October 2003 - Posts
This was the best lighter side of the PDC!! On Wednesday evening all PDC attendees were invited to a bash at the LA Universal Studios. The entire studio was open only for the attendees with the expception of some rides being closed. Food and beverages were on the house along with some dancing...
This was some breakout and the themes were very interesting. I had just enough time to see the Mummy Returns, Terminator 3D and Shrek 4D themes and each one of them rocks in their own way! Terminator and Shrek were 3D movies with effects integrated into the seats too, so when someone rides on a horse or hits into a rock, you feel the jolt too. The most interesting thing was the special effects of these themes which are packed into 6 - 10 minutes of the show. For example, in Terminator, a new T model (not UDDI!!) is introduced. For those of you who have seen Terminator - II, we have the T-1000 a new model of the future made from liquid metal. In the Universal Studio theme we have T - 1 million, an even more powerful enemy (shaped like a scorpion), that has all the same features of the lower end model (talk about compatibility :-)) This model tries to attack our famous Arny and since we all were asked to were polarized glasses, you can see the poking happening right in front of your eyes and sometimes its scary. The best part was when the enemy is destroyed by the usal stunt, which is to release liquid Nitrogen on the metal, thus freezing it. Arny uses his famous 3 words: “Asta LaVista Baby” (not sure if I got the spelling right) and then bombs the whole place. This causes the enemy to disintegrate and at the same time water sprouts were released all over the theater and that a cool feeling!!
Again, I could be but impressed with the logistics of the whole show and did some purchases of Woody Woodpecker... Overall, time well spend and enjoyed.
Hmmmm, sounded interesting and I walked inside. The session basically talked about the new HTTP services available right out of the box in SQL Server. This technology is basically an alternative to SQLXML. Note that I'm using the word alternative and not replacement, since I think SQLXML has many capabilities that Yukon Web Services does not have. Bascially, this feature uses the new HTTP.SYS kernel mode driver of Windows Server 2003 and thus, you would need Windows Server 2003 to utilize this feature. It is also planned to be provided along with Windows XP Service Pack 2. That definitely cuts out checking this thing on my laptop... :-(
Basically, T-SQL extensions have been added to allow the creation of end-points, which can expose services. Users can access these services via the WSDL that is automatically generated by these end-points. Once its SOAP enabled, there is then no dearth of clients that can make use of this feature. You can execute either stored procedures, or UDF's or ad-hoc SQL using this new feature and then get the results returned either as well known types (for functions since they have a return type) or as an array of objects (mainly for stored procedures since you cannot deterministically say what the stored procedure will return). Queries can be sent either over plain HTTP or over SSL and you can provide authentication for the user who is accessing the service. Errors from the code are handled as SOAP exceptions and you can also pass in parameters into the web service. You can also control the WSDL that way you want by providing a stored procedure that laid down the format of the WSDL. This feature is currently not there in the PDC bits, but will be added in RTM.
From the demo and the features that were shown, there are many issues that I find with this new method. These are my current thoughts and they can change once I wet my hands on this technology.
- SQLXML supported the use of templates that helped provide a level of abstraction for query execution to the user. Templates were basically XML files that laid down the input and the ouput requirements of the query.
- SQLXML also allowed you to specify schemas that let you control the way the XML was generated out of a call.
- One of the main tenets of having SQLXML at a higher abstraction from SQL Server was to allow scale-out scenarios in situations wherein the web-service is used by many clients. Since the new web service feature is hosted directly into SQL Server, there is no information on scalability and performance for large user loads. For example, what would happen if the terra server or the sky server (see my earlier posts regarding these terms) were hosted on Yukon web services?? Interesting exercise....
- From a web service and security point of view, I'm personally scared of exposing my SQL Server directly, since it is now on the onus of the server hosting this and SQL Server to protect itself against denial of service attacks and other hacks. Ideally database servers are embedded much inside of an enterprise...
