A webcast of Steve Ballmer’s Tech·Ed 2005 Keynote: "Delivering New Value to the Business" can be found here

Tuesday, June 07, 2005 7:18:30 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [3] | 

PDC '05  registration is open!

plus more details on the sessions have been published, such as for communications for example, there will be:

<extract>
Communications

• Building Next Generation Connected and Distributed Applications Using Indigo, IIS7, Peer-to-Peer, and More
• A Lap Around Indigo
• Indigo: Under the Hood
• IIS7: What's New in Hosting and Extensibility
• InfoCard in a Nutshell
• Enhancing Applications with Real Time Communication Platforms
• Building P2P Applications Using Longhorn's New PeerNet APIs
• Indigo Extensibility: How to Write an Indigo Transport Channel
• Writing Interoperable Indigo Services

</extract>

for all of the currently available/published details you can go to this link.

Ciao,
Paul

Tuesday, June 07, 2005 5:05:52 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/launch2005/

Enjoy!

-Paul

also the offical announcement for the launch date (the week of the 7th of Nov.) of  Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Biztalk 2006 can be found at this link

Tuesday, June 07, 2005 3:09:50 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Its looks like the week starting the 7th of Nov. is the big launch for Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Biztalk 2006. Cool!!

The details were announced this morning at TechEd.

details via, offical MS press release

Tuesday, June 07, 2005 3:00:08 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

This cropped in a discussion around some community work we are doing here in Ireland and I was a bit stumped as to how best to decribe the Infocard technology, as I only have a very vague recollection as to what is it etc….

Being the hoarder of web links that I am, I knew I had some bookmarks to it somewhere.

Sure enough I do, Tim Sneath gives a nice overview and of course Kim Camerons blog (one of the archs of Infocard) is a very useful resource.

Also you have a number of papers on MSDN that cover this in more detail, such as Microsoft's Vision for an Identity Metasystem.

And of course you can play with the bits in the avalon and indigo beta 1 RC.

– Paul

Saturday, June 04, 2005 3:16:35 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

The CTP of WSE 3.0 is out. You can get the download at this link and the release notes here.

Also some new HOL’s for messaging and security have been released, these can be found here and here

updates and new features include

<extract>

New Features for Version 3.0

• The introduction of Turnkey Security Scenarios that provide high level security building blocks that enable you to secure messaging patterns (such as request/response) rather than having to consider how to secure the request and response independently. These Turnkey Security Scenarios, otherwise known as security assertions, are best practices when securing end to end messages.
• Improved Policy Framework

• The Policy format has been simplified to reflect the Turnkey Security Scenarios. Policy still allows configuration-based declaration of security requirements for incoming and outgoing SOAP messages, but now concentrates on where to get the security tokens from based upon the chosen security assertion.
• CLR attribute based programming. Policy files can now be associated with a client proxy or a service via a Policy attribute i.e. [Policy("ServerPolicy")]
• Imperative and declarative programming models for policy have been aligned to provide uniform programming abstractions. In WSE 2.0 there was no correlation between the code written to secure a message exchange and declarative policy files. In WSE 3.0 through the use of the CLR Policy attribute and the SetPolicy method on WSE generated client proxies (via Visual Studio's Add Web Reference) policy files can now be used in code to secure a client or a service.
• Policy also allows significant extensibility mechanisms for user-defined policies in code. By extending the Microsoft.Web.Services3.Design.PolicyAssertion class to create your own policy assertion, custom transformations of the SoapEnvelope can be performed at any stage in the pipeline. For example this enables you to define a logging assertion or have a policy assertion that enforces specified XML schemas for message validation. The same assertion can then be used in the declarative policy file.
• An updated Security Settings Wizard that helps secure an application by generating a policy. The Security Settings Wizard also now reflects the Turnkey Security Scenarios when securing an application and walks you through the best choice of Policy assertion based upon your chosen security deployment.

• ASP.NET Web services, otherwise known as ASMX Web services, can now be hosted outside of IIS, for example in console applications or NT services and called with the TCP/IP protocol. The existing lightweight, message-oriented, SOAP programming model SoapSender/ SoapReceiver classes remain.
• Support for the W3C MTOM Recommendation to enable large amounts of binary data to be sent efficiently and securely.
• Improved session management when using WS-SecureConversation and Security Context Tokens (SCTs). SCTs can now contain the original client authentication token when sent from the client to the service, which enable sessions to be re-established if lost e.g. when a service's appdomain is reset. This provides reliability for the session and enables sessions to be used in web farm scenarios.
• WS-SecureConversation sessions can now be cancelled explicitly.
• Integrated tool support with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. The WSE 3.0 configuration tool can be accessed via the context menu on the Visual Studio 2005 Solution Explorer.
• Support for 64 bit runtime.
• Support for updated Web services specifications including WS-Addressing, WS-Security, WS-Trust, and WS-SecureConversation. 
• Updated QuickStart samples.
• See the documentation for more information.

