David Gristwood's Blog

My colleagues here at Microsoft are running a competition that is open to all UK developers, for the next four weeks, with a car as the first prize and some cool runner-up prizes! It looks pretty straight forward – you have to answer questions on smart...

Some of my colleagues at Microsoft are hosting a developer day this Saturday (yes, Saturday – this is not a typo). You can find out more info here , and see the final agenda here . As it says on the site “ For the first time ever in the UK, Microsoft...

A very simple question - should you use web services in your own application? Most professional developers are bought into the idea these days of exposing functionality in their applications via web services, for greater interoperability, but the question...

I have been doing a few bits a pieces with BizTalk Server recently (after several weeks doing other stuff), and there some interesting new(ish) downloads that I came across that I would recommend. First of all, there is a high availability white paper...

Over the past six months or so I have been on the lookout for some good web services books I could recommend. It’s turned out to be harder than I thought, for a couple of reasons (I think). Firstly, it is a technology that is evolving as we speak, and...

Happy New Year! It’s the first week of the new year, so an ideal time to start thinking about what 2005 has in store for developers . The number one event, at least for me, has to be the release of the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 (aka ‘Whidbey...

I have just had my first MSDN Flash newsletter article published – I had been threatening to do it for ages, but I finally got round to doing it, to coincide with a web services event I held last week in London . Here is the text for the article in the...

Later this month I will be running a one day MSDN session around understanding Web Service – I hope some of you reading this blog will be able to make it. It’s a free event, aimed at developers and system designers, and really anyone interested in web...

I was a big fan of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when it first came out (I listened to the radio series, bought the records, watched the TV series, and still own a real Marks & Spencer Hitchhikers towel which has part of the script about Knowing...

I spend a lot of my time with professional developers building systems on .NET, discussing various architectural and design issues. One of my focuses as the moment is web services , and one of the topics that comes up on a fairly regular basis, when discussing...

These words (in homage to the Fast Show) are by way of saying that I, for the bulk of Microsoft’s current financial year (July 2004 to June 2005), will be focusing on web services. This is a really cool and interesting area, and it’s great to see, when...

Somehow I feel the mindset needed for security and for software development don’t naturally go together (which would explain why the industry as a whole has such a problem). The reason is – I think – software development is very much a creative process...

I have just finished reading “ Opening The Xbox ”. A very enjoyable and interesting read, especially if you have an Xbox (if you don’t have an Xbox, get one now – they are great fun). The book traces the roots of the Xbox within Microsoft – the team who...

The issue of obfuscation and decompiling .NET code comes up on a fairly regular basis, so I thought I’d explore it in some more depth, and try to address some of the common questions that arise. This is not a new issue or topic – since...

I will be presenting a session at TechEd in Amsterdam next week on the subject of software development – “21 Rules of Thumb – How Microsoft develops its Software”. As someone who has been involved with software development for...

I am presenting the session on Building Data-Driven Websites with ASP.NET (a.k.a. Data Binding and ASP.NET) at the current Microsoft Technical Roadshow we are running in the UK, so I though I would use my blog to provide some additional links and background...

The upcoming release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) has had me thinking more about security. SP2 is very much a security related release – Windows XP was launched before Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative was underway,...

As I mentioned in my last blog “ Developing on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 ”, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is one of my favourite bits of portal technology, especially because it is build on ASP.NET, so it is a “real” developer...

I have been developing on Windows Server 2003 , part of the Windows Server System, since its launch a year ago, and I think it is a superb operating system, and if you haven’t taken the opportunity to look at it, you really should. I even quite...

Even though summer seems a long way away, preparation is well underway for TechEd Europe, which takes place 29 th June – 2 nd July 2004 in Amsterdam . You can find all the info you need at http://www.microsoft.com/europe/teched/ There are...

In yesterdays post about the forthcoming Microsoft UK Technical Roadshow, I realised, after I posted it, that I should have said that if you want to keep in touch with the other events and activities that Microsoft UK host, we have a bi-weekly MSDN Flash...

I will presenting at a couple of the forthcoming UK Microsoft Technical Roadshows (we used to refer to these as MSDN roadshows, but the new events now have an IT Professional and a Security track, alongside the traditional Developer track) Full...

I have just finished reading Merrill Chapman’s book “ In Search of Stupidity – Over 20 years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters ” and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Its very readable, and lends itself to both being read cover to cover...

Last month I had the good fortune to be at Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, and saw Pat Helland , from Microsoft’s .NET Enterprise Architecture Team, gave an excellent talk, entitled “Metropolis : Envisioning the Service-Oriented...

One of the regular software design discussions I find myself involved in is that of choosing between a rich (or sometimes, less politically correctly, “fat”) applications or a browser applications. Over the past 5 or so years we have seen...