Welcome to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Top Tasks :

WCF Community Bloggers

Browse by Tags

All Tags » .NET Framework ... » Software Archit... » New and Notable   (RSS)

  • New and Notable 150!!

    This is it, the big 150! The first New and Notable was on May 19, 2003 , (my first post was March 29, 2002 ) and I paid homage to the master, "I have always admired Mike's ability to look at the world out there and put it all into one great post, The Daily Grind . While I can't pretend to have Mike's writing ability, I would like to start moving to something similar instead of multiple seperate posts." I wish I had the discipline of Mike because if I posted daily I would be well towards 1000 instead of 150-) but hey I'm pretty proud of my record. I love this community and in the last 25 years this community (and Microsoft) have been real good to me and my family. I hope that what I have been picking here has been of good use to the community to keep you informed on key .NET activities as well as the architectural and design side. Thus, I go forth and pick: Entity Framework, ADO.NET 3, Orcas, MVP Summit One of the best writers in the community today is certainly Jeremy Miller . His latest post, MVP Summit Recapped: Linq for Entities, MonoRail, and Shameless Name Dropping , is a fine example of why. In one post, he is able to write quite elequently on complex subjects like the subtle design flaws in Entity Framework 3 and why WF 4 will rock your world. He is able to take a technology, stick to his design principles and stand his ground, educating and helping all involved achieve something better than was there before. He certainly wasn't the only one of us doing that but his post really captures the core design principles of no infrastructure code in business logic classes. Infrastructure is Infrastructure, business logic is business logic. We want the same thing: No marker interfaces, no codegen, no partial classes. Just plain "PO" and support for the Unit of Work pattern. David Laribee also talks on this area and makes clear that its a vision thing that doesn't really compare to NHibernate which is just OR/M; it's a full Read More...
  • New and Notable 149

    Yup, I'm still stuck in Seattle and I still feel like crap. Tomas just went off to the airport and I feel like the last MVP left in Seattle. Just want to get out of here and home but can't do that until tomorrow night. Lots of stuff stored up Entity Framework/ADO.NET 3/ORM/ASP.NET/MonoRail I consider my (and all the Code Better guys) biggest contribution to the whole Summit has been our conversations with the Microsoft Data Team on Linq for Entities . I would like to thank the Microsoft guys for being so open to feedback and understanding us In the meantime, Ayende went and did LINQ for NHibernate in his spare Time; does this man ever sleep???? Actually the second proudest moment came some of us CB bloggers with the special meeting with Scott Guthrie on how to make ASP.Net better support MVC much like Rails and MonoRail. My dissatisfaction with ASP.NET is well known and the reasons are expressed well by Ayende here on the leaky abstractions with WebForms and Jeremy Miller here . I expressed many times on my blog that I would just as soon go to Ruby on Rails if I had to do any Web stuff today. Several of the CB bloggers let me know about the goodness that is MonoRail. It's really awesome to see ScottGu have an MVC framework in the works as Jeffery talks about here Inheritance in the Entity Framework is the latest from the Data Team They also updated the 101 LINQ Samples that were included in the March CTP have now been updated to include the 101 LINQ to Entities Samples. To check out the newest samples download from here . Software Architecture/WCF/SOA Nice discussion from Harry on answering Dr. Nick's questions on SSB/WCF The Feb 2007 release of both the GAT and GAX have been released with Vista support but Harry has noted that you have to re-install all your guidance packages which is not so good Christian Weyer has some great slide decks from DevWeek 2007 Matias has an awesome post, " The holy grail of Enterprise SOA security " about SOA Enterprise Security using WCF Read More...
  • New and Notable 148

