If you are a C++ programmer you will want to download and read this very informative (deep!) white paper on the topic of multi-core programming using C++ published by Charles Leiserson and Ilya Mirman of Cilk Arts.

-bob

Recently I had the pleasure to interview Steve Resnick, Rich Crane and Chris Bowen on their new book Essential WCF. Check it out on Channel 9:

ARCast.TV - Essential WCF

-bob

SharePoint Server has long been viewed as an "intranet-in-the-box" and has enjoyed great success behind corporate firewalls. But what about using MOSS to build public-facing, high volume commercial web sites? In this ARCast episode, Denny Boynton sits down with Sundar Swaminathan of Quilogy, the lead architect of Energizer.com (yes, the site with the bunny that goes on and on and on...), and talks about why he chose to use MOSS as the architectural foundation of this high visible site.

ARCast.TV - Sundar Swaminathan on MOSS for Public Facing Web Sites

-bob

More than 100 people at Microsoft and from the IT industry in the world today have become Microsoft Certified Architects since the program was launched about two years ago. For people who are interested to become an MCA, they may wonder what it is like to go through the certification process.

In this interview with Biff Gaut, who earned his MCA title during the pilot phase of the MCA programs, Dr. Zhiming Xue “Z”, Architect Evangelist of the Microsoft DPE East Region, and George Cerbone, Microsoft MCA Program Manager and an MCA himself, interview Biff Gaut about the untold aspects of the grueling interview process, the trade-offs candidates have to make, and the key things to do before the interview day.

ARCast.TV - Biff Gaut discusses the Microsoft Certified Architect Program

-bob

Sam Chenaur recently conducted an interview with Lennox Scott, Chairman and CEO of John L Scott Real Estate.  With the help of Dr. Neil Roodyn, Tricky Business, and Loke Uei Tan from the Windows Mobile team, John L Scott Real Estate agreed to build a Silverlight POC targeting the Windows Mobile platform. 

Here is some interesting information about John L. Scott Real Estate:

• John L. Scott Real Estate was founded in 1931 and is currently led by third generation chairman and CEO, J. Lennox Scott
• Closed over 44,000 real estate transactions in 2007
• Grossed 14.6 billion dollars in sales volume in 2007 making it the 4th most productive regional real estate company in the US
• 145 offices with over 4,300 sales associates located throughout Washington, Oregon, and Idaho
• Johnlscott.com receives over one million user visits a month producing over nine million listing views
• Currently ranked the 8th most productive real estate brokerage in the nation by RIS Media
• Currently ranked the 4th largest regional real estate company in the nation by REAL Trends
• Recipient of Inman Innovator Award for “Most Innovative Real Estate Company in the Nation”
• Every year the John L. Scott foundation contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor events that help to raise millions of dollars for children's healthcare throughout the Pacific Northwest

Silverlight Mobile with John L Scott Real Estate

For more information on Silverlight 1.0 for Mobile visit: http://silverlight.net/learn/mobile.aspx

My good friend Denny Boynton, an architect evangelist from the midwest, recently interviewed Juval Lowy of iDesign on the topic of Interface Based Design. The interview has been posted to ARCast.tv.

ARCast.tv - Juval Lowy on Interface Based Design

Description

Should you use abstract classes or interfaces? What about WCF service contracts? Is the decision which one to use a design decision or a direct product of the technology at hand? Why is .NET allowing you such wide range of options, and why are other technologies (from COM to WCF) restricting you? In this ARCast, Juval Lowy will demystify these age-old questions and share his insight and perspective.

-bob

eWeek is reporting: Microsoft’s fastest-yet homegrown supercomputer, running the U.S. company's new Windows HPC Server 2008, debuted in the top 25 of the world's top 500 fastest supercomputers, as tested and operated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

The supercomputer, built and maintained in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, ranked No. 23 in the world with a problem-solving performance of 68.5 teraflops. The announcement was made June 18 at the International Supercomputing conference in Dresden, Germany…

Read more on eWeek…

Watch the video

Download the PDF

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Simon Guest, Senior Director of the Platform Architecture team at Microsoft for Channel 9. We discussed his team, what they do and what content and events we can expect from Microsoft  for the architect community. You can view the video right here:

ArCast.TV - Simon Guest on Architecture at Microsoft

You can subscribe to the ARCast.TV program here.

