Share via


Announcements from PDC 2008

PDC 2008 is incredibly exciting this year for the development community.

If you are not attending the PDC, I encourage you to go check out the keynotes and sessions that are being made publicly available to watch online.

Ray Ozzie’s keynote is one I would especially recommend. Today he announced the Windows Azure Services Platform as Microsoft’s new cloud computing and services platform, hosted in Microsoft’s data centers. Until now, when you built an application you had to think about how to build the application, what hardware it needed to run on, how much hardware to procure, and how and when to scale your business needs. Now with Windows Azure, you can focus only on the applications you’re building, not on having to buy hardware or software capacity to make your business run. You will also only pay as you grow. You pay for only the capacity and capabilities you use, and you can easily add more capacity as your business grows. You can even deal with unpredictable spikes in demand easily, by adding capacity. You now can rely on Microsoft’s data centers to host, scale, and manage your applications.

We have a great set of tools with Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, and we want developers to be able to use them to build cloud applications. We are building tools for Visual Studio to make this easier, and we’re making a preview of some of these tools available at PDC.

With the new Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, we make it easy for Visual Studio and .NET developers to build, debug, test, and deploy Web applications for our cloud platform. You can build an ASP.NET Web application using the same tools and techniques you use today – the experience is the same. The tools include a developer cloud environment that runs on your machine, so you can test and debug your applications before deploying them. The tool will also make it very easy to deploy your applications to the cloud with just a couple of clicks. You can download the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio CTP to try it out today.

There are many more benefits of Windows Azure for the developer. It runs the .NET Framework so you can use things like ASP.NET to build your cloud Web applications. You can use all of the application features built into ASP.NET, like session state, caching, membership, and roles, with providers for Windows Azure that we have available as samples. Windows Azure has a high-scale storage service that your applications can use to store data. This storage service works great with the new ADO.NET Data Services feature in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, so you can use it as a .NET developer.

And this is just the first step in us bringing a great cloud computing and services platform to developers. We are continuing to think about how to bring world-class tools to this space.

Other announcements that we are making at PDC surround a space that I am really excited about: Parallel Computing . I’ve talked about this in length in the past. We established the Parallel Computing Initiative in 2007 which encompasses the vision, strategy, and innovative technologies for delivering natural and immersive personal computing experiences that harness the computing power of manycore architectures. The manycore shift presents an unprecedented business opportunity for developers to take software experiences to the next level. At the same time, we understand that parallel programming is complex, difficult and labor-intensive, for even the most skilled developers.

Our goal for parallel computing is to make it simpler for both native and managed code developers to safely and productively build correct, scalable and responsive applications. Microsoft’s Parallel Computing Initiative is taking a comprehensive and integrated approach spanning solutions from local to distributed/cloud computing and from task concurrency to data parallelism.

Announcements we made today for Parallel Computing are that Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 will include programming models for concisely expressing concurrency, including new .NET Framework libraries such as the Task Parallel Library and Parallel LINQ, as well as the Parallel Pattern Library and Concurrency Runtime for developing native applications with C++ that execute efficiently on parallel hardware and parallel profiling and debugging experiences. This is all a part of the Emerging Trends pillar of Visual Studio 2010.

I have talked in the past few weeks about features of Visual Studio Team System 2010 and today I’ve talked about our parallel computing features that will be in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 and these are both very exciting to me. But today, I’m even more excited to tell you that we have released a CTP of our Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 products so you can actually play with these features and more. This is our first step in getting these early bits in your hands to play with and give us feedback. You can download the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP today.

Namaste!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    The word is out finally. With the PDC 08 going on as we speak, you can now download the bits of the next

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    As you have probably seen in Soma’s Blog , we have just released the Community technology preview(CTP)

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    Will the Task Parallel library and plinq just be part of .net 4.0, or will they be available to people on 3.5 as well?

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    Коллеги, не могу пройти мимо анонсов с последнего PDC. Желающие могут посмотреть keynote pdc в записи

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    YAWN. Cloud computing is just another effort by Microsoft to ultimately force businesses into a pay-as-you-go software service model. And hey - why wouldn't developers work extra hard to accommodate Microsoft's glorious vision? Well, I can think of lots of reasons.  :-)

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    It's great to the have this CTP available now ! I was eagger to get it and start playing with it. Thanks. By the way, do we have any 'cloud' features available in this CTP ?

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    I just found it here ! Update: It is also here on the Connect site. Update: Somasegar covers this and

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    Great stuff Soma.  Shame about the H2 2009 commercial availability - but something to work with is very welcome.

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    Hi Regis, The cloud tools features are not part of the VS 2010 and .NET FX CTP.  There were too many moving parts and so we ended up doing the cloud tools work as a add-on to VS 2008.  The team is working on integrating this with VS 2010. -somasegar

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    Le moins qu’on puisse dire : c’est qu’on attendait des annonces majeures pour cette édition 2008 de la

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    I’m really excited about the news today that we’ve released the latest Team System 2010 Community Tech

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    Muitas novidades aconteceram e vem acontecendo no mundo de tecnologia e desenvolvimento. Principalmente

  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2008
    Here is my wrapper topic/links from some people I trust on the Keynote and Day1: Matt Milner - PDC Keynote

  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2008
    Thanks Soma for replying about cloud features in this CTP. My other concern is regarding help/documentation. Is there any "ctp/beta" library available for this CT? Any .chm about .Net Framework 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 ?

