December, 2011

Hi, this is Dino Esposito. It’s been a couple of years since Microsoft Press published Microsoft .NET: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise   (ISBN: 9780735626096; 460 pages), which I wrote with Andrea Saltarello. We also created a successful class out of the book and taught it countless times. As you can imagine, we’ve received a lot of feedback about some of the statements we made in the book and some of the positions we took on sensitive design points. A frequent point of discussion is the software architecture version of the old chicken/egg dilemma. What comes first in the design of a successful application: the database or domain model? As usual in software architecture, the most appropriate answer is, “It depends.” However, the fact is that nearly everybody draws conclusions...

One more new Exam Ref to go before 2011 ends. It’s a joy to announce availability of MCITP 70-663 Exam Ref: Designing and Deploying Messaging Solutions with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 (ISBN 9780735658080; 448 pages), by Orin Thomas. Our latest addition to the Microsoft Press Exam Ref series is the study guide of choice for 70-663, the Pro-level exam required for the MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010 certification. Getting certified is a great way to start the new year. For a gaze inside, here’s the book’s Table of Contents and the review questions for exam 70-663 objective 3.1: Design and Deploy Messaging Security. You can get a sampler of the book, which includes the entire first chapter, here: http://cdn.oreilly.com/oreilly/booksamplers/msp...

David Solomon, co-author of the Windows Internals book series, is holding a 2-day webinar January 9 & 11, 2012, exploring the internals of key Windows kernel components and mechanisms featuring the Sysinternals tools. Topics include kernel architecture, memory management, thread scheduling, interrupt processing, time accounting, and crash dump analysis. This knowledge will help you help you troubleshoot difficult system problems as well as understand the true meaning behind key system performance counters. For more details, see www.solsem.com/register.html .

We’re excited to announce that Egbert Jeschke, Helmut Reinke, Sara Unverhau, Eckehard Pfeifer, Bodo Fienitz, and Jens Bock’s Microsoft Excel 2010 Formulas & Functions Inside Out (ISBN 9780735658028; 1104 pages), ) is now available for purchase! You can find the book’s introduction in this previous post . In today’s post, please enjoy two excerpts – Chapters 3 & 5. Chapter 3 - “From Numbers to Formulas” - Calculations in Microsoft Excel are achieved through formulas. Formulas are entered differently than other data, although you probably won't notice the difference. The procedure for working with Excel worksheets and working on paper is basically the same, except that when you work on paper you have to write down the initial values and...

We’ll be posting our “New book” announcement for this book in early January but wanted to make you all aware that XAML Developer Reference , by Mamta D. and Ashish Ghoda, is available now. If you have some free time over the holidays and want to study XAML, this is the book for you! Also makes a great gift for the developer on your list.

Just in time for the holidays, we’re happy to announce MCPD 70-518 Exam Ref: Designing and Developing Windows® Applications Using Microsoft® .NET Framework 4 (ISBN 9780735657236; 336 pages) by Tony Northrup and Matthew A. Stoecker. This book is the latest addition to the new Microsoft Press Exam Ref series , and a great way to prepare for the MCPD 70-518 exam, the Pro-level exam required for the MCPD: Windows Developer 4 certification. To give you a look inside, here’s the book’s Table of Contents, and an excerpt from the section on 70-518 exam objective 3.3 (Design Data Caching): Contents Chapter 1: Designing the Layers of a Solution · Objective 1.1: Design a Loosely Coupled Layered Architecture · Objective 1.2: Design Service Interaction · Objective 1.3: Design the Security Implementation...

You can read a pretty in-depth review of Eric Brechner’s I. M. Wright’s “Hard Code”: A Decade of Hard-Won Lessons from Microsoft (Second Edition) at the ZDNet UK Book Reviews site. The review is by Mary Branscombe, and it begins like this: What's it like to work at Microsoft? Better still, what do the people who write software at Microsoft actually do? This annotated collection of software development columns, originally written for internal consumption, is a fascinating view of what's infuriating, what's inspiring and what's plain bizarre (Frisbee golf morale events, for example). Hard Code calls itself "the brutal truth about coding, testing and project management", and there's lots of nitty-gritty detail at that level (written in a feisty, 'I dare you to...

Microsoft Press is pleased to announce the new book Developing Microsoft Media Foundation Applications (Print ISBN: 978-0-7356-5659-8, 384 pages) by Anton Polinger. Media Foundation provides the core tools you need to create powerful and professional media applications and components. The author, Anton Polinger is an expert who has been developing Microsoft media technologies for over a decade. This book shows you how to build applications that can capture different types of video and audio files, process media information, and stream media over the Internet. Filled with useful examples, you’ll get a complete introduction to the Media Foundation API, learn to develop custom Media Foundation components, and create advanced video and audio applications—while discovering how to...

