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Sitting here on Saturday morning with a nice cup of Kona coffee. There just is no better coffee in the world. Strong but deceivingly smooth. I really miss our former annual trips to the Big Island that we used to take with my Father-In-Law and family before he got ill. We used to go up in the hills and buy direct from the growers. Umm, nothing better. The coffee may actually help me get over my funk morning as there is now a lot going on my personal life but you know you never get to blog what really matters Agile/Extreme Programming/Tools While Steve was off having a baby , I went back into the team pairing full time for this Iteration rather than doing do the advance work on Workflow and stuff. It felt really good and of course it was a challenge for me, as many of the particulars of the system have changed since I last paired and I had to actually relies on my pair more. What floored me, even though it shouldn't at this point, is just how good this team has gotten. Every single person on the team could explain any place in the code at any time and we were able to evolve the design and code together. It still blows me away the power of pair programming BTW, we are working on our THIRD release of our Collateral Management tools and architecture to at least two Top 50 Banks! Ayende has released Rhino Mocks 3.0 , the premier Mocking solution on .NET IMHO He was also on .NET Rocks talking about NHibernate and Rhino Mocks Since he still had time after the last two somehow, he also put out an hour long screen cast about Rhino Mocks Jeremy is Code Complete on Structure Map 2.0 Financial and Banking Mike Walker announces the OBA Reference Application Pack for Loan Origination Systems (OR-Loss ). This is a lot of great stuff here Mike is also doing a Financial Services Unwrapped IV Webcast Workflow Paul Andrews blogs about the 3rd performance paper released for WF Sylvain blogs that K2 BlackPearl Beta 1 TR2 is available. BlackPearl is the version of K2.NET built on WF CLR/C# Read More...
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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...
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I have been working with the Office Live Services Beta for some months now. They just went live with my site over the weekend (although I still have to work on the domain name transfer) and it looks pretty good! I have a new Header and Home Page design. I have added my How-To STS/Window Authentication with ADAM/AD, Roles in AzMan with WCF to the refurbished WCF page . I added a new Domain Driven Design page under Software Engineering . My Presentations, as always are here . Hey, what else am I going to do while I am waiting for my flight? I would like and appreciate any and all feedback as comments here. What's good? What's bad? Knowing my blog and its subjects, what would you like to see? Technorati Tags: .NET , Windows Communication Foundation , WCF , Software Architecture , INETA , MVP , .NET Framework 3 , Microsoft Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
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Winter has finally set in with single digit temps and minus degrees wind chills but still no snow. WPF/Avalon Adam's WPF book is out and flying off the shelves apparently ! I have been looking forward to this one as his COM Interop book is the bible there. Feb CTP of WPF/E! New Docs, SDK and QuickStarts for the above Via Mike Harsh, Dave has put up a new WPF/E sample he built for a recent INETA talk that is a Reflection Editor .NET 3.0 Crash Course - Part 8: WPF Conclusion Tim Sneath , from the WPF Team, has been doing a series on great WPF applications that is up to 6. This hopefully proves that WPF is more than some pretty 3D demo thing and being used in real applications. #1: British Library Turning the Pages , #2: Electric Rain StandOut , #3: 90 Degree Radius Reports , #4: Otto , #5: TF1 , and #6: fnac.com LINQ/ADO.NET Orcas Entity Data Model 101: Part 1 Type safety - LINQ to DataSets Part 2 SOA As mentioned before, Dale Churchward is doing a series on "Proper SOA." He adds A Proper SOA is a Framework , A Proper SOA Must Work With Your Current Infrastructure and Legacy Applications , and A Proper SOA is Flexible Enough to Support Multiple Vendors, Software, and Hardware Harry on the Web Service Software Factory Kzu wrote a niece piece called " Building Software Factories Today " where he outlines some of the challenges and techniques you can use (and we will be using) to make effective factories on today's platform. [via Peter ] Financial and Banking Vertical/Architecture Mike has more on a topic near and dear to me: Software Factories for Financial Services Mike also shows how Microsoft is a clear leader in standards support for our Financial Industry. For us support for standards like SWIFT are critical BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT Architecture Nick says , "In think that one of the most valuable traits of an enterprise architect is the ability to push gently. In other words, if you find that a team is developing a solution that cannot be integrated or creates Read More...
