Blaine Wastell - patterns & practices client architecture guidance

Loosely coupled communication

Check our Francis Cheung's blog posts on loosely couple communication for composite WPF applications. Francis discusses three mechanisms for loosely coupled communication:

1. Shared Services
2. Commanding
3. Event Aggregation

Francis (did most of the work) and I identified some guidelines on when to use each of these mechanisms. Let us know your thoughts on the guidance as this is input to our Prism documentation.

Guidelines for loosely coupled communication

When communicating between modules you can use Shared Services, Commanding, or Event Aggregation. Use the following to help decide which approach to use:

• If you need to respond to a user gesture, such as clicking on a command invoker (button, menu item.), and you want the invoker to be enabled based on business logic, use Commanding
• If you need to fire an event and do not need a response, use an Event Aggregator
• Otherwise consider using a service locator to register and resolve Shared Services

Need help to prioritize SharePoint scenarios and requirements

We are starting a new project to provide guidance on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). If you are a SharePoint developer we need you to take a survey to help us priority scenarios and requirements for the guidance.

As background, customers have been asking for guidance on SharePoint for quite awhile now. SharePoint is a big application development platform that we need your help to determine where we should focus our time.

Track Prism project

The Prism project is making good progress toward our first release at the end of June..ish. If you want to track our progress for the past iterations, check out the Releases page on Codeplex. In the current drop, we created:

• New Event Aggregation QuickStart
• New Elements added to Prism to support Event Aggregation
• Updated the Regions implementation

Below is a screen shot of the Event Aggregation QuickStart. You will notice that our excellent UI design skills are displayed with this QuickStart.

We updated the RI's look and feel. Check it out.

Do we listen to the community?

Does the patterns & practices client team listen to the community? It is easy for someone in our position to fall into the "ivory tower" trap and not listen to customers. Within patterns & practices we work hard at listening to the community when working on releases. I am interested in hearing both the good and bad of the client team listening / not listening to the community. So please share as we work on improving our assets and helping you create line of business applications that deliver business results for your customers.

Mike Puleio worked with the development team to close issues identified by the smart client community. He recently blogged about the number of items recently closed:

• Out of 89 open work items/ issues, we closed 45 yesterday.  A number of these had been fixed in the May 2007 release and never closed, a number were fixed in this release, and some were related to different weekly drops.
• Out of the top 25 items (by community votes), we closed 13.
• Looked at another way, we closed 1/2 of the open issues, and 1/2 of the top issues.

I want you perspective on if this is good or is it bad. I view this as good, but I do not want to be in the "ivory tower" so I want to hear from you? When thinking about the question of is the client team listening to the community, I ask:

• What are we doing well?
• What do we need to improve?
• What should we do more of?
• What should we stop doing?

With this feedback, if you can prioritize it I would appreciate it. Just like on your projects, we have limited resources that we need to figure out where to spend our money to have the most customer impacts. By the way the feedback right now is timely given we are working on creating our fiscal 09 plan.

So let us know your thoughts.

Smart Client Software Factory - April 2008 Release for Visual Studio 2008 is now available on MSDN

As Mike announced in his blog yesterday, we released an updated version of the Smart Client Software Factory for Visual Studio 2008. As previously discussed in my blog, this release provides:

• Support for Visual Studio 2008. 
• Fixes for bugs identified by the community on CodePlex.
• Side-by-side usage of the April 2008 Guidance Package with the May 2007 Guidance Package.
• Support for Enterprise Library 3.1
• Documentation in HTML format on MSDN

The release does require Guidance Automation Extensions - February 2008 Release (GAX). When you upgrade to the Guidance Automate Extensions - February 2008 release you can install it on top of your existing version of GAX and you no longer need to uninstall your Guidance Automate Toolkit Packages.

Once Enterprise Library 4.0 is released, we will provide guidance in the Smart Client knowledge base on how to upgrade to this version of Enterprise Library. If you need to run on Visual Studio 2005, you should download the Smart Client Software Factory - May 2007 release.

Here is a snapshot of how you can access the documentation in HTML format on MSDN from the SCSF Home Page:

You can access the following topics in HTML format here:

• Introducing the Smart Client Software Factory
• Inspecting the Software Factory Assets
• Development Activities
• Deploying Smart Client Application with ClickOnce
• Customizing the Smart Client Software Factory

The downloads for this release can be found:

• Smart Client Software Factory - April 2008
• Smart Client Software Factory Source Code - April 2008
• Documentation in CHM format

Please note that the source code and documentation is the duplicated in the factory and in the separated downloads. This provides you the opportunity to view them without having to install the entire factory.

As always, provide feedback on CodePlex community site which is www.codeplex.com/smartclient.

SCSF April 2008 Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Published to CodePlex

In response to customer requests, we just published the Smart Client Software Factory April 2008 Alpha release to CodePlex. As I mentioned in a previous blog we are close to finishing this release. The current plan is to go out with EntLib 3.1 support as we are not taking advantage of new EntLib 4.0 features such as Unity. If you have a compelling reason for us to delay the release for EntLib 4.0 we want to hear from you soon so we have time to consider the change.