</extract> 

note the MTOM support and ASMX without hosting in IIS, pretty cool stuff. Also the “stateful” SCT is very useful, especially when scaling out across a web farm. Also this is the WSE version that is going to have wire interop with Indigo. Its based on all of the Whidbey goodness and going by comments that mfussell has on his blog it will ship at Whidbey RTM + 4 weeks.

Enjoy!

Saturday, June 04, 2005 2:51:38 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [2] | 

Just spotted this at Volker’s blog, AMD and MS are doing a tech tour together. Unfortunately, it seems the tour is only for the US market

Anyway, if you happen to be in the US, this should be well worth attending. The details can be found at http://cs.silverpop.com/amd/tech_tour/2005/registration_site1.htm

Wednesday, June 01, 2005 10:01:27 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

The new architecture resource center was launched on Microsoft.com yesterday. You can find it at this link.

Also you can find details on the upcoming certified architect programme.

– Paul

Wednesday, June 01, 2005 12:41:44 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

David Chappell has published an update to his early introduction to Indigo. The link to the updated article can be found at here

The paper is a great read, but what I find most interesting is the section entitled “Illustrating the Problem: A Scenario”.

When giving an example of solutions that leverage SO, my perference is to use solutions in the GDS/Travel industry vertical. When I have used the “new economy” example or a financial instuition example, I have found that it does not resonate well with everyone. What I have found is that folks sometimes feel that it protrays that a solution has to be a certain size and/or it applies to only certain vertical types.

So in the search for a example that seems to work the best (for me at least), I have tried using more local and specific examples, such as Reach or the UK’s Government Gateway. Since I typically draw a blank with many folks when I ask them if they know about the Reach project, the idea of using them got quickly canned.  

For me, the GDS/Travel vertical provides many of the best examples and resonates the best with folks. I don’t know of anyone that does not know of a travel web application, whether it be a web application for a flight carrier, hotel and/or car rental company and it seems that most folks know most/all of the big 4 GDS systems.

The other qualities I also like about this example is that you can depict the variations in size, scale and dimensions at so many different levels and still mantain fidelity. For example, the GDS/Travel industry is composed of iterative constellations of service providers which are a blending/composite of product/business/service lines from other service providers. SO fidelity is maintained by the solutions offered, being fractal in nature as well as being autonomous. The final quality of the example that I like, is that it explicily calls out that a service provider can be of any size, from a “Mom & Pop” hotel to an international Hotel chain, with the only requirement being that the service offered by the provider be distributed (over time and space).

Wednesday, June 01, 2005 12:28:06 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Rich Turner and Anand Rajagapolan , both program managers in the Distributed Systems Group (aka the Indigo team), talk on the DotNetRocks show about Indigo. This talk was held at the beginning of the month. You can listen to the recording at this link.

– Paul

Saturday, May 28, 2005 3:02:37 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Hi all,
         I’m going to be heading down to Cork to give a talk on Indigo. Only a few weeks ago, Rob Burke gave an excellent Introduction to WinFx and gave an Overview of Indigo and Avalon. Rumor has it that Rob might join me for the talk, if so, we will cover creating an Avalon app that talks to a SO solution built using Indigo. But this has to be confirmed!

For the session, I am going to go into detail about the SO concepts, contract first development, Indigo’s architecture and cover some prescriptive guidance on using ASMX, Remoting, ES and MSMQ today. Its going to be a long talk (if the one I held in Dublin is anything to go my), with lots of questions which will be cool and a bit of fun.

If you have any particular topics that you would like covered, by all means place a comment below. Indigo is a huge topic to cover, so not everything can be covered, but over 90+ minutes is a good enough time window to cover the high-level concepts.

The registration for the sesssion should be available on Developers.ie over the weekend. The session is going to take place on the 29th of June.

Hope to see you there,

Have a good weekend.

