This is the re-publishing of the original on my MSN Spaces blog
8:30 – 9:30 Keynote – Microsoft Technology Update
The introduction was given by Ben English. Ben talked about the state of the Net from a security point of view and explained What is the Microsoft’s approach to that. The subjects were Awareness & Education, Technology and Partnership.
Ben English – Security Lead at Microsoft Australia
Andrew Cunningham – Product Manager for Exchange, ISA & Management Server
After the introduction, Raj Natarajan presented Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and explained how to lock up Win2003 Server by disabling some services which are not needed during the setup of Service Pack 1. He also mentioned SUS (Software Update Service) becoming WUS (Windows Update Service). WUS is still beta but eventually will replace SUS in future.
Also all the update services like Windows Update, MS Download, VS Update are consolidated in one service called Microsoft Update, we will not be needing to visit different update sites to install patches and things when it is implemented. I couldn’t get a photo of Raj, he was sort of hiding behind the counter.
9:30 – 10:30 – MSDN Track – Visual Studio Team System Overview
I have hanged with MSDN Track series in Murray Room in National Convention Centre. Those presentations were more developer related after all. Prashant Sridharan presented how the productivity increases with Visual Studio 2005 and the Visual Studio Team System. VS2005 Beta2 will be released this quarter. VS Enterprise Architect and VS Enterprise Developer is also merging into Team System 2005. There are 3 versions of Visual Studio. These are VS Team Architect, VS Team Developer and VS Team Test. The bottom VS Team Foundation is sold separately and will not be included in MSDN Subscription . Basically we developers need the VS Team Developer version and Visual Source Safe is still available.
VS Team Foundation will be installed onto a dedicated Windows 2003 Server with .NET Framework 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. All the check-ins and check-outs will be made over this configuration. It is not using Visual Source Safe in any manner. It is a completely new system. SDLC tasks like workitem tracking, task creation and follow-up, document management, source control, reporting, change management eg will be on this platform. There are also MSN Messenger and Outlook plug-ins will be made available with code to integrate VS Team Foundation with these tools. When you create a project on VS Team Foundation it also creates a SharePoint site for it to make it easy collaboration so another requirement on the box is the SharePoint server.
It also integrates with Excel and MS Project for item tracking and project management. The tools that we use as open source like NProf, NUnit, NAnt are all have equivalents in VS2005 but I am not sure if they are as functional as open source counterparts. I felt in love with the Web Services architecting design tool. You can design Web Services as boxes, define inputs outputs and the structure for it will be ready to code. I was thinking the future of software development when I was in uni and this is actually what I imagined.
VS Team System also provides you with the software development methodologies to comply with. The only available option in beta version is “MSF Agile” which will give you some of the deliverables of Agile Methodology. The other option is “Formal Process Guidance”, this is CNMI Level 3 (I hope I spelled correctly) compliance. There is also a Process Guidance editor to tailor what is available or to create new ones.
The hint to get the VS Team System with low prices is to get the MSDN Subscription now. As they are promising to release the VS Team System this year end of September, you will get it in MSDN Subscription. MS will increase the prices of MSDN subscription after this release date.
Prashant Sridharan – VS Team System Product Manager
And Finula Crowe
11:00-12:00 – Tools For Quality Code
Nigel Watson and Sean Salisbury has presented tools to write quality code. Nigel presented FxCop and other code quality tools which are exist in VS2005. Sean presented Compuware products such as Security Checker. They are nice products and helps to deliver a secure, quality code. In VS2005 you can also define policies for check-in operations like “if the code did not pass unit test, do not check-in” or “if the code did not pass security check, do not check-in” so you will make sure that the code in Source Control is secure and unit tested.
Sean Salisbury from Compuware
Nigel Watson – MS Australia
1:00-2:00 – Design for Operations
David Lemphers and Nigel Watson has presented this one. They have talked about DSI (Dynamic Systems Initiatives), Systems Definitions Model, Application Connection Design, Logical Datacenter Designer. I don’t remember much but it is basically designing the architecture in a way to support easy development of it.
David Lemphers from TeamForce
2:00-3:00 – Source Control and Work Item Tracking
Prashant presented this one. He talked about Check-In policies, Unit Test, Code Analyzes, Code Coverage and mentioned about the Shelving and Unshelving. Basically, when you finish fixing a bug you are uploading your code into a shelf then you are creating a review task for your colleague to review your code. You colleague given access to the shelf to download your code when you create a review task. After review he or she uploads the code and you can continue from there. Much like branching with more flexibility.
You can manipulate work items from Outlook, MSN Messenger, Excel or MS Project; there is one for every type of person. There are companies writing tools for VS Team System for these purposes.
3:30-4:30 – ClickOnce Deployment
Andrew Coates gave a very nice presentation of how we can deploy the Windows Forms applications painlessly on to the client’s computer. With VS Team System you can publish your Windows Forms application on a Web Server and you can send the link to the customer to install it. When there is a new version available you only publish it in the same way and application picks-up the new version and installs it on to the client’s computer. Application checks if there is a new version available before it shows first form to the user. Client can revert back to an old version through Add Programs wizard.
Also you can use System.Deployment namespace for a menu option in the application to check if there is a new version.
Andrew Coates – Developer Evangelist
4:30-5:30 – Intro to SQL Server 2005 Programming
Greg Low presented new features in SQL Server 2005. The best part was SQL Server and CLR integration. Basically you can use SQL Server 2005 as a host for the CLR so CLR thinks that the operating system is SQL Server 2005. It is weird isn’t it. You can install an assembly into SQL server, it becomes part of SQL Server and call it’s functions from Query Analyzer. T-SQL, ADO.NET also enhanced. There are many functions added to T-SQL like Row_Number(), Rank(), Dense_Rank(), NTile() and also full support for user defined types and functions.
You can download the presentation and the code from www.sqlserver.org.au.
Greg Low
Conclusion
This is one of the most productive and informational day for me. I have got lots of idea about the new products, how to use it, what do I need to install. I am also looking forward to go to the Code Camp which you can get info from www.codecampoz.com