New in this release:

• The April 2008 release of the Smart Client Software Factory includes support for Visual Studio 2008. This release does not support Visual Studio 2005.
• We fixed a few bugs that were identified by the community.
• Requires Guidance Automation Extensions 1.4.
• April 2008 Guidance Package can run side-by-side with the May 2007 Guidance Package.

Known issues

• If the SCSF source is installed on the default path, compiling Quickstarts.WPFIntegration.sln will fail with path too long error.
• If the SCSF source is installed on the default path, compiling GuidancePackage.sln will fail with path too long error.
• Unit tests of CompositeUI.WPF.Tests project (in CompositeUI-WPFExtensions.sln) will fail when executed under debug mode.

Note: This is an alpha release and still has known bugs. We have not completed testing the factory. Use at your own risk.

Go try it out and give us your feedback on the discussion board especially regarding EntLib 3.1 and 4.0 support. You should also read Mike's blog on the release.

Web Client Bundles for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 Available on Download Center

We just posted the Web Client Assets (formerly known as Bundles) for both .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 on the download center. You can get links to the downloads from the Web Client Factory Home Page or from the Bundles Pages on CodePlex. If you are not familiar with the Guidance Assets, they are small packages of guidance whose purpose is to allow users to quickly, conveniently, and easily learn and evaluate a concept. Additionally you can use Assets individually or as a whole.

Note: If want to use them as a whole package, then you should use the Web Client Software Factory.

Although an Assets can contain any type of guidance, it typically includes the following elements:

• Source code: QuickStarts and related artifacts.
• Binaries: Application block binaries required by the QuickStarts .
• Written documentation: QuickStarts description and How-To topics.
• Guidance Package: Visual Studio Automation for performing development activies in accordance with our guidance.
• Reference Implementation: Applications that illustrate usage of our guidance in action.

All of the Assets, except for the Automation Asset, are zip files.

.NET 3.5 Assets for Visual Studio 2008:

• Web Client Composite Library for .NET Framework 3.5
• Web Client Contextual AutoComplete Application Block for .NET Framework 3.5
• Web Client Model View Presenter Application Block for .NET Framework 3.5
• Web Client Modularity Application Block for .NET Framework  3.5
• Web Client Responsive Composite Reference Implementation for .NET Framework 3.5
• Web Client Search Application Block for .NET Framework 3.5
• Web Client Validation Application Block for .NET Framework 3.5

.NET 2.0 Assets for Visual Studio 2005:

• Web Client Composite Automation for .NET Framework 2.0
• Web Client Composite Library for .NET Framework 2.0
• Web Client Contextual AutoComplete Application Block for .NET Framework 2.0
• Web Client Model View Presenter Application Block for .NET Framework 2.0
• Web Client Modularity Application Block for .NET Framework 2.0
• Web Client Responsive Composite Reference Implementation for .NET Framework 2.0
• Web Client Search Application Block for .NET Framework 2.0
• Web Client Validation Application Block for .NET Framework 2.0

Ok go download them :).

JD shares his insights from some of the best books

Earlier today I provided a link to JD's blog on a presentation from Stephen Covey. I have known JD for over 5 years now and worked closely with him on multiple projects for almost 2 years. During this time, I remember that JD read lots of books on lots of topics (I do mean lots of books) and was always trying news ways to improve himself and/or project execution. He publishes his review of the books he reads on Bookshare where his goal is to:

Improve your effectiveness at work and life with insights and actions from knowledge built to last. I regularly mentor people at work, so The Book Share is a place for me to share nuggets from books that I find useful.

Check out the site as there is lots of nuggets that provide insights to many different things in life. It is also a good place to continue to come back to as JD is always reading news books. After you go to the site let me know if you say WOW just as I have done.

JD Meier shares "Cliff Notes" from Stephen Covey's presentation to Microsoft

JD Meier recently posted a blog on Stephen Covey's presentation to Microsoft. The blog post includes:

• Lighthouse principles
• Values and principles
• Personal and family mission statement and why
• One of my favorites Urgent but not important
• Office politics
• Finding your voice
• Keys to effective large teams
• Win / Win agreements
• Keeping top talent
• Plus lots more

Check it out. I worked with JD on Whidbey Security Guidance and learned a lot from him. This guidance is still one of the best sellers on MSDN. He share many of his secrets on effectiveness on this blog.

Composite Web Application Block on Unity

Mike Puleio recently posted blog entries on how to convert Composite Web Application Block (CWAB) to use Unity. Here are the links to the blog posts:

- First post

- Second post

If this is something you are interested in, check it out. Unity simplifies the CWAB.

Smart Client Software Factory for Visual Studio 2008 close to shipping

Now that Web Client Software Factory Shipped and the team is focusing on Prism (the composite scenario on WPF), we are getting customers asking when SCSF and CAB for Visual Studio 2008 will ship. I am happy to say that we are working on porting SCSF and CAB to Visual Studio 2008. We anticipate shipping this release somewhere between tax day (April 15th for those outside of the US) and the end of April.

