PDC08 Highlights
Los Angeles, CA. October 27th, 2008. The lights dim, the combined voices of thousands of developers settle to a hush, the music starts, stage lights go up and Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, takes to the stage. It’s the start of another Professional Developers’ Conference (PDC), the first since 2005, and immediately the announcements start.
Windows Azure, Microsoft’s new cloud operating system leads the way, closely followed by the
Azure Services Platform. Build .NET applications that run on Windows Azure and deploy, manage and scale them in Microsoft data centres. Included in the Azure Services Platform are
.NET Services (including Access Control, Service Bus and Workflow Services) and
SQL Data Services as well as the
Live Services we’ve come to know and love from identity (Windows Live ID) to spatial (Virtual Earth). Applications can be architected to run on-premise, off-premise (in the cloud) or a combination of the two leading to a very flexible deployment model. In the middle of all that was UK company Sentient and their Bluehoo social networking application that runs on Windows Azure and is built using Silverlight and Windows Mobile.
Day 2’s keynote is a slew of firsts. First look at
Windows 7, first look at Office web applications in
Office 14, first look at
Visual Studio 2010 and the enhanced code editor written in WPF, first look at the Live Framework, a unified programming model for Live Services.
The UK was again well represented in the form of the BBC and Tesco. The BBC demo’d a fantastic media player prototype built in Silverlight and Silverlight for Mobile using the Live Framework to enable offline use and synchronize recorded programmes and metadata across multiple devices and users. Tesco showed a cool WPF application, an enhanced front-end for their online store, that made extensive use of touch and even enabled you to scan barcodes using your webcam.
Beyond the keynotes, attendees got a first look at
Oslo, our new modelling platform including tools, language and repository for building applications at a higher level of abstraction and
Dublin, a set of Windows Server enhancements for greater scalability and manageability and extending IIS to provide a standard hosting environment for WF and WCF. All nicely rounded out by sessions drilling into Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, Workflow 4.0, C# 4.0, Visual Basic 10, F#, Velocity, parallel development and more. A lot to cover in just four days!
The good news is all the sessions from the PDC 2008 are
available to view online and I have started to list my “
Must Watch” sessions on my blog. The following links will take you to more information on specific topics;
Windows Azure & the Azure Services Platform,
Live Services,
Windows 7,
Live Framework.
Mike Ormond
Developer Evangelist
Read Mike's blog
Results from last poll:
Do you use 3rd party controls or libraries as part of your application?
60% Yes – including commercial
16% Yes – but only if they are free
16%Yes – but only if they include source code
8% Never!
Question of the fortnight
Which of the technologies covered at PDC 2008 are you most interested in finding out more about?
1. Azure Services Platform – “Cloud computing”
2. Framework futures – WF, ADO.NET, Parallelism etc.
3. Language futures - C#/VB/F#/DLR etc
4. Oslo - Modelling platform
5. Dublin – IIS/WCF/WF enhancements
6. Windows 7
7. All of them!
8. None of them – my brain hurts!
To take part in this week’s poll question please visit
my blog to submit your answer.
