Yes, I know I didn't blog during the congress as planned. But it was kind of busy... Anyway, it's midnight now and thanks to my jet-leg I get to catch up on that.
Generally speaking it was a good congress, with lots of interesting stuff.
In perspective, the most interesting news was the official announcement of Oslo. It was positioned as the future technology in the SOA product offering of Microsoft. It encompasses all the products and probably will drive the introduction of new ones. A key point here is the emphasis placed on modeling which should be supported by a new repository technology that will show up. Almost all their software will interact with this repository while still using the products native interface. Next to that there will also be some generic software that will allow us to look at the repository at a higher level of abstraction, using DLS's and query languages. They showed off a concept version of this and it looked awesome.
The sessions I took and found great were:
- Platforms for SOA: Comparing .NET and Java (FT203), by David Chappell. As usual, his session was both enlightening and entertaining. It pointed me to the Java equivalent for WCF (SCA), Workflow (BPEL), etc.
- BizTalk adapters for WCF: Deep Dive (FT400), by Aaron Skonnard. This guy is from training company Pluralsight clearly walked through the WCF adapters in BizTalk 2006 R2 and actually showed how to work with them. Demo here.
- How everyone should test their BizTalk solutions (FT306), by Darren Jefford. This is the first author of great Professional BizTalk Server 2006 book. Great presentation on testing tools BizUnit, BizTalk LoadGen 2007, Orchestration Profiler and PerfMon Counter spreadsheet
- Robust error handling for BizTalk solutions (FT201), by Matt Meleski. This guy presented on error handling using MOM and using the exception handling block from the ESB Guidance package.
- ESB Guidance architecture (SA400) and Building solutions (IA400), by Marty Wasznicky.
- Advanced orchestration concepts & best practices (SA304), by Stephen Thomas. This is the guy running the BizTalkGurus.com community site.
- Identifying & avoiding anti-patterns in your SOA solutions (SA307), by John Callaway. I tended to disagree with many of his points, I guess because of the black or white way he put on those issues. But the guy is a great presenter, off course.
I couldn't get to the following sessions:
- Web service software factory: driving consistency & best practices in your service design (FT206), by Don Smith. The session was running in parallel with John Callaway's session.
- Building a service monitoring infrastructure with BizTalk BAM (IA300), by Jon Flanders. When I got there the room was full. No standing allowed.