    Still real tired from my Oklahoma trip , partying with Raymond sure is exhausting-). Agile/Development Tools On my short list for some time now, is to switch from NUnit to the definitely superior MbUnit. My friend Andrew has done some great work with this tool and he has a new release out with the beta 1 release of MbUnit 2.4. New features in this drop. I really need to switch and get my team to switch over. It's just been an inertia thing with NUNit as I knew all along MbUnit was better Testing private methods for .NET 2.0 rom Ben Hall. Database rollback support for .NET 2.0 from Cathal Connolly and Todd Menier. NUnit style explicit support from Graham Hey. Speaking of NUnit, they also have a new release, NUnit 2.4 Release Candidate (2.4.0). The Release Notes are here and include some nice features: A new syntax and internal architecture for Asserts is being introduced in this release, based on the notion of constraints found in JMock and NMock. The Assert.That method is used to make an assertion based on a constraint Assert.That( actual, constraint, message, args ); Assert.That( actual, constraint, message ); Assert.That( actual, constraint ); The constraint argument may be specified directly using one of the built-in constraint classes or a user-defined class. It may also be specified using one of the syntax helpers provided as static methods of the Is class, such as Is.Null Is.Empty Is.EqualTo( object ) Is.CollectionContaining( object ) Is.SubsetOf( collection ) SCSF is one of the most visible Microsoft projects being done in an Agile way. They are crazy as us doing one week Iterations. Blaine has some reflections on Iteration 3 . CB brother, Jeremy asks what OSS tools are you using in development? As I answered there, they include: NUnit CruiseControl.Net FitNesseDotNet RhinoMocks Subversion TortoiseSVN Ankh Wiki Speaking of tools. my good buddy Tomas (see you next week!) has a nice list of Text Editors One of the things Raymond and I discussed in Oklahoma was Read More...
  • New and Notable 146

    Ah Saturday morning where we can sleep in, ah no wait...I have kids to wake me up at the crack of dawn... Software Architecture The PAG folks continue to deliver their goodness with their first weekly drop of the new version of the Smart Client Software Factory and they looked like they brought over some of the cool stuff from the Mobile version: What’s New In this drop, you have the first look at: • New Application Blocks. We have ported over four application blocks that were previously available as part of the Mobile Client Software Factory. We may refactor, remove, replace, this code in the future (we value your input), but we currently have the following: o Disconnected Agent Application Block. This application block provides management features for execution of Web services from occasionally connected smart clients. With a disconnected service agent, the device can maintain a queue of Web service requests when offline (disconnected) (emphasis mine) and then replay them when a connection to the server application becomes available. o Connection Monitor Application Block. This application block monitors and exposes the available connections and the associated networks. o Endpoint Catalog Application Block. This application block provides features to expose the physical addresses and other details of remote services. o Data Access Application Block. This application block provides support for SQL Server Compact Edition. This application block will be replaced when the factory migrates to the next version of Enterprise Library. Jeremy Miller continues his excellent posts and talks about something Steve and I approach in our architecture: Don't Let the Database Dictate Your Object Model . I have to admit to being dragged a bit by Steve into this approach with OR/M and dropping the whole data-centric database-out view I have had for many years. Also see his My Least Favorite Kind of Requirements Undocumented WCSF Feature: Global Exception Handling Udi tackles Can, or Read More...
  • New and Notable 142

    Data/ADO.NET Orcas Two from the ADO.NET team: Entity Client and Nulls - LINQ to DataSets Part 3 Software Architecture/SOA/CAB Udi answers, Can or should SOA be implemented without Web Services? David Chappell on The Three Faces of SOA Eric Newcomer: WS-* vs. REST is not the question Another architect with a chronicle of How CAN and TDD helps doing better designs WCF/CardSpace Richard Turner gives an insightful report on RSA2007 especially on the "demo showed Wachovia 's website running on Corillian 's online banking platform using Arcot Systems ' security engine to generate managed cards and process token requests." Corrillian and Wachovia's work will be important for all of this in this sector as more and more backs embrace CardSpace and Identity management. We are seeing a lot of movement in this area. Jorgen provides some great links on Interoperability with WCF . This is an area that I am becoming more involved with Java systems communicating with our WCF Services. Dr. Nick continues with More Poison Message Handling Tomas on Writing a WCF Transport Channel - Part 1 Agile Architecture Uncertain Planning Nick talks about The minimum amount of architecture needed for Test Driven Design . .NET Framework 3/WF .NET Framework 3.0 training kit for WF, WCF and CardSpace [via Mike ] .NET 3.0 Middleware Technologies Day: Third Incarnation David Chappell: Why Workflow Matters WF, WCF and CardSpace training materials posted Technorati Tags: .NET , Smart Client , PAG , CAB , Software Architecture , Windows Communication Foundation , WCF , Windows Workflow , WF , Agile Architecture , TDD , .NET Framework 3 , ADO.NET , Orcas , Microsoft I'm listening to Street Life by Roxy Music on the album Stranded (Remastered) Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
  • New and Notable 138

