Session Abstracts
The 2008 Launch Day and TechDays 2008 offer a wealth of information for Developers, IT Professionals and IT Architects.Listed below are the abstracts of all sessions delivered over the three days.
An Overview of Visual Studio 2008
Speaker: Peter Himschoot
Explore all the new Visual Studio 2008 features, from language enhancements; improved designers; Web and smart-client development tools; to Visual Studio Team System, a suite of software lifecycle management tools poised to transform how you deliver software for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web.
Building Applications for Windows Vista and Office 2007 with Visual Studio 2008
Speaker: Jay Schmelzer
The 2007 Microsoft Office system has evolved into a business application platform that developers can use to build and deploy Office Business Applications (OBAs). This session demonstrates how developers can use Visual Studio 2008 to build OBAs, customize Microsoft Office applications, and utilize the Microsoft Office platform. This session also new features and improvements introduced in Visual Studio 2008 for smart client development.
Secondly, we demonstrate how you can leverage both Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Forms in a single application to build the right experience for your customer. Finally, we show feedback-driven improvements to existing features in Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, and ClickOnce.
Mission Critical Features in SQL Server 2008
Speaker: Dandy Weyn
Attend this session to learn how new enhancements in SQL Server 2008 provides you with the highest levels of availability, protects your business critical data and scales across growing data volumes and mixed workloads. This session provides an overview of the new security, scalability, performance and availability features in SQL Server 2008.
Next Generation Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008
Speaker: Gill Cleeren
Visual Studio 2008 enables developers and IT operators to dramatically reduce the amount of time, effort and code required to develop and deploy real-world Web applications. ASP.NET 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 and IIS 7 each provide much improved administration and management support, on top of dramatically improved performance. Also covered is support for ASP.NET AJAX, JavaScript enhancements, rich support for CSS standards and rapid development of data-bound Web pages.
Opening Keynote
Speaker: Bill Hilf
Join us at the launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. We will detail how this launch wave will help IT Professionals and Developers deliver next generation web and business applications, manage IT environments for scale and security, and take advantage of virtualization to increase operational agility. We'll feature real-world IT heroes delivering solutions on top of the Microsoft platform and show demos that showcase some of the newest technologies in the launching products.
Pervasive Business Intelligence with SQL Server 2008
Speaker: Frederik Vandeputte
Attend this session to learn how the new enhancements in SQL Server 2008 provide a comprehensive and scalable Business Intelligence platform that enables you to integrate and manage your growing data volumes, comprehensive analysis and enterprise reporting, and deliver insights through Microsoft Office System. This session provides an overview of the new data warehousing, reporting, analysis and integration features in SQL Server 2008.
Simplify Management with SQL Server 2008
Speaker: Steffen Krause
Attend this session to learn about the new manageability improvements in SQL Server 2008 that enables you to administer, monitor and maintain your data platform infrastructure while reducing the time and cost of management. This session provides an overview of the new manageability improvements that enables you to manage the infrastructure with policies, monitor and optimize your platform with insights and relevant information and scale your management across multiple servers.
Virtualizing your IT Infrastructure with Windows Server 2008
Speaker: David De Backer
The new Windows Server Virtualization technology, Hyper-V, and updated presentation virtualization technology, Terminal Services, are core features in Windows Server 2008. This session will provide you an overview of the virtualization technologies in Windows Server 2008, the scenarios, features, benefits and how they deliver real value. Management of your virtual infrastructure is critical for improving the overall efficiency of your IT environment, this session will also cover how our management technologies enhance the core Hyper-V and Terminal Services scenarios to make your datacenter a dynamic and flexible IT platform.
Windows Server 2008 Overview
Speaker: Arlindo Alves
Windows Server 2008, in addition to incorporating new capabilities and enhancements to existing features, includes a number of improvements in the core OS that enhance the Operating System’s capabilities in this area. Features aimed at increasing the ability of Windows Server 2008 to support highly critical workloads by improving operational reliability, reducing system failures, and easing management. We will also discuss improvements in other related elements in the platform that help Windows based systems and services help move an organization's IT Department forward.
Windows Server 2008 Security and Compliance Technologies
Speaker: Erik de Bondt
Windows Server 2008 offers rich capabilities for securing your IT Infrastructure and proving tools to ease with compliance mandates. This session will discuss the Windows security and compliance features such as Network Access Protection, Right Management Services, and Active Directory Federation Service. subsystem, why auditing is important and how to configure an audit policy e updated Windows Server 2008 event subsystem
10 Things to Love in .NET 3.5
Speaker: Roy Osherove
In this talk we'll explore 10 things every developer should know about and find valueble in the .NET 3.5 framework and extensions. From LINQ and Lambdas to WF and WCF, this talk will be a quick overview of each of the major cool stuff in .NET 3.5.
Active Directory Attacks and How to protect against them
Speaker: Jan De Clercq
This session provides examples of attacks against Active Directory and shows how you can protect your enterprise directory against them. The attacks addressed in this presentation include password cracking-, elevation of privilege-, and denial-of-service-based attacks. The session will help you understand some of the inner details of the AD authentication and authorization systems – such as LM hashing and Kerberos pre-authentication, cached credentials, SIDHistory, and token bloat… – and how these can create attack opportunities. Most importantly, this session illustrates the need for organizations to have a rock-solid AD administrative delegation and auditing model and a proven AD disaster recovery plan.
