Update: the same roadmap is now published on MSDN. I adjusted the slide below to make timelines clearer. No other changes.

We wanted to share with you all the projects we are either working on or we have identified as potential areas of investment in the current Fiscal Year (that started past July and ends next June 2012). The red dashed line is roughly the present. At this time, any project that has not been started (e.g. all the Windows 8 related projects and CQRS) is just a placeholder with just some rough ideas on their scope. We don’t know yet what that content will look like, how it will be packaged (a book? code? samples? all of the above?, etc.). But as usual, we’d very much welcome your input! All our projects end up on MSDN eventually, but have a corresponding community site on CodePlex where we post drafts and early versions.

 

 

Some extra information:

 

1. Developing Immersive Windows 8 Windows Applications

  • Focus: Provides guidance on building end-to-end immersive Win8 applications using the HTML5/ JavaScript,and XAML and C++/C# application stacks.
  • Candidate App Scenario: B2C/Connected-consumer. Windows 8 Metro-Style applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: Application Design & Structure; UI – Controls, Form Factor Considerations, Interactivity, Touch & Gestures, Styling, Transitions, Animation, Media, Data Visualization, Rendering, Effects; Data Binding; UI Patterns (such as MVVM); Navigation; Sensor and local device access; Security – inside/outside the sandbox; Interacting with remote services; Accessing data; Local data storage and caching; Testing, debugging and performance tuning; Deployment, updates, and versioning; App Marketplace, leveraging legacy components.
  • Note: This project’s start and end will likely be impacted by Windows 8 ship dates.

2. Enterprise Library 6 Platform Re-alignment and Integration Pack for Windows8

  • Focus: EntLib provides guidance and re-usable code blocks for addressing cross-cutting-concerns such as caching, data access, cross-tier validation, etc. Over the years, many scenarios supported by EntLib are now better supported by the .NET platform. This project is focused on ensuring EntLib’s close alignment to the current platform (.NET 4.5) with a goal of reducing EntLib’s footprint by leveraging platform capabilities and improvements. EntLib will remain focused on filling gaps in order to support real-world end-to-end enterprise application development. In order to ensure this, the project will focus on desktop client applications as a core scenario and will deliver an Integration Pack for Windows 8. This will provide specific guidance on building enterprise LOB desktop applications for Windows 8. We may also update the EntLib Silverlight integration pack during this project to support Silverlight 5.0.
  • Candidate App Scenario: LOB/Enterprise Windows 8 desktop applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: Configuration management; Logging, diagnostics and telemetry; Exception Handling; Data access and caching; Cross-tier data validation; Security & Cryptography;
  • Note: This project’s start and end will likely be impacted by Windows 8 ship dates.

 

3. Developing Modular MVVM Applications using WPF and Silverlight (Prism 4.1)

  • Focus: An update to our existing content that provides guidance on building end-to-end applications using the managed code WPF and Silverlight 5.0 application stacks. We will likely update Prism to 4.1 to cover the RTM release of Silverlight 5.0 and the beta release of WPF 4.5.
  • Candidate App Scenario: Modular LOB/Enterprise Windows desktop applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: As outlined in the existing Prism documentation – UI design patterns (MVVM); UI composition; Modularity; Navigation; Dependency Injection, Loosely coupled inter-component communication; Deployment and updates, etc. An interesting component of this project will explore its relationship with Win8 and harvesting patterns demonstrated in Prism that apply to Win8 apps.
  • Note: This project’s start and end will likely be impacted by Windows 8 ship dates.

