Microsoft has now made the Visual Studio 2005 Community Technical Preview available to MSDN subscribers and those in attendance at VS live. The download on MSDN is a whopping 2.7gb DVD ISO image. I'm glad that it was put up as a single complete download. Yes, it takes a while to transfer, but that just gives us extra time to do our real work.

On the topic of 2.7gb downloads, I can't help but think back to the good old days of modems, Bulliten Board Systems (BBS), and files over 100k being huge! Hmm... 2.7gb at 2400 baud? if I started back in 1988, would I have the file yet? Heck, I remember going all out and buy my first 100mb hard drive! Ahh... those were the days.

Oh ya... back to the real work.

Posted in Longhorn | Rant  | Comments [0] 

Carl says that Bill said (At VSLive) that a new version of the Whidbey bits are on their way. There has been a lot of talk recently about these early releases of code. I think it's a great move to get the tools in the hands of developers as early as possible. As one recent article quotes Prashant Sridharan, lead product manager for Visual Studio, as saying “Developers will install anything, whereas an IT guy in the data center will not,"  While that's probably true, I think the importance is in getting developers comfortable with the tools as early as possible.

This new “community technical previews“ version will apparently be dsitributed Thursday to... I'm not sure to who, but I'll make sure I start checking my mailbox that day.

I hadn't noticed this before, but it also appears that Microsoft is officially referrign to Whidbey as Visual Studio 2005 and the .Net Framework 2.0. They have an excellent roadmap available here

Posted in Longhorn | Software  | Comments [0] 

Canadian cellular service provider Telus is apparently the first to sign on to use an innovative new style of keyboard called “Fastap” developed by Digit Wireless. The phones are to be manufactured by LG and distributed in Canada by Telus. For more details see the press release here. For delivery details check with your local Telus Mobility Dealer. Soon we'll need to start to sharpen our fingers!

Posted in Telephony  | Comments [0] 

April Triangle .Net User Group Meeting 4/14/2004

Preview of Indigo 

Service oriented architectures are becoming the norm for enterprise systems in today's distributed world. The heart of SOA is messaging standards, and the defacto standard for messaging is web services. Web Services are quickly moving to the forefront of corporate information exchange, and XML is the most common messaging format to describe the data. Indigo is the codename for Microsoft’s new messaging framework. It provides rich support for SOA that is complementary to traditional object-oriented approaches. Indigo represents the best of .NET Remoting, ASP.NET, .NET Enterprise Services, and web service Extensions (WSE), rolling them into a unified programming and administrative model. Indigo supports standards such as HTTP, XML, and SOAP, and delivers a mechanism for secure, reliable, transacted messaging. Indigo will be included in the next version of Microsoft Windows, code-named “Longhorn”, although it should be available independently at some time before Longhorn ships.

This talk will provide an introduction and preview of Indigo. It will include both the mechanics of using Indigo, and sufficient background as to address why Indigo is so important. Come and learn how to take advantage of the coming standard for SOA on the Windows platform.

Instructor Bio :
Doug Turnure is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation, focusing on .NET technologies. He serves numerous enterprise clients as a developer, author, trainer, and occasional conference speaker. His specialties include .NET internals, memory management, and distributed communication, although he enjoys anything pertaining to .NET. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent five years as an instructor and course author with DevelopMentor and Aggelos, Inc. His primary topics of instruction include VB.NET, C#, and ASP.NET. Doug is currently based in Atlanta, Georgia.  

For more information please visit the TRINUG Website

UPDATE: For some background info, check out this MSDN-TV show!

Posted in Longhorn | TRINUG  | Comments [0] 

If you're trying to figure out how to use the Data Access Application Block to fill a typed dataset, look here. Thanks Roy (and other contributors) for some great info!

Posted in Software  | Comments [0] 

If you went to DevDays make sure you take a look at the IssueVision sample code located on the DevDays 2004 DVD. It has some great example code for all sorts of things ranging from installation and deployment to using web services to update data in a semi-connected environment.

it also seems that a new IssueVision 1.1 version of the code is going to be available at some point in time to and will implement code using WSE 2.0.