Advanced Debugging with Visual Studio
Speaker: Ingo Rammer
Basically every .NET developer knows the Visual Studio debugger, but only few know its little secrets. In this session, Ingo shows you what you can achieve with this tool beyond the setting of simple breakpoints. You will learn how advanced breakpoints, debugger macros and visualizers, interactive breakpoints, tracepoints and interactive object instantiation at development time can support your hunt for bugs in your applications.
Ajax Patterns
Speaker: Nikhil Kothari
This session takes a deep look at the Ajax paradigm by discussing useful development patterns, common problems and associated solutions. Patterns covered range from development approaches such as unobtrusive script attachment, to fundamentals such as search optimization to user interface and usability patterns such as intuitive navigation and visual notifications. While the demonstrations are illustrated through basic scenarios, like any pattern, the concepts can be applied to your own applications. In the course of demonstrating the patterns, this talk will also cover various aspects of ASP.NET AJAX including the latest features.
Anatomy of S+S – Part I: Practical considerations for building S+S Applications
Speaker: Eugenio Pace
Many of us have seen or used "software delivered as a service", but we have seldom analyzed these applications. In this session we will see the internal components of a typical S+S solution. We will present specific details of their implementation, common technical challenges and proven design patterns to address these challenges using the Microsoft Platform. A sample implementation will be shown, demonstrating these core design patterns and their application to all layers of a software solution: UI, business logic & persistence. Considerations for integration with “cloud” services (such as Microsoft Silverlight Streaming) will also be covered.
Anatomy of S+S – Part II: Considerations for Running & Consuming S+S Applications
Speaker: Eugenio Pace
Service delivery is a broad discipline that amalgamates knowledge and best practices from technical areas, such as networking, security, instrumentations and monitoring, operating systems, business processes, and system automation. Many ISVs are re-implementing operational components by necessity, not because those infrastructure additions provide significant value to differentiating the core features of the applications. Moreover, building these components add to the time and cost of delivering the application. Therefore, for the software vendors, most of such redundant work and expenditure can be eliminated if the software vendors can obtain the same operational functions from third parties that specialize in S+S hosting. This session explores the relationship between ISV and Hosters, and opportunities for both in the road ahead, as well as considerations of consuming S+S applications from an enterprise perspective.
Anatomy of S+S – Part III
Speaker: Eugenio Pace
The emergence of specialized on-line services gives developers an opportunity to offload functional responsibility to such services and concentrate resources on the value added aspects of their own offerings. These services are like “on-line libraries” that can be leveraged by an application. Microsoft is planning to offer a wide variety of such services. Some of them are already available, like Silverlight Streaming Services, but there will be others coming. In this session we will explore examples of usage of some of these on-line services and the implications to the application architecture.
Application Lifecycle Management and Visual Studio Team System
Speaker: Steven Wilssens
Do you want to know about the “Why?” of Application Lifecycle Management, as well as what it means to adopt “value-up” software development practices? During this session you will learn the benefits of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), and how Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) provides the necessary tooling to support an ALM approach. You will see how Microsoft adopts these practices within the development of its own products.
Building Applications with Silverlight 2
Speaker: Nikhil Kothari
Learn how to use Silverlight for building your rich internet applications using the power of managed code, .NET and XAML UI on the client. This session will demonstrates using the Silverlight presentation framework including controls, the application model, the networking stack and other new capabilities that Silverlight brings to browsers for the next-generation of cross-browser and cross-platform applications.
Building RIAs for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007
Speaker: Patrick Tisseghem
In this session you’ll learn how to leverage Web 2.0 technologies to deliver a rich and interactive end-user experience for SharePoint sites and content. Topics that will be covered are: building ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 enabled Web Parts; creating and consuming SharePoint Web Services that are AJAX-enabled; Web Parts hosting Silverlight 1.0 and 2.0 applications; techniques to have the Silverlight applications communicated back and forth with SharePoint content such as items in lists and libraries, user profile information and search results; samples of how publishing portals can be enriched with Silverlight navigation controls and enhanced page layouts; demos on how to build Vista Gadgets that display SharePoint content using traditional UI techniques as well as using Silverlight.
Deploying Windows Server 2008
Speaker: Kurt Roggen
Learn about the deployment options & features in Windows Server 2008 including Windows Deployment Services (WDS) and multicasting, Windows Imaging, Microsoft Deployment.
Microsoft Deployment Solution Accelerator is the next version of Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 and provides deployment automation and task sequencing for Windows Server 2008 to support deployment of both server and desktop infrastructure. We will have a look at deploying both Windows Server 2008 full installations and Server Core installations, including Server Roles, Role Services and Features.
Developing More Intelligent Applications using Data Mining
Speaker: Rafal Lukawiecki
Imagine an application that adjusts its behaviour as it learns about the needs and characteristics of its users: for instance, a user interface that knows what the user is most likely to do, or select next. Or, perhaps, a web store that can predict a shipment delivery failure even before the order has been placed, and warns the user. How about software that knows it is being abused and is on the brink of being hopelessly attacked by a criminal. In these three cases, and many others, traditional approach would require you to think of all the circumstances in advance, and to encode them as some form of logic. Naturally, that is impossible task ever to complete. Data Mining offers to us a glimpse of a world to come: your application will self-trace its past behaviour in order to discover these patterns for you. Your code, in turn, will use the ever-evolving data mining model to perform predictions based on which the application would react. While the world of academia has been thinking of similar approaches, notably in the Artificial Intelligence research, it has only recently become an everyday possibility to harness the power of Data Mining to similar extent. Come to this session if you would like to see where the future is headed. This session will introduce the key concepts of data mining and its algorithms for the benefit of those not yet familiar with the field, but the bulk of the presentation will concentrate on the as yet unexplored world of building more intelligent applications.
