Alain's Globosphere : Development

Get ready to upgrade to Windows Visa

alainler — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:39:00 GMT

As most of you know already, Windows Vista is knocking at the door and should normally be on the market early next year. There are many things you can do to get ready to this upgrade.

If you're part of the Customer Preview Program then you do have access to the installation files. If you're not part of it, the MSDN kit will make Vista available. If you're neither in the Customer Preview Program nor an MSDN Subscriber, you'll have to wait until RC1 to get the bits.

It's also recommended you test if your machine will be able to run Vista at its best. There is a small test application called the Windows Vista Upgrade Adivsor Beta that you can download and run. This will tell you how safe (or unsafe) it is to run Vista on your existing machine.

For the software upgrade itself, there are some restictions on the type of software upgrade you can do. Some transitions will require a clean install, and some others will support in-place upgrade. There's a table that helps you identifying all the possible combinations. Of course, if you need to do a clean install, there's a tool you can use to transfer your settings from your old to your new machine. This tool is the User State Migration Tool or the Files and Setting Transfer Wizard. This tool starts up automatically as you install Vista.

For more information, go and visit the Windows Vista site or the Vista Developer site.

Dev & ITPro Days 2005 in Belgium is knocking at the door

alainler — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 18:57:00 GMT

Hi guys,

We are now one week away from Dev & ITPro Days 2005. This session will be unique from many perspectives. Indeed, half of the agenda is for IT Professionals (the persons who actually operate the data center, the ones who are responsible for making sure that the data center never fails :-S ), and the other half is for the Developers (the ones who develop the applications to support the business objectives). This prooves Microsoft's concern now goes way beyond Developers and that we want to offer the very best platform for supporting your day-to-day operations.

You'll also notice a "Connect" concept in the agenda in Day 1. This connect concept is a way to show that the work of an IT Professional and a Developer is highly related. Actually, the "Connect" concept will show how the work of both the people relate to each other. For example, you'll see the following sessions: "IT Fortress: Developing on a Secured Infrastructure" & "IT Fortress: Securing your Infrastructure". As you can see, we definately make sure that the connection between the roles is done properly.

Finally, I'll be there for the whole duration of the event. Should you want to talk to me over the event itself, about Architectural Topics or simply have a drink, don't hesitate to call me when you'll be there.

May I remind my Architect Council members that they have a special "deal" for coming at Dev & ITPro Days. Just call me to talk about it.

See you on Feb 1st at the Heyzel...

Belgium: Industrial Strength SOA Workshop ...

alainler — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 01:11:00 GMT

Hi guys,

I'm currently preparing a very specific event about "Industrial Strength SOA Workshop". This worshop is the result of the collaboration between Newtelligence and Microsoft EMEA, and will take place only in 4 countries in the whole EMEA region.

The speakers will be Clemens Vasters and a colleague from Newtelligence. I'm sure it's not necessary to talk about them as they are pretty well known and appreciated.

This workshop will take place in Brussels/Belgium, on Feb 22, 23 and 24 (a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - easy for your flights and time management during your week). There will also be a set of links and whitepapers made available to the subscribers to get ready for the training itself. Even though this preparation is part of the actual training, it is optional ... but highly recommended.

This is how this training officially shows up:

Building industrial strength applications based on Service Oriented Architecture principles and Microsoft® .NET requires a lot of knowledge. There are numerous technical and design oriented considerations spanning the whole application “stack” – from resource abstraction strategies and transaction control, business service and component design, presentation control logic, robust event logging, integrated security management, to performance and scalability considerations.

This workshop offers many benefits to application developers and architects. A few of them are:

n        Light speed Adoption: By focusing on first principles of what it takes to build complex systems using Microsoft .NET technologies and by providing easy-to-use micro-frameworks, components, and guidelines developers will learn consistent development strategies for high performance and scalability. The information and code provided is designed for extensibility and compatibility with forthcoming .NET programming models; allowing you to build on the .NET framework in the most productive manner.

n        Successful Software: Using the tools and guidelines discussed in this workshop will allow the developer to produce sound, working applications which perform reliably and scale.

n        Adaptability: We will cover various approaches for delivering adaptable front-ends targeting multiple delivery channels (browsers, LAN-connected workstations, mobile devices, etc.), and on the back-end, extensible database architectures are developed to support further adaptability.

n        Reusability: The application models we explore promote reusability of business components via composition of fine-grained primitive functions which can be aggregated into services.