    I have already said my piece on the Vista launch but also Office 2007 launches today which really rocks. The much better Outlook 2007 is worth the price of admission alone IMHO. Vista and Office Launches Vista Launch Page Bill Gates Keynote European Launch Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor Office 2007 Launch Page Nial Kennedy on launch in San Francisco Microsoft Debuts Vista in Global Marketing Blitz Robert McLaws posts on all those great Vista Updates that finally showed up last night on my Update. Can someone get me to stop playing Hold 'Em Ultimate Extra, my fingers hurt -) Software Architecture/SOA Pablo asks "CRUD Service for Service - Is a Bad Practice?" I think it depends, and as Robert Wilczynski says in the comments, some kinds of CRUD are fine, but the greater anti-pattern is chatty contract/interface. What's your thoughts? Pablo also talks about Services in .NET Part 1 Edward has started a new series of posts about factory basics called 'Factories 201', and he has kicked that off with a post entitled "What are they (concretely)?" [via Jezz Santos ] Arnon continues his excellent architectural writings on his Architect Blog with What Is SOA Anyway?: Part I, Ambiguity and Anyway? Part II, Hype Soma talks about Software Factories [via Harry ] WCF/Web Services/Workflow William Tay makes the very real case for why WS-ReliableMesaging is vital. I mean, when people *** about WS-*, I don't get how its not obvious that "the main characteristics of Web services is communication over unreliable communication channels such as the Internet employing unreliable data transfer protocols such as HTTP, SMTP and FTP" and many of us need things like WS-RM and other standards to build real service-oriented systems that actually do something. Luckily for me, Indigo bakes all this goodness in so it's just an attribute to me The master, David Chappell, tells us What's Really Important About SCA ( Service Component Architecture )? YAY! Mark Mercuri tells us the good news that the current Read More...
  • New and Notable 133

    A N&N from Brussels Belgium where I am up in the middle of the night (again I wake up at 3AM!) with my sleep hours all screwed up. I am enjoying my week here nonetheless. I don't know quite what to make of Brussels. Some parts remind me quite a bit of Paris but there is this weird mix of "modern" glass buildings although the style is a bit "older" than such US buildings. I don't know, I'm jet lagged and probably making no sense. The (potential) customer we are visiting is actually quite large > 3,000 employees most in one large building and I have been working hard on a "High Level Technical Document." Its' certainly some BDUF but this is a large SaS type architecture across 3 data centers that has many Enterprise issues (levels of Failover, SLAs, SQL Server Hot Mirroring, Perimeter Zone Security, etc. to deal with and get right. Anyhow, the food is good and there is a lot of espresso-). Architecture The Open Group (the TOGAF guys) has scheduled what appears to be an interesting conference on Enterprise Architecture and SOA in San Diego [via Architecture Blog ] Avalon/WCF Karsten gives an update on the North Face In Store Explorer WCF application that floored many of us at PDC05 and has now been deployed . He also reminds, "Note that the white paper written about this application is still relevant and worth reading. The code samples all work just fine on the final bits and have some useful code as far as state management, image montages and a 3D carousel." My good friend and fellow Smart Client track speaker, Walt Ritscher has started a new WCF blog at http://wpfwonderland.wordpress.com - Subscribed! Check out XAML to IL Explained Part 1 , WPF/e Example - Game of Life WCF/Indigo/SOA Nicholas Allan has his best of 2006 (and what a year it was for him/them!). Also check out Zen Faults Other Ted Neward has his predictions for 2007 , of which I mostly agree with all of them but one of the best qualities of Ted Read More...
  • New and Notable 131

