Tech Ed 2000

In 2000 I attended the annual Microsoft Teched conference which was held in Auckland, NZ. The topics were mostly based around the various components that make up the new at the time .NET offering which is centred around development, management and delivery of applications and content over the Net between servers and services and out to as many client devices as possible.

Introduction

This years Teched was based at the Aotea Centre and Town Hall in downtown Auckland and ran over three full days, starting on Thursday (3rd August) and finishing on Saturday with an excellent nights entertainment courtesy of Bill (and the conference fee) on Friday.

I took the streams that were aimed more at client side technologies or web content management or delivery, and one of my colleagues at the time headed along to the more back-end server-based or development topics like SQLServer, COM+, C# (sharp), Exchange-Server etc.

A list of web references is included at the bottom of this page for the impatient and those interested in further reading.

.NET in a Nutshell

.NET is essentially Windows-2000 and the Active-Directory Service for O/S and directory services, storage technologies like SQL-Server and Exchange-Server, development tools like Visual Interdev and Viusal Studio and other products such as Application-Center, Biztalk-Server and Commerce-Server

These tools enable web content and applications such as the Digital Dashboard to be delivered to client tools such as Outlook-2000 and IE5 (although MS claim to be planning to support other 'down-level' devices also). The new Windows Media 7 player and format were also covered in a couple of sessions I attended during the conference.

Most of these products are in Beta stage currently (August 2000) and there were plenty of warnings before demos that there was a possibility of a crash or two, which there often was, however things were generally more stable than previous MS demos I've been to. Maybe Bill's nasty experience during the Windows-98 launch gave them a shakeup. In fact I don't recall seeing a single Blue Screen.

A common theme throughout the keynote speeches and technical sessions was the fact that Microsoft are employing web standards such as XML and HTML for packaging content for exchange between services or delivery to clients. Most of the .NET components also use HTTP for transport which means less hassle reconfiguring firewalls to allow traffic through on ports other than '80'.

One technology that was (not surprisingly) absent from any of the discussions we attended was Java despite the clear borrowings that C# has made from the language. I didn't hear a single speaker or conference attendee even mutter the word. Discussions about the Active-Desktop (IE4) were also cleverly avoided.

Digital Dashboard

The Digital Dashboard concept is one of a collection of web parts (HTML snippets) assembled into a template (or Dashboard) that are then delivered over a network connection to the client.

Once a Dashboard has been received the downloaded Web Parts can be added or removed from the Dashboard layout and the layout itself can be altered. Other parts that have been made available to the user can also be fetched from the server catalogue, and personalisation changes can be stored in SQL-Server 7.0 or the Windows-2000 NTFS file system (Exchange-2000 storage will be available once Exchange ships).

The client-side Dashboard customising interface is much like a "My Home Page" kind of portal service, seems easy to use, and no technical knowledge is required on the part of the user.

New web parts are created using the Resource Kit or Visual Inter-Dev and can be added to the Catalogue where permissions can be applied to limit access if needed to specific users or groups. The web parts might be collections of local data, or pointers to other resources on another server or network.

The currently supported clients are Outlook-2000 and IE5 with a pledge to eventually support other browser versions (even the 'down-level' Netscape). The down-level devices will receive an HTML3.2 rendition of the Dashboard layout and user modifications will involve a return trip request to the server to make changes. IE5 and Outlook however will receive a client-side scripted copy which will allow local changes to be made to content layout without an additional request.

Anything that can currently be embedded in an HTML page can theoretically be placed on a Dashboard (Audio, Video, Spreadsheets, Graphs, Images, Chat, Net-Meeting etc.) although there are clearly some browser dependencies for display support.

Version 1.0 of the Digital Dashboard was first released in September last year. Copies of the Resource Kit for version 2.0 were given out at this years conference and Brian Peach and I both have copies of the CDROM.

Active Directory

The active directory provides a queryable (and updateable) database of information about resources and users and acts as the central authority for network security, similar in function to the combination of existing DNS and LDAP technologies.

LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol) is an IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standard. The information contained in an LDAP directory might be users e-mail or phone numbers or descriptions of printers, Distributed File System shares, or SQL databases on the network.

Exchange Server 2000

Exchange Server 2000 is the pending replacement (due for release on 26th of September) for the currently deployed version 5.5. As with the other 2000 server products, Exchange-Server supports storage and exchange of XML document markup/data and HTTP for transport over the network.

There's the expected integration with the Office suite and traditional email clients like Exchange, Outlook, Outlook Express and browser based clients, but Microsoft are marketing the 2000 version (more heavily than previous versions) as a document store and collaborative working, work flow management technology.

Other new features include adding Meta-data properties to stored documents, content indexing and searching, content addressing via URLs, Front-Page integration for forms-based application editing and audio/video/data conferencing.

