XML in the Wild

1. Hands-0n labs are very cool. I think I did every single Office 2007 lab except for the one about Excel. Those of you who know me, and how I feel about Excel and Excel development know why!
2. Sharepoint 2007 is a user friendly and usable portal with all sorts of features that end users will love, like workflows, blogs, and wikis... OH MY!!!
3. Do not bring your laptop bag to the first day of the conference. They just give you another one.
4. Empty your laptop bag of all but the essentials every night to make room for more vendor stuff. Trust me on this one.
5. The RibbonX Developer model is XML-based and way cool.
6. Spend time talking to folks on the Microsoft Office Development teams. They're very nice people who can tell you a lot about where the products are going.
7. XML - means to an end, or end unto itself? Microsoft seems to be more on the means to an end side of this fence. Yes, they have XML running through pretty much all of their systems as middleware - the RibbonX Developer XML file-based interface is an excellent example, but other than to continue Word's ability to work with a custom schema, they still haven't gone so far as to adopt XML as a content management way of life. They're getting closer, though.
8. The absence of any real discussion of XSLT and the near absence of any real discussion of XPATH... Maybe this was because it was such a huge and high level conference, but no one really talked much about XSLT and why you would want to do transforms on XML. XPATH got mentioned only occasionally in terms of how to get at stuff in middleware XML files. Whas' up with that?
9. Old dogs can learn new tricks. Once you convince them of the value of the trick. I used to think that applications were better in terms of maintenance and upgrades if you coded everything meticulously by hand. In practice, however, this also meant that your development team needed to follow a consistent methodology and approach, and that adding new people to the mix meant that you needed to bring them up to speed on your methodology and approach, convince them why your way was THE WAY, and then look over their shoulder to make sure they weren't breaking the rules... This was back in the days when I was trying to make the code do back flips and look perfect for the sake of making the code do back flips and look perfect, when I really should've been thinking about the quickest way to solve the business problem AND built a good solid maintainable and upgradeable application. Now I'm all about the quickest way between point A and B. Visual Studio generated code - whether you're using intellisense or snippets give you consistency and makes sure that you follow the rules. Microsoft does publish best practices and all sorts of other information about how you can approach your projects. So my question is, if I'm not a technology guru - that is, I don't sit on standards committees and think deep thoughts of brilliant and Escher'esque symmetical code patterns, why should I reinvent the wheel if I have a tool (Visual Studio) that does the hard stuff for me? I've long held to the motto "just because you can does not mean you should." I've only just come to really think to live by that motto in the last few years, though. This, however, is not an excuse for not understanding how to do it the hard way. You really do have to know how to do it the hard way to stay on the edge of these technologies, and to better appreciate how much stuff you can turn over to Microsoft's tools when building a Microsoft-based application.
10. Hah! I don't really need to go out and buy a Windows Mobile smart phone after all! I went to the Cingular site and figured out how to do everything I want to do on my current phone. Truth be told, I've used the Palm OS for too long to just give it up, and I don't need to be more connected than I already am. I can't believe I'm giving up the opportunity to lust after new techno toys, but there you go.

And there you have it folks... The conclusion of XML in the wild Tech Ed 2006 environment.

But there are many other environments and habitats in which wild XML may thrive. For this reason, I've decided to continue my musings here. I can't guarantee any smoking gun revelations, but I do keep my ear to the web on lots of XML topics other than XML in Microsoft products and content management-based XML...

And with the previous brave statement, I open the virtual floor to whomever should care to request any further field studies of the wild XML beast. If I don't have an opinion (yeah. right.), or don't know a subject directly, chances are that I do know from whom, how, and where to find answers. I invite you to bring on your suggestions for further XML in the Wild adventures.

// posted by Jean K. @ 10:49 AM