|
|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » TechEd (RSS)
-
There are online resources from this year's TechEd conferences available through MSDN. A limited number of keynote and breakout sessions are on the site, but you do get other videos such as interviews, panel discussions, lunch sessions, and the like that go beyond slide shows. Read More...
|
-
Didn't I write that I wanted to blog more this year? It's June, you see what came out of that. First things, first; I'm flying to Orlando tomorrow for TechEd. Looking back at what my conference schedule looked like up until 2 years ago, it's hard to believe that this is my first (!) scheduled conference talk this year. I actually do miss the life on the road a little bit. The compensation for it is that I get to see my family every day (my daughter Eva's first birthday is coming up on June 25th) and that I'm getting to work on and define the stuff that I 'just' used to be talking about. This really is the first time that I do a talk about a Microsoft technology that I own; so that's a bit of a thing: SOA 403 Building Federated Solutions on the Internet Service Bus Thursday, June 5, 2008 10:15AM-11:30AM Room: S220 C (DEV) 'Own' means here that I'm the responsible Program Manager for the entire 'Messaging' feature area of BizTalk Services in what we call the '.NET Online Services' team around here. The PM title isn't entirely accurate, because I'm also writing pretty substantial amounts of product code these days. The ability to write and contribute code into the product was the primary reason why I switched jobs and joined the team I'm now in, but it turned out that the PM role was the overall better fit for me. So I'm 60% PM and 40% Dev. Or something like that. Back to TechEd. There are two talk about what we're building. The first one is 'today' (I'm still on Pacific Time so I realize that may be a bit late); Justin Smith will provide a broad overview on the services we're building: SOA206 Messaging, Identity, and Workflow in the Cloud Tuesday, June 3 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM Room: S220 C The second talk is mine (above) and as you might be able to tell by the '400' classification I've got the clear intent not to spend too much time in Powerpoint. I am going to show four common architectural issues and ways to deal with them using the cloud platform. And I'm going to show you the code for it. I also plan (we'll see how that part goes with the on-site network) to host an app for 'crowd participation' so that I'm explicitly not going to ask you to turn your laptops off. Since the BizTalk Services SDK hasn't spread very broadly, yet, I'll base the majority of the demos on the SDK samples so that you can easily repro the stuff that I show you. Now ... you say ... "BizTalk Services? I don't have anything to do with BizTalk! Do you want to sell me BizTalk Server?" Well, it's always nice if customers decide to pick up some BizTalk Server licenses, but: No, I don't. Our stuff does actually compose with BizTalk Server 2006 R2 through the WCF Adapter, but the way to think about this code-name is that 'BizTalk' just happens to be the brand that our division has been using for Messaging. There was the BizTalk Framework, BizTalk Server and now we've got BizTalk Services. It's a brand. And we're actually finding that that name isn't really a perfect fit for what we're Read More...
|
-
With TechEd Developer closer at hand, I've put together the latest schedule data for sessions of interest to developers for each of the different products. The first group is sessions of general interest. The second group is sessions focusing on WCF and WF development. The third group is sessions focusing on CardSpace development. The fourth group is sessions focusing on BizTalk development. Microsoft Strategy and Vision for SOA by Oliver Sharp Services are fundamentally changing the way we build, deploy, and manage applications. In this session we identify common challenges, and share our latest guidance and success stories. In addition, we outline Microsoft's strategy to simplify complexity in a service oriented world using our frameworks, servers, and online services. The Road to "Oslo": The Microsoft Services and Modeling Platform by David Chappell Microsoft's "Oslo" project aims at creating a unified platform for model-based, service-oriented applications. This new approach will affect the next versions of several products and technologies, including the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft System Center, and more. Although many details of "Oslo" won't be public until later in 2008, this session provides an overview of what Microsoft has revealed so far. Along with a description of the problems it addresses, the session includes a look at several new "Oslo" technologies, including a general-purpose modeling language, role-specific modeling tools, a shared model repository, and a distributed service bus. Platforms for SOA and Business Process Management: Comparing .NET and Java by David Chappell The .NET and Java/J2EE worlds have been competitors for several years. How do things stack up today? And what will the future look like? This session provides an independent perspective on how these two environments compare, focused on technologies for SOA and BPM. Comparisons include Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) vs. pure BPEL workflow and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) vs. Service Component Architecture (SCA). Framework and Microsoft BizTalk Best Practices with an Eye Toward "Oslo" by Jon Flanders Microsoft has announced "Oslo", the code-name for a wave of technology affecting the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft BizTalk Server, and the idea of building service-oriented systems using Microsoft technologies. In this session we discuss what we know so far about these technologies, and how to think about Read More...