There is also support for a new protocol Web DAV, which is a Header/Method extension to HTTP that enables distributed authoring, permissions, locking and versioning of documents (of any type) over the Web. Essentially it's like a network file system over the web, using XML to specify and retrieve document properties. Web DAV was originally authored by Microsoft and submitted to the IETF for review in 1995 and has since been issued as RFC2518. Microsoft shipped their first Web DAV enabled product in March last year, but it's only recently that clients that support it, like the Office-2000 suite, have been made available.

Not to be outdone by Microsoft, the open source community has lept at the challenge and in June this year webdav.org and the Apache Software Foundation released a press statement about Apache support for this extension to HTTP. The Apache module 'Mod_DAV' apparently works 'seamlessly' with Explorer-5.0 and the Office-2000 suite. Unfortunately there are no plans for support of DAV under Mozilla/Netscape6 when they are to be first released.

Web DAV is a real watch-this-space technology for which the only real limiting factor currently is the lack of authoring clients and potential security issues (which can be gotten around by using SSL). If testing of the Apache module on our own Web servers works out well, it will also eliminate the need for FTP access and finally bring about the demise of the evil Frontpage Server Extensions.

SQL Server 2000

This latest version of Microsoft's RDBMS product has just left Beta-2 stage and is now rolling out for manufacturing slated for release in the US on the 26th of September. SQL Server 2000 is set to become a key part of .NET, replacing the current release of SQLServer, version 7 (relased November 1998). Microsoft claim to have been running SQL Server 2000 behind their own business applications for the last six months.

Major new features of interest in the Web realm, include supportfor storing XML documents in relational database tables, and generating XML documents directly from relational data. HTTP access is also a core feature of SQL Server 2000 enabling direct queries through a network via URL references.

One way to take advantage of these features is to store a SQL query in an XML form within a table, reference the XML document over HTTP (also supporting SSL for security) using the URL and return the query results back to the calling device as XML structured data.

With SQL Server 7 (or most other SQL products) the only way to store XML data in a structured manner (i.e. without using a Text-field :-) was to write some middleware that parsed an XML stream, shredded it into individual XML elements, and plugged these elements into the appropriate table fields. A similar program would then do the reverse when querying and extracting the data back out of the store. SQL Server 2000 now handles this interchange function automagically.

Windows 2000

All of the server based products mentioned in this document are dependent on services delivered by the operating system Windows-2000, one of the few technologies at Teched that aren't actually in Beta at the moment (in fact Service Pack 1 has just been released). I was attending Teched this year with a focus on learning about the Web technologies that bolt on top of the OS not the OS itself.

