Every rational surface is separably split.
We introduce a new construction of exceptional objects in the derived category of coherent sheaves on a compact homogeneous space of a semisimple algebraic group and show that it produces exceptional collections of the length equal to the rank of the Grothendieck group on homogeneous spaces of all classical groups.
These are expository notes from the 2008 Srní Winter School. They have two purposes: (1) to give a quick introduction to exterior differential systems (EDS), which is a collection of techniques for determining local existence to systems of partial differential equations, and (2) to give an exposition of recent work (joint with C. Robles) on the study of the Fubini-Griffiths-Harris rigidity of rational homogeneous varieties, which also involves an advance in the EDS technology.