|
-
It's not time to panic yet, but this is a sign that you should start getting your TechEd plans ready. This is the first year in the US that TechEd is split into two events. TechEd Developers TechEd IT professionals If you're reading this, then you're probably more interested in the developer conference. Although the developer conference is June 3-6 and the IT conference is June 10-13, they both have the same set of dates for registration. Around May is when registration started getting dicey the last few years although it's hard to predict what will happen with the new logistics. Read More...
|
-
I noticed the other day that the TechEd sites have started getting an extensive collection of session titles although it looks like no other descriptions are available. I'm just taking a guess about what most of these talks are going to be about, but I'm predicting that this audience will find these talks from the TechEd Developer half of the conference interesting. I haven't tried to figure out the Silverlight talks yet because those are too hard to predict from just the titles. WCF AJAX-Enable Your Windows Communication Foundation Services Building Federated Solutions on the Internet Service Bus Building RESTful Services Using Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 Building Secure Web Services Using Windows Communication Foundation Durable Windows Communication Foundation Services Integrating Business Applications with Windows Communication Foundation Productive Windows Communication Foundation Providing Load Balancing, Application-Level Failover, and Centralized Configuration Management with Windows Communication Foundation Services and Microsoft .NET Applications WF Building Human Workflows with Windows Workflow Foundation State Machines Getting Workflows Running and Talking in Your Applications BizTalk Degrees of Freedom Port Binding in Microsoft BizTalk Server Microsoft BizTalk in the Supply Chain: Providing Supply Chain Visibility with EDI and Business Activity Monitoring Windows Communication Foundation Adapters in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Framework and Microsoft BizTalk Best Practices with an Eye Toward "Oslo" CardSpace What's New with Windows CardSpace in the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Read More...
|
-
It's midway through the final day of the conference so it's about time to give a summary of the week. The Event The overall level of announcements was light during the week. There was a lot more focus on the products that have been released than the products that are upcoming. Acropolis was announced at the beginning of the week. Windows Server Core got some additional elaboration but had already been announced previously. The attendance was larger than last year but the venue was massively larger. There is still room for growth next year when TechEd returns to Orlando. Lunch was distinctly improved from last year in Boston and was at the level of moderate cafeteria food this year. Snacks were plentiful and varied. The Talks There were a lot of great talks this year- too many to attend everything I wanted to see. The distribution across the week is uneven depending on your interests so I'll have to watch a few sessions once the recordings are published. It's unfortunate that the chalk talks aren't recorded because I missed almost all of them due to conflicts. The rooms for breakout sessions were large and I had almost no problem getting a spot. Even the smaller rooms held 300 people, which was great for the sessions that turned out to be unexpectedly popular. The setup for chalk talks was much better than last year. Each theater was equipped with AV equipment, monitors, and this time the white boards were usable. However, a lot of the chalk talks had capacity problems as they only held 32 people. The chalk talks last year only tended to get 20-30 people but this year a lot of chalk talks had 40-50 people. The microphones were not powerful enough and the monitors weren’t large enough to support an overflow crowd. The Location The weather in Orlando is absolutely brutal coming in from Seattle. Every day was in the 90s with the humidity maxed out. It's actually tough finding nice restaurants. The towns in the area are spread out a bit and a lot of places serve resort fare. You have to search around and ask people in order to distinguish the good spots from the best-advertised spots. This is going to be a whole lot easier next year at least. Read More...
