Meet the Azure team at PDC09

David Gristwood goes roving with his video camera at the PDC to meet some of the Azure team who are responsible for building Azure and deciding the features make it into the product set. This is a great chance to hear some of the team talk about their areas of focus across Azure, including:

-          The Azure developer experience

-          What the Azure fabric controller is and how it works

-          What the new Codename “Dallas” project is about

-          The newly announced Appfabric and how it relates to .NET Services

-          The role of the newly released Windows Identity Foundation

And last, but by no means least, take a tour round one of the new Azure storage containers that was on display at the show.

(There is a bit of background noise in some of the interviews, but that’s the buzz from all the folk attending the PDC, but we hope it doesn’t detract from the video interviews).

Entity Framework 4: Part 1 - Simple Model First

This is part 1 of a series of short introductory screencasts to the new features of ADO.NET Entity Framework 4, which is part of .NET 4 and Visual Studo 2010. It was created using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

In this 10 minute screencast I explore the new Model First capability of Entity Framework. Model First allows you to create your Entity Data Model from scratch, focusing on defining the conceptual model from which we can then generate a database schema and mapping.

It is based on the demos I delivered during my Entity Framework session at TechEd Europe in November (DEV305).

Links:

• Companion walkthrough on my blog
• The relationship between the betas and ctps explained
• The related series of blog posts on Entity Framework 4
• Entity Framework 4 Resources
• My blog, twitter and team twitter

How Azure is being used in the real world - Azure Deep Dives

Microsoft runs occasional Azure Deep Dive events, with a small numbers of customers and partners, to help accelerate their progress building real world solutions on the Azure Platform, and providing feedback to the product team. This video looks behind the scenes at one of these 5 day Azure Deep Dives, meets the Microsoft folk mentoring the sessions, and the customers and partners building their solutions.

Check out the video to see:

- The features in the Azure Platform that early adopters are finding most compelling

- The emerging architectural patterns being used, such as the use of queues for durable messaging

- Discussion of recently released features for Windows Azure, and some hints for new features being announced at the PDC

- Real customer and partner solutions that are being built on the Azure Platform.

Talking Architects - Angela Yochem

"Architects need to be partners of the business" is what Angela Yochem, an Executive IT Architect with a large multinational organisation, believes is key in delivering value to the enterprise.