The title is a quote from Don Box while presenting Windows Communication Foundation at Microsofts Professional Developers Conference in LA.  Many years ago I read some of Dons books and was always impressed on how he got Windows.  I had the pleasure of seeing him live at this years PDC and saw what a dynamic speaker he is, in addition to the fact that he probably knows more about Windows then any other person on the planet.

 

Dons SOA comment goes directly to how goofy our industry has become where everyone has latched onto this latest TLA.  I cant go anywhere in the software world without running across SOA.  Like Don says, SOA what!  To quote Don, Message, oh message, the truth is on the wire.  There is nothing else.  So much for SOA

 

I was able to catch Steven Sinofskys presentation on Office 12.  The big news is the investment Microsoft has made in SharePoint Version 3.  I thought SharePoint 2003 was pretty cool as that is how I make my living as an Architect, solving customer problems using SharePoint.  However, version 3 is incredible!  It is the center piece of Microsofts Enterprise Content Management (ECM) strategy for the Information Worker.  It represents the 5 pillars of connected systems, Interaction (using Atlas), Messaging and Services (using Windows Communication Foundation), Workflow (using Windows Workflow Foundation), Identity and Access (using InfoCard and AD), and Data (using SQL 2005).  Whats really surprising to me is that at this years PDC, nothing on ASP.NET web application development.  It looks like that SharePoint is the web application of choice.

 

Speaking of Workflow, I got to see Windows Workflow Foundation in detail.  Essentially it is a framework (i.e. a se