- SQLXML as an abstracted service allowed Microsoft to play around the XML capabilities of SQL Server without affecting the relational engine. Now with the integration of this into SQL Server, handling product updates and keeping pace with future standards might force a build of the entire server.
- Most of the things shown in the demo are things that are achievable through SQLXML itself and it was not very apparent as to the highlights of this method.
Overall, this method may be useful for scenarios where we want direct access to SQL Server, but I'm not sure as to how people might take advantage of this feature. More needs to be tested and worked upon in this area for me to arrive at a proper conclusion and possibly take back some of my initial apprehensions :-)
This was probably the best session of the morning keynote on Wednesday. This theme here was to discuss about the advances made by Microsoft working with University partners on the front of information delivery and access over modern devices (like the Tablet PC).
The demos consisted of some applications developed by Brown University and MIT that allows students to ink out data on the Tablet PC and then have the application link-up to powerful simulation software like MatLab to render the results. For example, we had one demo, wherein the equations for a pendulum were inked out on the tablet and then a diagram of the pendulum was also drawn. Then by making a few strokes of the pen, which are specific to the application, the pendulum starts to occilate according to the equation in real-time!! Man, imagine the learning power that this puts into the hands of students. In my days, we used to imagine how things would work and now, students, using these powerful devices, can actually see them work. This is really exiciting!!
Another demo along the same lines was given, which is very relevant to the industry that I work in: Higher Education. Here, students often attend various classes and interact with fellow students and the professors and the demo showed how information sharing can happen between all the parties involved using real-time video, messaging and ink technologies. A real eye-opener for what's to come.
If you are interested in knowing what's happening at Microsoft Research, visit research.microsoft.com.
For all you people out there who are interested in astrnomy, this is something that you must read. Actually, I'm quite interested in space, astronomy etc and in fact in a seperate post, I will discuss my readings about the book called String Theory, by Green.
Well, this project is a research project that has been done by a lot of students from Johns Hopkins and other schools and head by Jim Gray, a noted computer scientist. The presenter of this session was Jim Gray himself!! The aim of this survey is map out the universe and represent all of the information using a federation of web and database servers so that scientists can tap into its knowledge base and mine for data. This is a project of mamoth proportions and runs into several terrabytes of data and guess what is the backend?? SQL Server!! Data is stored as images in the database and a .NET web services are used to assemble the data onto canvases (read memory streams) and then sent back to the user in real-time. Ultimately, one day, we might have a virtual observatory!! I think its a great idea to have something like this and I'm going to have a crack at this site and its contents as soon as I get back home...
You can know more about this site by visting http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr1/en/. You can also visit http://skyserver.org which gives you downloads that you can use to build your own sky server node. Information regarding the database schemas and code is also present and can be a very good insight of learning.
Well, what is SPOT, you may wonder. SPOT stands for Smart Personal Objects Technology and it is all about making day-to-day devices smarter with software that delivers information at the right time and place and on any device. This was one of the themes of today (Wednesday) at the PDC. It was interesting to see the advances that were made in this area and the best thing was Microsoft is working on a version of the CLR for these devices and will probably upgrade VS.NET to support developing for these devices.
Imagine having a watch that runs a small version of the CLR with the garbage collector. Will time stop as the garbage collection is done?? Let's wait and see...
This was an event outside the PDC and I had an invite for the same. I had also registered earlier for this via the SSWUG web-site. The session was held by Gert Drapers, a member of the SQL Server development team and an architect. Gert is known to have developed the SQL Query Analyzer and other areas of SQL Server. The place where this was held was near my hotel and I was able to walk over to the place. One interesting meeting that I had was with the LA .NET users group head and some of its members. I was able to relate very well with this group, since I'm a member of the Bangalore (India) .NET group too and it was interesting to share some experiences.
The session started with a core introduction to Yukon and I was begining to feel whether I made a mistake of coming over, since I've already worked with Yukon. But, as the session progressed it actually became interesting as Gert delved into some interesting areas of Yukon and its enhancements. Some of the cool features that we discussed were the new XML capabilities, T-SQL enhancements and .NET programming. When I was initially working with Yukon, I was forced to code most of the .NET procedures the hard way, but with Whidbhey, things become a lot simpler, since the shell is already there for you and you just need to fill out the pieces.