    I am SO busy with INETA trips and tons to do at work. Here is what I have stored up for the last week or so. WCF/SOA/Workflow/WF Tomas blogs about something I face every day in WCF with WCF ServiceHost Failures and IDisposable with "The "don't call Close()/Dispose() if faulted" behavior that ServiceHost requires does not work well with IDisposable; it demands a behavior different from the standard IDisposable pattern." We're having a lot of issues with dealing with failures and what to do with them but Tomas definetly states a fundamental problem. Tomas has also WCF, WF and BizTalk Sample Posted with some interesting stuff!! MTOM Interoperability between Oracle Application Server and Windows Communication Foundation Part1: From WCF to Oracle Jesus Rodriguez as well, " I am happy to see this progress: " The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) announced the publication of three new Working Group Drafts : the Basic Profile 1.2, Basic Security Profile 1.1 and the Reliable Secure Profile 1.0 Usage Scenarios. Advancement of these documents to Working Group Draft status is an invitation to the Web services community to provide technical feedback." I could just list every single post that Mike Taulty writes on WF; they are all that good! In particular, WF and Versioning , MetaStorm and the Workflow Designer , Little Workflow Foundation Sample I could and have done the same with "Nicholas Allen's" posts on Indigo: ListenUriBindingElement , Creating Faults Part 1, and Part 2 CLR How to avoid assembly loads , and Getting the list of loaded assemblies from Richard Lander James Higgs talks about Garbage Collection and the IDisposable interface WPF/Avalon Karsten has an awesome Avalon demo - "The Woodgrove Finance Application is a great demo of how WPF can be used to create better data visualization, in this case for financial data. I've posted the source code -- there are some good nuggets in here worth exploring." Introducing the XML Assembly Generator Data V1 of Data Read More...
  • New and Notable 130

    Lots of great stuff this time. CLR/Interop There has always been a ton of confusion about CLR assembly version numbers since 1999 and a lot of people don't understand all the different version numbers. Luckily, Richard is starting a series on them with the first being the Native File Version which of course has nothing to do with CLR Versioning. Back to Interop - Mike Stall wisely says Marshal Opaque Structs as IntPtr Instead of Byte[] Speaking of Mike, he's got a very good Table of Cool .NET Tools if you work at this level WPF/Avalon Mike Swanson lists More WPF Conversion Tools, Including VB6 to XAML Karsten s ays, "If you are a WPF developer, you must read Optimizing WPF Application Performance " Anthony clarifies the difference between Microsoft Visual Studio codename "Orcas" CTPs and "Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP". WCF/SOA/Workflow Pablo has three Recommendations to Design Message Contracts . I agree with all three. Number 1 about not including business behavior in the message but using simple DTOs across has been the hardest for us to achieve. Nicholas Allan (again!) on Proxy Bypassing Behavior The Sharepoint team blog has been having a series of posts on Workflow in Sharepoint 2007 Choosing the Right Microsoft Integration Technology [via Tomas ] Windows Vista/Office 2007 Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 has their Business Launch today. Here is the official site . Technorati Tags: Software Development , Avalon , Windows Presentation Foundation , Software Architecture , Agile , Agile Development , Windows Communication Foundation , WCF , SOA , Microsoft Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
  • New and Notable 129

    Workflow/BPM/WCF/SOA David Chappell presents arguments both pro and con as to whether Microsoft qualifies as a BPM vendor. Personally, I think the answer is yes, especially when WF is intergrated into BizTalk 200x and other products. Nicholas Allan continues the excellent Indigo WCF posts with Controlling the Synchronization Process LINQ and Family/CLR PLINQ, which I blogged about some time ago has surfaced again with this post from DonXML where he does some clever reading of Microsoft job posts! to make some educated speculations on the growing importance of Concurrency and Parallellism in the CLR as well as PLINQ . And yes, Don, "the cool kids [ALREADY] realize that WPF, WCF and WF are yesterday's news, and LINQ is where it is at ;)" Speaking of LINQ, see the XMLTeam blog for the announcement of the LINQ to XSD Preview and these links: Here is the link to the LINQ to XSD download . The LINQ to XSD overview document is available separately. You also need the LINQ download (May 2006 CTP) Here is the link to the LINQ to XSD download . The LINQ to XSD overview document is available separately. You also need the LINQ download (May 2006 CTP) Also from Joe Duffy, see Vista SRWLock acquires during shutdown Architecture Validation Application Block: Revealed! [via Mike ] Technorati Tags: Software Development , Software Architecture , WF , Workflow , BPM , LINQ , PLINQ , SOA , Windows Communication Foundation , WCF , CLR , Windows Vista , Microsoft Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
  • New and Notable 123

