The new COM API for UI Automation (UIA) is a significant advance over previous OS support for programmatic access to UI from native code. The Windows 7 UI Automation API also introduces new support for ARIA properties, virtualized controls, and customizable patterns. This presentation also shares key information about implementing accessibility for custom controls using the UI Automation Provider API. The demos and code samples are primary written in C++.

• Michael Bernstein

This is a web exclusive session which was not delivered at PDC2008, but provides complimentary content aligned with PDC. How does Windows use code signatures to enhance security? How do I sign my application to get the best user experience with features in Windows 7? How can my application's security benefit from verifying code signatures? This session will review key features in Windows 7 that leverages code signatures, such as signing for Internet Explorer, 64 bit kernel, User Account Control (UAC), and Software Restriction Policies (SRP). We will show you best practices and review common mistakes when signing code. We will also show you how to sign your application's product updates and verify signatures from with-in your application.

• Ben Nick

One of the defining characteristics of the human spirit is its ability to aspire to a greater tomorrow. Whether it be good health, sustainable resources, improved living standards, or better education, human beings exhibit an inexhaustible capacity to imagine a brighter future-and to work to make such dreams real. At Microsoft Research, we share a commitment to making the world a better place. Our work is all about advancing the frontiers of knowledge, overcoming challenges, and getting to the solution of important problems. Microsoft Research is focused on developing new technologies that can improve all our lives and in cooperation with academia, governments and industry we are applying our results to make the world a better place.

Chris Anderson and Don Box take the microphone over in Keynote 3 and explore Microsoft's latest technologies through the eyes of working developers.

Microsoft Executives Steven Sinofsky, Julie Larson Green, David Treadwell, Scott Guthrie and Takeshi Numoto provide insights to Windows 7, Office 14 for the Web, Web and Windows Development with Visual Studio and .NET and building rich social applications with Live Services in this keynote at PDC2008.

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie introduces Windows Azure and Azure Services Platform during the PDC2008 opening keynote. Explore how Microsoft is transforming Microsoft's offerings across the board with announcements from Amitabh Srivastava, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft with responsibility for major components of the company's next-generation services platform; Senior Vice President of the Server and Tools Business Bob Muglia, Corporate Vice president of Microsoft Online David Thompson.

Unit testing means different things to different people. To Agile developers, it enables Test Driven Development. To researchers, it enables test generation from static and dynamic analysis. To others, it's a means to test protocols, APIs, and other functionality below the presentation layer. Others still see it as a means to do conformance testing. Hear four experts debate the perspectives on the advances of the last decade and the trends of the next. Audience participation is encouraged.

• Jim Newkirk
• Nikolai Tillmann
  Nikolai Tillmann has been with Microsoft Research for 6 years. He is currently leading the Pex project, building an automated test case generation tool for .NET based program analysis. Previously, he worked on Spec Explorer, a model-based testing tool.
• Euan Garden
• Peter Provost
  Peter Provost is a Sr. Program Manager with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Architect Edition. He is a recognized agile coach, author and presenter and brings more than 10 years of agile development and project management experience. Peter is currently working with VSTS Architect Edition to help create the next wave of architectural and modeling tools.

Learn how to catch critical bugs earlier in the development cycle by identifying issues such as buffer overruns and SQL injection attacks before they actually cause a security exploit. The Code Analysis features in Microsoft Visual Studio help you tune application security, robustness, performance, and more. Learn about Code Analysis (for native and managed) and how to apply it effectively within your team's development lifecycle. Also hear about new features in Visual Studio 2010, including the new Rule Sets feature that makes it easy to manage, configure, and maintain rules.

• Ravs Kaur

The Visual Studio Debugger provides a slew of features that make the task of debugging both easier and more efficient. Learn about time-saving tips and tricks for all versions of the Visual Studio Debugger, including the new debugger features in Visual Studio 2010. Hear about the new mixed-mode debugging feature, the breakpoints window enhancements, the new WPF visualizers, and a number of other features. Also learn about thread debugging enhancements, new features for making stepping into properties easier, and more. Join us as we crack open the toolbox and walk through some of the debugger's best practices.

• John Cunningham
  John has been in the business of debuggers and diagnostic tools for around 15 years. He cut his teeth on debuggers for Windows 16 and 32bit, SunOS and Solaris. After a brief stint doing embedded debuggers at Wind River Systems, John joined Microsoft during the Visual Studio .Net product cycle. He has worked as a developer and lead on native and managed debuggers. John was part of the TeamSystem team from Day -30, working on the VS profiler and code coverage. Since then John has worked on starting the project for the application flight recorder as well as continuing to develop debugging and profiling technologies. John dreams in CodeView records. There is no cure.

Learn about the Concurrency Analysis Platform (CAP) from Microsoft Research and how it enables various concurrency bug-finding tools. See a demo of CHESS, a tool built on CAP for finding and reproducing Heisenbugs. Also hear about future tools from Microsoft Research, including a lightweight data-race detection engine and a tool for finding memory-model errors.

• Thomas Ball
  Thomas Ball is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research where he manages the Software Reliability Research group (http://research.microsoft.com/srr/). Tom has been at Microsoft Research since 1999. He is one of the originators of the SLAM project, a software model checking engine for C that forms the basis of the Static Driver Verifier tool, made freely available by Microsoft for finding defects in device drivers. Tom's interests range from program analysis, model checking, testing and automated theorem proving to the problems of defining and measuring software quality.
• Madan Musuvathi
  Madan Musuvathi is a Researcher at Microsoft Research and is interested in building program analysis tools to improve the productivity of developers and testers. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2004.