  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2008
    Hi MPS, TPL and PLinq are available in the download of Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework 3.5, available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/concurrency/bb896007.aspx.   The Visual Studio 2010 CTP consists of updated versions of these same libraries.  To find out more about the differences, check here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/7/3/97392db4-632a-42cc-a6ed-02864305f2e3/Microsoft%20Parallel%20Technologies%20for%20Managed%20Code%20Developers%20October%202008.xps -somasegar

  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2008
    In his blog post on Monday, Soma mentioned some of the great things happening at PDC 2008 and also announced

  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2008
    Visual C++/Visual Basic 4.0, 5.0 - Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 Visual Studio 6.0 - Windows 98 Visual Studio 6.0 - Windows 2000, Windows Me Visual Studio 6.0, Visual Studio .NET - Windows XP Visual Studio .NET 2003 - Windows XP Visual Studio 2005 - Windows XP Visual Studio 2008 - Windows Vista Visual Studio 2010 - Windows 7 Windows 7 introduces a solid new developer platform. Sadly, MS will require devs to upgrade to 2010 for full Windows 7 programming support when VS 2008 should be fully supported for Windows 7 development or Visual Studio 2010's WPF IDE and parallel programming improvements should be given away free. Gone are those days when Windows XP enjoyed 3 development platforms or Visual Studio 6.0 could target 3 OS generations.

  • Anonymous
    October 29, 2008
    Last I'd heard VB6 can still target all of those platforms.  Of course I've heard nothing official on Win7 yet but the rumors seem strong.

  • Anonymous
    October 29, 2008
    Microsoft, it seems, can only look into the future - they no longer seem able to focus on the present. We're still using C++ every single to day to build our (successful commercial) desktop software products. We do this because MS still us no truly effective alternatives. MS seemingly abandons development technologies just as they become mature (e.g. Windows Forms and ASP.NET already treated as secondary to WPF and Silverlight, for example). The MS development stack is increasingly a hodgepodge of the latest fads - a case of shiny object syndrome running horribly deep. As for Cloud Computing - it has far more to do with Microsoft business initiatives than it does with our development efforts. On the positive side, I do think the new concurrency abstractions will be useful in the general sense. I hope this area gets the attention it needs.

  • Anonymous
    October 29, 2008
    Anonymous - There should be no issues using VS 2008 with the Windows 7 version of the Platform SDK. In fact, that is what is getting the bulk of the testing right now from Microsoft since that is what the Windows team is currently using for its internal development.

  • Anonymous
    October 29, 2008
    @Mark Gordon - "Developers once again were an after thought in the cloud paradigm. The frustrating part is VFP and VB solutions were royalty free and THEY worked."  Wha..?  VFP and VB6 are technologies that still work - they just don't solve the problems that .NET tries to solve, and that Azure is trying to solve.  You can still do useful things with a Microsoft C compiler released in the 80's, but, sorry, we're not going to halt everything right there. @Dev - "MS seemingly abandons development technologies just as they become mature (e.g. Windows Forms and ASP.NET already treated as secondary to WPF and Silverlight, for example)." Wha....??  With ScottGu and others doing so much great work with ASP.NET MVC?  Are you even following what's going on?? Man... maybe we should have halted the development of new popular music once Disco had been achieved.  That's what you guys and others who voice similar opinions sound like to the rest of us.

  • Anonymous
    October 30, 2008
    Publicación del inglés original : Lunes, 27 de octubre de 2008 12:09 PM PST por Somasegar Este año PDC

  • Anonymous
    October 30, 2008
    Please make .NET a more interesting framework for science and science education by adding complex number and matrix to the .NET library, so that they can be used in all .NET languages. F# already has them. How difficult would it be to make them .NET standards? There are lots of codes for science in C/C++. It is much easier to reuse them in C#, if it supports complex and matrix, than to rewrite them in F#. Even C has complex numbers now! And there is a good reason for it. We use it everyday! Please do it!!! It may help to keep some of us on the Windows platform. Of all the relatively new languages, only Phython got the numbers right. In my oppinion, ISO should not approve any language, such as C#, that does not has complex numbers.

  • Anonymous
    November 02, 2008
    @MegP_MS,  yes, but will VS 2008 have support in the form of an update for all the new features with Windows 7? Even VS 2005 works with Vista but for Vista-specific features (.NET 3.0/3.5, WPF designer etc) VS 2008 is required.

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2008
    Somasegar, this is really good news. The parallel session from Daniel Moth at PDC was excellent. Really excellent. However, it only heightens the need for these tools now (or at least something we could ship against). One thing I am slightly confused about is how .NET 4, VS 2010 and Windows 7 are coupled. Are they all tied into approximately the same release schedule? Will .NET4 ship with Windows 7? Ok, VS2010 could make it into late 2009, as VS2008 did (in 2007). That's still a year away at best for the parallel extensions (appearing in .NET 4) though. Perhaps Daniel's talk was too inspiring! Finally, also great to see VS2010 move to WPF. Should mean good stuff for the WPF designer too hopefully, which needs work IMHO. Max

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2008
    Hi Max, I’m glad to see that you are excited about the tools and frameworks coming out for Parallel computing.  I hope you continue to play with them and give us feedback.   The version of the .NET Framework that will ship with Windows7 is .NET FX 3.5 SP1.   As we make more progress on these different product lines, we will be able to share more about the release timeline for the different products. -somasegar

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2008
    a nice article on building apps on Azure http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/aspnet/Building-applications-for-Windows-Azure.aspx

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2008
    The increase in speed at computers has shifted from ever increasing clock speed to the addition of multiple

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2008
    Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 will include programming models for Parallel

  • Anonymous
    November 30, 2008
    I just found it here ! Update: It is also here on the Connect site. Update: Somasegar covers this and more in Announcements from PDC2008...

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2009
    just i want to find,:) Thanks.