-bob

It was great fun to visit Burlington, VT, Portland ME, Hartford CT, Waltham, MA and Rochester NY in our latest roadshow. Chris, Jim and I presented on LINQ, Office Development, Silverlight 2 and ASP.NET MVC.

Right in the middle of the roadshow tour, the Silverlight team released Silverlight 2 Beta 2. That threw me a bit of a curve ball since my Sounds Familiar application was built on Silverlight 2 Beta 1. As a result I had to do some quick updates to the application while on the road. As a result, I learned a lot about the Beta 1 to Beta 2 migration. For the background reading on my Silverlight Session, see my 4 part series on Silverlight 2. Some of the information there is now out of date based on the release of Beta 2, but most of it is still relevant.

Whenever you are an early adopter of new technology there is always the risk that the next beta will break your current work. That is to be expected. Now that we have reached beta 2, we have a go live license and so the risk of breaking changes happening between now and the final release has been much reduced. Check out what NBC is doing with Silverlight to provide on-line coverage of the summer Olympics. Also check out the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia site.

The biggest issue I ran into when migrating from Beta 1 to Beta 2 was adjusting the HTML and JavaScript that participated in the resolution independence aspect of my application. As a result I moved from using JavaScript to bootstrap the application to using the <OBJECT> tag. This actually simplified my host application which has now been trimmed down to a single HTML file and the XAP file that contains the Silverlight application. Check out the contents of the Default.html file in the project.

Another modification was a simplification of how to invoke a SOAP service. That went from 5 lines of code down to 3. Once you make the service reference, you will have a fully configured client proxy so there is no need to create and initialize an EndPointAddress() or a BasicHTTPHandler(). Those 2 steps are removed so you are left with (1) create the proxy, (2) configure the callback, (3) call the service:

ws = new SoundsFamiliarServiceClient();
ws.GetCDListCompleted += new EventHandler<GetCDListCompletedEventArgs>(GetCDListCompleted);
ws.GetCDListAsync();

Check out the MainWindow.xaml.cs file to review this code in context. My source code and PPTs are located in this SkyDrive folder:

If you are looking for Chris’ and Jim’s ppts and code, check out these links:

• Jim O’Neils roadshow recap
• Chris Bowen’s roadshow recap

For additional information on beta 2 and the changes between Beta 1 and Beta 2, check out these resources:

• Scott Guthrie’s Silverlight 2 Beta 2 post
• Breaking Changes Between Beta 1 and Beta 2
• What Changed from Beta 1 to Beta 2
• Upgrading from Beta 1 to Beta 2
• Details on the new networking features in Beta 2 including Duplex, JSONObject and tool support

See you in September – bob

The Heroes Happen Here event series has now come to a close. I was responsible for the Office Server System Development session, DEV003. I am now able to post my content from that session. Follow this link to download my PPT and and sample code:

The demos included are:

1. Word Action Pane

2. Excel Task Pane

3. Office Forms Region

  -bob

I attended TECH*ED 2008 last week in Orlando Florida. I was able to do several interviews with industry luminaries and influentials, architects all. Those video interviews are now showing up on the TECH*ED Online site.

My first interview was with Simon Guest, Senior Director of the Microsoft Platform Architecture Team. Simon leads a team that is doing some very interesting work creating online content for architects such as the Architect Journal, ARCast and events such as the Strategic Architect Forum (SAF). 

You can see my interview with Simon here.

Cilk Arts, Inc. is holding a seminar on Enabling your C++ applications to leverage Multi-Core x86 processors.

