2008/11/05

PDC 2008 - Day 3 - Other sessions

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Keynote

The Keynote by Rick Rashid was very impressive. I already know about Microsoft Research, but I didn't know that it was wide and that so much people work on that. Google does a lot of marketing on their Google Labs but to be honest I'm more impressed by MS Research (which works in the shadow) and I hope that MS will not build a marketing strategy on that!

The video is here.

For people from Italy take a look to this.

TL06 WCF 4.0: Building WCF Services with WF in Microsoft .NET 4.0 by Ed Pinto

Abstract

Eliminate the tradeoff between ease of service authoring and performant, scalable services. Hear about significant enhancements in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 4.0 and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) 4.0 to deal with the ever increasing complexity of communication. Learn how to use WCF to correlate messages to service instances using transport, context, and application payloads. See how the new WF messaging activities enable the modeling of rich protocols. Learn how WCF provides a default host for workflows exposing features such as distributed compensation and discovery. See how service definition in XAML completes the union of WF and WCF with a unified authoring experience that simplifies configuration and is fully integrated with IIS activation and deployment.

What I carryed out...

One of the best presentation I've seen at PDC this year.

I will talk about Dublin as an hosting process in another blog. What I really apreciated in this session was the leveraging of Workflow Foundation (WF) for the management of asynchronous messaging in complex interacting systems scenario.

Why I've this feeling with asynchronous messaging? Because for my job (industrial and tracking applications) has a HUGE RELEVANCE so I strongly reccomend to my colleagues (Eros, Lucone, Gallo, Valerio e Luca) to take a look to the video (download it and play it on a airplane trip!)

Also it's very impressive how the editor of WF is improving. It's very closer to the Orchestration editor of BizTalk 2006 (that is born for the orchestration of business processes...)

PC22 Windows 7: Design Principles for Windows 7 by Samuel Moreau

Abstract

Together, we can increase customer enthusiasm, satisfaction and loyalty by designing user experiences that are both desirable and harmonious. In this session we introduce the Windows User Experience Principles approach to shipping software. Along the way we share stories and lessons learned along the journey of designing the user model and experience for Windows 7, and leave you with a set of principles that you can apply as you build your applications for Windows.

What I carryed out...

A skipped lunch....

TL24 Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability by Steve Carroll, Ed Glas

Abstract

Performance must be considered in each step of the development lifecycle. See how to integrate performance in design, development, testing, tuning, and production. Work with tools and technologies like: static analysis, managed memory profiling, data population, load testing, and performance reports. Learn best practices to avoid the performance pitfalls of poor CPU utilization, memory allocation bugs, and improper data sizing.

What I carryed out...

This session were be of interest for my colleague AlessandroF because was based on VSTF 2010 and the new tools for perfomance testing.

The basic idea is that there are different tools to accomplish difference performances analysis requirements during the steps in project life-time.

  • During the "Gathering Requirements" you would use a tool to set the performance goal on different scenarios;
  • During the "Designing" you would run end-2-end test to evaluate your achitecture;
  • During the "Development" you would run tests and evaluating how your changes affects the previous release (the following pictures show an out-of-the-box report):

image

There is a strong interaction between the performance analysis tools and ALM of VSTF 2010 so that you can evaluate your progress during time.

Also there a lot of improvements in the tools theirs elf:

  • Now you can profile JavaScript!
  • There is a memory profiler tool and a Contention Profiler (this is very important for multi-core development, you can look to the lock and jump to the code that is causing the lock!)
  • Tools work remotely and under virtualization.

BB18 "Dublin": Hosting and Managing Workflows and Services in Windows Application Server by Dan Eshner

Abstract

Hear about extensions being made to Windows Server to provide a feature-rich middle-tier execution and deployment environment for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) applications. Learn about the architecture of this new extension, how it works, how to take advantage of it, and the features it provides that simplify deployment, management, and troubleshooting of workflows and services.

What I carryed out...

Dublin is one of my favourite technologies from PDC. It's an application server to host workflow instances.

It's also important for my job (in the industrial world but also for business process management and Sharepoint) so that I'll blog separately about it.

PC56 Windows Embedded "Quebec": Developing for Devices by Shabnam Erfani

Abstract

Do you need to understand how to extend your applications and services to embedded devices using Windows 7 technologies? See the new Windows Embedded roadmap and hear plans for our next-generation offering built on Windows 7 technologies.

What I carryed out...

That's for my colleagues Eros and Martino which uses to work with Windows XP Embedded. Please read this!

  • Quebec is the new release of XP Embedded based on Windows 7 (yes, Vista has been skipped!)
  • No, It's not for Real-Time and you need Real-Time you need 3rd party extension
  • Language Independent (XP was based on English, here you can bind different language images)
  • Sensor SDK for development and integration of external sensors (but I cannot find anymore reference to this).
  • 64bit support
  • Minimum image size of 512MB (to fit on a Flash)
  • To create an image the following tools (Quebec image build tools) are available:
    • Image Builder Wizard (IBW
      Let you installs Quebec interactively or unattended
    • Image Configuration Editor (ICE
      GUI tool to create image configuration and distribution shares for image configuration
    • Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM)
      Installs M feature sets to an offline or online Quebec image
    • Windows PE 2.1
      Windows operating system with limited
      services, used for initial image installation
    • Syspre
      Removes system-specific data from an embedded Windows image
      Supports application plug-ins
    • Windows Deployment Services (WDS)
      Used for remote installation  of images on device
    • Additional tools for managing languages packs, drivers, and servicing

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