Innovation Showcase Headlines – 11/09/2009

Lots of terrific articles posted this week on the Innovation Showcase news site. Read about new features in Visual Studio 2010, check out David Chappells’ whitepaper on the SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform and see video interviews with Don Box and Dave Thompson.

• Visual Studio 2010 Gallery - RegEx Editor
• Two Roundtable Discussions on Windows 7 Application Compatibility
• TFS 2010 for SourceSafe Users
• What is the Windows Azure Platform?
• Visibility and Control in a Service-Oriented Architecture
• 10 Things to Hate About the iPhone
• Azure - Helping a Non-Profit to Help Others
• Concerned about Windows Azure?
• What Makes Windows 7 A “Killer” OS
• The SQL Azure Tools Keep Coming!
• ORM Comes to SQL Azure!
• Azure Blob Caching – Life on the Edge
• Webcast: Designing Multi-Tenanted Applications on Windows Azure
• Dave Thompson: Turning Software into Services
• Don Box - Perspectives on SOAP, Programming Data and M
• Microsoft Holding BizSpark Incubation Week for Windows Azure
• SharePoint 2010: Developer Platform White Paper by David Chappell
• ARCast.TV - Improving Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio Team System
• NBC Winter Olympics on Silverlight
• Windows Marketplace for Mobile - The Race to Market Challenge
• Architect’s perspective on Silverlight 3

	Visit the Innovation Showcase Site
	Subscribe to the Innovation Showcase Feed
	Follow Innovation Showcase on Twitter

ARCast.TV - Improving Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio Team System

ARCast.TV - Improving Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio Team System

In this interview with Zhiming Xue at Microsoft, Mike Snell, VP Solution Services at CEI, Microsoft Regional Director and co-author of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Unleashed book, discusses five key issues that typically exist in the application lifecycle management (ALM) process – requirements tracking, code review, unit testing, automated testing (aka black box testing), and continuous integration.   Mike speaks each of these five issues from his extensive customer experience and offers his domain expert views and recommended practices, including use of Microsoft tools and systems such as VS 2008 Team System, Team Foundation Server, MSBuild and some non-Microsoft tools such as Ravenflow and RequisitePro for advanced requirements management.

Azure Blob Caching – Life on the Edge

Microsoft has just announced the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN)

This is a new network edge caching service built upon Windows Azure that provides improved high-bandwidth blob retrieval performance by locating blobs near the point that they are requested.  Blobs can be retrieved either from a Windows Azure storage account directly or from a local point of presence node based on the request URL and whether the data is currently available at one of 18 delivery nodes located across the world.  This is one more excellent example of the continuing evolution of the Windows Azure Platform.  There will be many more to come.

You can read more about it here…

 

Architect Innovation Cafe WebCasts – November 2009

Title:  An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight 3

November 24, 2009 at 11:00am – 12:30pm PST

Presenter: Tim Heuer

Abstract:  Many .NET developers are becoming more and more interested in the Rich Internet Application development space, and in particular Silverlight.  In this session we will step back from a detailed implementation technology and take a higher level look at Silverlight from the architect’s perspective.  We will discuss the types of applications where Silverlight makes sense and some scenarios where Silverlight may not be the appropriate technology.  We will also delve into some of the architectural decisions that the architect must consider when writing applications for this platform and where some of the tradeoffs may lie.

Event ID:  1032432980

Link to Register:  http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032432980&Culture=en-US

 

Title: Cloud-computing architecture – designing multi-tenant applications on Windows Azure.

November 25, 2009, 11:00am – 12:30pm PST

Speaker:  Joseph Hofstader

Abstract: Cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in information technology today.  With all the confusion surrounding acronyms ending in ‘aas’ like Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) it can be intimidating for even seasoned IT professionals.  This presentation will briefly discuss the different types of cloud platforms and then address one of the key business scenarios for the cloud: Software as a Service.

Software as a Service is a business model for making applications available over the Internet.  One of the key tenets of SaaS is multi-tenancy, or software designed to be used by multiple parties.  Designing SaaS applications touches on many of the technologies that comprise the Azure platform: Processing, Storage, Workflow, Database and most importantly security.   This presentation will discuss how each of technologies can be utilized to define a flexible architecture for multi-tenant solutions.

