I still remember conversations over lunch about how Pedro did not want to be a dev lead/manager, having done it before. How his real passion was development. Therefore, I was taken a back when I saw the announcement so I ran over to Pedro's office to...

One of the limitations of our designers is that it does not support encrypted appSettings entries. After talking to customers, however, we have realized that this it is not a common scenario to encrypt the config sections during design and that it is...

and hurting... Doing a 720 down the mountain has a completely different connotation for me. Ali

As I read Zillow's web page, which is one of the most hyped startups in Seattle , I came across the About my house... page for each of the executives. I thought it was a great idea so, in true form, I ripped it off and came up with my own version for...

It was sooo hard to find this link and I knew what I was looking for, so I thought I'd post it here for the benefit of others. The 'official' data contract/service versioning story is here: http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url...

Why I Hate Frameworks: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431.12 Internally, I feel that these are the kind of discussions that we have every day. If, for example, we talk about adding a tool window, we usually also start talking...

Senior members in our team have suggested that PM team should start using the DSL tools to prototype some of the new architecture models/designers that are being proposed. Consequently, I've been laboring away on my DSLs for the last few days and Pedro...

Jurgen's posted a great real world example of why WCF extensibility is essential for interop. The scenario he describes is that of having to a connect a TANDEM system written in COBOL to a Windows client using WCF. Which is an example of why you would...

There are a few books that you have to had read to have an intelligent conversation with Bill Gibson, Jack Greenfield, and David Trowbridge, aside from Jack and Keith's Software Factories book. While these change from month to month, for the topic...

Since David Trowbridge joined, we have been having morning SCRUM-like meetings to keep in synch with each other. I've attached a pic of the guys (Mark, Suhail, and Dmitriy)at the one that took place in my office. Ali

I haven't thought about the relationship between “Actions” and "Operations" for quite a while. Therefore, I thought I'd give my brain dump. I look forward to your feedback in case I have it wrong. First, I thought it useful to summarize the description...

I was going through the FebCTP changes for WCF from JanCTP and saw the following change: Remove MessageContractAttribute.Action (and Rely Upon OperationContractAttribute.Action / OperationContractAttribute.ReplyAction) WCF was overriding the...

Pedro was kind enough inform me about this cool DSL called "Contract-first" DSL: http://www.edwardbakker.nl/PermaLink,guid,0f4e80f7-2ebd-4ab4-a8b4-954cadfc622b.aspx I recommend that you take a look. I am eagerly waiting to play with this once is made...

Dmitriy Vayasura released an add-in with a whole bunch of Class Designer/Distributed System Designer power tools last year on GotDotNet: http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=fe72608b-2b28-4cc1-9866-ea6f805f45f3 I'm wondering if anyone...

There a lot of customers, for better or worse, who are using DataSets in their services and (I shudder as I say this) there are times when it might make sense to do so. An example might be when the developer has control of both the client and the service...

I just discovered a cool workflow for how to use the Distributed System Designer. http://dotnet.org.za/photos/willy/images/50063/original.aspx Cheers, Ali

Mark just posted a blog about top-down design here: http://spaces.msn.com/mgroves/blog/cns!43AFE059FDA652E!1179.entry This is so typical of Microsoft. Mark came in and said, "Show me the value!" and after throwing various TechNotes/Documentation at...

After Tomas's comment on my last blog, I've been thinking about the operation inference feature in Christian's WSCF tool. I'm not sure that inferring operations based on the message name has been standardized. (Please correct me if I'm wrong) I've...

One of my big realizations has been that Contract-first is not about the WSDL it's about the schema. CWeyer's tool generates a WSDL, but the value of the tool is that it allows you to stich together the schema for the data/messages that you have created...

After talking to a lot of people, I am trying to cement the relationship of policy to the contract. There is a thought that policy is part of the contract. That policy is created up front and negotiated between the two parties alongside the rest of the...

I was trying to get a pulse on Contract-driven Development and what the industry was saying, so I compiled a list of quotes and links. As I think this might be useful for anyone interested in the area, I thought I'd share this out. Let me know what...