Mike recently described an issue with unit test we found during the port of the code from VS2005 to VS2008 that you should check out. At this point, we need to finish the installer and final testing. Once that is done we will publish the release on MSDN. This new release will require an upgrade of GAX/GAT to the February 2008 release.

As part of the release process, we will publish the SCSF and CAB documentation on MSDN. We also did this for WCSF.

Using EntLib 3.1 with Visual Studio 2008

If you want to use "take full advantage of Enterprise Library 3.1", Scott Densmore just posted a blog about how to make it work on Visual Studio 2008.

We have had customers using WCSF February 2008 which runs on Visual Studio 2008 ask how they can use the factory with Enterprise Library 3.1 which runs on Visual Studio 2005. For those that need this capability now you should you should refer to Scott's blog.

WCSF February 2008 Release can now live side-by-side with October 2007 Guidance Package

Based upon customer feedback, we made a change to the installation program to allow the Web Client Software Factory - February 2008 Release to be installed without requiring you to uninstall the Web Client Guidance Automation - October 2007. If you want to run both guidance packages side-by-side, you will need to uninstall the your version of the February 2008 factory and download the current version of the factory from the download center.

The support for this scenario is the only change in the msi. The source code and documentation has not changed from what was released on February 28, 2008.

As an fyi, as I mentioned in my blog, we are close to finishing the bundles for both Visual Studio 2008 / .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2005 / .NET 2.0. Once these bundles are complete, you will be able to download them from the download center. I will send out another blog once they are live.

View Web Client Software Factory Documentation on MSDN

As I mentioned in my previous blog, a complete copy of WCSF February 2008 release's documentation is now available to view on MSDN.  Let us know your thoughts of viewing the documentation on MSDN. As an fyi, it will take some time for the links and content to replicate to all the servers worldwide. If you do not see the documentation, try back in a few hours.

You can navigate to the documentation using MSDN's Left Navigation:

Or you can access the documentation from WCSF home page on MSDN --> www.msdn.com/webclientfactory and scroll to the documentation section on the home page.

Web Client Software Factory - February 2008 Shipped

After further ado, we finally shipped the Web Client Software Factory. Glenn and Michael describe what is in the new release. I want to highlight a couple of things from the release.

• Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Support. This factory supports Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. Over the next 2 weeks we will re-release the bundles with support for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5.
• Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0 Support on Codeplex. If you need support for Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0, you can use the code on Codeplex. Over the next few weeks, we will migrate the existing bundles to MSDN and the Microsoft download center.
• WCSF February 2008 and WCSF June 2007 run side by side: I'm excited that this release can run side by side with WCSF June 2007 so you can leave the previous release on your machine if needed.
• Requires GAX February 2008 Release. You will need to upgrade to the Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) February release. This release of GAX allows you to upgrade existing versions of GAX and keep your previous GAT packages. Thank you GAX/GAT teams. The delay in GAX/GAT caused us some delays but it is well worth the extra time.

Another item that I want to highlight is that we released WatiN Automated Acceptance tests.  There are a number of good automated acceptance tools on the market. This one works well for our requirements. You can download WatiN from here. When you look at the source code, you will find solution files with "FunctionalTests" in the name. In order to run the these tests, you will need to have the WatiN dll.

Please give us feedback as how much you use the automated acceptance tests. In a later blog post, we will provide information as to how you can maintain the acceptance tests.

Note: this is a link to an external Web site that provides software that can be used to write acceptance tests. Please note that Microsoft is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites. This is for the lawyers.

We have received feedback that you really like the bundle documentation on the Web. Based upon this feedback, we plan to put all the Web Client Software Factory documentation on MSDN. This will take time as we figure out so keep checking back on www.msdn.com/webclientfactory.

Links

Factory Links:

• WCSF Home Page.
• WCSF February 2008 Download. This includes the guidance package, documentation (both HsX and CHM), source code installer for the blocks, source code installer for the guidance package, QuickStarts, and Reference Implementations.
• Getting Started with the Web Client Software Factory
• Installing the Web Client Software Factory - February 2008 Release
• Upgrading to the Web Client Software Factory - February 2008 Release

Factory Component Links:

• Source code: includes source code for the guidance package, QuickStarts, and Reference Implementation.
• Block Source code: Web Client Software Factory Source Code for Application Blocks
• Documentation: Web Client Software Factory documentation and api documentation in CHM format.

Bundle Links (also for Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0 Support):

• AutoComplete
• Web Client Automation
• Composite Web Client Library
• Module View Presenter
• Modularity
• Responsive Web Client Reference Implementation
• Search
• Validation

Release Blog posts:

• Scope of the release by me
• Scope of the release by Glenn and Web Client Factory Status
• Glenn's blog about the release
• Michael's blog about the release

If you got this far, go download the factory and use it on your next project. When you start using it, give us your feedback on Codeplex.