Microsoft PDC 2009 – the announcements at the keynotes

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Find out what's nextThis year I did not have the opportunity to join the Microsoft PDC event personally but I did manage to follow most part of the keynotes. Keynotes were streamed live both on November 17th and November 18th. If you would like to watch them on-demand they are being made available on the www.microsoftpdc.com site soon.

The PDC is historically quite important for announcements, this year was no different. Here’s an overview of what was announced (note: personal list, no guarantees it’s an exhaustive list).

Keynote Day 1

Speakers for the first keynote were Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft and Bob Muglia, President Server & Tools.

Windows Azure & SQL Azure

Windows Azure release schedule was announced, the services are free to evaluate through January 2010. We will begin charging customers on February 1st, 2010.

Learn more, download the tools: https://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/

Microsoft Pinpoint
Pinpoint can be viewed as a marketplace to find partners with whom to work for your projects, giving you access to specialized service providers and support.

https://pinpoint.microsoft.com

Codename “Dallas”

“Dallas” the commoditization of data. OK, that’s my own personal way of seeing it (not any MS official wording) but that’s really one way I’d put it. I see the use of this for statistical data, meteo, postal information, and much more. Check it out and request your trial token: https://blogs.msdn.com/dallas/archive/2009/11/17/a-quick-overview-of-dallas-for-developers.aspx

Dallas also works together with Pinpoint, which can be seen as your marketplace for data providers.

Seesmic for Windows
Loic LeMeur, founder of Seesmic went on stage to present the new Seesmic for Windows. This version is built in WPF and can be downloaded from the seesmic.com site. At the same time he also showed a Silverlight version of the application (note: currently the Silverlight version is not available yet).

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Visual Studio 2010 – no new announcements but a nice demo:

Download the full source of the demo application shown during the keynote, Tailspin: https://tailspintravel.codeplex.com/

ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta

The next version of ASP.NET MVC is available in beta. Check out Phil Haack’s post on this. This beta release contains a go-live license.

Windows Server AppFabric (previously Velocity & Dublin codenames)

Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric include the capabilities from projects “Dublin” and “Velocity,” as well as the Service Bus and Access Control services that were formerly under the “.NET Services” brand (today, these services are now called Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and Windows Azure platform AppFabric Access Control services).

  • For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data. This feature was previously codenamed "Velocity".
  • For composite applications, AppFabric makes it easier to build and manage services built using Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. This feature was previously codenamed "Dublin."

Learn more:

Keynote Day 2

Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie and Kurt DelBene were the top speakers announced for this keynote.

Silverlight 4 Beta

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The stuff put into Silverlight 4 is incredible, that’s what you’ll hear from anyone that watched the day 2 keynote. New features like elevated trust and notifications for out-of-browser Silverlight applications, but also webcam and microphone support, print support, and much much more.

Silverlight 4 Beta is available now, Tim Heuer has great post with all the links and starter demos and videos for you - https://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/11/18/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-complete-guide-new-features.aspx.

Official Silverlight.net page on Silverlight 4 Beta: https://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/

There is also a new section on Channel 9 with Silverlight 4 training: https://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Silverlight4/

WCF RIA Services

Previously called .NET RIA services, the beta version was announced. Check out Brad Abrams’ blog https://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/11/18/welcome-to-wcf-ria-services-beta.aspx

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta – SharePoint 2010 Beta

Kurt DelBene talked about the new features of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and announced the availability of the public betas for:

  • Microsoft Office 2010 Beta
  • Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Beta
  • Microsoft Project 2010 Beta
  • Microsoft Visio 2010 Beta
  • Office Mobile client for Office 2010 beta – available through the Windows Marketplace

Download your version at https://www.microsoft.com/2010

Also announced: PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – CTP version is available - https://www.powerpivot.com/

One last thing: if you haven’t watched the keynote, take the time to watch it soon because I promise, it’s worth it. As Silverlight is one of my focus points I can recommend you to watch the Silverlight 4 part at the very least.