Updated 13 April 2010. Fixed the download links

It’s a wrap. Boise Code Camp & Tech Fest 2010 was awesome. The sessions, the people, connecting with old friends and making new ones: it was a great community event. A big thank you to the organizers, Chris Brandsma, Scott Nichols, and David Starr, plus all of the volunteers who pitched in to create an excellent weekend for software professionals and amateurs in the region. Well done!

Here a few of my highpoints. Ole Dam’s session on Lean provided great insight into how a number of different practices fit together: Ole is a Lean Sensei and has worked at Toyota and other operations companies. Listen to an interview with him on this podcast. I thought Chris Bilson did a great job making the case for PowerShell for the developer, as opposed to the system admin. Thanks for the great tips and insights along the way. Richard Hundhausen let me heckle in his TDD talk and learn some unit test goodness in VS2010. And David Starr did not let a little thing like not being able to login to his demo virtual machine (yikes!) slow him down on his talk on supporting healthy team behaviors with VS2010 ALM — good save, great conversation!

And the Boise hospitality was outstanding, as always!

My downloads

My two talks (one repeated) went really well. Great questions from the audience in each one of them. That’s always a good sign and keeps me on my toes. Here are the links for downloading the slides and code:

What’s New in C# 4.0?

Getting Started Using “M” to Model Data and Create DSLs

The readme.txt file in each one includes notes on the software required: the C# 4.0 code uses IronPython, and the “M” code uses the SQL Server Modeling CTP. Don’t waste time tearing your hair out by overlooking those dependencies.

The SQL Server Modeling team has released an update of the November CTP that works with Visual Studio 2010 RC. Kraig Brockschmidt made the announcement in the MSDN Forums earlier today.

As I reported earlier, the Visual Studio 2010 release candidate (RC) was not compatible with various other prerelease bits. That’s a good thing: trying to get all of the different teams to deliver prerelease software in lock step would slow down the development process down with little commensurate value. In other words, it is a small and reasonable price to pay for working with the technologies before they are completed.

According to Chris Sells, the new SQL Server Modeling November 2009 CTP Release 2 only updates the original November 2009 CTP so that it works with Visual Studio 2010 RC and .NET Framework 4 RC. It does not fix anything else or deliver any new functionality.

The recommended sequence, described by Kraig, is to uninstall the previous Modeling CTP, uninstall VS 2010 Beta 2, then install VS 2010 RC, then install the new Modeling CTP Release 2. If you’ve already embarked on some other path, see Kraig’s notes for details on getting order restored to the universe.

If you’re in the greater San Francisco Bay area, come out and hear me talk on Modeling with SQL Server Modeling Services (née “Oslo”) on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at the Bay.NET User Group which meets on the Microsoft campus in Mountain View. Social networking starts at 6:00 PM, and my presentation is at 6:30 PM. This is a free event, but registration is required.

First, please don’t get thrown by the SQL Server part of SQL Server Modeling Services. This modeling technology is for developers, architects, database developers and, in the fullness of time, most aspects of the application lifecycle management.

I will explain what’s in the November 2009 CTP of SQL Server Modeling Services, where the technology is going, and why you should be interested in it today. I’ll demonstrate the “M” modeling language using the new Intellipad editor, and graphical modeling in “Quadrant”. Bring your questions, and I will see you there.

Doug Purdy has blogged that Microsoft’s “Oslo” project has been realigned and unveiled as SQL Server Modeling at VSConnections this week. There will be additional announcements and a new Community Technology Preview (CTP) released at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference 2009 (PDC09) next week, so stay tuned.

Doug’s post provides a brief recap of the jigs and jogs that have been the history of the “Oslo” codename, starting with the announcement at the 2007 Microsoft SOA and BP conference where it was the term applied to a broad multiple product initiative for modeling. I was fortunate to be in attendance for the initial announcement, and have followed the winding path of Oslo, so I am keenly interested in the Oslo-related keynotes and sessions at PDC to which Doug posted some handy links earlier. And, of course, I can’t wait to get my hands on the next set of bits.

As I see it, modeling and DSLs have been underrated by most of the software development community, and that is largely due to the lack of first-class mainstream support in the form of great technologies and equally great tools. Sure, there have been some great strides, like the Domain-Specific Language Tools in Visual Studio, but you can hardly characterize their use as widespread. And, no doubt, Martin Fowler’s upcoming book on DSLs (which you can read as a work-in-progress) will help raise the level of discussion and general awareness of the concept. And there are many other efforts in the world as well. But there is much left to do.

Why is modeling so important? Because as an industry we work too hard for too long to create applications, using general purpose languages and low-level technologies, essentially from scratch each time. It is high time to evolve past that approach and dramatically reduce the cost and time-to-market for broad classes of applications that businesses need today. That is why I am excited about SQL Server Modeling (née Oslo) and that’s why I want it to be a truly great modeling platform.