Adarsh's blog : General

MSDN Webcast: UCMA API

adarshk — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:35:00 GMT

In this webcast, we present the software development kit (SDK) for the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA) version 1.0. The SDK includes a SIP-based endpoint API that can provide the flexibility and scalability required by advanced developers to build and integrate server applications, such as alert broadcasters, media control units, and instant messaging (IM) bots, into the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 infrastructure.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032343097&CountryCode=US

If you just started looking into UCMA API this webcast might be interesting for you. Its on-demand version is available on msdn site.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Unified Communications Managed API 1.0 SDK Public Beta download pointer

adarshk — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:14:00 GMT

Hi,

This might be a good news to all of you who were searching for the download pointer for UCMA API and difficulty in finding it. Now you can download it without logging into msdn account.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1aaf0e4f-804c-4888-9c7c-81d7f7a6ddef&displaylang=en

I will start posting samples about API usage scenarios now.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

UC Managed API (UCMA) v1.0 beta available

adarshk — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 21:58:00 GMT

I was eagerly waiting since a long time to write about this exciting news, With the public annonucement of OCS 2007 beta, now we have a managed API known as UCMA is publicly available. Before coming out with official name UCMA, we were internally calling it as Ucp.net sdk. This SDK opens up the Sip signaling stack for managed application. As soon as it publishes on MSDN (expecting within a week or so), I will provide the download link and I will post more real scenarios and samples here.

Its a sip stack endpoint API, below is the list of some interesting features you will see in UCMA 1.0

a) Support for Sip Endpoint REGISTER to sip servers and SipPeerToPeerEndpoint,

b) Full SipSignalingSession to establish Sip dialog, it includes support for REDIRECT and REFER,

c) Utility classes for Sip header, Sip uri and SDP parsing,

d) Support for SIP SERVICE request, which is commonly used by OCS for publish operations,

e) Support for basic SIP Subscription dialog and Notification with automatic refresh,

f) Great scalability for middle tier application with MTLS server connection management,

In the coming weeks I will be posting simple code snippets and explain the usage scenarios for each of this feature.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

"Test driven development" - some practical experiences in API development

adarshk — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 05:46:00 GMT

Since last few years I was reading a lot of discussion about "extreme programing" and "test driven development". I decided to explore and apply some of those principles in my own development and within my team. Here are some of the interesting things I would like to share. These experiences are based on a project for developing a public SDK.

Approach:

First thing I really did not try the hardcore methodology of test driven development. I took a little relaxed approach with relaxed restrictions.

My approach contains following category of pro-active and reactive actions.

a) Pro-active action was applied on all new functionality, here I did applied the rule that at minimum main line happy scenario code path must be included as an automated unit test and most common failure code path should be covered,

b) Second action is reactive approach, here when our test team reported any issue. Fix must include unit test and should also try to cover other related scenario.

In some sense this looks very relaxed compare to hardcore "test driven development" approach, but I found it is easy for adoption within the team and still contains lots of benefit in terms of time investments and returns.

Results from this approach:

Overall I was very encouraged with this approaqch and here are some of the fruits I found in applying this approach

a) Overall quality of regular build is improved with almost no regression in mainline scenarios.

b) Unit tests included with bug fixes helped to cover more related scenarios in addition to identified bugs.

c) Test team is more happy; unit test code snippets works as live spec document for them and help them to start testing right away.

d) Very few complaints from test team about missing or outdated specs.

e) Test team is very active in finding corner cases, fault injection, stress, perf scenarios and helped to provide better coverage and repro, which definitely improve the overall quality in eraly product cycle.

e) Writing the unit test for happy line scenario help us to exercise our scenarios as a real API user customer. This helps us to find API naming and usabilty issues even before including the public API in product.

f) We did keep test code and product code in separate assemblies, this helped to improve overall debuggability of the code.

Overall I found the approach was very practical and beneficial for us, I will post more details and some quantitative data later.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Office Communicator Web Access is RTM

adarshk — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:35:00 GMT

Finally the official RTM day for Communicator Web Access (CWA) is arrived, its pretty cool to watch the real time presence and IM to your contacts from web based application. For me it was very exciting to deliver my first RTC product in hands of the customer.

Its pretty cool application demonstrating the power of AJAX and it is 100% managed application build on .net frameworks 2.0. Ofcourse it also uses the power of my favourite System.Net classes of .net frameworks. UI is pretty much same as familiar office communicator 2005. It is useful for anyone working remotely or non windows machine. For Microsoft people it is already deployed (check => https im dot microsoft dot com), I found it very useful for communication, when I am sitting at home and not connected to my office machine.

