Potash Valley

The second day at PDC was almost a keynote day as the whole morning was focused on annoucements. Though, I managed to attend very interesting sessions.

TL14 Project "Velocity": A First Look

Before going to this session I knew what Velocity was for: distributed data caching. I also knew about difficulties to implement such a framework as I have already created one for Data Tier Modeler, our old ORM framework. Going to this session was a great pleasure as it answered a lot of my questions, especially about all the available features, and real scenarios applications. Definitely one of my next development topics.

BB43 Identity: "Geneva" Deep Dive

I didn't really what it would be about but this session was very instructive. Not only did we learned about all issues concerning authentication on the cloud, but also some solutions, with our without Geneva. If you have to deal with network administration or just are a developer focusing on the cloud, don't hesitate. The demonstrations did not work smoothly but the expected results were meaningful though.

TL20 Entity Framework Futures

Entity Framework is a great initiative from Microsoft. But this session did not reach the expectations I had. We learned how to do the simplest thing ever with an ORM tool, and people applaused ! Hey guys, this example was trivial ! Mapping a table with two columns to a POCO ? That's not "Futures". At least this shows what we could expect for next versions, but those features are already implemented in lot of open frameworks. At least, it's better than LINQ To SQL.

Universal Studio

As last time Microsoft invited everyone to visit the Universal Studio Park. Always great, free food, free amusements, including new ones: Simpsons replacing Star Wars, and a scary tour instead of the usual studio visit :>