Overall, the session was a very good experience and the pizza's were good too!! I finally returned to my hotel at around 10PM and crashed to wake up for the next day at PDC.
My initial intention in this PDC was to attend the sessions on Yukon to see if something new might be discussed. I'm an MVP in SQL Server and have been working with Yukon for the past month or so, so any new information that I can soak in can help me, but I was mistaken!! The sessions did not go beyond what I had already worked on, thus, I shifted my focus to Whidbhey, the next generation of VS.NET and man, its got cool features aimed at productivity.
Seeing all these new features and intelligence makes me think that one day programmers might become obsolete!! The infrastructure does most of the underlying work and abstracts away all the hard work that you now just code business logic. In the good old days, you had to code almost everything yourself and in-fact that is what distinguished programmers. You used to have demi-gods with whom you would discuss this how some internal working is going on, but now, things look different. Today, I guess domain knowledge is all that matters and the tools are becoming so intelligent that one day they might start thinking for us!! (remember Terminator)
Well, that was an interesting digression, but back to Whidbhey. Some of the cool features that I like are with respect to editing, formatting, and oveall productivity. Another good thing is with respect to accessibility. This used to be the realm of accessibility experts, but with the introduction of this feature, hopefully all of us would be accessible compliant! Smart tags are used extensively inside of Whidbhey to improve productivity and this is really cool. There are some nice personalization stores introduced in ASP.NET 2.0 that aids in providing rich personalization to end-users, with just one line of code (that rocks!!).
Well, that's the information that I have on Whidbhey as of now, as more sessions at PDC are pending. Maybe I'll start a seperate blog for each feature that I feel is interesting.
The keynote was opened by Bill Gates and it was very well strucutred. Gates talked about the challenges that the industry faced in the last few years with respect to computing and how Microsoft is committed to make sure they stay ahead of the race. One thing that really appealed to me was the amount of openness that MS has about its products. Each feedback counts and they really listen!! The only thing that gets me down sometimes is that the product releases are so rapid that by the time you get comfortable with one technology the next one makes you feel like an idiot!! In fact, that's the way I felt after I saw the prelim bits on LongHorn and its associated sibblings: Indigo, Avalon, WinFS and WinFX. Well, back to the keynote... Gates actually went on to say that the only issue that is facing application developers today is the limitations imposed by the applications themselves!! This is actually true if you think about it for a minute... Harware is cheap, memory is cheap, bandwidth is fast, infrastructure is rich, so why are not applications take advantage of it!!
LongHorn seems to be the answer to this and my first impression of this was WOW!! (not Windows On Windows :-)). Anyways, the session from Gates was followed by one from Jim Allchin which talked more about the technologies in general. Some of the cool demos that I liked was the one from Amazon that used the features of Avalon to build a rich user experience. Can't wait to get my hands on that piece...
Well, the PDC is all kicking away and the session promise to be good and informative.
Well, this was a trip that I was wanting to make for a long time and it all worked well. Some of my official trips coincided with this visit and overall I was able to make this trip at last. One thing that immediately struck me was the proportion of this event with respect to what happens in India. Its enormous!! I guess there must be around more than 5000 people in this event. The best that I liked was the logistics of this place. Everything is so smooth and structured, that you feel as though it is a well managed organization!!
The PDC this year is being held at LA downtown in the LA Convention area and the locality is pretty dull. Nothing much to do during the evenings except visit some malls. Recently a forest fire broke out in the California area and this is causing lots of havoc for commuters and residents in general. The fire is now approximately 30 miles outside of LA and the whole weather is smoky. What a time!!! Hopefully, the fire fighters should control this thing and my heart goes out to all those who have had their homes destroyed.
Well, no excuses really, but have been really busy officially and personally and have also been travelling a lot. Hopefully, this insight into myself will help me blog more regularly.