– Paul

Friday, May 27, 2005 3:37:51 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

During the week, Microsoft released a number of papers that discuss the breaking changes that exist in Beta 2 of Fx 2.0 that may effect applications that have been built on .NET Fx 1.1.

Some of these papers include:
– Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 (Beta) Compatibility
– Breaking changes in .NET Fx

These breaking changes are due to standards compliance, customer feedback, and correctness. More details explaining the thoughts behind these decisions can be found at this link.

So now is a good time to do some testing and provide feedback on these changes. You can use the MSDN product feedback center to provide feedback.

Some of the potential hotspots include:

<extract>
There are two well-known hotspots for compatibility that are worth mentioning:

– Serialization: Any data serialized between versions of the .NET Framework is potentially fragile, since serialization relies on the internal structure of the object. This can impact data that is serialized to a file or data that is serialized for communication through .NET Remoting. We are investing in version-tolerant serialization, which will be available when we release Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0.
– Checking for a particular version of the .NET Framework: Applications that check whether a particular version of the Framework has been installed on the machine during setup or check for a specific version of the Framework while running are version-brittle. This has been a particularly common concern among setup programs that leverage managed code.
</extract>

but this is not an exhausive list, so I would suggest that some testing with Beta 2 of Fx would be required, as well as have a look at the Breaking changes in .NET Fx. This is especially the case if you are a .NET Remoting user and I know there is a few of us in Ireland

hope this helps,

– Paul

Friday, May 27, 2005 2:17:06 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Tom’s Hardware has a great article which compares the Pentium 4 against the Pentium M.

IMHO, the article is a good read, as well as another fine example that shows how faster clock cycles does not necessarily mean more work gets done. Even though Pentium M does not have half of the bells and whistles that the P4 has, it beat the P4 in most of the perforamance tests (even beating the P4 EE).

The conclusion for the article can be found  at this link. Overall, great news for heavy users of laptops.

IMO, Well worth a read.

– Paul

ps

Many thanks to Mike Taulty for blogging a link to the article. 

Friday, May 27, 2005 11:43:38 AM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

The MSMQ version 3.5 Beta for Indigo is now available and can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=00e76c8a-e571-440e-929f-dc748136a886&displaylang=en

- Paul

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 12:32:05 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

this new community lead web site, http://www.extended64.com/ is one of the best out there.

I only spotted the site a few weeks ago and already they have some great blog posts and forum discussions on experiences with x64 windows, with more and more tips'n'tricks beginning to appear.

So, I think it is well worth signing up to and hey if you are playing with x64 windows, by all means share your experiences. More and more feedback and sharing of info on device drivers, shell widgets, etc.. will collectively help in understanding what works and what are the workarounds with getting the current stuff to work on x64, while software catches up.

- Paul

Monday, May 23, 2005 8:28:27 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

The release notes for indigo Beta 1 RC can be found online at this link or when installed at the following location %WINDOWS%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50215\Microsoft Avalon and Indigo Beta 1 RC\WinFxKnownIssues.rtf

Note there will be some updates required to make certain core infrastructural pieces for a small number of the features in this cut of the Indigo Beta 1 to work (i.e. for this RC), example features include queued channel support (leveraging MSMQ) and web service transaction support.

Monday, May 23, 2005 6:14:08 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Beta 1 RC of Avalon and Indigo was announced/released today. You can get the SDK and Redist at these links (Redist and SDK). Note the SDK has been updated.   

This release supports Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 running on Windows 2003 and Windows XP. As this is a beta, I would suggest installing this on a VPC or a test machine, also if you have a previous version of Avalon, Indigo or Whidbey installed, I would suggest having a look at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/uninstall/.

You can get all of the details at this link.

Enjoy!

- Paul

Monday, May 23, 2005 5:23:38 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

After reading Yaniv Pessach's great article - about how to Juice Up Your App with the Power of Hyper-Threading -  I noticed how he only covered the GetLogicalProcessorInformation api to detect hyperthreading. While this API is available on Windows 2003, it is not on Windows XP.

However, all is not lost. Detecting the HT or DC technology is not very straightfoward, but is doable, hence it is probably an article in itself.

On the Intel website, they provide a managed C++ sample that can be easily incorporated into an assembly and hence reused/called from VB or C#. The code can be found at this link.

[update] some links were broken, the code can be found at http://www.intel.com/cd/ids/developer/asmo-na/eng/212489.htm?page=9

Sunday, May 22, 2005 2:32:30 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [2] |