Writing ... or Just Practicing? : Enterprise Library

Try, Try, and Try Again

Alex Homer — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:37:00 GMT

There are some seemingly simple phrases that trip so easily off the tongue, but end up leaving you tongue-tied. Or, if not physically entangled, then tied in knots both architecturally and programmatically. Our intrepid little band of developers and writers just encountered an interesting example of one of these disarticulating phrases: namely "reliable messaging".

...(read more)

Additional Integrational Hybridization

Alex Homer — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:05:00 GMT

For some unaccountable reason, my semi-coherent bluster a couple of weeks ago wandered across the topic of integration when discussing Windows Azure hybrid applications. Since then, I've been delving deeper into the whole area of hybrid application challenges as we fine-tune our thoughts on the third of our series of guides about designing and developing applications for Windows Azure. And it seems that we in the IT developer community are dragging our heels when it comes to inventing exciting new words.

...(read more)

Hybrid Triangulation (with Cat Food and Bananas)

Alex Homer — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 05:23:00 GMT

Once again I'm at one of those gloriously satisfying stages in my p&p working life when I'm trying to define the structure for a new guide. We know what technologies we want to cover, how we will present the guidance, and the kind of sample that we'll provide to demonstrate the all-encompassing wonderfulness of the technologies on offer. But after two weeks of watching videos, perusing technical documents, consulting experts, and RSI from repeated spells of vicious Visioing, I'm still floundering in a cloud of Azure confusion.

...(read more)

Time to Stop Typing and Start Thinking

Alex Homer — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 03:16:00 GMT

It's amazing how, sometimes, things get simpler the more you fiddle with them. Or, to be more precise, something that seems to be evolving into an increasingly complicated problem turns out to be easy to resolve when you step back and look at it from another direction. I guess it's what they call "lateral thinking"; the archetypal example being letting air out of the tyres of a truck that's just a bit too tall to pass under a low bridge.

...(read more)

It Configures

Alex Homer — Sun, 09 May 2010 05:40:00 GMT

Some weeks ago, I rambled on for a while about making a use case for scenarios. It came about through an experience working on a project where a specific set of features of the software were so complex and unintuitive when you randomly played with them that it seemed almost impossible to provide potential users with any useful guidance on what they were actually there for. I can now reveal that the software in question was the new configuration tool for version 5.0 of Enterprise Library.

...(read more)

Some Consolation...

Alex Homer — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 05:32:00 GMT

I remember when I first started writing books about "Active Server Pages" how we had no end of problems creating sample code that users could easily install and run. There was no SQL Server Express with its auto-attach databases mechanism, no built-in Web Server in Visual InterDev (this was the days before Visual Studio as we know it now), and you couldn't even assume that users had a permanent Internet connection (the vast majority were on a dial-up connection). So you had to create complicate set of scripts and a setup routine, even for ASP samples, that registered the components you needed and populated the database, as well as providing a long list of prerequisites.

...(read more)

Five Go To The Library

Alex Homer — Sun, 10 May 2009 08:21:00 GMT

Our little documentation department here at p&p occasionally gets some odd requests. I've done the "write some fictitious stories about corporations that don't exist" bit in the past (as content for a sample application, in case you were wondering), and the "write a technical article about cloud computing but don't mention any products or technologies" thing (it was a very short article). Combine this with an emerging policy of rewriting everything four times when people keep changing their minds about what they want, and you can see why I'm usually quite busy.

...(read more)