PDC 2008 – Day 2
Yesterday was great and Day 2 was chalk full of windows 7 and Oslo goodness. The keynote started off right with a demo of Windows 7 and some of the new features that will be included. Some of the key things that will be introduced in 7:
- Better performance – reduced disk IO, reduced memory consumption, and faster response times from the start menu
- Mountable and bootable VHDs – this is probably the biggest feature in 7 IMO
- Improved program management from the taskbar – you can see more details within program groups and even preview the larger screen
- Customizable taskbar and system tray – you can change what the shutdown button does and which items show up in the system tray and how they notify you
- Tweakable UAC notifications – they added a slider that allows you to change how often and under which circumstances you will see the UAC approval prompt.
After the windows 7 keynote Don Box and Chris Anderson did a little demo of putting a service in the cloud. These guys are always interesting and they did not fail to entertain. Probably the funniest part of the demo was when people in the audience started hitting their published service during the keynote since it was running live in the cloud. The next part of the demo after that happened was showing how to secure a service in the cloud. LOL
Next it was off to learn about Oslo. The session was packed and it was a very interesting overview as to what Oslo is and what it is NOT. The main point is that a model-driven approach is not something new and that we have been doing this all along with technologies from COM to .NET 3.0. Oslo is a toolset to assist in this process we have been doing this whole time. Oslo is made up of 3 main parts:
- M – This is a textual language used to describe the models. This is used by devs to create and manipulate models.
- Quadrant – This is a tool for interacting with models and DSLs. It is a way to overlay visuals over the top of your models.
- Repository – This is simply the database that holds all of the model data.
After getting a taste for Oslo we headed over to the M deep dive. This was a very short demo that showed how you can use IntelliPad (an M dev tool) to build and populate models. They also talked about the grammar processor that allows yo to make your own custom syntax for M to allow a more natural language way of manipulating models.
The day ended with the party at universal studios. It was a Halloween theme with smoke everywhere and zombie-like actors walking around the park trying to scare people. It was pretty over the top but luckily the bottom part of the park wasn’t full of these characters. Best ride at the park has to have been the Mummy roller coaster.