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Way back on Sep. 7th of last year, I published an entry on writing your first WPF program on Vista . Now, that Vista is really out, and there is a ton of excitement about WPF on blogs lately. I spent about 4 hours this morning from 1-4 AM (yes that's when there's no kids!) setting things up and getting things working. This time, however, I to force myself methodically to go through excercises using the book Foundations of WPF: An Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation . I felt that I was reading a lot of other books but sometimes I just need to force myself to go through some driven excercises to get it to sink in. I don't think I want to put in the steps here as that would just be the copyrighted material from Chapter 3 but the main difference for me is this first excercise had me using the Expression Blend product to design a WPF application that creates a slick UI on top of a SQL Server and displays bikes utilizing Data Binding. I found Expression Blend a much better experience for creating XAML UI's than Cider which is admittely not finished until Orcas. Some things to note: I used Tim Sneath's Building a Perfect WPF Developer Workstation to set up my Vista machine SQL Server 2005 Standard requires SP2 for Vista. I got it here (SP2 Dec CTP) I know this is not a real step-by-step how-to post but I'll have much more soon. Technorati Tags: .NET , Windows Presentation Foundation , WPF , Avalon , Microsoft Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
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Completely buried with two projects and the main one is going to CTP #2 at a major back in Paris/London next week so going to scrape this together quickly. I have also been pairing with Steve back on the main project on solving performance problems - yesterday, he and I optimized a section of the system where an operation was taking 25 to 30 minutes and got it down to 30 seconds! Now that's a good boost! I have much in my head concerning where we are at and my current feelings on being agile, architecture and such but they will have to wait. I tried to blog about the Apple iPhone announcement but couldn't muster up enough interest... Architecture and SOA, Agile SOA and BI Impendence Mismatch Arnon has great comments on a presentation (via Shahid Sah's blog) by Ron Jacobs on the Software Architect's Role. he says, "In this presentation, entitled Architects and the Architecture of Software , Ron compares the architect's role to that of an explorer, advocate, and designer," and "However, I would personally replace "advocate" with "mentor", and "explorer" with a "polymath" or "Renaissance" man. I'd also add a leader and visionary (although Ron mentions that as part of the discussion on explorer)." I agree with his additions, at least how I see my role. He also has some outstanding comments on Agile Iterations and what I really want to write about (and finding) when I have time: "To me, that is just a reminder why JEDUF is important. I find that in projects that are large or overly complex "sacrificing" one, two, or even three iterations for handling technical risks and forming a candidate architecture goes a long way ( and I don't care if this makes my project not agile. I am fine if it is pliant , lagum or what-not)." I am actually finding its quite a bit more than 1-3 Iterations depending on the project and environment. Actually this ties in with Jim's Design Maps . Cazz on Building Software Factories Today Richard Venyard on SOA Algebra WCF/Indigo Harry finds Indigo daunting Read More...
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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...
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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...
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Family morning at the Gentiles means the whole family watching Radiohead from 1994 while waiting for the Starbucks to come... Software Development Ayende points to this great list Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money and asks what excites you as a developer? As I said in a Retrospective last night, its not about money for me or just a job (expressed as "Build Something That Matters"). If I can't have the passion for my project, my career as a Software Architect, taking the responsibility for my own career, than I need to find something else to do because this is far from the least stressful job out there. You had better be in it because you love it and love to create and ship stuff that delights customers. Otherwise I can go weave baskets out in New Mexico... Data/OR/M/Software Architecture Jeff Palermo notes that we'll see Microsoft's OR/M soon and I can't help thinking BFD and its about time. After years of misleading developers that Stored Procs and database-driven architectures and apps were the only way , is too late? Many of us who have been doing this for a while and come out of other environments are already way ahead using Wilson OR/M, NHibernate, LBLgen and others. And everyone gushes "oh, ah, LINQ is so cool!...... I really like my friend Peter's piece Specifications are Like Object-Oriented Messages . A must-read! Avaon/WPF XamlPadX Updated! Vista Tim Sneath has Windows Vista Secret #10: Open an Elevated Command Prompt in Six Keystrokes Technorati Tags: Software Development , Data , OR/M , LINQ , Avalon , Windows Presentation Foundation , Software Architecture , Agile , Agile Development , CLR , Microsoft Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
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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...
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Angus, the bulldog has so taken over the house. At least, it's made us more popular with the neighbors. Agile/Extreme Programming I always appreciate the care Jeremy Miller takes in articulating his points and his latest is no exception. In stating his Programming Manifesto , he makes reference to the infamous Agile Manifesto , I find I am in alignment with just about all his well-argued positions, particular, Unit Testing and Testability over Defensive Coding, Tracing, Debugging, and Paranoid Scoping and Explicit Code over Design Time Wizards. Read it all and come up with your own. Martin Fowler takes on PairProgrammingMisconceptions . Some are obvious but three, in my mind, are not: You have to do pair programming if you're doing an agile process Extreme Programming forces you to do Pair-Programming It's only worth pairing on complex code, rote code yields no advantage. WPF/Avalon/Windows Presentation Foundation Wow! Take a look at XamlPadX (Extended ) [via Mike ] Check out how to create Vista Gadgets using WPF A Sackful of WPF Tidbits from Tim Sneath Learning WPF WCF/Indigo/SOA/Workflow Tomas with How IMetadataExchange is Hosted WS-MTOM has been released Nicholas Allen::Advanced URL ACLing with Windows Vista Nicholas Allen::Design Pattern for Building Channel Factories and Listeners Vista Vista tips, get yer Vista Tips! Technorati Tags: SOA , Service Oriented Architecture , Windows Communication Foundation , Software Architecture , WPF , Avalon , Windows Presentation Foundation , TDD , Agile , Agile Development , Microsoft Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
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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...
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Ok after all this confus ion (a bunch of questions still remain), I was able to install the whole bunch on Vista 5600 and I got my first Avalon program working there from VS2005. .NET 3 Runtime Components (already installed in box) Microsoft Windows SDK Sept CTP Orcas Tools for .NET Framework 3 Windows Workflow Extensions Release Candidate 5 (do I hear 42?) Technorati Tags: Vista , Windows Communication Foundation , WCF , Indigo , Windows Vista , NET Framework 3 , WPF , Avalon , Microsoft Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More...
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