Event ID:  1032432981

Link to Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032432981&Culture=en-US

 

SPEAKER BIOS

Tim Heuer

I currently work for Microsoft as a program manager for Microsoft Silverlight, a web technology aimed at delivering rich internet experiences to users.  Before this current role, I was a developer evangelist for Microsoft serving the Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana and Utah areas aiming to strengthen and support communities and software developers in these geographies. 

Josepher Hofstader

Joseph Hofstader is an architect/evangelist in Microsoft Communications Sector.  Joe has spent his career architecting, designing and developing solutions in the telecommunications industry.  Over the last 5 years, he has been involved in architecting solutions that provide telecommunications services in the cloud.  Joe presents regularly at industry events sponsored by organizations like the TMForum  and the National Association of Broadcasters.  In his spare time Joe is an adjunct professor in the department of Information Technology and Electronic Commerce at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.

Innovation Showcase Headlines – 11/2/2009

The Innovation Showcase is a fantastic collection of the most compelling content that is of interest to the Architect Community.

Subscribe, follow and stay connected.

Here are this weeks headlines:

• Windows 7 Bible: Your Complete Guide to the Next Version of Windows from CIO Magazine
• Automating Azure
• PDC09 – Register Today
• Windows 7 Runtime Libraries Available for Vista and Windows Server 2008
• Resources for Developing Windows 7 Applications
• IHI Shines Silverlight on Healthcare Improvement
• Connected Show #19 – User Experience..It ain’t lipstick baby!
• ARCast.TV Special - Michael Stiefel on Software as a Service in the Cloud
• Cloud Storage Studio – Managing Azure Storage
• O’Neil’s 7 on 7
• IE8 Accelerator for Searching IHI Improvement Map
• Mike Taulty Video Series on PRISM for Silverlight 3
• ARCast.TV - Mark Pollack on Architecture Refactoring
• SharePoint 2010 Videos Reveal Development Experience
• Patterns-Based Silverlight Development Blog / Screencast Series
• Silverlight 3 Custom Sorting with Paging Support
• 10 Expression Blend 3 Tutorials for Silverlight
• Spec Explorer for Visual Studio
• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Course – Channel 9
• MSDN - Developer Learning Center for Beginners

	Visit and Innovation Showcase Site
	Subscribe to the Innovation Showcase RSS Feed
	Follow the Innovation Showcase on Twitter

ARCast.TV - Mark Pollack on Architecture Refactoring

ARCast.TV - Mark Pollack on Architecture Refactoring

While there are many qualities by which to judge an architecture, two technologies, dependency injection (DI) and aspect-oriented programming (AOP), provide guidance on some of the most foundational.   Not only do they influence how a system's components are designed and organized, they also determine how easily the system may evolve.   In this episode, Mark Dunn and Mark Pollack discusses DI and AOP from an architectural point of view, showing how the principles promoted by DI and AOP translate to tangible architectural benefits such as loose coupling and a separation of business and technical concerns.

Mike Taulty Video Series on PRISM for Silverlight 3

Mike Taulty has published an excellent series of screencasts illustrating some of the ideas found in "Prism" or the "Composite Application Guidance" from the Patterns and Practices team that can be used to build Silverlight applications in a way that lends itself to testability and modularity.

In talking to customers building business applications with Silverlight I find that Prism (and it's friend Unity) is frequently mentioned but not everyone has seen it and so I thought I would explore it myself and capture some of the results of that exploration here. – Mike Taulty

Mike starts off with some fairly basic code and starts making use of dependency injection and modularity:

• Part 1: Taking Sketched Code Towards Unity
• Part 2: Dependency Injection with Unity
• Part 3: Modularity with Prism
• Part 4: The Unity Bootstrapper

Next Mike moves that code into the Silverlight world and illustrates some specific areas of Prism:

• Part 5: Moving to a Modular Silverlight Project
• Part 6: Shells, Regions, Views
• Part 7: Commands
• Part 8: Loosely Coupled Events with Event Aggregation
• Part 9: Sharing Data via Region Contexts

Finally Mike brings some of these concepts together in a longer, more realistic example of a simple Email application built using the Prism framework - warning, this is a much longer session but I wanted something that draws things together:

• Part 10: A Larger Example: "Email Client"

Mike recommends that you watch the 10 screencasts in order but if that feels like too long a process or if you're already very familiar with concepts like dependency injection and containers like Unity then perhaps watch the last screencast first and then refer back to the previous screencasts if certain areas need more illumination.

