For all those who attended my sessions "The Buzzword Puzzle: Web technology integration" at Microsoft DevDays 2009 or anyone else who is interested the resources and screencast are available for download below.

The blurb for the presentation goes as follows: "We often see various web technologies shown off in isolation as they come out but never really see them operating together to form a complete solution. This presentation will introduce the ease with which various Microsoft technologies integrate including Silverlight 2, AJAX, WCF, jQuery and more!"

Please send me any questions you may have about the talk. Hope that you enjoyed it!

The Buzzword Puzzle – Web technology integration – ScreenCast
The Buzzword Puzzle – Web technology integration – Slides
The Buzzword Puzzle – Web technology integration – Demo

Today Visual Studio 2008 SP1 was released adding some really great enhancements to the development experience. Some of the enhancements include (taken from msdn):

• Richer JavaScript support, enhanced AJAX and data tools, and Web site deployment improvements
• SQL Server 2008 support
• ADO.NET Entity Designer
• Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server (TFS) addresses customer feedback on version control usability and performance, email integration with work item tracking and full support for hosting on SQL Server 2008.
• Improved WPF designers
• Visual Basic and Visual C++ components and tools (including an MFC-based Office 2007 style ‘Ribbon’)

The .Net framework also has an SP1 which includes the following enhancements:

• Performance increases between 20-45% for WPF-based applications – without having to change any code
• WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services
• Streamlined installation experience for client applications
• Improvements in the area of data platform, such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and support for SQL Server 2008’s new features

You can get more details and download the whole pack at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533447.aspx

Note: This is quite a large download at 831.3 MB