Bryant Likes

I missed the Keynotes due to the fires, one of which is right down the street from me.

I did catch the lunch session on Tips-and-Trick for .Net Managed Components which had some pretty good information. People were coming and going quite a bit but I think it was most interesting when someone started leaning on the light controls.

Next I went to the Data Access and XML in Whidbey session which was somewhat interesting but was way too crowded. The new XML editor in Whidbey looks nice and I do look forward to the intellisense. The drag-and-drop data controls look cool, but I'm not ready to buy into it until I play with it.

In the afternoon I went to Scott Guthrie's session on ASP.Net in Whidbey which was very good. Again it looks like MS has implemented some great drag-and-drop features which hopefully work well. I can't help but think of the script library that came with Visual InterDev 6.0.

For the last session I hit the Indigo session where Don Box philosophized about software services. I found the session to be interesting despite the lack of demos and sometimes crude metaphors. Below are my notes from the session:

Indigo Tenets:

1) Boundaries are explicit (opt-in)
2) Services are autonomous
3) Share Schema (and contract), not class
Schema = define structure
Contract = Schema over time (behavior)
4) Policy-based compatibility

Services:
Today - use ASMX (for most situations)
Tomorrow - Indigo

What you get:
1) Boundaries come into focus
2) Unified and Simple
3) Interoperation
4) Continuity

After the sessions I had dinner at In-n-Out with some fellow SQL Server MVPs and our MVP lead.

Now I'm back at the PDC sitting in a Birds-Of-A-Feather session waiting for my own BOF session to start. I met with Andrew Conrad in the expo hall today and he and some of the other Data Access guys will be there. Hopefully it will be interesting.