// In IssueVision 1.0, this method returns an instance of the web reference for
// the IssueVisionService, with credentials attached as a custom SOAP header.
// In version 1.1, the section marked below will be replaced with WSE 2.0 logic.

Stepping through code like this is a great way to learn how things are done. I hope more application examples are on their way from Microsoft.

 

Posted in Software  | Comments [2] 

The New Microsoft Way? Thursday, March 11, 2004 6:00 PM Today in an email response to being forwarded a News.Com Link to a story about Yukon and Whidbey being delayed, I started to think about what that really meant. I sense a new trend in Microsoft's approach to things and in the end, even with delays, I wonder if it will result in a faster adoption rate of their new products.

Here's my theory, and I stress MY THEORY, I have nothing official to really it on.

In the "Old Microsoft" way, a new product would be designed and eventually distributed to a small private group of beta testers. By that point in the development cycle, they really could only try to fix things, and would have a hard time to go back to change or add any features. A short while later, the product would be released and start to be really put through the paces. For many organizations the RTM would be their first look at the product and some would be willing to move to it once a service pack fixed any issues they found. The timeframe from announcement to beta to release may seem quicker, but I think there is a large timeframe between product development / announcement to market acceptance.

In the "New Microsoft" way, if we take Whidbey as an example, they share it with a small private test group at a very, very early stage. Then while the product is still somewhere in Alpha they release it to a larger test group, in this case the 6000+ developers at PDC in Oct 2003 (and recently a number of additional developers at DevDays) and ask them to put it through the paces asking for feedback. One thing to point out is they are not just asking what is a bug, but rather what do you like, don't like, would like in this release. This is still an Alpha version! They have been receiving an enormous amount of feedback about bugs and features that they would not get until it was almost publicly released the old way. People are already testing and working with Whidbey, and it's far from done!

Beta 1 is hopefully going to have some huge improvements, many driven from early feedback when it was possible to change things. By the time it's released to market, it should be solid, developers will know and understand it, and they can start using it immediately.

Robert Scoble's response to this issue that ship dates are often pushed back because "the quality isn't good enough". Do we really want to force something that is not ready? Do we want to start hearing "that feature or bug is a great suggestion, but we'll have to get to it later because of the ship date"? Are we angry about the ship date because we can't use it in our production apps, or because we can't have the completed version of a new toy? I think at this point in the game it's important in the big picture that these major projects including Whidbey, Longhorn, and Yukon be done right.

I think the New Microsoft way provides a more transparent process will provide a much better product in the end, and will get it in the hands of users sooner, allowing earlier testing which will build a higher level of confidence to use the release version sooner, which I think in the end will result in a better product with better acceptance.

That's my two bits worth anyway!

 

Created with Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 One place for all your notes

Posted in Software  | Comments [0] 

A big thanks to Doug and all the speakers for putting on a very enjoyable and informative DevDays 2004 in Durham, NC.

Some of the key points that made it into my notes are:

• Security – Care about, learn about it, deal with it
  Service Pack 2 – Be ready for it. See the “Windows XP Service Pack 2 – Security Information for Developers document on MSDN
• Use stored procedures! At the very least, used parameterized queries. Dynamic SQL statements can be very, very bad. SPs are secure, fast, and easy to maintain.
• Strongly Name your assemblies – Versioning doesn’t work unless the assemblies are strongly named.
• Smart Clients – As defined by Todd Fine : “The best of thick and thin clients”
• Auto updating apps are super cool. Todd did a great demo of using MSI to deploy an application once and keep it updating automagically Check out the AppUpdater component
• Issue Vision, a sample source code application distributed at the event has some great smart client example code for handling semi-connected data access, threading, and much more.

The crowd was very excited by the Whidbey demos. Todd Fine and Ken Spencer did a great job of showing off some of the great new features, including many time saving shortcuts for developers. The Whitehorse modeling demos looked very slick, especially how it reacted to code changes.

Overall it was a great event that I hope continues to happen frequently. Thanks to everybody that stopped by the TRINUG user group table and said hello. On a semi-related note, Doug Turnure from Microsoft that did the opening keynote will be presenting Indigo (A must see!) at the April Triangle .Net Users Group meeting.