When is this unique event?  Friday, June 20 - 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Where is it being held? Microsoft Office, 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA 02451

About this seminar
With an irreversible shift towards multicore x86 processors underway, in order to deliver competitive application performance, your application will soon need to be rewritten as parallel or multithreaded applications - which can be difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone. Join us for an informative briefing where you will hear about the key challenges facing software developers, review the programming tools and methodologies available today, and discover the key questions to ask when choosing a multithreading approach and toolset.

Register here to reserve your seat at this briefing.

Do you do technical presentations as part of your job? Do you speak at user groups or Code Camps? Well Chris Bowen has documented some of his most useful tips and tricks for technical presentations. -bob

Experience the Future of the Microsoft^® Platform

Since 1991, the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has been Microsoft’s premier gathering of leading-edge developers and architects. Attend the PDC to understand the future of the Microsoft platform and to exchange ideas with fellow professionals. You’ll learn about upcoming products, meet Microsoft’s leaders and top engineers, write some code, and be inspired! Unplug for a few days and think about the future.

• Explore the full breadth of the Microsoft platform in more than 160 technical sessions
• Roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and explore the latest technology for yourself in the hands-on labs
• Attend a day-long pre-conference seminar to get deep training, best practices, and insightful advice from industry experts (*additional fee required).
• Take the opportunity to interact with your peers and Microsoft staff in a variety of community-focused events like Ask the Experts and in the PDC Lounges

In past years, the PDC has unveiled Microsoft .NET, Windows^® XP, Windows Vista^®, and other significant milestones in the evolution of the Microsoft platform. This year, you’ll hear more details about our services platform, the future of Windows, mobility, and our next generation of developer tools. And there are always a few surprises.

Visit the PDC2008 Site to learn more and to register.

I wanted to make you aware of a new architect group that is starting up here in the northeast. IASA is the premier association focused on the IT Architecture profession through education, advocacy, events and development of best practices. Microsoft is hosting the first IASA New England Chapter meeting on June 17^th at the new Microsoft office in Cambridge, MA.

Below are the details and logistics.

The New England chapter of IASA exists to provide a forum to established, practicing and emerging IT architects in the Boston and surrounding areas, for communication, learning, exchange of ideas, professional support and to contribute to the development of IT architecture as a profession.

On June 17^th, we will hold our very first meeting at the Microsoft Offices in Cambridge. Come join your fellow architects for some food, drink, conversation and a very interesting session on the topic of Software Factories.

Can current software engineering paradigms cope with increasing software complexity? Is it even possible to conceive of factory produced software - where software creation is a well defined and repeatable engineering process? Learn from the experts who are at the forefront of new developments.

Our speakers are experts in Software Factories, Patterns and Practices, Model Driven Development and Domain Specific Languages. Most importantly, they are actually applying and testing these approaches in the real world using the Microsoft Factory Initiative which is a natural evolution of the processes, tools and techniques that define software development best practices. Learn about the challenges that must be overcome to realize the Software Factory vision, and why it is so essential for the next leap in software engineering.

Agenda

5:00pm-6:00pm – Eat Drink and Talk Shop

6:00pm-6:15pm – IASA Overview and Goals of IASA New England

6:15pm-7:30pm – Introduction to Software Factories, John Slaby and Jezz Santos

7:30pm-8:00pm – Discuss our next meeting, suggestion for topics, wrap up

Software Factories - John Slaby of Raytheon and Jezz Santos of Microsoft

or I’d Rather Build Tools that Write Code than Write Plain Old Code

This presentation will provide an introduction to the Microsoft Software Factories initiative. As we examine the history of software engineering, we see Software Factories as a natural evolution of the processes, tools and techniques that define software development best practices. We will talk about the challenges that must be overcome to realize the Software Factory vision, and the motivations for why we believe this is an essential next step in an increasingly competitive business environment.

Meeting Logistics

June 17^th, 2008, 5pm to 8pm

Microsoft Office

One Memorial Drive

Cambridge, MA

Charles River Conference Room, First Floor

Click here to register

If you have any questions about this event or IASA New England, please contact the chapter officers at iasane@live.com.

p.s. there is a related Facebook Group for this chapter that you can join by visiting this link: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26711674592