As many of you would know by now, these days I am attempting to summarize my experience at Tech-Ed 2011 (India) held from March 23-25, 2011 at Bengaluru, India.

The summary of my experiences on Day 01 can be found at:http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/nakul/archive/2011/03/28/tech-ed-2011-india-day-01-connect-learn-explore-evolve.aspx

Today, I will be sharing with you the experience of Day 02.

IE 9 India Launch – Fast is Now Beautiful!

I just can’t believe how lucky I am to be a part of history! Day 02 of the Tech Ed 2011 saw the India launch of the most awaited web-browser – The Internet Explorer 9! Brian Hall, General Manager of Windows Live and Internet Explorer products was at the venue to demonstrate the path towards a more beautiful web!

With full support of HTML 5 and CSS3, this is a completely new browser, that allows us (the end users) to pay more attention to the web-site and the overall browsing experience rather than the browser itself. The IE9 browser can leverage the CPU’s available power for better performance. The browser integrates seamlessly with Windows 7 and is able to make use of features like jumplists to allow for a highly productive web-experience.

Incidentally, the new JavaScript engine in the IE9 is called – “Chakra”! The world’s 2nd largest developer ecosystem (refer Mr. Qi Lu’s comment on the Indian IT industry during the opening keynote on Day 01) does have a deep influence.

Some of the sites where you can see the capabilities of IE9 in full bloom are http://www.snapdeal.com and http://www.flipkart.com. Go check them out!

Download IE9 from http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/

Test your browser against IE9 by using the test tools available at: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

IE6 countdown…

10 years ago, a browser was born. A browser that changed the browsing experience forever, and was so great that people still use it to this day! It was the Internet Explorer 6. Now, it is time for IE6 to die. Internet technologies have grown to such an extent that all of us need to work together to finally sunset IE6. Visit  http://www.ie6countdown.com/ to do the following:

1. Join the cause – Display the countdown timer on your website for IE6 users
2. Get a list of the reasons of why you absolutely should upgrade to IE9
3. Spread the message – about 15.8K tweets are already out as of writing this post – won’t you do your part?

Windows Azure – a solid cloud platform

After the power-packed launch of IE9, it was time for studying some case-studies on the practical implementations of Windows Azure. Bharat Shyam, General Manager, Windows Azure was at the event to showcase the success stories of Windows Azure. The audience was mesmerized when Bharat shared some of the biggest Azure installations. To name a few, Windows Live, Bing, Exchange Hosted Services, MSN website, Windows Hotmail and a lot of other commonly used sites and services are hosted on Azure.

Breakout Sessions – a mix of Core Dev & BI tracks

Day 02 was a mixed-bag for me. Personal interest in data access technologies and BI technologies made me attend sessions across tracks – some in the Core Dev and others in the BI track.

Core .NET Framework 4.0 enhancements every developer should know

Sanjay Vyas and Raj Chaudhuri, two of the leading independent experts (and MVPs) in the .NET area presented a very concise, but thorough session on the key enhancements of the .NET Framework 4.0.

What’s new in the Base Class Library?

1. Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) – Declaration & consumption of extensibility points and monitoring of new runtime extensions
2. New Data types of BigInteger/ComplexNumber/Tuple and Sorted Set
3. I/O improvements – Memory mapped files

New Language Features

New in C# 4.0	New in VB.NET 10	New in Both
Named Parameters Optional Parameters Dynamic Scoping	Statement Lambdas Multiline Lambdas Auto-implemented properties Collection initalizer	Generic Variance Extension Property

Data Access Methodologies – When to choose what (ADO.NET, Entity Framework, LINQ, WCF Data Services)

Post lunch, Wriju Ghosh gave a concise pill on Data Access Methodologies explaining when and how to choose between ADO.NET, Entity Framework, LINQ and WCF Data services.

Switching gears with BI

After some core Dev sessions, it was time to join the BI track by attending the following sessions:

1. Building Semantic Models in SQL Server “Denali” – Rushabh B. Mehta (President, PASS and MD, Solid Quality India Pvt. Ltd)
2. SSAS – Designing, Development & Deployment Best Practices – Amit Bansal
3. Internal and working of DAX with Power Pivot – Rushabh B. Mehta

Power Pivot, since it’s release has attracted me for it’s simplicity, and Rushabh’s session was full of pointers to make Power Pivot a very powerful self-service BI tool.

Closing time – Demo Extravaganza!

As on Day 01, the final session of the day was an action-packed show of the sheer power that Microsoft’s technologies possess. From games that one can make in under 3 minutes to calculating the distance between Bengaluru and Hyderabad (venue, Tech-Ed 2009) using SQL Server Spatial databases – this session had it all. The audience never batted an eyelid, and we had a perfect end to another perfect day!

Stay tuned for a detailed account of excitement on the final day of Tech-Ed 2011 (India)!

Until we meet next time,

Be courteous. Drive responsibly.