n        Consistency: The majority of techniques and concepts discussed are illustrated in an application framework that you are free to take away with you. Combine this with patterns, application blocks and other micro-frameworks from Microsoft’s Patterns & Practices group, and your development projects will become more consistent and regular resulting in fewer bugs and applications which are easier build, test, and maintain.

n        Scalability: The application models used promote stateless, multi-tiered, load balanced architectures for maximum scalability.

n        Flexibility: In addition to the flexibility of Visual Studio .NET as a highly configurable environment, the architectures discussed in this workshop also highly configurable. As such, we develop management strategies for keeping these configuration possibilities under control without loosing the flexibility.

n        Leverage: The concepts used and technical artifacts of this workshop leverage a broad set of integrated Microsoft product technologies.

BTW, all attendees will come with their own machine (infrastructure will be put in place) so that they can take the actual exercises, demos, PPTs, etc back at the office to further work on them and reuse them.

This training will be charged at a very minimal fee, most of the costs being paid for by Microsoft itself. This training is obviously open to non-Belgian people. The number of seats is limited in order to allow the very best possible interaction between the attendees and the speakers.

Those of you who have interest in this training program can go there for the French version or there for the Dutch version to get more information and potentially subscribe to the event.

Looking forward to seeing you there ...

Belgium Dev & ITPro Days: Tell us what you want ...

alainler — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 01:41:00 GMT

Hi guys,

We're now preparing the content of the Belgium Dev & ITPro days. I appear to have the ownership of the content together with Rudi Larno. Please tell us what you want to see and what you want to learn!

Topics can go over: Visual Studio.NET 2005 (what aspects of it?); ASP.NET 2.0 (caching, design, ... ?); Sql Server 2005 development, administration, integration, business intelligence features, reporting services; Infrastructure Security; Software Deployment; Software Release Management in VS.NET; Modeling features in VS.NET; Operating the data center; Applying patches; or anything else!

I'll galdly receive your comments, requests, feedback about that and I guarantee that I'll use that to prepare the content. Be as precise as possible in your expectations.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Tech'Ed 2004 - Yokohama - Conceptual Approach to Application and Platform Interoperability

alainler — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 07:20:00 GMT

I must admit this is absolutely great: I've been invited to Tech'Ed 2004 in Yokohama in Japan by my colleague Masashi.

The subject I'll be presenting will be "Conceptual Approach to Application and Platform Interoperability".

Simon has done a superb job focusing on the interop possibilities that exist between J2EE and .NET. This is of course the most important interop requirement of the moment and actually, my work looks more like a generalization of what Simon has done in his book. Of course, I look forward to sharing my thoughts with him.

However, interoperability is something that always had been required. Interop, a long time ago, was just based on data, then it evolved to allow application interop (remeber the good old COM days), we're now more and more heading into the direction of platform interoperability and the concept of service delegation in nowaday's architectures is quite realistic.

This session will actually look at most of the interoperability styles that have existed so far and some that, IMHO, could become really key for high development productivity and efficient application maintenance. Once again, there's nothing bad at looking at the past to better understand the future (look at what Pat Helland has done with Metropolis)

All the developments around web services and the different protocols around it (see WS-I) are really key to the success of global platform interop and this is the way to go. However, not everything is web-services-based or even web-services ready and there are many other types of interoperability styles and possibilities.

I hope that my audience in Yokohama will like my presentation. I'll keep you posted anyway ... even while traveling! ;-)

Meawhile, if you guys have great ideas about conceptual approaches to application and platform interop (IOW: How would you do interop?), please let me know.

About backward compatibility of XP SP2: Life has changed ...

alainler — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 05:42:00 GMT

I read a lot of comments about the backward compatibility "issues" of Windows XP SP2 and I understand that this could be quite frustrating that an application does not run the way it always did but let me try telling why by using a real life example, not related to IT at all.

I'm living in a very peaceful neighborhood in Belgium around Liège. My wife, Josette, and I really felt good at home. You know, when you want to buy a bread, you just jump in your car, go to the baker, buy your bread and come back home without worrying about anyhting. Of course, when you're back home, you leave your car in front of you home and you don't even close the windows. Life really was great!

However, not so long ago, I left my home, not to go buy a piece of bread but to go and meet my sister. We stayed together say, half an hour, not a long time anyway and when I came back home, what a frustration! All drawers open, DVD player, TV, home theater system all gone, jewelry gone as well ... what a mess! This is a terrible feeling that I had back then.