Dude, where's my business logic?
Speaker: Chad Hower
Over the years we have moved from desktop, to client server, to 3-tier, to n-tier, to service orientation. In the process though many things have changed, but many habits have remained. This session discusses what we are doing wrong, and solutions.
Interop – the new battle ground?
Speaker: Stephen McGibbon
Interoperability between software platforms from different vendors has always been a matter of importance. Increasing government regulation and policy decisions have elevated interoperability to a strategic matter affecting the entire ICT industry. We want to demonstrate you how interoperability fits within the Microsoft platform strategy. Based on this framework we then illustrate through practical examples and case studies how Microsoft achieves interoperability between our platform and those of the competition (40 mins). The core ingredients of Microsoft’s approach are:
Keynote: Software Paradigms and IT Models
Speaker: Rafal Lukawiecki
This technically-lighter session aims to put the many software development paradigms of today in a broader, historical perspective to highlight newly emerging trends. There is no denying that while we are discovering the new, for example with Service Orientation, we are also re-discovering the old, such as Declarative Programming. At the same time the operational environments have started their evolution towards virtualised, model-and-framework-managed data centres. As every Architect, Developer, and IT Professional wants to know about the future of their art, we will try to extrapolate a possible direction for these important technology trends by finding not always obvious parallels between our past achievements, academic research and the needs of the market.
Managing Windows Server 2008 with Server Manager and WinRM
Speaker: Daniel Van Soest
Windows Server 2008 makes significant improvements in server manageability with a one-stop administrative solution called Server Manager. This streamlined management tool allows IT administrators to complete setup of Windows Server using the Initial Configuration Tasks page, and configure and manage server roles and features with prescriptive wizards and a unified management console. WinRM is the new and improved WMI protocol for Windows Remote Management. This session will present and demonstrate the capabilities of Server Manager and how to extend this with the WinRM functionality and tools.
Microsoft Forefront
Speaker: Michael Anderberg
Many have asked over the years - why isn't Microsoft in the anti-malware business themselves, why do they leave this business to partners? Well with the introduction of Forefront and its various member products, we do. Come to this session and get an understanding of how Microsoft Forefront’s products easily integrate with each other, with your organization’s IT infrastructure, and they can be supplemented through interoperable third-party solutions, enabling end-to-end, defense-in-depth security solutions. The result for you? Simplified management, reporting, analysis, and deployment enable you to more efficiently protect your organization’s information resources and secure access to applications and servers
Network Access Protection (NAP) Architecture and Design
Speaker: Kevin Rhodes
This session will review the functionality and architecture of Network Access Protection (NAP), look at the pro’s and con’s of enforcement mechanisms and then discuss deployment design and execution. It will talk about the experiences from the Microsoft deployment of NAP and how those lessons learned can be applied in deployment planning.
New Enterprise Search Technologies: Microsoft Search Server 2008, Federated Search and Faceted Search
Speaker: Patrick Tisseghem
The Microsoft search space has been extended with a number of important products and technologies. The goals of this session is to give you an overview of the latest features. Following topics will be covered: search administration with the Microsoft Search Server 2008, Federated Location Definition files and how to use them to create new federated search locations, customization of the Microsoft Search 2008 Search Center, customizations in the XSL that is used to transform the search results into the HTML representation displayed in the browser, faceted search, refinement of the search results and the delivery of options to have users execute a search within the search. This session is also an opportunity for Patrick Tisseghem to highlight the topics that are covered in his latest MS Press book “Inside the Index and Search Engine” out in the shops around April 2008.
Office Open XML Formats
Speaker: Chad Hower
Office 2007 now stores its documents in XML. This makes manipulation and creation of documents easy to do, even without Office installed. The Office Open XML format is also an ECMA standard and has backwards compatibility with older versions of Office as well as some capabilities on Linux and Macintosh, as well as Java. Surprised? Learn about these features and more in this session.
Providing Remote Managed Services with Microsoft System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007
Speaker: Rory McCaw
This session will cover the new managed services solution Microsoft is building to enable partners to create a services-based business by delivering remote IT managed services to small and midsized businesses. Supported by System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Operations Manager 2007) and System Center Essentials 2007 (Essentials 2007) technology, this combined solution creates a powerful platform with which you can provide remote software update management, monitoring and troubleshooting of customer environments over a secure internet connection. In addition, you will be able to extend the service to show your customers the value of the services you provide.
Read-Only Domain Controllers (RODC) - A deep technical breakdown
Speaker: Jorge de Almeida Pinto
Companies with branch offices sometimes face a dilemma..."Are they going to place a writable DC in a non-secure location or no DC at all?!" Placing a writable DC in a non-secure location creates the high risk of compromising the complete forest if the writable DC for example is stolen or compromised. Placing no DC at all, means that authentication must go over the wire and that makes another dependency for authentication which can have the undesirable effect on authentication when the WAN is not available. Besides this, other issues exist like non-Domain Admins having the need to administer the local DC in a branch office that has others roles (e.g. file and print services) or LOB applications installed.
