint 2010
• Outlook Social Connector - general SDK
• MIX10 - Conference in March in Vegas

Main Theme

3 screens and a cloud  (next 'wave' is Cloud computing [Mainframe (1970's) --> client-server (1980's) --> web (1990's) --> soa (2000's) --> cloud (2010's)]

• Phone, TV, PC
• Silverlight being the client mechanism (they are really pushing this to be the main UI mechanism)

Data playing increasingly larger role - Vivek Kundra - Chief Information Officer for the USA live via video feed

• make information public - for public consumption and transparency of data
• data.gov - searchable data catalogs

Conference Sessions Attended (11) + 1 pre-conference workshop

Workshop

1. Developing Microsoft BI Applications - The How and the Why
   1. Note that I struggled with this decision.  I signed up for Getting the Most out of Microsoft Silverlight 3 but having spent the last 9 months on a Silverlight project for one of our clients, I did not think it was going to be that beneficial.  There’s a ton of info on the web for Silverlight.  However, there’s not much for BI.  The Silverlight application I worked on sits on top of a Analysis Services Cube – the API is completely different than just throwing down a Entity Framework model on top of a relational database (which I did as well for some parts of it).  This app has an AdoMdDataReader, CellSet and MDX statements.  I was curious how others approached this area.

Sessions

1. Data Programming and Modeling for the .NET Developer - SQL Server Modeling Services
2. Overview of SharePoint 2010 Programmability
3. Evolving ADO.NET Entity Framework in Microsoft.NET Framework 4 and Beyond
4. SketchFlow: Prototyping to the Rescue
5. Microsoft Perspectives on the Future of Programming
6. Should I Use Silverlight, MVC, or Web Forms for Web User Interface Development?
7. Networking and Web Services in Silverlight
8. Advanced Topics for Building Large-Scale Applications with Microsoft Silverlight
9. Automating the App Lifecycle with Windows Azure
10. SQL Server Modeling Services: Using Metadata to Drive Application Design, Development and Management
11. Mastering Microsoft WCF RIA Services

Conference Sessions I wanted to attend, 44.

There was alot of concurrent session angst for me.  At any given time slot, there were 11 sessions and many of those I wanted to attend more than one in that time slot.  Luckily it was all being recorded and available at PDC, http://microsoftpdc.com/.  It will be interesting to see how making this all available online affects conference attendance in the future.

I might add that one of my favorite sessions, ‘Should I Use Silverlight, MVC, or Web Forms for Web User Interface Development?’, was an audience participation session where I got to talk quite alot because out of the mass of people in the session, I was one of the few using Silverlight in a LOB application for one of our clients.  However since it was audience participation, there is no video or audio available – an experience you can only get by being there.

Conclusion

Overall I thought this conference extremely worthwhile.  To be able to see the direction of the software industry and to see how much data is going to play a part in the future.  I think Perkins, having years of experience with Data Warehouse projects, is sitting in a perfect position to take advantage.