Unity 2.0 container update

gmelnik — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:18:56 GMT

Our latest work on Unity 2.0 is available on Codeplex (see change set 28516). This is the first work we’ve done on Unity as part of the EntLib5.0 effort.

Major changes in this drop include:

ObjectBuilder2 DLL is now gone. The code is now completely contained in the Unity assembly, and you won't need to reference OB2 anymore in your projects using Unity. Over time the ObjectBuilder stuff is going to lose a lot of it's generality and be just the underpinnings for the container.
We're taking a first cut at fixing our exception messages. All the extra BuildFailedException’s that ended up in the inner exception tree are now GONE. Instead, you get a top level ResolutionFailedException, and the InnerException is the actual exception that caused resolution to fail. And the exception message has been reformatted significantly to hopefully get a better description of what the container was doing, and how it ended up where it did, when the error occurred. This is in response to user feedback to provide better error messaging in Unity. We consider this to be a significant improvement, but still need your feedback. In particular, we look forward to specific suggestions about how we could change the messages to be even more descriptive and intuitive. Please reply to this post or via Codeplex discussion thread.
Silverlight projects are now updated to Silverlight 3.

Enterprise Library 5.0: Product Backlog prioritization results

gmelnik — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:50:00 GMT

Some two weeks ago, we exposed the preliminary product backlog for Enterprise Library 5.0 and invited the community to vote on the features that matter to them most. And what a response we got! Over 2,600 people viewed the backlog and 981 cast their votes, with 230 troopers persevering to the very end. 18 members of the EntLib Expert Advisory Board also voted. In this post I would like thank you all for taking the time to complete the survey, and I want to share the results with you.

In retrospective, every previous EntLib release had a theme:

1.0 = Integration of application blocks
2.0 = .NET 2.0 update
3.0 = Validation, PIAB, Block Factory
4.0 = Dependency Injection with Unity, WMI 2.0

Over the years, EntLib grew larger, and arguably more complex than it really needs to be. The community has spoken loud and clear that they want EntLib to be easier to learn and to use. We have taken this feedback seriously, and have decided to focus this release on enhanced user experience, simplicity, and learnability. The working slogan is “Simplicity for the Win!”.

So, getting back to the product backlog. Let me explain the methodology we used to analyze the data. Stories voted as Priority 1 got 20 points, Priority 2 got 19 points, Priority 3 got 18 points, and so on, with Priority 20 getting only 1 point. Votes from our team of expert advisors’ carried double weight. Then, for each story, we calculated an arithmetic sum (the total number of points), and - using these numbers - ranked all of the stories (obviously the story with the most points was ranked as #1).

Based on past experience, we didn’t want to plan our development execution in the strict natural order of story rank, because this would require juggling various blocks within each iteration, and potentially create silos of experts around each block. Instead, we wanted an iteration to have a theme that the entire team can focus on. Therefore, we decided to carry out affinity mapping of stories for each block, and calculate their group weightings (ignoring all stories with ranks 50 and higher, since those automatically made our P3 bucket and so are not likely to be done). We then stack ranked the P1 groups (colored green in the following table) and we plan to address them in the stack ranked order, with the individual stories inside the group still ranked according to the original scores. Note that learnability and user experience stories will be addressed in parallel with all the development stories throughout the entire project, and -therefore - those groups are listed near the top of the backlog.