With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft implements a new type of DC that aids in mitigating the risks of placing a DC in a non-secure location and assigning permissions to non-Domain Admins on DCs. This session explains how this new type of DC works and will also cover other interesting information to know about.
Recovery Scenarios, High Availability and Site Resilience with Exchange Server 2007 SP1
Speaker: Scott Schnoll
This session covers the spectrum of recovery, availability and resiliency. It opens with an over of the recovery features in Exchange 2007 SP1, and how to use them to recover from small, medium and large scale failures. Then, we dive deep into high availability strategies and features, including load balancing, redundancy, failover clusters and continuous replication. The rest of the session covers datacenter resilience, including backup site preparation and activation, and resiliency strategies.
Sharepoint for Administrators
Speaker: Steffen Krause
SharePoint is installed – now what? This session gives an overview on the three stage SharePoint administration architecture. We explain the different administrative roles, from IT administrator to content administrator. In addition we talk about some of the most important administrative tasks – backup, permissions and security.
SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services – New Architecture, Visualisation and Tablix
Speaker: Steffen Krause
Reporting Services 2008 has much to offer. See the new architecture, which no longer needs Internet Information Server (IIS) and provides new features like better memory management and enhanced rendering. Learn about the new, completely flexible Tablix layout which enables you to combine fixed and dynamic columns and multiple parallel groupings in one report. And finally, take a look at the new chart and gauge controls and how you can create great looking visual reports.
SQL Server Intergration Services (SSIS): Zero to Hero
Speaker: Dandy Weyn
"Have you dealt with different sources of data that you want to consolidate into a central database?
Whether you need to collect data for Business Intelligence purposes, or as an administrator you want to deal with the log files that certain applications spawn out, starting from zero you will become your company’s SQL Server Integration Services SuperHero.
You will learn how to create basic data transformation packages, as well as provide complex tasks such as lookups and work with variables and expressions.
This session will provide you with the necessary skills to use SQL Server Integration Services, and focus on e of the new features in SQL Server 2008 Integration Services, as well as the SQL Server 2008 Relational Database Engine."
The .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Framework
Speaker: Alex Turner
Modern applications operate on data in several different forms: Relational tables, XML documents, and in-memory objects. Each of these domains can have profound differences in semantics, data types and capabilities, and much of the complexity in today's applications is the result of these mismatches. Alex Turner, C# Compiler Program Manager, explains how Visual Studio 2008 aims to unify the programming models through LINQ capabilities in Microsoft Visual C# and Visual Basic, a strongly typed data access framework and an innovative Application Programming Interface (API) for manipulating and querying XML.
Troubleshooting Web Sites on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 7
Speaker: Fabio Yeon
Ever want to know what's really happening inside your Web server? Like what requests are executing or what AppDomains are loaded in processes? Have you wanted to trace a request but only when it's failing? Come to this session to see how Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 is expanding its monitoring & diagnostics capability through features like Runtime Status and Control data that allows you to see not just which worker processes are serving which pools, but also what requests are executing in them and their current state (including what module they're in and how long they've been there!). We'll also be showing you a new feature called Failed Request Tracing that will allow you to configure IIS to trace requests for a specific URL and only flush those trace logs to disk if the request meets a failure condition that YOU define. Want to find out why your clients are hitting 401's? Or why a request for a static file is taking WAY too long? Use Failed Request Tracing to view this data. Also covered is how you can instrument new managed modules and capture that tracing in IIS trace logs (like Failed Request Tracing), as well as how to route ASP.NET Page Trace events into IIS trace logs. Come to this session to see how IIS 7 is enabling you to finally get under the hood and see what's really happening.
Visual Basic: Tips and Tricks for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Speaker: Jay Schmelzer
In this session, we combine some tips for existing Visual Studio features, and tricks for leveraging new Visual Studio 2008 features. We look at a variety of existing features including operator overloading, refactoring, creating your own snippets, some tips for using frameworks classes (and generics), and leveraging application settings. Then we look at new features including some LINQ Do’s and Don’ts, My Extensibility, and taking control of unit testing in Visual Studio. All of these tips are aimed at giving you a more productive, fun programming experience.
Visual Studio 2008: Building applications with Office 2007
Speaker: Jay Schmelzer
This session provides an overview of the tools and technologies that enable developers to leverage the new Visual Studio 2008 and Office platform tools and technologies to build new and exciting Office Business Applications. You’ll learn a number of key technologies in this session, including the creation of Office smart clients, development of custom SharePoint workflow, and extension of Outlook to integrate key business data into one of our most popular productivity tools.
Visual Studio 2008: RAD for Today’s Line of Business Application Developer
Speaker: Jay Schmelzer
In this demo intensive session we’ll take a look at improved support in Visual Studio 2008 for building distributed business applications. We will focus on Visual Studio’s support for building and consuming WCF services, sharing business validation rules between client and server, implementing local caching of read-only data on the client, sharing common application services like authentication and authorization between Windows and Web client applications and much more. Next we will turn our attention to web and see how Visual Studio 2008 allows us to easily incorporate rich experiences into our existing ASP.NET web sites using ASP.NET AJAX, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and take advantage of improved HTML designer, CSS editor and JavaScript intellisense and debugging. Visual Studio 2005 raised the productivity bar for business application developers. Visual Studio 2008 builds on that foundation bringing unmatched productivity gains to distributed business application developers.
