More Tech Ed stuff...

OK, I actually started this post a day or so ago. But, It's been hard to finish it, primarily because I've been using the computers provided here at Tech Ed between session (gotta bring a laptop next year) and because Brian has been using the time between sessions to introduce me to some Microsoft people, which has been very cool. I've also had a real nack for picking back to back sessions that are on the complete opposite ends of the convention center.

The other reason is that this is a personal blog. I am soley responsible for all editorial content, and I answer to no one. Well, maybe still my Mom on occasion...

Yeah, I work in technology, and a lot of content here will be technology related because of this. But, it isn't going to be limited by my job. For one thing, I have a lot of friends and family who read this and frankly, I don't think they would be interesting in reading a pure-techno blog. And frankly, that's not the kind of blog I want to write! This blog is about what interests me. If that's going to be a problem for some people, then I suggest finding another blog, God knows there are plenty out there.

Here is an update on the sessions I've been to;

CON320 (WinFX) Windows Communication Foundation: Building Peer-to-Peer Applications: Very interesting. WCF seems to be a very powerful technology that is capable of a lot of things. I'm not sure peer-to-peer is high on my list of things to do with it, but it was nice to see how it could be used to facilitate this type of connectivity.

DAT320 An Inside Look At an exciting New Addition to Visual Studio Team System (part 2). I missed part 1. They are talking about the new Visual Studio for DBA's. I missed the first one because it wasn't in the schedule since they hadn't announced the product yet. The second session was about refactoring databases and running test cases. Pretty interesting. They handed out the CTP to everyone, so I'll have to play around with it when I get home.

ARCTLC14 Introduction to the Service Factory. I really like this. I've had the GAX and GAT downloaded for a while, but haven't had time to play with them. After this session, I'm going to make the time. This thing will basically generate the stub code for all your WCF based services (there are about half a dozen contracts you use) which is a great time saver. I just hope it doesn't inspire some people to "cut corners" with their WCF education. It will do a lot of the work, but you still need to know what's going on under the hood.

DEV233 Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server: Using Metrics to Manage and Troubleshoot Your Projects. This was mostly a re-hash from a previous session. It talked about the reporting capabilities of TFS when you track code and changesets to workitems. He showed the same "out-of-the-box" reports that I've already seen a hundred times. He did a couple custom reports, and that aspect it pretty easy, but he didn't do a "deep dive" by any streach.

Dev237 Visual Studio Team Foundation Server: Step-by-step Migration and Adoption planning. This wasn't step-by-step anything! It was a re-hash of a previous session about creating custom guidance and work item types. I didn't' get anything really new out of it except that he did go into a discussion of how TFS scales and what and how much hardware you really need based on your team size. It was less than I thought, which should help get this into more clients shops.

ARC220 How to Get Your Grandmother Building Missle Defense Systems: This was a good session, unfortunately the presenter, Martin, was having some major technical problems with the projectors and the SVM switch on the stage. For those who don't know, each stage has on PC that generally hosts the Power Point slide, and the presenters plug their laptops into a KVM to do their demos. This session was mostly about how Architects provide guidance to developers using Frameworks and tools. I think he had to cut a few corners in his presentation because of the technical difficulties.

CON423 (WinFx) Windows Communication Foundation: Desgining Bindings and Contracts. The more I learn about WCF, the more I like it. This really blurs the lines between all the service paradigms out there to the point where you can really design for the business, not around the technology. For those who don't know, at any WCF session they will talk about the "ABC's". Address (where), Bindings(how) and Contracts(what). This was a session on all the different contracts that exist in WCF (more that I care to list here) and how and when to use each one. Good stuff!

Con335 (WinFX) Windows Workflow Foundation: Creating a Host for the Workflow Runtime: This was an OK session. Kind of a re-hash of the intro session, but he did go into binding custom events to workflow events and how the runtime is contained and works.

That's all for today. The "party" is tonight. It's at Wrigley Field and Train is playing. Not my kind of music and baseball stuff and'm kind of tired, so I probably wont go for long.

BTW: I appologize for any and all spelling errors. Blogspot spellchecker sucks and I don't have access to a machine with Word.