Mike has made the source code for Video 10 here for download as it's a bigger set of source and something you might want to explore after the video - this does not necessarily represent "best practice" but is, instead, just meant to illustrate some of the Prism ideas.

 

Tallan Presents The Evolution of the Asynchronous Web

Join us on Wednesday, November 11th at 8:30AM at New Horizons' New York City office for breakfast followed by this informative seminar.
Register now!

Join us on Thursday, November 12th at 8:30AM at New Horizons' Bloomfield, CT office for breakfast followed by this informative seminar.
Register now!

Overview
If you want to attract and maintain a strong user base on your website today, two things are essential: a rich user experience and fresh, up-to-date content.
In its early years, the Web was filled with static websites that required user interaction to request new pages and discover updated content. Over time, new technologies, such as JavaScript and XmlHttpRequest, have increasingly brought about a shift in the way users browse the web. These advances allow websites to provide important feedback and updated content to users with fewer delays, network traffic, and webpage refreshes. Today, even newer innovations such as RSSCloud and PubSubHubbub are gaining momentum and are leading us down the road to a true Asynchronous Web.
During this seminar, we will step through the evolution of the Asynchronous Web and discuss some of the key technologies that have made new, richer user experiences possible and are changing the method and rate at which users are receiving updated content on the Web. The topics we'll cover include:

• The Synchronous Web – Where we started and some of the limitations of synchronous user-browser interaction
• Ajax - New advancements in XMLHttpRequest and highlights of 5 of the most popular Ajax toolkits, including ASP.NET Ajax
• Rich Internet Applications - Creating richer user experiences through the use of popular browser plug-ins, including Microsoft Silverlight
• The Real-Time Web - How concepts and technologies such as RSSCloud and PubSubHubbub enable companies and individuals to use free, open technologies to deliver content to users at near real-time speed

Speaker
Bryan Labutta is Tallan's Web Development practice lead and is responsible for ensuring that Tallan remains on the forefront of web technologies and trends. His experience includes over 9 years of web development and Agile project management for Fortune 500 clients including The Walt Disney Company, ING, and Ingram Micro.

Location in New York City on November 11
New Horizons
Grace Building
43 West 42nd Street
(Street Level Entrance)
New York, NY 10036

Location in Connecticut on November 12
New Horizons
340 West Newberry Road
Bloomfield, CT 06002

To register, use the links above, reply to this email or call (860) 368-3082.

IE8 Accelerator for Searching IHI Improvement Map

The Improvement Map is a Silverlight 3 based online tool that distills the best knowledge available on the key process improvements that Hospitals can leverage to deliver better outcomes for patients. The tool makes it easy for hospitals to find, understand and adopt best practices.

 

IHI has extended the reach of their Silverlight application by creating an IE8 Accelerator that allows searching directly into the Improvement Map database.

To try it out, install the accelerator and then visit a medial site like the CDC.Gov or WebMD.com. Simply highlight a medical term like Heart Disease or Asthma and use the Accelerator context menu to search the IHI Improvement Map application for process improvement maps associated with that term.

For detailed information on the Improvement Map, click here.

 

O’Neil’s 7 on 7

Jim O’Neil, a developer evangelist for Microsoft, has published 7 detailed technical articles on 7 features of Windows 7 that developers should be looking at if they want to really shine on the new OS.

1. Task Bar
2. Federated Search
3. Extended Linguistic Services
4. Direct2D and DirectWrite
5. Sensor and Location API
6. Windows MultiTouch
7. Windows Xp Mode

ARCast.TV Special - Michael Stiefel on Software as a Service in the Cloud

ARCast.TV Special - Michael Stiefel on Software as a Service in the Cloud

The Architecture Innovation Cafe presents Michael Stiefel on Software as a Service in the Cloud Architecting and building a Software as a Service application requires solving a series of problems that are independent of a particular software platform. Michael discusses three areas of focus for designing and building services so that you can leverage your work into new platforms such as Windows Azure.

Connected Show #19 – User Experience..It ain’t lipstick baby!

