A few months ago I posted on how to automate deployment of Windows Azure projects using MSBuild. While the approach documented in that post continues to work, Windows Azure SDK 1.6 has introduced some new capabilities for managing Windows Azure credentials...

Just a quick note that I’ve edited my previous post Using MSBuild to deploy to multiple Windows Azure environments based on some changes to the platform that have come with the Windows Azure SDK 1.5 and Windows Azure PowerShell cmdlets 2.0. The...

Introduction In my last post , I showed how to use Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus Queues with WCF. Service Bus Queues provide a great mechanism for asynchronous communication between between two specific applications or services. However in complex...

In 2008 I posted a series of blog articles about how to use MSMQ, WCF and IIS together. I chose to use this architecture as it combined the scalability and resiliency benefits of durable asynchronous messaging, with the simplicity and power of the WCF...

What is an Environment? Anyone who has worked on a software development project will be familiar with the concept of an “environment”. Simply put, an environment is a set of infrastructure that you can deploy your application to, supporting...

Many developers choose to use service oriented techniques to break large systems into smaller, loosely coupled services. Frequently, each service will be hosted on a different machine and use WS-* protocols for standards-based communication. However there...

Bubble Charts are a great way to visualise data that has three numerical values for each point. Two of the values are plotted on the X and Y axis, while the other is represented via the diameter of the bubble. Excel also supports Bubble Charts with...

Update 6 December 2011: Windows Azure SDK 1.6 includes some significant changes to how credentials and publishing settings are managed, so I've written a new post Automated Build and Deployment with Windows Azure SDK 1.6 which shows how to leverage these...

PowerShell is an amazing technology which I’d love to learn to use properly some day. Unfortunately I’m still at the stage where I don’t really know much about it, but from time to time I need to use it to solve random problems. Luckily, trial and error...

I’ve just come back from Microsoft’s Tech.Ed conferences in Australia and New Zealand, where I presented a session called The role of an architect in an agile team . Thanks to everybody who attended the session, and for the great questions...

Hi again – yes I know it’s been a while. Recently I’ve started a new role in Microsoft which involves helping customers deploy applications on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. I thought it may be fitting it...

Today’s post is a quick plug for a new tool developed by my friend Olaf Conijn, who (amongst other things) has been a developer on several versions of Enterprise Library. His new tool is called Suggested Resources for .NET Developers , and the current...

Hello again! It’s been a while, I know. I’ve been busy over the last few months with several projects, some of them software related, and one of them human – my son Jesse was born on 26 February 2010. Fun times! Meanwhile, back in Redmond, the p&p...

Just a quick post for anyone attending TechEd Australia and/or New Zealand, in the first couple of weeks of September 2009. I’ll be doing two presentations, so please stop by and say hello (and maybe even watch the sessions!). The sessions I’m presenting...

Where were you at 2:15am (Sydney time) on 5 April 2009? Other than the fact that your memory is pretty hazy now that a few weeks have passed, you’d expect there to be an unambiguous answer to that question. However it turns out you could well have been...

One of the critical responsibilities of every developer and architect is to understand, and know how to prevent, as many kinds of security attacks as possible. While there are many types of attacks and many weapons at our disposal to thwart them, the...

When I decided to leave the patterns & practices team to move back to Australia, one of my big concerns was whether I would be able to work on teams with the quality and dedication I experienced on projects such as Enterprise Library. It turned out...

I tried. I really did. For five months I’ve chronicled my daily thoughts and activities for all to see. But despite my efforts, this really only confirmed what I suspected right from the start: that Twitter is really pretty pointless. Now before you...

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been on a bit of a blogging vacation of late. Rest assured that I’m still here and I’ll try to get some good posts happening soon. But for now I just wanted to draw your attention to one of Grigori ’s posts asking for...

It’s that time again – the kick-off for the next major release of Enterprise Library. I can’t believe we’re already up to version 5.0 – it doesn’t seem like that long ago when we were planning version 1.0. Anyway, you should know the drill by now....

Reposting Grigori’s announcement in case you missed it: Here’s a gift for the New Year’s. We have produced a new hands-on lab on validation with Enterprise Library. It contains 13 exercises that walk you through capabilities of the Validation Application...

As I mentioned in my recent post about how my team does agile , one of the core ingredients of our process is that nobody is allowed to check in without having gone through a code review and a test review. No other team that I’ve worked on previously...

Pablo Galiano , one of my friends and colleagues from my patterns & practices days, has just released a very cool extension for Visual Studio 2008 called StickyNotes . As the name suggests, it allows you to attach sticky notes to your code, with a...

As you know, I’m a big fan of agile software development. But what exactly does “agile” mean? If you ask a room full of software engineers that question, you’re sure to get as many different answers as there are people. I’m not going to try to tell you...

Those who have followed my blog for a while should know that I’m not in the habit of using this space to blindly promote Microsoft products – although if I find something genuinely cool or useful I’ve been known to give it a quick plug. This is why I...