• Virtualization, an alternative IT environment
• High Availability – Always on Technologies in SQL Server 2008
• An introduction to Cloud Computing – Azure services

Nischay spoke on Virtualization. It was all about Hyper-v & a bit on how System center of win server 2008 would help in virtualizing Profile, Application, Desktop & Presentation. I was more interested in Desktop virtualization, which Hyper-v fares badly when compared to Vmware Workstation which pretty much supports every OS on earth. Find out comparison sheet here.

Next session was on SQL Server 2008 by Amit. It was a brilliant presentation. He knew very well what he spoke & did demonstrate hands-on. He presented stuff on Failover Clustering, Database Mirroring, Database Snapshots etc..

Following sumptuous meal was the session on Azure by Tulika. This was the session for which I was there for. As it says in the agenda it was just an intro & nothing interesting turned out of the presentation.

The event also had a lab to check out the technologies discussed.

Give away, also included a cool 2GB thumb drive. Thanks Microsoft!

Microsoft Innovation Days

This blog is a quick run through on Microsoft Innovation Days. I am limiting this blog to a few words on each session. As this was a fully packed hectic event, each session can consume an article by themselves. If you are looking for rhetoric on the event you should be looking somewhere else.

The event started with a keynote.

First session was about Microsoft’s bet on cloud. Azure, Mesh, new live services & much more. The presenter Pandurang Nayak, Technology Evangelist for Microsoft implemented a “Hello World” Azure application with VS 2008. Demoed many applications built on cloud computing.

This was followed by a note from Siddarth Kapoor, Developer Marketing Manager. This session was concentrated mainly on Microsoft’s offerings for developer community. He showcased the fully revamped msdn site & bdotnet.in a site for/by .net buffs in Bangalore.

Next session was all about RIA. Praveen Srivatsa, Regional Director, presented it. The main focus was on jQuery & Microsoft’s support for jQuery. I won a T-shirt here for giving the most compelling definition of RIA. He created a “Hello World” app with asp.net MVC web application template which uses jQuery extensively.

This was followed by a session on Optimizing Queries in MS SQL by Vinod Kumar. I paid less attention here as I don’t use MS SQL. But, the drive away points were not to use joins, negative statements unless there is no alternative. He showcased query analysis with Execution Plan.

This was followed by ***** buffet.

Later was the session on IE8, SL2 & Windows 7. IE8 is in beta, has rough edges need to be smoothened, it was evident by its unwillingness to cooperate with the presenter. Again Pandurang was presenting this session. He created a “Hello World” WebSlice. Web Slice is something similar to RSS, using which one can subscribe to a certain section in a web page. He demoed some accelerators built for IE8. Accelerators are tiny plugins increasing the usability of a web page. IE8 follows strict XHTML 1.0 & CSS2.1. Websites break if they don’t conform to this standard. However, there is compatibility mode which can be activated programmatically if the site is not IE8 complaint, & the site starts to render in pre IE8 engines. There were not many SL2 developers in the crowd. This made the presenter to skim through his presentation. However he showcased SL2 toolkit & created a “Hello World” chart. The answer was “Wait, be patient” for the query on print support for Silverlight. Windows 7 was demoed. Major changes are less footprint & less resource hungry. I won a Formal Shirt here was answering what “Aero Shake” stands for & officially got disqualified for winning more goodies further.

Next session was on Partnering with Microsoft. The presenter Girish explained the benefits of Microsoft Innovate On & Bizspark Program. If you are a company working on Microsoft Technology & you are less than 3years old & your annual revenue is less than 1 million USD, you get all the future releases of Microsoft softwares with 25 licenses for a nominal fee of just 100 USD.

The last session was on developers’ toolkit for .net application by Bijoy Singhal. He explained things on fuslogvw, perfmon, sos.dll, ngen etc.. Later the session was concluded by thanking the participants.

Its really fun & educative to be part of an event like this. The organiser expressed his doubts to whether to continue conducting events like this. Mr.Organiser don’t think twice, keep up the good work. There is no better way to reach the likeminded crowd. Forget not to invite me in your future events.

Cheers,

Chirag