We are already into the 2nd day of Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC 09).  This year the theme is very clearly Cloud Computing and Azure but there are a sprinkling of sessions on Visual Studio 2010, Team System, Languages and even a little SharePoint and CRM/XRM.

Day 0 was workshop day and I attended and slightly assisted ‘The Yellow Croc Man’ (aka Chris Auld) with his sessions on developing for the Azure Platform.  Chris did a fantastic job – pointing out a lot of things that us developers don't normally care/think about as much as we should – i.e., pricing and data sovereignty.  These are very important issues with Azure and cloud computing in general.  Bad programming can cost a lot of dosh.  Our TicketDirect project was used extensively during Chris’ preso and at the end of the day, Mat Davey (TicketDirect CEO), Chris and I took the stage to answer questions (which was slightly scary).

Today was Key Note day with Ray Ozzie (Microsoft Chief Architect) and a host of walk-on ‘softies and 3rd parties.  Key points here were the announcement of :

PinPoint – a market place for all things Microsoft.  It’s up now - http://pinpoint.microsoft.com

Project Dallas – data as a service.  In CTP now - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/17/microsoft_dallas_data_service/ 

SQL Data Sync – Synchronise data from SQL Local to/from SQL Azure.  I think this is part of SQL 08 R2 – CTP available now.

Project Sydney – this allows you to connect direct to on-premise SQL Server from cloud roles. 

AppFabric – Will include caching (velocity), workflow, monitoring, service bus, service hosting and access control.  Most usefully this will enable multi-tenant apps. CTP will be out early next year.  This is a host for applications and replaces the .Net Services SDK.  More on this after later sessions.

Visual Studio 2010 will also include a bunch of new stuff to make deployment much much simpler for cloud and non-cloud applications. 

System Centre and IIS – admin tools to support AppFabric.

BizTalk 2009 R2 – updates for new SQL and Windows server R2 releases. PowerShell access. Mapping enhancements and updated B2B accelerators.

Interestingly, WordPress is now hostable on Azure – this is still a PHP Apache app – no .Net there.   Microsoft are providing a production ready service for this ahead of the office switch-flick on January 1.

Following the keynote we attended the Lap Around Azure session by the Direct of the Platform, Manuvir Das.  Once again, TicketDirect  was shown and received a very favourable response.

Day 1 is only half over! I’ll update with more news later.