To get more information and FAQ you can read Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access Overview

If you are looking for download check the Microsoft download center - Communicator Web Access download

One comment I can not resist to mention about UI, it is so much similar to office communicator 2005 :) that one of my friend even asked "How did it launch the office communicator on my machine and would it work on a machine with no office communicator installed." Only later he realize that it is browser window not the office communicator application.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Network programming to real time collaboration

adarshk — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 17:44:00 GMT

Its long time since I had posted on my blog. I am coming back and will start posting regularly. One of the reason was I moved to the new feature area known as "Real Time Collaboration". You might have seen the release of Live communication server and office communicator release recently. Very soon our team would be releasing the web based version of communicator. All these are very exciting, cool part of web version is it is completely managed code and in the bottom of networking stack it uses the System.Net.

I will continued to post on Network Programming and would add topics on Real time collaboration and SIP in feature areas.

You could help us on application compatibilty verification

adarshk — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 20:11:00 GMT

Hi,

If you have an application build on .net frameworks 1.0 or .net frameworks 1.1, which is using System.Net classes. If you want to make sure that your app works behaves as expected on 2.0 we could help.This would also enable you to contribute on our effort for application compatibility verification and make sure application works perfectly with 2.0 version of frameworks.

Here are some basic requirements

a) You are willing to share the app with us under NDA, application should be small to medium size that can be set up in less than a day on one or two machine

c) Please note this effort should not be considered as any official guarantee for compatibility, we will do best effort to verify and tell, if there is any breaking changes

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Must watch MSDNTV shows on network programming

adarshk — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 21:09:00 GMT

If you love working on network programming and curious to see the demo of upcoming network programming features in .Net frameworks 2.0, you will love these MSDN TV shows from our team.

Write Connected Applications Using System.Net

Learn how to write better connected apps with System.Net in Visual Studio 2005. Since VS 2003, we've significantly enhanced the System.Net class libraries to make writing connected apps easier with added support for FTP, SMTP protocols, and the ability to listen and respond to HTTP requests

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20050113NETDG/manifest.xml

What's New in .NET Remoting for .NET Framework 2.0

Matt Tavis shows some new features and code examples in .NET Remoting in .NET Framework 2.0, including the new IpcChannel, the secure TcpChannel, and Version Tolerant Serialization (VTS) to allow authors to version their types without breaking serialization.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20050120NETMT/manifest.xml

7 Habits of successful software company

adarshk — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 06:01:00 GMT

Yesterday I was looking at one of my longtime favorite book "7 habits of highly effective people" on my desk, I suddenly realize how these habits could easily map and summarize the charactersitics of successful software company. Here is what I come up with

Be proactive -

Do not wait for customer to create demand or competitors to build the product. Go ahead and predict the upcoming demand and work on meeting those demands.

Begin with the end in mind -

When start a project/product, always keep eye on what finally this product is trying to achieve, what are the customer requirement we are aiming for?

Put first things first -

Do not get lost in world of fancy features, prioritize the requirement and features you are looking for. Always focus on important and urgent features first.

Think win win -

Your company success also depend on your employees and customers attitude, so let them feel sense of achievement with your success.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood -

Understand the customer requirement first, before coming up or proposing the solution.

Synergize -

Build a chain of vendors and partners and let make them successful with your success.

Sharpen the saw -

Keep investing on new research and innovative ideas. Invest on keeping your employees up-to-date and proper training.

These are just quick thaughts, so feel free to post your comments.

Books on .Net Frameworks Network Programming

adarshk — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 19:09:00 GMT

Following are the some .Net frameworks programming books, where I worked with author on reviewing the manuscript before publication.

Network Programming for the Microsoft .NET Framework

ISBN: 073561959X
by Jim Ohlund, Lance Olson, Anthony Jones

This is an excellent book covering the network class library features for v1.0 and v1.1 of .Net frameworks. I has a wide coverage of topics including low level socket programming, webrequest/webresponse based programming model.

TCP/IP Sockets in C# : Practical Guide for Programmers (Morgan Kaufmann Practical Guides Series)

ISBN: 0124660517, by David B. Makofske, Michael J. Donahoo, Kenneth L. Calvert

This book covers fundamentals of socket programming with a good number of examples using System.Net.Sockets namespace, asynchronous programming model and message parsing in socket application.

Other Network Programming Books

Professional .NET Network Programming
ASIN: 1861007353, by Srinivasa Sivakumar, Ajit Mungale, Andrew Krowczyk, Vinod Kumar, Christian Nagel, Nauman Laghari, Tim Parker

C# Network Programming
ISBN: 0782141765, by Richard Blum

Multicast Sockets : Practical Guide for Programmers (The Morgan Kaufmann Practical Guides)
ISBN: 155860846X,by David B. Makofske, Kevin C. Almeroth