Connected Show – Episode #19 – Dave Crawford on User Experience: It ain’t lipstick baby!

In this episode guest co-host and Interviewee Dave Crawford of Microsoft UK joins Dmitry to discuss News such as Windows 7, Windows Stores, ZuneHD development, Java Bridge, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and many more stories.

Finally Dave tells us all about the User Experience project role, how development projects can benefit from it and how Developers and Designers need to play nice together.

Xerox Claims Printable Electronics Breakthrough

 

M. David Stone writes for PC Magazine about an innovative breakthrough at Xerox that allows them to print circuit boards on flexible material…can computer clothing be far behind.

 

From Mr. Stone’s article…

Xerox on Tuesday announced a new silver ink (among other things) that it's calling, and apparently is, a breakthrough in printable electronics, a leading edge concept that's generated a lot of discussion but few actual products to date, largely because of the issues that Xerox's new technology addresses.

In concept, printable electronics is just what it sounds like: using a printer, basically an ink jet, to print electronic circuits. If you can do that reliably, you can print electronic devices for far less than current methods cost. You can also print the devices on a variety of new materials.

The possibilities range from printing on flexible plastic (opening the door to displays you can roll up and put your briefcase), to paper and cardboard (for packaging that can give audio and video instructions for assembling a product, actively remind you to take your medicine, or confirm whether you already took it), to fabric (which will allow wearable electronics -- a T-shirt with a display, say, replacing a printed slogan for marketing or for showing support for a political candidate.)

Read more…

IHI Shines Silverlight on Healthcare Improvement

Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with Michael Iantosca, CEO of eDefine, Paul Hamnett, VP of engineering at the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI.org), and Kerri Sweeny, Director of Development at IHI, to learn about a new Silverlight based solution they have created for the healthcare quality industry called the Improvement Map. The Improvement Map is a Silverlight 3 based online tool that distills the best knowledge available on the key process improvements that will lead to better outcomes for patients. The tool makes it easy for hospitals to find, understand and adopt best practices.

This multi-part article provides you with a background on IHI and the Microsoft Partner that assisted them with this effort, eDefine and the reasons that drove them to create this unique solution for the healthcare industry. It also presents the architectural details of their solution which provides an excellent blueprint for designing and implementing a scalable line of business application using Silverlight 3, PRISM, Entity Framework, and ADO.NET Data Services. The use of Service Oriented Design and the Model-View-ViewModel pattern also demonstrate how you can design a robust, extensible and easily maintainable solution using these technologies. We have also documented the end user benefits and customer testimonials. You know you have succeeded when you users fall in love with your application.

This post is a joint venture and so I want to give credit where credit is due. Michael Iantosca wrote the Architecture Overview. Paul Hamnett and Kerri Sweeney wrote the section of the Benefits that their customers are seeing from using the Improvement Map and also supplied the customer testimonials. In other words they did all the heavy lifting!

The Improvement Map Solution Brief

• Part 1. Background
• Part 2. Architecture Overview
• Part 3. The Benefits
• Part 4. Customer Testimonials

I would like to say thank you to the folks at IHI, Paul and Kerri, for allowing me to peer inside their solution and share their well thought out architecture with the community and a huge thank you to Michael Iantosca, CEO of eDefine, for taking the time to document his blueprint for success.

PDC09 – Register Today

Register by October 30th and receive a $300 discount!

Get Windows 7 Compatible

PDC09 attendees can get a jumpstart on making sure their applications run seamlessly on Windows 7.  Technical experts will be available onsite at the Windows 7 Developer Center to offer technical guidance, assist with compatibility testing, and answer questions about the Windows 7 Software Logo program.  (Find out more)

Attend the Developer Boot Camp

It’s not too late to register for the free Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp to be held on November 16 (the day before the PDC conference).  Top Windows 7 engineers will lead a full-day, technical workshop focused on optimizing application performance, reliability, and security on the Windows 7 platform.  (Register via the PDC09 conference site to attend.)

Connect with the PDC Community

Follow PDC09 on Twitter, Facebook and get developer community news and event news via the “What’s Happening” RSS.

Watch and share the PDC09 on Channel 9 videos.  New episodes of Countdown to PDC09 and Knowledge Chamber provide a preview to the great content that will be at PDC09.