Posted in Rant | Software | TRINUG  | Comments [0] 

Tonight at the Triangle .Net Users group we were treated to the best SQL Server Yukon presentation I've seen since PDC. Ok, so it's the only one I've seen since PDC, but it was worth the wait! Peter Debetta from Wintellect fame gave us an excellent look at the new .Net technologies that will be a part of Yukon and lead some great discussions on when and where using .Net code instead of T-SQL makes sense.

One of the key take aways from the presentation was that juts becuase you can .Net code, it doesn't mean it's always the right thing. T-SQL still remains the method of choice when simply dealing with the data.

Be sure to check out Peter's Blog and watch for his upcoming book. Thanks again from the group!

 

Posted in TRINUG  | Comments [0] 

Devdays is here!

Doug Turnure and a cast of others have started the day with a keynote. Following a couple video's about the IRL and Match.com using .Net technologies to “do more with less“, they are focusing on a number of new Microsoft products including Biztalk Server, SQL Reporting Serivices, and Whitehorse.  SQL reporting services is one of those great looking tools that I really need to take a closer look at. It looks like a very effective way to provide end users with reports on data. Whitehorse, shown by Ken Spencer is described as an “Integrated model-driven set of design tools to increase productivity and predicatability in design, development, deployment and maintenance of service-oriented distrubted systems“. Translation: Very Cool! It's far from just another code generator.

I'm going to be attending the Smart Client presentations and will post anything of interest.

Greg and I will be at the TRINUG user group table during the breaks meeting and hope to make many new .Net contacts.

Posted in Software | TRINUG  | Comments [0] 

Yesterday I attended an excellent MSDN event on security related topics. Glen Gordon presented two sessions, Writing Secure Code – Threat Defense and Implementing Application Security Using The .Net Frame (Presentations available here). While I'm finding I can always enjoy and take away something useful from Glen’s presentations, I really think Microsoft deserves some credit for getting the word out to the development community on security. Yes, they have had their own problems in the past with their own code, but they’re on a mission to make sure that none of us take security for granted and are getting the word out quite effectively through webcasts, MSDN events, and I’m sure we’ll hear even more great information at DevDays.

Glen commented on his blog following the presentation on how a number of developers were suddenly concerned about vulnerabilities in their code. I think it’s great that Microsoft is taking such a strong leadership role in the development community.

One of the cool things I started playing with recently following a webcast that Glen also addresses is the use of WindowsIdentity and WindowsPrinciple objects for validation of users and their roles. This makes taking advantage of windows security a snap! Here’s how easy it is to check to see which roles the user running the code belongs to:

WindowsIdentity myIdent = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();

                  WindowsPrincipal myPrin = new WindowsPrincipal(myIdent);

 

                  Array wbirFields = Enum.GetValues(typeof(WindowsBuiltInRole));

                 

                  StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

                  sb.Append("BuiltIn Roles for ");

                  sb.Append(myPrin.Identity.Name+ ":\n");

                 

                  foreach (object roleName in wbirFields)

                  {

                        try

                        {

                              sb.Append(roleName);

                              sb.Append(" ");

                              sb.Append(myPrin.IsInRole((WindowsBuiltInRole)roleName) + "\n");

                        }    

                        catch (Exception)

                        {

                              sb.Append(roleName + " Could not obtain RID for this role.\n");

                        }

You can also make use of the myPrin.IsInRole((“MyRoleString“)to check and see if the user is in a custom role.

Note   When testing for newly created role information, such as a new user or a new group, it is important to log out and log in to force the propagation of role information within the domain. Not doing so can cause the IsInRole test to return false.

Posted in Software  | Comments [0] 

Microsoft is presenting an additional event following DevDays March 9th in Raleigh-Durham. Mark Scott will be giving a presentaion “Introduction to the Prescriptive Architecture Group: Best Practices for Data Access“. Microsoft is asking that anybody wishing to attend to register HERE. The link also includes more details about the event. My understanding is that this is a free event that happens to follow DevDays.

If anybody is interested in a Post-Post-Devdays get together, please let me know.

Posted in Software  | Comments [0]