MSDN event
Friday, November 10th, 2006I went to an MSDN event yesterday with Jeremy from work and learned about some interesting new stuff in the Microsoft pipeline.
First, they are expanding their Visual Studio Team line up with an offering for DBAs. Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem/products/dbpro/) has all of the tools you expect from VS along with some great new ones specifically for use with databases. Integrated unit testing of SQL scripts and version control are nice, but the inclusion of DataGenerator, DataCompare, and SchemaCompare puts it over the top.
Secondly, the .NET 3.0 Workflow Foundation is awesomely powerful. It is more than just flow control, it also allows you to build in your business rules. http://wf.netfx3.com/ is a page to find out additional information on it. I am going to do some experimenting and will be posting a thorough step by step this weekend.
Last, but not least, is Expression Web (http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/web_designer/default.mspx). It isn’t FrontPage. That, in and of itself is enough to make this a great web design offering, but this program has brains. It generates clean, sleek html/css and can handle nested MasterPages. If you are going to do any web design, download this while it still has a free trial.