Total points	Rank	Description (T-shirt size)
*Architecture*
2910	1	ARC01 : Architectural update: use DI container instead of one-off Object Builder factories; DI container independence (XL)
2164	2	ARC02 : Simplification of the codebase (identify redundancies, obsoletes etc.) (XL)
1898	6	ARC03 : Reduction of the number of assemblies (XL)
*Learnability*
2082	4	LEARN03: Notebook-style 150 page book for Enterprise Developers (XXL)
1400	12	LEARN02: Notebook-style 150 page book for Architects (XXL)
1338	14	LEARN08: Updated Quickstarts (XL)
976	22	LEARN09: Updated Hands-on Labs (XXL)
590	37	LEARN10: EntLib Overview Video (L)
524	42	LEARN07: Migration guide v.4.1 ->5.0 (L)
*User Experience*
1876	8	UX05: Config tool facelift - towards a more intuitive and easier to use UI (XL)
1718	10	UX03: Config IntelliSense for Unity and EntLib in XmlEditor (M)
1610	15	UX01: Better error reporting/messaging throughout (M)
1010	28	UX02: Debugging Visualizer for Unity (L)
744	36	UX04: Config IntelliSense for Unity in XmlEditor (M)
*Data Access*
2652	3	DAAB01: DAAB & LINQ basic integration (i.e. execute a query on a database, get back an object that you can do LINQ on) (M)
2012	9	DAAB02: Async ADO.NET support (M)
1390	16	DAAB04: No swallowing of SQL exceptions (S)
*Logging*
2006	7	LAB02: Async logging (text formatting done asynchronously) to cut down on load on primary thread (M)
1100	17	LAB03: Automatically purging old files by the rolling trace listener (S)
*Tool support*
1516	13	TOOL02: Support of Unity configuration (M)
*Unity*
1072	19	UIN01: Generalized interceptor (XXL)
1108	20	U06: Clearer error reporting (M)
1042	23	U05: Unity-MEF Integration (e.g. unityContainer.Resolve<MefPart>()) (M)
896	24	U03: Support for passing arguments to the Resolve method (M)
*Config*
1962	11	CFG01 : Config decentralization (support for config stored in multiple sources) (S)
1276	18	CFG05: Making Unity configuration less verbose (M)
1072	21	CFG07: Unity config auto-registration: expanded conventions and helper classes to reduce need for explicit configuration (M)
804	34	CFG02: Improved Config API (XL)
850	38	CFG03: Support for different sections of config in different media (not just files) (XL)
*Validation*
2438	5	VAB01: Integration with WPF (XL)
1020	25	VAB04: Decorating LINQ objects with Validation attributes (M)
944	26	VAB02: Integration with/assistance in implementing IDataErrorInfo (S)
840	33	VAB07: Validation Block refactoring to allow using Unity to resolve Validators (M)
570	40	VAB12: Inheritance-aware object validator (M or ?)
*Installability/Uninstallability*
858	29	INS01: Installer allows you to pick which specific blocks to install instead of the whole package (M)
864	31	INS03: EntLib installers to be included as part of installers of other custom products (merge modules) (M)
*Extensibility*
1028	30	EXT01: Simplifying writing extensions and plugging their custom configs into the config tool (XXL)
*PIAB*
784	32	PIAB01: Implement PIAB interface that takes an interceptor type (to leverage new Unity interceptors) (S)
718	35	PIAB03: New handlers (incl. RequiresTransaction and Call Forwarding) (S)
*Resource management*
996	27	RAB03: Resource Application Block (a provider to get assorted resources from various media/sources) (XXL)
*Localizability*
834	39	LOC01: Localizability of EntLib assemblies (L)
752	41	LOC02: Localizability of exception messages and templates (S)

Stories in P2 (yellow in the following table) and P3 (red) categories are listed according to their ranks, and not group ranks. Should time permit, we will address the P2 stories in the order shown.

P2
614	43	LEARN01: Discoverability and context/dependencies EntLib poster (L)
556	44	LEARN11: EntLib5.0 New Features Video (L)
682	45	EHAB02: Parameterized templates for exceptions (M)
572	46	TOOL01: Type picker improvements (sped up search, better generics UI) (M)
516	47	U04: Container introspection (S)
590	48	LEARN12: Unity Overview Video (L)
500	49	VAB06: Simple validating field only if the value is not null (S)
590	50	VAB13: Support for recursive data structures (M)
496	51	U02: Allow a mapping from a named registration to the "default" one (S)
506	54	VAB08: Enabling Validation Block to be used with 3rd party object relational mappers (M)
482	55	VAB09: Honouring validation attributes defined in System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations (S)
468	59	LEARN04: Notebook-style 100 page book for Operations/IT management (XXL)
394	65	VAB03: ArgumentValidationException.ToString() show the validation results (S)
P3
500	52	UIN02: Caching of matching policies (M)
608	53	DAAB03: Fix: validation of sprocs parameters – do not validate (S)
496	56	LAB04: Authenticated Email Trace Listener (S)
430	57	CFG06: Support other config schemas for Unity config (e.g. XAML-based config)
402	58	U01: ResolveAll to return unnamed registration too (S)
390	60	LAB01: ETW sink (?, potentially XXL)
422	61	LEARN14: Unity Extensibility Guide (XL)
424	62	VAB16: Additional validator: Validator that checks that an enum contains a value that maps onto its defined values (S)
404	63	INS02: Installer ships both debug and release versions of the DLLs (S)
546	64	CFG04: Support for multiple pieces of config for a single block in multiple places (XXL)
412	66	EHAB01: Default post-handling action to ThrowNewException instead of NotifyRethrow (S)
378	67	TOOL04: Web-based config tool (L)
372	68	CACHE01: Adding a reason to the class that informs a user why their object was removed from the cache (S)
409	69	LEARN15: Guidance on environmental overrides in Unity (S)
409	70	LEARN15: Unity& MEF decision tree/matrix (M)
344	71	VAB14: Provide NullValidator to properly "ignore nulls" instead of the "Or composite" (S-M)
390	72	CACHE02: Cache backing store targeting ESENT (L)
352	73	VAB15: Additional validator: Number of decimal places validator (S)
292	74	PIAB02: Add non-generic overloads (S)
344	75	VAB05: Simplifying checking for positive / negative values (S)
282	76	LEARN05: Migration guide v.2.0 ->5.0 (XL)
266	77	VAB11: Better localization support (i.e. the first time the validator is used, the locale for the messages is defined) (M)
270	78	VAB18: RelativeDateTimeValidator update to compare against UtcNow instead of Now (S)
238	79	VAB10: Honouring MetadataType attribute (M)
238	80	TOOL03: Block invocation from the configuration designer (e.g. Configure a block, Right-click, Copy “Code to Invoke”, and then paste it elsewhere) (S)
234	81	TOOL05: Easier manipulation of validation trees (potentially, drag&drop) (M)
238	82	VAB17: Validator that compares against a single specific value (S)
196	83	LEARN06: Migration guide v.3.1 ->5.0 (XL)
162	84	LEARN13: Unity Extensibility Video (L)