VSTS Application Lifecycle management
Speaker: Yves Goeleven
Application lifecycle management regards the process of delivering software as a continuously repeating cycle of inter-related steps and each of these steps needs to be carefully monitored and controlled. As the complexity and sophistication of this task has grown it has been matched by increasing numbers of tools with little or no integration. Today Visual Studio Team System provides us a comprehensive environment that allows for frictionless integration of all the roles participating in the application lifecycle.
WCF and WF: Integrating two key technologies of .NET 3.5
Speaker: Ingo Rammer
Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation are two cornerstones of .NET 3.5. In this session, you will learn about different ways to combine them to workflow-enable your WCF applications.
What’s new in Windows PowerShell 2.0 for IT Pros?
Speaker: Bart De Smet
With PowerShell 1.0 being a huge success, we’re streaming forward for an even more impressive 2.0 release. We’ll focus on the various forms of remoting, improvements to the PowerShell language, the Universal Code Execution Model, restricted runspaces, script cmdlets, script internationalization, script debugging support, eventing, the graphical PowerShell, and much more. This is your chance to come and see Windows PowerShell 2.0 in action and to learn how it will help you being more productive in managing your IT infrastructure.
What's new for developers in SQL Server 2008?
Speaker: Dandy Weyn
As a developer you want to understand the new features in SQL Server 2008.
In this session you will learn how to work with the new data/time datatypes as well as implementing new T-SQL Features such as the MERGE statement.
You will learn how to enable a database for change data capture and track changes in data throughout an ETL data process.
You will also see on how to implement geospatial data and work with FILESTREAM objects.
This session is focusing on database developer SQL Server side topics.
Windows Vista Service Pack 1
Speaker: Tony Krijnen
Microsoft Windows Vista has monitoring tools on board that look at the reliability of the operating system, drivers and applications. Windows Vista SP1 leverages that data and besides new updates it will improve reliability, Besides the improvements we also take a look at the deployment of Windows Vista SP1. What are the common problems you need to be aware of? What are the different ways to install Windows Vista SP1? performance, application compatibility, and device compatibility. In this breakout we will talk about the areas improved upon in Service Pack 1. What was changed for File copy, resume from hibernation and standby? What are the new tools for performance?
.NET 3.5: WinForms and WPF
Speaker: Chad Hower
With two options for building forms, which is better to use? For the near future the answer often is both. In this session we will cover the strengths and weaknesses of each, and how to use them effectively together.
“Under the Hood” of System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Speaker: Edwin Yuen
Learn about the architecture and deeper technical details of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and how to use that knowledge to better manage your virtual machines. Topics to be covered are technical review of the physical to virtual migration process, using Powershell with SCVMM, advanced deployment topologies, SAN integration.
Applied Service Oriented Architecture
Speaker: Steven Wilssens
During this session we will have a look at what the most recent buzzword in the IT industry means for one of the product teams at Microsoft. Although it is still in beta, Popfly was recently chosen as one of the 25 most innovative products by PC World. See how SOA, short for Service Oriented Architecture, works for a product that was build using a variety of Microsoft services, what the team has learned from this experience, and how this approach can work for you.
ASP.NET MVC Framework
Speaker: Matt Gibbs
A benefit of the MVC architectural pattern is that it promotes a clean separation between the models, views and controllers within an application. ASP.NET now includes support for developing web applications using an MVC based architecture. The ASP.NET MVC Framework is designed to support building applications that exhibit the following traits: Testability – Red/Green test driven development - Maintainability –clear separation of concerns - Extensibility – interfaces allowing custom implementation at all levels - Web Standards and clean URLs – with routing and giving developers tight control over the resulting HTML. Join us for a dive into the new MVC Framework and learn how to leverage this new alterative in your own applications.
Building internet web sites using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Speaker: Joris Poelmans
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides the necessary framework components to build Internet web sites using master pages, page layouts and WCM specific functionality. In this session we will take an in-depth look at how to use these components and which are the best practices for developing an internet web site while leveraging the MOSS platform. This session will conclude with a look at the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint as well as at the migration story for MCMS customers.
Closing Keynote: The Microsoft Digital Lifestyle
Speaker: Matt McSpirit
You may be familiar with Windows Vista at work – whether you have deployed it, or are evaluating it, but have you ever thought about the possibilities of Vista outside of work? This session, aimed at IT professionals, explores not only the built in elements of Vista, such as Search, Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, and the Networking and Sharing Center, but also how you can extend your Windows Vista Experience, with Windows Vista Media Center, Xbox 360, Windows Home Server, Windows Live and specific applications to open up a new world of gaming and home entertainment.
Configuring, Managing and Remotely Administering Windows Server 2008 Server Core
Speaker: Daniel Van Soest
Windows Server 2008 introduces a brand new installation option called Server Core. Server Core is Windows without Windows! With Server Core you can minimize the complexity and attack surface but faced with a command prompt how are you going to configure and manage the server and its core services? In this session through the use of comprehensive demos we will show you how to optimally manage the server and its roles from the command prompt. The session also covers how to administer Server Core remotely using the familiar MMC snap-ins and how to properly configure Server Core to allow the MMC snap-ins to connect.
