TechEd Day 4
Well now, wasn't today interesting. Started the day rehashing the age-old discussion about Linux. This was healthy debate triggered by Mark Russinovich's session 'A Tale of Two Kernels'. The people at my table were saying that increasingly, Linux is seen as a replacement for Solaris, HP-Unix and AIX platforms - not as an alternative to Windows. Refreshingly, these people were all perfectly aware of the hidden costs (such as deployment, management/support, maintenance, training, lack of commoditized software etc) of Linux. So, the only real sticking point is the robustness argument. The old 'our X servers run for 18 months without reboot, but we had to reboot NT servers every month'. NT wasn't all that stable - no secret there - but what about Windows Server 2003? Is it just too soon to get good evidence of robustness? Is it just a perception thing - too many people with low confidence in NT tarring Server 2003 with the same brush?
Then, a really good session by Paul Stubbs on Server Programming with VSTO 2005. A feature many of my customers have been asking for for a long time. The ability to process Word and Excel documents/workbooks on the server without running Word/Excel - without even having Word/Excel on the server at all. As you may already know, VSTO 2005 allows you to cache islands of XML data within the book/doc. With the new ServerDocument VSTO class, you can inject arbitrary data into these islands on the server. You can even expose data from Office docs to ASPX. There are limitations, of course, but this is still a great new feature.
Followed by an interesting discussion with Blair Shaw about Visio extensibility. When will VSTO come to Visio (and Access, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher)? Soon, but not yet. With so many business process applications needing sophisticated graphics-based front-ends, you'd think Visio is an obvious candidate for programmability support. You only have to think of the new graphical tools in Visual Studio 2005, or the Metadata Designer tool in IBF. If Blair manages to get to TechEd Europe at the end of June, I'm looking forward to continuing that discussion.
What happened next? Oh yes, lunch: main course in Hall B/C, dessert in Hall F. Interesting - some variation on the Atkins diet, no doubt - make you walk off all the carb intake between courses.
Then, I gave my Office Interop Object Lifetime Management Cabana session. On the pros+cons of ReleaseComObject, GC.Collect, IDisposable and the like. I enjoyed myself anyway. Triggered an interesting chat with Paul from General Mills - he's looking to architect reusable service layers as he migrates COM-based Office solutions towards hybrid COM/.NET solutions. More or less the gist of my breakout session on Friday.
BJ Holtgrewe and Mike Hernandez of the VSTO team re-enacted the Hindenburg disaster - although I believe the VSTO dirigible contained Helium rather than Hydrogen. The boys were last seen racing at full tilt for the Mexican border in hot pursuit of their errant blimp.
Tried to get into a SQL Server 2005 (Yukon) session - no luck, completely packed out filled to the brim bursting at the seams.
Well, now for a spot of work polishing my deck, then off to Rock the Office!