We’re pleased to announce that the new Microsoft Press book Integrating PHP with Windows (ISBN: 978-0-7356-4791-6; 664 pages) is now available for purchase! Millions of developers use the popular PHP web development language to create web sites and web applications. But PHP runs on servers, so all that code has to be hosted and executed on some type of server—and increasingly, that is a Windows Server running Internet Information Server (IIS). The hosting OS and ecosystem is extremely important to PHP developers and IT staff, because it includes such tasks as authentication, security, caching, error handling, performance, notifications, and maintenance. You’ll see how to build PHP applications that run efficiently and effectively with an array of Windows technologies...

Thanks to everyone who responded to the sign up request. I received 80 requests from testers and they will be getting information in email soon. If you did not get into the pilot, I’m sorry, but we had to limit the numbers. I will post details sometime in the spring if we choose to move forward with a commercial product for labs online. Thanks, Kim  

Greetings. Tony Northrup, who has authored or co-authored at least a dozen Microsoft Press books for IT professionals, including MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-515): Web Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 , has just published a new book: Tony Northrup's DSLR Book: How to Create Stunning Digital Photography . Here’s a quick description of the book from Tony: “I've been working on this book -- Tony Northrup's DSLR Book: How to Create Stunning Digital Photography -- in-between my Microsoft Press books for about two years now. It's a general, but very in-depth, photography book for everyone from beginners to advanced amateurs. It's a great gift for anyone interested in photography: 222 pages with 350+ pictures. The Kindle eBook is just $5.” You can visit Tony’s Amazon...

We are pleased to announce that the new Microsoft Press book, MOS 2010 Study Guide for Microsoft OneNote Exam (ISBN 9780735664821, 160 pages), is now available for purchase! In today’s post, please enjoy reading an excerpt from chapter 2, Sharing and Collaborating: Synchronizing Shared Notebooks Shared notebooks are identified in the Navigation bar by a Sync Status icon. The icon displays a symbol to indicate the status of synchronization. For example, you’ll see a check mark when a notebook is up to date. You’ll see a warning exclamation mark when OneNote has encountered problems with the synchronization process (for example, if some sections are not available or in a location that is not accessible.) The icon shows arrows spinning in a circle when a notebook...

Microsoft Press is looking for people to test a new online lab program. The pilot is built around labs for Exchange Server 2010, so some familiarity with Exchange Server, regardless of version number, would be a plus. If you wish to sign up to be a beta tester, please send an email to msp_onlinebeta@microsoft.com with the subject “ Request to Beta Test .” Please include your first and last name in the email. We can allow 10 testers per session. Each session will last for one week. We will run the pilot for 8 sessions starting January 9, 2012 and ending March 4, 2012. We can accept the first 80 requests. We will let you know the dates for which you are scheduled and send instructions on how to access the lab. Once you begin testing the labs, we would appreciate any feedback...

In case you missed it, today is a Windows Azure day. Take a look at the five events Channel 9 is streaming live today: http://www.learnwindowsazureevent.com/ “Join us LIVE from the Microsoft Redmond Campus to learn how to get started building applications for the cloud from Microsoft technical leaders Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich!” And you can watch the events here: http://channel9.msdn.com/events/windowsazure/learn

From Steve Weiss, Associate Publisher, O’Reilly Media, Microsoft Press Division These are exciting times in tech publishing, at least for those who have been anticipating the changes the industry is going through for some time now. Since O’Reilly Media and Microsoft created a business alliance two years ago to manage Microsoft Press, we’ve dramatically increased our online publishing presence, taking more than 500 titles to DRM-free digital formats. We’ve grown our presence at tradeshows and industry events as well, to the point where we need a dedicated marketing specialist to help manage our online activities, our community outreach, and how we continue to grow the business in a constantly changing social-media-driven environment. The position--Senior Marketing...

December is looking like Exam Ref month. This new Microsoft Press certification series launched in October, and we’re publishing two more titles just in time for the holidays. The newest Exam Ref -- MCITP 70-663 Exam Ref: Designing and Deploying Messaging Solutions with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 (ISBN 9780735658080; 448 pages) -- shipped to the printer this week, thanks to the stellar work of author Orin Thomas and our production team. The Exam Ref series is designed for experienced, MCTS-certified professionals ready to advance their status. Each book focuses on the critical-thinking and decision-making acumen needed for success at the MCITP level. This title provides a comprehensive and concise way of preparing for 70-663, the Pro-level exam required for the MCITP: Enterprise...

Yesterday we blogged about Don Reifer’s new Microsoft Press book, Software Change Management: Case Studies and Practical Advice (ISBN: 9780735664753): Why is it so difficult to change organizations? What does it really take to make “process improvement” yield measurable results? For more than 30 years, Donald Reifer has been guiding software teams through the technical, organizational, and people issues that must be managed in order to make meaningful process changes—and better products. This practical guide draws from his extensive experience, featuring 11 prototype case studies spanning the public and private sectors and even academia. Each case study illuminates the original conditions; describes options and recommendations; details reactions, outcomes, and lessons...