Creating Custom LINQ Providers – LINQ to Anything
Speaker: Bart De Smet
LINQ is all about unifying data access in a natural language integrated way. But there’s more than just LINQ to Objects, LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML. In this session, we put ourselves on the other side of the curtain and explore the wonderful world of LINQ providers. You’ll learn how to create a fully functional LINQ query provider allowing users to target your favorite query language using familiar LINQ syntax in C# 3.0 and VB 9.0: LINQ to AD, LINQ to SharePoint, LINQ to Outlook, you name it! This is your chance to get to know the inner workings of LINQ.
Deep Reflection
Speaker: Roy Osherove
In this 400 level session Roy digs deep into the heart of some of the new features in Reflection 2.0 such as runtime code generation using DynamicMethod (Lightweight Code Generation - LCG), parsing IL at runtime, generics in reflection, debugging runtime generated code, understanding Reflection.Emit, ReflectionOnly Context's for security and using Code gen to improve performance. Put your thinking cap on.
Deep-Dive and Advanced Functions of DPM2007
Speaker: Jason Buffington
In this session, we will go into real specifics of how data protection is achieved for each of the core workloads, including SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, and Virtualization - including advanced application topologies, recovery scenarios, etc. We will also briefly cover command-line control of DPM 2007 through PowerShell, deployment and monitoring through System Center, and discuss bare metal recovery of production servers using the DPM System Recovery Tool (SRT).
http://blogs.technet.com/JBUFF
Domain Specific Development with Visual Studio Domain Specific Language (DSL) Tools
Speaker: Jelle Druyts
As one of the pillars of the Software Factories initiative, Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) provide a way to describe your business domain in a language closer to the actual problem than using traditional programming code.
The Visual Studio Domain Specific Language Tools allow developers to create their own graphical designers and code generation tools – much like the ones you can find in Visual Studio today, such as the Class Designer.
In this session, you will learn how to develop your own DSLs inside Visual Studio and see an example of a real-world DSL that simplifies your life as a developer: the Configuration Section Designer.
Exchange2007: How about Autodiscover, DPM, Database Portability, and EMS
Speaker: Ilse Van Criekinge
In this session you will be given an in-depth overview of the configuration requirements of the Autodiscover service in Exchange 2007, including its importance for the Office Communicator Phone Edition (code-named Tanjay), Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, and Windows Mobile 6.1. You will also be able to decide why Data Protection Manager should be deployed in your Exchange organization. And then, you will dive into this great feature included with Exchange 2007 Mailbox server: Database Portability. To conclude, Ilse will show you five great Exchange Management Shell cmdlets that you will keep in mind when managing your Exchange environment
Group Policy Infrastructure in Windows Server 2008
Speaker: Kurt Roggen
Learn about the new Group Policy features in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, including the new format and functionality of Administrative Template (ADMX) files and interoperability with legacy ADM files, the ADMX central store, improved awareness of changing network conditions, using multiple local Group Policy Objects (MLGPOs), Group Policy templates, Group Policy Filtering and the new Group Policy Preferences (GPP).
Group Policy Preferences Extensions significantly extend the scope of Group Policy to include areas such as drive mapping, folder creation, shortcuts, scheduled tasks and many more. Additionally, new features such as setting-level targeting and the elimination of “tattooing” provide greater control over where and how policy settings are applied.
We will provide an introduction to the products acquired from DesktopStandard and discuss their future availability and roadmap.
Hidden Windows Server 2008 Security Gems
Speaker: Jan De Clercq
This session stresses the importance of a proactive and defense-in-depth-based approach for securing a Windows-rooted I.T. infrastructure and it shows why Windows Server 2008 is a better choice for proactively protecting your I.T. assets against malware. It provides a technical deep dive on the following Windows Server 2008 security gems: Windows Integrity Control (WIC), and Owner Access Restrictions (OAR), and new system-level security features such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Protection (DEP) and Windows Service Hardening (WSH). The session explains what security services these features can provide, how you can leverage them and how you should preferably configure them in a Windows Server 2008 infrastructure.
How to Transition from sms 2003 to Sccm 2007 – Notes from the field
Speaker: Kim Oppalfens
Come and learn more about the different methods to transition from a SMS 2003 environment to System Center 2007. During this session we will discuss the pros and cons of the Wipe and Load, In-place Upgrade, Side-by-Side Migration and the speakers’ personal favorite the Side-by-Side upgrade. Furthermore we will show how you can use scripts to assist you in the automation process of certain tasks within the migration process.
IIS7 End-to-End Extensibility for Developers
Speaker: Fabio Yeon
In IIS7 the server exposes a brand new, powerful extensibility model for building server features that can be used to extend its functionality, or replace any of the default features. With the Integrated Pipeline architecture, managed modules become virtually as powerful as native modules. In this talk we will illustrate extending the server with an end to end scenario, building a managed module to extend the runtime, extending the new configuration system with custom properties as well as the IIS user interface to expose them to the users.
Implementing the new Microsoft Fundamental Computer Investigation Guide for Windows
Speaker: Kai Axford
Human Resources tells you "We think Bob may be storing some illegal files on his machine. We need you to find them." What do you do now? Join us for a unique and interactive presentation as Kai and a special forensics guest star demonstrate and discuss computer investigations. We will demonstrate the tools that are discussed in the new manual, and see examples of the more popular forensics tools for Windows. This session is a must-see if you're being asked to run your own internal investigations.
