I delivered a session on Architecting the Next Generation of .NET Applications at http://www.spaconference.org/spa2007 As promised, here are the links. RESOURCES Dinnernow http://www.dinnernow.net/ http://www.codeplex.com/dinnernow WPF...

I am delivering a session on .NET 3.0/3.5/"Longhorn" Server stuff at SPA next week . I hope to show some cool and unusual stuff - alas none of which I currently understand. Hence I have a rather busy few days ahead and likely I will be quiet on the blogging...

I needed to do some research for one of our larger UK ISVs on VB6 migration options. As part of that I spoke to one of the Execs at Artinsoft and thought it would be useful to share what I found out more broadly. But first some background... VB6 migration...

As a team we have had lots of discussions around OpenXML of late. But I think Dave summarised the importance of OpenXML perfectly today: "OpenXML was the primary success of the POC I did with <ISV NAME REMOVED> last year. Every other piece of the...

Two areas I have spent a fair bit of time on in the last 6 months are SaaS and Workflow Foundation . Workflow Foundation is a great technology that seems to fit well into the SaaS world of "configuring business processes" - which is one reason why Workflow...

In March we held a conference for UK Architects which covered a diverse range of topics, many handled in Workshop formats. The slides are now available including several decks we used to cover off SaaS for Customer/ISV. I think we win the award for "most...

We have some very successful ISVs in the UK using ... drum roll... Foxpro very successfully. I spotted this article covering off the future of Foxpro . I found the most interesting bit to be the promise to use www.codeplex.com to allow the Foxpro community...

SaaS is great, SaaS is wonderful, SaaS gives you per seat per month costs with immediate exit options.... Err... cough. I popped over to SugarCRM - an Open Source ISV I had come across in my travels around the blogosphere. $40 per seat/month it proclaimed...

Because if you are, then you are not alone - most of my UK ISVs are only just now looking at SaaS. If you have an "on-premise" model then a move to delivering "on-demand" can be extremely challenging - both technically and from the perspective of your...

This scenario is simple and relatively frequent. A solution that is normally deployed into a single site with a single central database, now needs to be accessed from many sites in many geographies over some kind of WAN or perhaps even public Internet...

I started to discuss a proposed architecture with an ISV that included (potentially) MSMQ. The architecture we were discussing included Remote Receive from queues - something I had learnt in the early years of MSMQ to avoid at all costs (and instead we...

I heard of Retrospectives a few years back but only had the opportunity to hear first hand how powerful they can be last year at http://www.spaconference.org/spa2006/ . I am two weeks away from attending (and delivering) at SPA 2007 and in the thick of...

A colleague pointed me at this great article which talks about how the architecture of MySpace evolved as the site became more successful. The site started out initially as a Perl/Apache/MySQL prototype, moved to SQL Server for live (2 Web servers and...

I just came across our new site aimed at helping people learn to develop using Visual Studio Express Editions. This is great introductory material - ideal for a new hobbyist developer or a teenage child (or younger! - check out the video of the 11 year...

Yesterday we delivered the workshop on SaaS to Architects from customers and ISVs in the UK. There was a lot of great discussion during the workshop which made life so much easier for us. A big thankyou to all who attended. We will be writing up our notes...

Last day - March 4th On Sunday Richard and I headed over to the hotel to pull together our final set of slides for the session and to work through exactly how we would run the workshop. Concerned that we might struggle to get a good debate going we...

What can you say! Check out the write up and videos: Event Write up http://www.nxtgenug.net/Article.aspx?ArticleID=153 The NxtGenUG – ReadyBoost Song by Dave McMahon http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=f022109f-2980-4689-8de7-d3bdbfb676fb ...

27th and 28th of Feb DAY 4 and 5 22nd I was thinking SAAS. 23rd I was thinking "I wonder if that huge wave is going to get us!" - yep, I took the family for few days holiday in Lyme Regis and was met with a rather choppy sea on the first day with some...