TechEd 2007: Day 1

So a good kickoff to TechEd 2007. I got to enjoy the day as my first presentation isn't scheduled until Tues afternoon. I attended three sessions:

The first was an Introduction/Overview of Office Business Applications. This one was a review for me, but showed off some of the new features coming in V3. In particular click once deployment, a ribbon designer, enhanced design support for outlook forms controls, Office 2007 document-level projects, and design time support for Word Content Controls and binding were all way cool. Plus they handed out lots of copies of my book :). If you are here at the center, there are still some to be had at the TLC center. The OBA team can be found at the Visual Studio Tools for Office booth.

My second session was on ADFS v2. Frankly this was a bit disappointing. I expected a lot of material detailing the differences between v1 and v2. Most of the slide content addressed v1. The session included some CardSpace demos as well.

The day's last session I attended was on Database Design Patterns (I know I am diversifying). I really liked this one. Basically the presenter discussed abstract patterns like OLTP, OLAP, and a new one I had not heard of SCD (Slowly Changing Dimensions). The abstract patterns were followed up with concrete demos that really illustrated the point. The overall theme was to pick a design pattern that fits the problem and try not to mix them; ruining performance of both in the same application. He also talked about horizontal and vertical positioning. With demos. Way cool.