It was a great event which basically was intended for Developers (first part about Visual Studio 2010, TFS 2010 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2) and System Administrators (second part about Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and ForeFront 2010).
Moscow is my favorite city and I was happy visit it again (even at winter with much more snow than usually ;) ).
Unfortunately one lecturer was ill and ADO.NET 4.0 topic was not covered but the rest of the themes were described in the deep details.
I will not provide here details of the presentations because otherwise it will be too long post but I would like provide my comments instead.
At first I would like list the features I will definitely incorporate in my daily development:
SQL Server 2008 R2:
1.
Master Data Services - new feature of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 which is intended for providing "central management of master data entities and hierarchies" with very friendly UI of their management.
2.
Report Builder 3.0 - new version of Report Builder which is nowadays supporting maps data presentation and use Ajax technology for more efficient presentation of the results.
3.
StreamInsight - super-feature from my point of view (lecturer was full of enthusiasm about its applying for stocks traiding ;) ), enables almost real-time data flows' processing by usage of the appropriate .NET IObservable/IObserver interfaces.
Visual Studio 2010:
1.
SharePoint development tools - however it doesn't cover all required functionality (e.g. SharePoint Solution Installer seems being still useful) but at least some steps towards the facilitation of SharePoint development are completed (e.g. 'Browse SharePoint sites by using the Server Explorer', 'Create Web parts and application pages for a SharePoint site', 'Develop SharePoint solutions with SharePoint project type templates and SharePoint project item templates' and 'Import, modify, and extend solution packages (.wsp)').
2.
Data-tier application (DAC Pack) - new very useful capability of building just one file for incremental upgrading of your database (which is not too complex like renaming the column but can contain adding column, creation or altering the view etc).
3.
Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management 2010 contains plenty of new features for full-cycle automation of all regular development and testing tasks.
Team Foundation Server 2010:
1.
Team Project Collections - new hierarchical level of organization for TFS projects which is allowing completely separate instances of the TFS project sets be located within the same TFS server.
2.
TFS_Config, TFS_WareHouse and TFS_* - new data organization concept is
more consistent with SharePoint terminology.
3.
Best Practices Analyzer as the part of PowerTools 2010 - seems being useful.