Transaction Semantics for Arbitrary Code

In Whidbey, arbitrary code can have intimate relationships with transactions. This enables you to expose transactional behavior in code, which is cool in a geeky, look-what-I-can-do way, but the implications to my day-to-day work are much larger. For example, you can have a transaction-aware data container (such as a list) that has transactional semantics when part of a large MSMQ or SQL Server transaction. Extract an item from my TransactionList inside a Whidbey LTM (Lightweight Transaction Manager) transaction, and if that transaction flows into a SQL Server transaction that aborts, my TransactionList can recover it's previous state. BTW, the cost of starting an LTM transaction is about one microsecond.

And it works in Whidbey

A code example will follow as soon as I get a stable compiler/SDK installation on my victim VPC installation.

Remoting's not dead. Yes, it is. No it's not. Yes it is. No it's not, but Elvis is.

It seems that a lot of the discussion about whether or not remoting is dead really depends on your point of view. Those that didn't care for the uber-geek chic of tightly-coupled remote objects are happy to proclaim that remoting is now dead. Sharp-penciled types that really grokked and embraced remoting are happy to see the evolution of the new programming model.

If you love IMessage, et al., then be aware that this programming model will not be extended in Indgo. Architecturally, it's now a cul-du-sac. However, the code you've written (and will continue to write with these types) will continue to work. But there's a new programming model for rich-method-call communication with distributed objects. See the [RemoteObject] attribute. Indigo is really a way to break down the artifical barriers between web services, COM+, and remoting. Is remoting dead? I don't think so, and anyway, it depends on what the meaning of remoting is. More later, battery dying...

Becoming an Indigo Monk

That's it. I'm shaving my head, buying a dark-blue robe, and going off to share the love of ubiquitous connectivity with the world.

And WinFS is the other coolest thing I've seen

The ability to expose multiple views of data on my PC is the other coolest thing I've seen. With WinFS, the organization of my data is completely separate from the location of my data. I'll try to get a demo of this posted right away. And along with the organizationalvs. information aspects - the ability to arbitrarily paint metadata with drag and drop is just really cool. I'm not going to be able to survive with Windows XP as my client box.

XAML is the coolest thing I've seen

Markup for the desktop, with the presentation design separated from the code, much like aspx pages today. It's very easy for a designer to have complete control of the visual look of an app, while a developer can have complete control over the functionality. At compile time, the *.xaml files are compiled into two compilation objects:

• A *.g.cs (generated C# file) that is a compiled CE source code representation of the XAML
• A *.baml file that is a binary stream of the XAML info

One of my favorite moments so far was in an Avalon talk - the presenter asked ~500 people how many used VB. About a dozen raised their hands. Heh.

The Network Here is Going to Make Me Choke Somebody

Scoble. The network at the PDC sucks. Severely. And I have no constructive criticism for you, because I've lost two blog posts, and I'm really pissed off. One of the posts I lost said nice things about you, though.

That's no moon....

One interesting aspect of the talks this morning was Microsoft's view of the typical machine that will appear in the Longhorn timeframe:

• 4-6 Ghz CPUs with 2 cores
• 2+ GB RAM
• 1 TB drive
• Graphice procesing: 3x today

The limiting factor restricting development of applications that take advantage of even today's hardware is the software.

Longhorn is meant to take advantage of modern hardware and improve the user experience. Input is now way beyond keyboards and mice. Speech, Ink, syncable data from external sources - all of these things are now equal players for input. Feedback to end users is now way past the low resoution displays we've been using. The focus is on displaying structured information in a easy-to-mange way. And the displays - holy cow. We're way past the browser. XAML is going to enable a lot more direct interaction from graphics designers for rich-client apps.

Don't call me

BTW, I don't have my cell phone with me. I lost my crappy Ericsson T68i, and I haven't hooked up with a replacement. It's just a coincidence that I lost my phone at about the same time that the Motorola MPx200 was released. Honest.

Traffic

Geez. It took 2 hours for me to drive from Orange County to the LA Convention Center. I left at 6:00, and got here just after 8. The oniste logistics were great though. In my seat and powered up just before 8:30. No bits until after the keynotes.

Some People Have More Important Things to Worry About

My thoughts are with two people today that are probably worrying about things that are more important than getting the latest Longhorn bits:

• My brother-in-law Mitch, a firefighter in San Marcos in San Diego county- he's got a few things on his mind right now.
• Ted Olsen, an old friend from my San Diego punk-rock concert-promoter days

I met up Ted this year after losing touch for about twenty years - we were filmed for the Marc Rude documentary on the same day. Ted lives in a tract of homes exactly like my neighborhood, but built in San Diego instead of Orange County. He lives in the same model as my neighbor's house - it was a bit freaky. His Scripps Ranch neighborhood was built into a grove of trees that is (was) just stunning. I can't find his number (no suprise, I usually can't find much of anything), but I'm really hoping that his neighborhood that looked so much like my neighborhood is still there.