LINQ Under the Covers: An In-Depth Look at LINQ
Speaker: Alex Turner
Want to know what really happens when you execute your favorite LINQ queries? Join us as we peek behind the curtain in Reflector to see how the C# compiler translates LINQ query expressions into standard query operators, while digging into the iterators that make LINQ to Objects tick. Learn exactly when query evaluation is deferred, and see how lambda expressions and closures work together to enable LINQ's elegant syntax. Then we'll explore how nearly identical LINQ to Objects and LINQ to SQL queries will result in radically different translations as we dig into the details of IQueryable and expression trees. Finally, we follow our IQueryable objects across the language barrier to investigate the unique features VB brings to LINQ, including XML literals. It is suggested that you attend the session "The .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Framework" before attending this session.
Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5: More than a name change!
Speaker: David De Backer
Microsoft Application Virtualization (previously known as SoftGrid) is driving new levels of efficiency in the desktop management. With version 4.2 now released, the natural question that comes to our minds is: “What’s next?”. This session will review the Microsoft Application Virtualization and will include demonstrations of some exciting new capabilities that will be coming in the next release.
Next Generation Networking in Windows Server 2008
Speaker: Rafal Lukawiecki
Below the new look and feel of Windows Server 2008 lies an entirely re-written, updated, and expanded core of networking technologies: NG TCP/IP. You do not have to be a geek to get excited by networking and Windows Server 2008 has plenty to offer. To start with, the Next Generation TCP/IP protocol stack offers a myriad of performance, security, and administration improvements. Next in line is built-in first-class support for the IPv6 protocol, which is progressively expanding and may eventually replace the present standard of IPv4. Add to that features such as Network Access Protection and you have the cutting-edge yet secure and reliable foundation of any IT infrastructure. This session will aim to look at all of those changes and improvements. We will even present you with the (probably) fastest-ever crash-course on IPv6. Naturally, we will spend some time looking at all of the new features and performance goodies that NG TCP/IP has for you. If you are responsible for networking we would be grateful if you would consider attending this rapid-paced session.
Operations Manager 2007 Tuning and Best Practices from the Field
Speaker: Rory McCaw
This session will provide you with the ammunition to take your Operations Manager 2007 installation to the next level. If you have installed Operations Manager and are receiving unwanted alerts and feel a little overwhelmed and unsure of what to do, this session is for you. This session will provide you with the knowledge of how to perform post installation configurations, reduce noise, create custom rules and following best practices.
Roles, Roles, Roles.. A Guide to Role Based Access Control
Speaker: Daniel Meyer
Roles are a fundamental concept in Enterprise IDA requirements today. Understanding the concepts of groups, application roles, enterprise roles and policy driven access rights is difficult, since there is no crisp definition and a lot of overlap. Given the long list of different technologies modelling access rights/roles/groups, from AD, ADLDS, AzMan, ADFS, ILM to IAG and Sharepoint, it is hard to keep an overview on what to use where. This session will give an overview of the different models on how to manage access rights in enterprises today and map these to Microsoft technologies like .Net, AD/ADLDS, ILM, Sharepoint and AzMan. It will also cover an overview on Partner solutions delivering added value in this area and case studies on the different scenarios.
Running externalized Business Rules in any .NET application (including Sharepoint) with the Workflow Foundation Rules Engine
Speaker: Serge Luca
As an important subsystem of the .Net Framework 3.0 and 3.5, Windows Workflow Foundation provides 2 engines: a Workflow Engine and a Rules Engine. The Rules Engine is a very interesting way to isolate the Business Rules from the other parts of the application which will be therefore much easier to maintain; the Rules Engine also manages interaction between rules thanks to its forward chaining feature; another benefit is that a business analyst or a power user can modify the business rules without having to recompile the application.
In this session, we will have an overview of the Rules Engine , you will see how to store business rules in a repository , how to use rules without workflow , how to organize the code and how to use the Rules engine in any application. We will take the case of Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services 3 or MOSS 2007 web parts.
SQL Server 2008 – Enhancements for the Relational Data Warehouse
Speaker: Steffen Krause
As a part of the “Pervasive Insight” theme, a lot of work was done to make SQL Server 2008 an even better platform for relational Data Warehouses (DWs), from small to multi-Terabyte. New T-SQL commands like MERGE are introduced to make updating a DW a better experience. Change Data Capture enables you to do high performance tracking of changes in production tables. Star Join enhancements make typical DW queries faster and more efficient. Data and Backup compression reduces both on-disk size and I/O bandwidth requirements on large DWs. Partitioned Table parallelism enhance multithreaded queries against partitioned tables. Native support for new Date/Time data types enable hassle-free import of temporal data from other platforms. Come to this session to see how all of these features work and how they make SQL Server 2008 a great Data Warehousing platform.
The ABC of building services with WCF
Speaker: Peter Himschoot
In today’s highly connected world being able to communicate is very important, especially for your applications. But how? Web Services? Remoting? Enterprise Services? WCF is Microsoft’s unified framework for building communication into your application, ready for the future. In this session we will look at building services with WCF, getting our hands dirty through building a service live, in front of your eyes. After this session you should have a clear understanding of the development life-cycle for WCF, the advantages of using WCF and how to proceed with it yourself.