    A very good day to leave the country and find a new one... WCF/Indigo/SOA/Workflow/.NET Framework 3 Here are the separate download links for the parts of .NET Framework 3 RTM that I blogged about yesterday: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation) Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Windows SDK .NET Framework 3.0 Samples - Microsoft Identity and Access Webcast Series [via Craig McMurthy ]. To register for any if these webcasts, including our kickoff webcast: “Identity and Access Vision and Strategy”, visit this link: IDA Webcasts MIIS Identity Integration 2003 SP2 Early-Adopter Access program available . This one would be a real good one for us to jump onto to. Windows SDK: Planning Ahead Mike Taulty on Workflow and ASP.NET Web Services . Nothing to do with Mike's fine article but does anyone else other than Steve and I find that WF doesn't work with another member of WinFX, WCF right out of the box very strange?? I understand the need to support ASMX and I am fine with that but in the last 3 years couldn't they have also integrated WF and WCF before ship for the rest of us?? Data/SQL Server/LINQ/OR/M SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 CTP (November 2006) Support for the upcoming Windows Vista. Data Mining Add-Ins for Office 2007, which enables data mining functionality from SSAS to be used directly within Excel 2007 and Visio 2007. SSRS integration with MOSS 2007, which allows integration with the Report Center in SharePoint providing seamless consumption and management of SSRS reports within SharePoint. SSAS improvements for Excel 2007 and Excel Services relating to performance and functionality. Oracle Support in Read More...
  • New and Notable 120

    Windows Vista The big news, according to News.com , Steve Ballmer will ring in availability of Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Exchange 2007 at the New York Stock Exchange on November 30th [via Robert ]. This should mean the proper release of WinFX .NET Framework 3 with WCXF, WPF, WF. It will be good to be mainstream again Software Architecture/SOA/WCF Looks like the very capable Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz , has essentially picked up the book on SOA Patterns/WCF that I was going to do for Manning. Hey, it looks like its in better hands as I read his first chapter and its great stuff. I look forward to this one.\ Speaking of Arnon on Architecture, check out his column , and in particular "The Saga Continues: "Queues are Databases?" where he responds to Udi who had a couple of comments regarding his second post on Queues Are Databases . Ted Neward has started an MSDN column based on his Pragmatic Architecture talks he has been doing and if the first article in the series on Layering, is any indication it's going to be a great series. Highly Recommended! Scott Hanselman has two great posts on Identity/CardSpaces; first here and then his latest Hanselminutes episode . Lots of great resources here. Also highly recommended! Jorgen points to a Craig McMurtry post on Versioning Service Interfaces, definitely an tricky area. The PAG folks have just released a very much needed " ClickOnce Resource Kit for SCSF " that was developed in partnership with ClickOnce guru Brian Noyes . Nicholas Allan: MixedMode Addressing WPF/Avalon I just discovered this series, which apparently is already in its eighth post; A Tour of XAML VIII: More Fun with Markup Compatability Technorati Tags: SOA , Service Oriented Architecture , Windows Communication Foundation , Software Architecture , WPF , Avalon , Windows Presentation Foundation , Microsoft Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
  • New and Notable 117

    I am still reeling from seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers with Mars Volta 2 nights ago in Philly at the Wachovia Center. The Peppers were beyond grea t with Frusciante taking a very active lead role. Many of the songs contained a full-out Hendrix-type feedback solo in it that showed the depth of his talents. I think Stadium Arcadium is their best album since Blood, Sex, Magic (which they pulled out the title song the other night!!). You can't beat a start of Can't Stop-> Dani California! Mars Volta is one of my favorite bands (although hard to take at times) and I am listening to the brilliant new Ampheture right now which they played in full the other night. Live, they come off as a wall of sonic noise and Bixler-Zavala wailing singing, an assault on the senses that drove people nuts (my wife wanted to leave!) and their greatness only came through in sporadic moments (Viscera Eyes). Okay, a lot of stuff today. Number one, I want to congratulate my good friend and master of these types of posts, Mike Gunderloy for hitting The Daily Grind 1000 !! Mike is an incredible asset to the community and a terrific writer to boot. If you are one of the rare people not already subscribed, get your ass over there this minute and make it so! I have started to write (for work) a Workflow XOML loader and executor. I want to do something like XamlPad or even Snippet Compiler to execute my workflows. I have the hosting of the runtime down and loading the XAML/XOML. More later. WCF/SOA/Indigo/BizTalk/Workflow/Distributed .NET Another good friend of mine, Tomas Restepo. has some great stuff: He released his MSMQ Activities for Windows Workflow Foundation. He addresses MsmqListenerService concerns with the above Gets answers for the question of how to get the SOAP Action associated with a given operation when all you have is the OperationDescription for it Points to Ralph Squillace s post an walkthrough entry of how metadata publication (MEX + WSDL) is enabled in Windows Communication Read More...

Copyright © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. | Terms of Use | Privacy Statement | Contact Us