Microsoft Patterns and Practices Conference - Day Four

Today's topic was "Software Factories", but it should have been titled "A bunch of stuff that you'll need VSTS to use".

Keynote - Scott Hanselman

Scott delivered a great presentation on the MVC framework that Microsoft is currently working on.  He went over the plusses of using the framework, like how it provides for clean separation of concerns and how it is extensible and pluggable. We even got a chance to see it in action in Visual Studio.  The framework won't require VSTS and will probably become a very handy development tool.

Domain-Specific Development with VS DSL Tools - Gareth Jones

This talk was about how to build a domain specific language using the graphical modeler in Visual Studio.  What it really boils down to is "How to generate a Modeling Language, using the graphical modeling language in VSTS."

Patterns of Software Factories - Wojtek Kozaczynski

Wojtek went through the Software Factories that the Patterns & Practices group has released and reported some of the common patterns that he found.  Kind of dry stuff that I won't be using anytime soon.

Building Services...Service Factory: Modeling Edition - Bob Brumfield, Ade Miller

Here, we were shown how to use a software factory to generate a modeler that will then generate some code.  Once again, this is a VSTS thing.

Web Client Guidance: Web Client Software Factory - Michael Puleio, Chris Tavares & Blaine Wastell

This was a good discussion of the P&P group's Web Client Guidance.  I've not before seen a simpler and easier to understand diagram that showed the difference between the Model View Presenter pattern and the Model View Controller pattern.  You don't need VSTS to use the guidance bits.  Expect more blog posts about this one.

Using Team Factories - David Trowbridge

Yet another Team System oriented talk.

Build your own Software Factory - Wojtek Kozaczynski, Bob Brumfield, Ade Miller

I've got to admit that this talk was way over my head.  From what I gathered, basically went through what it took to generate the software factories that they have released.  I guess there's a reason that they make the big bucks.

Tomorrow is the last day of the conference and will be dedicated to "Applications".  Scott Hanselman will give another keynote.