|
-
This post is coming in the afternoon because I spent most of the morning playing around with the Acropolis release. It is a very early release: a lot of the templates and options that you would want to use are missing, so it is mostly an attempt to find out about the vision for the product. I also watched the introduction video that they have on the website. I recommend watching the video because it points out the places where more content will come in the future rather than trying to guess while using the program. There are also two walkthroughs in the help file. I hadn't seen that mentioned so I didn't find the walkthroughs until after I had been playing around for a while. One of the walkthroughs goes through the same scenario as the introduction video. The other walkthrough is more interesting and it covers building a simple RSS reader. You will notice that while there is almost no code written for the notepad walkthrough, the RSS walkthrough has a substantial amount of code and XAML to write relative to the time you spend using the tools. I think that the RSS walkthrough is closer to a realistic example and it's better to use that sample if you want to get a feel for the developer experience. Writing notepad only gives you a feel for the installation process because all of the functionality is built into the product already. I don't think that it takes that long to get a feel for the product because a lot of the features and polish are still to be added. The core tools are very simple, but you'll need to learn each of the application types, component parts, layouts, and themes once they are available. After about four hours, here are my initial impressions. I like the wizard approach for getting started but it has to be easy and robust to change my mind later and not lose the code I've already worked on. There is a lot of terminology and stuffy terms that get thrown in your face right when you start. It threw off my initial impression on usability to large extent. I like the model for command routing and handling. It matches the way I'd want to code but the infrastructure gets automatically generated. The separate designer application helps get the infrastructure crud out of my face when I don't want to see it. I hope the extensive use of XAML leads to a substantial wealth of tool support in the future. I'm weary of having to play with huge piles of angle brackets, whether it's XML config, XAML, or any other angle bracket dialect that is in style at the Read More...
|
-
Although TechEd doesn't normally have major product announcements (the conference is more about what has already happened rather than what is coming up), this year has been particularly light. Last year, we were caught up in the large rebranding of .NET Framework 3.0, which happened the week before the conference. We were not a newly-announced product, but we essentially had to act that way because it reset people's awareness about the components that Microsoft was shipping. Our role this year has evolved from explaining who we are to more explaining how to use the product. One product that did get announced this year is Acropolis . Acropolis continues the line of Greek-themed web application frameworks by helping you build client applications that tie together components from multiple different providers. There actually isn't a requirement that you build mashup-style web applications but I suspect that will be a favorite of the early-adopter crowd. Once it gets a bit more mature, I can see the potential here for writing business portal and integration applications faster (and hopefully they'll look a lot better than older generation applications as a bonus). The keynote address by Bob Muglia on Monday was similarly bigger on vision than substance. The second half of the talk did touch on quite a few products although we didn't get much that was deep or surprising. Here's the list of references that I put together: Windows Server 2008 ("ships late 2007") - and more details about Windows Server Core Visual Studio 2008 ("ships late 2007") SQL Server 2008 ("actually ships in 2008") Windows Virtualization Silverlight BizTalk Services Read More...
|
-
I gave a chalk talk on channel development in the afternoon yesterday. I did a huge experiment for the second-half of the talk, which was to write a custom channel from scratch for the audience. That's the kind of theater that you can pull off in a chalk talk but not a regular breakout session. I started with a completely empty Visual Studio environment, wrote a web service, explained why the web service call crashed due to a protocol issue, and then fixed the crash by writing a custom channel. We had 46 people in the audience at the start. The capacity of the chalk talk theaters is only 32 people, but we secured about a dozen extra chairs from the lounges and people stood along the back. Capacity was an issue for several of the chalk talks yesterday. I saw one chalk talk for BizTalk that had crammed almost 60 people into the room. If you're in the audience, it starts getting quite warm after a while. The breakout session rooms are quite spacious on the other hand so I haven't seen any problems there. The Orlando venue has a tremendous capacity and a generally good layout. The only other difficulty was that the standard equipment was a non-adjustable over-ear headset microphone. In addition to making you look like a cross between a call-center worker and a pop star, that type of mic is pretty uncomfortable to wear for an hour and picks up a lot of extra noise if you move around while talking. I tried a half-dozen ways of putting the headset on to fix the issues before the AV guy offered a standard lapel microphone. They had one sitting in the AV case in the room. I don't know why they didn't make the proper equipment available from the start. I promised at the end of the talk that I'd post some resources. Ed Pinto and Kenny Wolf are giving a talk "Architecture of Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation and Common Extensibility Points" on Thursday at 4:30 PM. Steve Maine is giving the buzzword titled talk "Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Syndication, AJAX and REST Services in Web 2.0 with .NET Framework 3.5" on Friday at 1 PM. There are six samples that I particularly recommend for channel developers. Chunking channel HttpCookieSession channel UDP transport WSE transport UDP activation Config code generator Finally, here is the code that was written during the talk. The scenario was based on an HTTP problem I described back in August . using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Channels; Read More...
