Here in sunny LA the annoucements at PDC 2009 are significant. Though many new features are catching up to what Apple can already do, the integration and breadth of the 2010 releases is big!
Software Releases Announced
- Public release of beta versions of:
- Windows Azure - Microsoft's Cloud Computing platform was officially launched. It will be available for production use beginning January 1, 2010. Customers will not have to pay for service until Feb. 1st.
- Microsoft Pinpoint - A new online marketplace for Microsoft partners to offer applications.
- Microsoft Codename “Dallas” - A place where developers can find, purchase and use data from the cloud.
- Windows Server AppFabric - A set of application server technologies formerly code-named "Dublin". These features will simplify and enhance the use of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
- ASP.NET MVC 2 - The first beta release of MVC v2 was announced and made available to developers.
- Silverlight 4.0 - The first beta release was announced and demonstrated
- Internet Explorer 9 – An early look was presented that covered progress on performance benchmarks
- BizTalk Server 2009 R2 - The product team announced BizTalk Server 2009 R2, and previewed some capabilities of a version beyond that.
Other Relevant Technologies
PDC 2009 Resources
My Summary
The one-day workshop “Developing Quality Software using VSTS 2010” provided a comprehensive, if dry, overview of Microsoft’s ALM solution, formerly known as Team System. The Microsoft ALM Solution (for now I’ll refer to it as MAS) consist of Visual Studio and TFS. The major feature emphasis in the 2010 release is code quality, Office/SharePoint integration, lab management and builds.
The conference sessions focused on cloud capabilities and new releases of Microsoft software. Highlights for me were:
- The integration of data design, modeling and development into Visual Studio continues to improve. Clearly, there is tremendous overlap now of the process, technologies and development tools for database development and code development. VS2010 offers a more complete and visual way to model, develop and deploy databases.
- VS/TFS support for SharePoint is much improved. The new features in VS to support SharePoint include:
- Web Part, BCS and Workflow designers
- Package and Deploy SharePoint projects
- Generate WSP for Production Deployment
- View SharePoint site in Server Explorer
- Team Foundation Server Integration
- Support for SharePoint Sandboxed Solutions
- Import WSP from SharePoint Designer
- Extensibility for Development of Additional
SharePoint Artifacts
- SharePoint Business Connectivity Services support
- A “Birds of a Feather” session on Agile tooling demonstrated (again) that birds of a feather do not all think the same together. There were some interesting Agile tools mentioned that include: Jing and Live Mesh
- There are big code visualization improvements:
- Team Build 2010 has been totally revamped:
- Build Controllers lets you pool your builds
- The build process is now defined and customized using Windows Workflow 4.0 (WF 4.0)
- WF 4.0 support visual (XAML) and code based development
- Reusing Build Definitions using Build Process Templates
- The Build Summary and Log is now readable!
- Gated Checkins, a.k.a No More Broken Builds
- Codeplex will be supporting a library of common build activities
- New to 2010 - Lab Management:
- Integrated reporting - SQL Server Reporting Services:
- TFS 2010 Process Templates: Enterprise SCRUM for TFS:
- The next evolution of the Conchango SCRUM for TFS process template for complex/enterprise development environments
- Supports multiple releases, work-streams and teams within a Team Project
- Additional Session Summaries from Sasha Goldshtein’s blog