That feeling, I don't want to have it anymore, never, no, never again. I called a security company and asked for the very best security system allowed by the law. I managed to have such a system not only in my home but also in my car. I had to pull wires all over my house for sensors and video cameras and of course, I had to repaint every single room. I attached sensors to the windows, the doors, etc. I connected my alarm system to my telephone and I managed to have a monitoring contract with a security company. For my car, I installed a system that allowed me not only to locate my car wherever it is, but also to remotely stop the engine. The cost of all that was huge, believe me, but I felt better. Hmm, better ... how good is that? Not really as good as it was before my home had been visited, no really, far from being as good as it was!

Actually, life has dramatically changed! All the things I did, like going to the baker (remember?)... Now, when I want to go to the baker, I have to activate my alarm system, close all the doors with the security keys I have received, deactivate the alarm system of my car, etc, etc. Even simple things such as going to p... at night and you forget you turned the alarm system on! (:-o) Can you imagine, all the things I did before and that were that easy?

Sometimes I wonder why I have done all that. I'm sometime so pissed to turn on the alarm system to go see my sister for half an hour. But when I really think about it, all this energy and money I have put in my home, in my car, really is to feel ... secure and once for all, prevent that terrible feeling from happening again!

Life will never be the same, it has changed, but it's the cost for my new peace of mind after a dramatic experience with a thief!

But, you know, in computer science, we also know that life was easy, that it was very easy to send files by e-mail to a friend, that if was very easy to go read a document at home through RAS but when you get a virus, when sensitive information is stolen, you start understanding that security measures really are necessary. Those security measures cost an awful lot of money, take time to implement and test. After you have them all, you feel better but life has changed ... dramatically! If you understand that feeling, you understand why Windows XP SP2 potentially can prevent you from doing things as easily as you did them before ... but that's the cost for your new IT peace of mind!

Think about it!

Some readings:

This Smartphone can change one's life ...

alainler — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 20:51:00 GMT

About 3 weeks ago, I got a Smartphone Qtek 8060 powered with Windows Mobile 2003. Well, it changed my life!

Before having that device, I had a Nokia mobile phone and an iPaq PDA (read about new HP iPaqs here). That was 2 devices to carry at all times. 2 devices to take care of, 2 cables connected on my desk at all times for battery reload, 2 contact lists and synchronization methods (+ a special piece of software for the Nokia), etc. I looked at the Qtek 2020 that took me closer to the PDA with telephone features but still, it was too big for me.

The 8060 is what I wanted. It's first and foremost a telephone. You have the ability to use it and carry it as if it were just a classic telephone. You reload the batteries once per day, you put it in its beltpocket when you leave in the morning and that's about it. However, it has the versatility of a PDA. (Oh yes, you also have the ability to turn off the phone features but keep the PDA features available).

As far as connection technologies, it uses GSM, GPRS and Bluetooth. Through GPRS, I got it to work with my Exchange server (for my mails, my tasks and my 500+ contacts) and with an Internet Browser ... in minutes. It automatically synchronizes with my Exchange server every hour so I'm in touch with the office and I have all my contact (speed dial is a dream!) and tasks info wherever I go. There's also a very nice feature called the "Automatic Mode" that changes the telephone mode (silent, normal, etc) based on your schedule so you don't even have to remember to put your phone on silent when you go in a meeting. Bluetooth comes in handy when it comes to using a headset or a GPS software!

It has a little camera but, really, it's more a toy than a real tool. There's multimedia support through Media Player. There's a "Voice Note" capability that really is great when you think about something while driving your car. Once again, the key thing is that you actually do have it all at all times!

I even installed maps of cities. Can you imagine having, in your telephone, the map of the city you're in, with hotels, points of interest, museums, etc?

Hey, and through the use of the Compact Framework and the convenience of Visual Studio.NET, you can also have your own applications on that device (DVD list, train collection, work hour registration, traffic counter, games, etc). I've put an extra SD card of 128Mb in ... and I never had to use it so far!

This smartphone also has some bad sides: The battery does not last long enough for one full day heavy use (say from 6.00AM to 11.00PM) so the craddle is very helpful to reload the battery when you're at the office; the navigation pad is not really the very best I've ever seen (to say the least); there is no voice dialing feature (that was available on my Nokia)!

If I have to summarize: It's an amazing productivity tool that you have with you at all times, even without thinking about it. It comes handy more often than you think. I strongly recommend it!