The Past, Present, and the Future of Security in IT
Speaker: Rafal Lukawiecki
Why is security such a challenge for Information Technology? We seem to be constantly “solving” security problems, yet we are still surprised each time a new vulnerability has been discovered. This lighter, non-technical session aims to give you a broader perspective onto the problem of security in IT. We will briefly review the history of the most important attacks and flaws and the defences they spawned. While reviewing the issues of today we hope to show you a certain pattern of omissions which, if addressed, could greatly help us secure IT. The session will suggest that the key answers to questions of securing technology do not lie in its sphere, but require a broader and more pragmatic approach. Necessarily, we will stress that it is people and processes that matter far more to security than technology itself.
The TR1 Libraries and building “modern” user interfaces with MFC
Speaker: Ronald Laeremans
The TR1 Libraries and building “modern” user interfaces with MFC
This session will demonstrate the new features added to MFC in Visual Studio 2008 and our plans to evolve the MFC library for Visual C++ 10 and beyond. We will also take an in depth look at the TR1 extensions to the C++ Standard Library which can make your code significantly more robust and expressive. We’ll cover the major libraries in TR1: shared_ptr, regex and the functional libraries, explaining when to use them, how to use them, and how not to use them.
Tips and Tricks for Exchange Server 2007 SP1
Speaker: Scott Schnoll
This session provides 30 tips and tricks for installing, configuring, tweaking and maintaining Exchange servers. There are tips covering Windows Server 2008, clustered mailbox servers, database health checks, Windows PowerShell, the Exchange Management Shell and Exchange Management Console, exporting data, using certificates, hardening Exchange servers, and more!
Transitioning from Exchange public folders and file servers to SharePoint
Speaker: Geert Baeke
SharePoint offers exciting new possibilities for document storage and collaboration. Learn how to transition from Exchange public folders to SharePoint document libraries and the best practices for migration. See how you can access SharePoint documents using Exchange Server 2007 OWA and mobile devices. You will also learn how to migrate from standard file servers to SharePoint for both shared and personal user data. Learn how to implement SharePoint My Site and the best practices for users to access this data.
Unit testing in .NET 3.5
Speaker: Roy Osherove
In this talk we'll explore the exciting and problematic world of testing code that uses .NET 3.5 technologies, especially LINQ, Anonymous Types, Extension Methods, Dynamic Initializers and other language features. It's possible, but the answers aren't always what you thought they will be.
We’ve been hacked! Web security for developers
Speaker: Dave Webster
This is a demo driven session showing the actual hack of a web site. You will learn how to write your web sites securely, and what your IT department will need from you. We will cover Cross Site Scripting (XSS)/SQL injection hacks as well as subtle hybrids.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Overview
Speaker: Edwin Yuen
Want to learn more about the upcoming Hyper-V technology in Windows Server 2008?
This session will provide an overview of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
Topics will include an architectural overview of Hyper-V, specific usage scenarios with Hyper-V, a comparison with Virtual Server, and a demonstration of the Hyper-V technology.
This is a must-see session for those who will work with Virtualization in Windows Server 2008.
Windows Server 2008 Licensing, we can’t make it fun, but we can make it easy.
Speaker: Patrick Viaene
Speaker: Erik de Bondt
How do I know if I already have a license for it? What does a license allow me to install? Does virtualization change the licensing-rules?
From a license perspective, WS2008 is just another MS product that requires the correct license for usage. But what are the possible acquisition-paths? If I had WS2003 with Software Assurance, can I really install it ‘for free’? Do I need more licenses if I have mutliple VHD-files with WS2008 as host OS? Can I rent WS2008? Like it or not, at some point, smart IT Pro’s must ask the right questions for correct but economical usage of WS2008. Discover the PUR – Product Use Rights – a document that holds all answers to a too simple question: ‘If I have a license for MS product, what am I allowed to do with it?’ A large part of the session will focus on ‘Licensing in a Virtual Word’. Together with Technical & Solution Advisor Erik De Bondt, we will address all virtualisation offerings and their correct license usage.
Windows Vista Myth Busters
Speaker: Michael Anderberg
To many the much awaited Windows Vista was somewhat of an anti-climax... or so it would seem. In this session we will systematically address and disspell some of the myths that have appeared around Vista,during the first year of its life. What is User Account Control (UAC) and why should I NOT disable it the first thing that I do. What about drivers, are there any? Moste definetly so! My applications won't run, they say, why is or isn't that and what can you do about it. Attend this session and get the most of your own questions answered.
WPF and Expression Blend. What is in it for developers.
Speaker: Dave Webster
Now that we have had some time to get used to XAML and WPF and seen the shiny new UIs we can build, it’s time to get serious about architecture and understand the power of databinding and opportunities for Data Visualization. In this talk we will discuss advanced topics in databinding, how to access the Graphics Model to show data, and the use of MVC architecture patterns. We will stretch Expression Blend version 2.0 to its limits.
WPF Futures
Speaker: Bart De Smet
Learn about the great new features in Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5 and beyond. See examples that include Add-ins, data binding support for LINQ and ADO.NET, interactive 3D, streamlined application deployment, high-performance animation, and much more. During this session we’ll explore what’s coming next in WPF 3.5 SP1: performance improvements, writeable bitmap, XAML enhancements, refinements to the data binding model and a more streamlined deployment story.