 

4. Developing Windows Phone 7 Applications using Silverlight – 2nd Edition Update – Phase I & Phase II

  • Focus: Phase I is an update to our existing guidance on the development of Silverlight-based Windows Phone 7 applications. This update is to showcase the new capabilities in the WP7 Mango release and to address feedback on the first edition. The Prism MVVM library for the Phone will also be update for any platform updates. Phase II is focused on making WP7 more testable. We intend to produce some artifacts to help write simpler unit tests (e.g. adapters & mocks)
  • Project community site: http://wp7guide.codeplex.com
  • Candidate App Scenario: Cloud-connected consumer oriented mobile phone applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: Application Design & Structure; UI Design – Form Factor Considerations, Interactivity, Touch & Gestures, Styling, Transitions, Animation, Media; Tomb-stoning and Navigation; Push notifications; Implementing MVVM; Sensor and local device access; Security; Interacting with cloud-based services; Accessing data; Local data storage, caching and synchronization; Testing; Debugging and performance tuning; Deployment, Updates, Versioning; Marketplace.

 

5. Test Guidance for Continuous Integration with VSTS

  • Focus:  Provide guidance to Test Engineers on common testing scenarios using Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server.
  • Candidate scenarios:  Setting up continuous test integration infrastructure. Building test harnesses.

 

6. Developing Mobile Web Applications

  • Focus: Provides guidance on the development of interactive web applications that specifically target HTML5 capable mobile phone devices such as WP7 Mango with IE9.
  • Candidate App Scenario: Cloud-connected consumer oriented mobile phone web applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: Application Design & Structure, using ASP.NET MVC/Razor; Client-side JavaScript and jQuery development; Leveraging HTML5/CSS3/SVG capabilities; Browser and device capability detection; Integration and re-use within ‘full’ web applications; UI Design – Form Factor Considerations, Interactivity, Touch & Gestures, Styling, Transitions, Animation, Media; Navigation; Sensor and local device access; Security; Interacting with remote services; Accessing data; Local data storage and caching; Debugging and performance tuning; Versioning.

 

7. Enterprise Library Integration Pack for Windows Azure

  • Focus: Provides guidance on auto-scaling and building resilient applications on Windows Azure.
  • Project community site: http://entlib.codeplex.com
  • Public backlog: http://entlib.uservoice.com
  • Candidate App Scenario: LOB/Enterprise/Consumer facing cloud applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: Scaling Windows Azure roles based on predefined criteria (e.g. schedule, resource metrics and other KPIs). Increase tolerance to connection failures to different resources (e.g. databases, storage, external dependencies, etc.). Add automatic retries in case of failures.

 

8. CQRS Guide

  • Focus: Provides guidance on building application using the Command Query Response Segregation pattern. Many customers have expressed interest in this approach to building apps.
  • Candidate App Scenario: LOB/Enterprise/Consumer facing cloud applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: Applications with high scalability and/or high performance requirements.

 

9. Migrating/Developing Applications to/for the Cloud – 2nd Edition Update

  • Focus: An update to our existing guidance on the migration and development of applications for Windows Azure – updated is to showcase the new capabilities of the Windows Azure platform and to address feedback on the first edition. This project has been already completed and content is in production now for MSDN release.
  • Project community site: http://wag.codeplex.com (will be on MSDN very soon)
  • Candidate App Scenario: Continued focus on LOB/Enterprise/Consumer focused cloud applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: Using Web and Worker Roles; Using Queues & SQL Azure, Table, Drive/Page Blob Storage; Claims-based authentication and authorization; Migration of existing application assets to the cloud; Designing a new application for the cloud; Using upgrade and fault domains; Single and Multi-Tenant application design; Deployment, Update and Versioning; Testing, Debugging and Performance Tuning; Tools for cloud development.

 

10. Hybrid Cloud Application Guidance

  • Focus: Provides guidance on developing hybrid (applications that have on-premises and cloud components). This project demonstrates use of platform features such as Windows Azure Connect, Windows Azure VM Roles and Windows Azure Service Bus.
  • Project community site: http://wag.codeplex.com
  • Candidate App Scenario: Integration of on-premises and cloud based Enterprise/LOB applications.
  • Candidate Sub-Scenarios: Implementation patterns for data, workflow and identity integration; taking advantage of cloud specific capabilities such as geo-location, dynamic scalability, etc.