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Wiki Menu: FrontPage Edit References Delete Changes Formatting Index Tags: NZ conferences development microsoft web	Tech Ed 2000 In 2000 I attended the annual Microsoft Teched conference which was held in Auckland, NZ. The topics were mostly based around the various components that make up the new at the time .NET offering which is centred around development, management and delivery of applications and content over the Net between servers and services and out to as many client devices as possible. Introduction This years Teched was based at the Aotea Centre and Town Hall in downtown Auckland and ran over three full days, starting on Thursday (3rd August) and finishing on Saturday with an excellent nights entertainment courtesy of Bill (and the conference fee) on Friday. I took the streams that were aimed more at client side technologies or web content management or delivery, and one of my colleagues at the time headed along to the more back-end server-based or development topics like SQLServer, COM+, C# (sharp), Exchange-Server etc. A list of web references is included at the bottom of this page for the impatient and those interested in further reading. .NET in a Nutshell .NET is essentially Windows-2000 and the Active-Directory Service for O/S and directory services, storage technologies like SQL-Server and Exchange-Server, development tools like Visual Interdev and Viusal Studio and other products such as Application-Center, Biztalk-Server and Commerce-Server These tools enable web content and applications such as the Digital Dashboard to be delivered to client tools such as Outlook-2000 and IE5 (although MS claim to be planning to support other 'down-level' devices also). The new Windows Media 7 player and format were also covered in a couple of sessions I attended during the conference. Most of these products are in Beta stage currently (August 2000) and there were plenty of warnings before demos that there was a possibility of a crash or two, which there often was, however things were generally more stable than previous MS demos I've been to. Maybe Bill's nasty experience during the Windows-98 launch gave them a shakeup. In fact I don't recall seeing a single Blue Screen. A common theme throughout the keynote speeches and technical sessions was the fact that Microsoft are employing web standards such as XML and HTML for packaging content for exchange between services or delivery to clients. Most of the .NET components also use HTTP for transport which means less hassle reconfiguring firewalls to allow traffic through on ports other than '80'. One technology that was (not surprisingly) absent from any of the discussions we attended was Java despite the clear borrowings that C# has made from the language. I didn't hear a single speaker or conference attendee even mutter the word. Discussions about the Active-Desktop (IE4) were also cleverly avoided. Digital Dashboard The Digital Dashboard concept is one of a collection of web parts (HTML snippets) assembled into a template (or Dashboard) that are then delivered over a network connection to the client. Once a Dashboard has been received the downloaded Web Parts can be added or removed from the Dashboard layout and the layout itself can be altered. Other parts that have been made available to the user can also be fetched from the server catalogue, and personalisation changes can be stored in SQL-Server 7.0 or the Windows-2000 NTFS file system (Exchange-2000 storage will be available once Exchange ships). The client-side Dashboard customising interface is much like a "My Home Page" kind of portal service, seems easy to use, and no technical knowledge is required on the part of the user. New web parts are created using the Resource Kit or Visual Inter-Dev and can be added to the Catalogue where permissions can be applied to limit access if needed to specific users or groups. The web parts might be collections of local data, or pointers to other resources on another server or network. The currently supported clients are Outlook-2000 and IE5 with a pledge to eventually support other browser versions (even the 'down-level' Netscape). The down-level devices will receive an HTML3.2 rendition of the Dashboard layout and user modifications will involve a return trip request to the server to make changes. IE5 and Outlook however will receive a client-side scripted copy which will allow local changes to be made to content layout without an additional request. Anything that can currently be embedded in an HTML page can theoretically be placed on a Dashboard (Audio, Video, Spreadsheets, Graphs, Images, Chat, Net-Meeting etc.) although there are clearly some browser dependencies for display support. Version 1.0 of the Digital Dashboard was first released in September last year. Copies of the Resource Kit for version 2.0 were given out at this years conference and Brian Peach and I both have copies of the CDROM. Active Directory The active directory provides a queryable (and updateable) database of information about resources and users and acts as the central authority for network security, similar in function to the combination of existing DNS and LDAP technologies. LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol) is an IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standard. The information contained in an LDAP directory might be users e-mail or phone numbers or descriptions of printers, Distributed File System shares, or SQL databases on the network. Exchange Server 2000 Exchange Server 2000 is the pending replacement (due for release on 26th of September) for the currently deployed version 5.5. As with the other 2000 server products, Exchange-Server supports storage and exchange of XML document markup/data and HTTP for transport over the network. There's the expected integration with the Office suite and traditional email clients like Exchange, Outlook, Outlook Express and browser based clients, but Microsoft are marketing the 2000 version (more heavily than previous versions) as a document store and collaborative working, work flow management technology. Other new features include adding Meta-data properties to stored documents, content indexing and searching, content addressing via URLs, Front-Page integration for forms-based application editing and audio/video/data conferencing. There is also support for a new protocol Web DAV, which is a Header/Method extension to HTTP that enables distributed authoring, permissions, locking and versioning of documents (of any type) over the Web. Essentially it's like a network file system over the web, using XML to specify and retrieve document properties. Web DAV was originally authored by Microsoft and submitted to the IETF for review in 1995 and has since been issued as RFC2518. Microsoft shipped their first Web DAV enabled product in March last year, but it's only recently that clients that support it, like the Office-2000 suite, have been made available. Not to be outdone by Microsoft, the open source community has lept at the challenge and in June this year webdav.org and the Apache Software Foundation released a press statement about Apache support for this extension to HTTP. The Apache module 'Mod_DAV' apparently works 'seamlessly' with Explorer-5.0 and the Office-2000 suite. Unfortunately there are no plans for support of DAV under Mozilla/Netscape6 when they are to be first released. Web DAV is a real watch-this-space technology for which the only real limiting factor currently is the lack of authoring clients and potential security issues (which can be gotten around by using SSL). If testing of the Apache module on our own Web servers works out well, it will also eliminate the need for FTP access and finally bring about the demise of the evil Frontpage Server Extensions. SQL Server 2000 This latest version of Microsoft's RDBMS product has just left Beta-2 stage and is now rolling out for manufacturing slated for release in the US on the 26th of September. SQL Server 2000 is set to become a key part of .NET, replacing the current release of SQLServer, version 7 (relased November 1998). Microsoft claim to have been running SQL Server 2000 behind their own business applications for the last six months. Major new features of interest in the Web realm, include supportfor storing XML documents in relational database tables, and generating XML documents directly from relational data. HTTP access is also a core feature of SQL Server 2000 enabling direct queries through a network via URL references. One way to take advantage of these features is to store a SQL query in an XML form within a table, reference the XML document over HTTP (also supporting SSL for security) using the URL and return the query results back to the calling device as XML structured data. With SQL Server 7 (or most other SQL products) the only way to store XML data in a structured manner (i.e. without using a Text-field :-) was to write some middleware that parsed an XML stream, shredded it into individual XML elements, and plugged these elements into the appropriate table fields. A similar program would then do the reverse when querying and extracting the data back out of the store. SQL Server 2000 now handles this interchange function automagically. Windows 2000 All of the server based products mentioned in this document are dependent on services delivered by the operating system Windows-2000, one of the few technologies at Teched that aren't actually in Beta at the moment (in fact Service Pack 1 has just been released). I was attending Teched this year with a focus on learning about the Web technologies that bolt on top of the OS not the OS itself. See Also: Web Related Conferences \| Web Development \| Notes Index
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