|
-
For those of you that weren't reading last year, here's how the week is going to work. Rather than posting on the regular 5 AM schedule, I'll be doing a post a day between 10 AM and 12 AM Eastern time summarizing what happened the previous day. If there are any events during the day, I may also give a second post in the afternoon. The response to having a picture story was a bit lukewarm so I'm not going to repeat that this year. Orlando also lacks the nice overhead walkways that Boston had so it wouldn't have turned out as well. I actually have nothing to report from yesterday so this post is a bit short. I had a five hour flight delay at Atlanta and missed all of the preconference activities on Sunday. I'm currently working on getting ready for a chalk talk on channel development this afternoon. It roughly follows the Channel Dev Tour series but in a 75 minute format. Read More...
|
-
After TechEd goes to Orlando, there's still more to come. I hope no one actually has to travel to all the stops. It would be a really long trip. United States: Orlando, June 4-8 India: Mumbai, June 13-16 Australia: Queensland, August 7-10 New Zealand: Auckland, August 13-15 Japan: Yokohama, August 21-24 Hong Kong: Hong Kong, August 28-30 South East Asia: Kuala Lumpur, September 10-13 Taiwan: Taipei, September 18-20 South Africa: Sun City, October 21-24 Europe: Barcelona, November 5-9, November 12-16 China: November 8-10 Read More...
|
-
Here's a selection of webcasts over the next two weeks that I thought you might be interested in. The majority of these are going to be done in association with the online presence of TechEd this year. MSDN Webcast: Applying Service-Orientation to Your Development Process (Level 300) Tuesday, June 5, 2007 7:15 A.M. - 8:30 A.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: How to Select the Right Combination of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Windows Workflow Foundation, and BizTalk for All Your Workflow and Orchestration Needs (Level 300) Thursday, June 7, 2007 5:00 A.M. - 6:15 A.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: A Lap around Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" (Level 200) Monday, June 4, 2007 7:30 A.M. - 8:45 A.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: .NET Framework 3.0 End-to-End: Putting the Pieces Together (Level 300) Tuesday, June 5, 2007 2:30 P.M. - 3:45 P.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: Building Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" (Level 300) Wednesday, June 6, 2007 2:30 P.M. - 3:45 P.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: ASP.NET AJAX Client Libraries: Development Tips and Tricks (Level 200) Tuesday, May 29, 2007 9:00 A.M. - 10:00 A.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: ASP.NET AJAX Client Libraries: Session Review (Level 200) Thursday, May 31, 2007 10:00 A.M. - 11:00 A.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: A Lap Around SilverLight (Level 300) Monday, June 4, 2007 1:45 P.M. - 3:00 P.M. Pacific Time Read More...
|
-
I'll be giving another talk on channel development for WCF this year at TechEd. Due to the selection of sessions, there's really only one good lead-in talk and it's currently scheduled for later in the week. That means that I'll be spending more time on background material than I normally would. However, if you have any questions about channel development that you'd like to see covered, submit them between now and May 18th. Read More...
|
-
A year later, and it's already time to say again that TechEd 2007 is in Orlando from June 4th to 8th, just eight weeks away now. Eight weeks away also means that the time for early registration is almost gone, so register now if you want to take advantage of that. I expect that the posting schedule during the event will be very similar to last year so be prepared for a blitz during late May and early June. Read More...
|
|
|
|