The initial request for a Business Rules Application Block (which would help developers to take advantage of the WF business rule engine without creating a workflow) has been evaluated, and we solicited additional feedback from the advisors and the community. We didn’t see much convergence on the scenarios, and concluded that - at this point - we would not be playing in this area.

With regard to the platform we will target, originally our plan was to target binaries to version 4.0 of the .NET Framework. However, our advisors and the community pushed back on this. The result from 1,229 votes is shown in the following graph:

This data is significant enough for us to adjust our plans to meet the community needs, and so we will target the binaries to version 3.5 SP1 of the .NET Framework. We will also carry out our test path on version 4.0 of the .NET Framework to ensure compatibility.

A similar question was asked about the framework version to which we should target Unity. The graph below shows the result of the votes, and so the decision is similar to that for EntLib 5.0. We will be targeting version 3.5 SP1, but also testing on version 4.0.

Ethnographies to guide strategy

gmelnik — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:28:49 GMT

Ethnographies are descriptions of people with their habits and points of difference (typically, in their natural settings). They explore the richness, depth, and complexity of some phenomena. These descriptions are based on extended observations, which make this type of studies particularly difficult to produce. Popular in social, geographical and psychological studies, ethnographic-based research studies are hard to come by in computer science and software engineering. This is to no surprise as, historically, empirical software engineering was rooted in the quantitative paradigm and many pundits still believe that ethnographic research is less rigorous than other “hard”, quantitative methods of scientific inquiry (a multi-decade old positivism vs interpretivism argument). Still, ethnographic methods are slowly gaining popularity (see published studies on the topics of agile teams dynamics, conflict in software engineering teams, distributed teams, maintenance work).

Importantly, ethnographies are also getting attention in the industry. Corporate ethnographies are being used nowadays not only to explain customer behavior but to actually inform strategy and long-range planning. Ethnographic research is complementary to market research. In a short column of March 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, Ken Anderson, an anthropologist at Intel Research, explains how it is different in a way that unlike market researcher who tend to ask specific and highly practical questions, ethnographers observe people in a nondirected way – the goal is “to see people’s behavior on their terms, not ours.” He describes how ethnographers have veered into strategic questions (in particular, in a business unit that is concentrated on processors and platforms for home use). Anderson concludes that “ethnography has proved so valuable at Intel that the company now employs two dozen anthropologists and other trained ethnographers”. He believes that “ethnography is so beneficial that it will spread widely, helping firms in every industry truly understand customers and adapt to fast-changing markets”. I tend to agree with this prediction.

At Microsoft, we too use ethnographies. I was actually quite happy to find people with job titles “UX – Ethnographer”. I am going to see if I can get any of them engaged on the Enterprise Library project. With their help, I plan to gain additional insight into how developers actually use Enterprise Library, not just what they say about their experience.

Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : user experience

Unity 2.0 container update

Video on what’s coming in EntLib 5.0

Enterprise Library 5.0: Product Backlog prioritization results

Ethnographies to guide strategy