On Tuesday, at the Ft. Lauderdale launch event, I was asked about how well MOSS would do under virtualization. My comment was this, just about as well as any other server would do on the Microsoft platform. Probably pretty well, since its just ASP.Net and SQL server at the core. Well, I didnt realize that with the new HyperVisor (Hyper-V) technology included in Windows Server 2008 that it could truly be to the scale that it would take to run a top internet site. I think I probably suspected it could, but I am not sure how much I believed it!
Well, I come to find out that MSDN and Technet have been running on this technolgy for weeks now. I havent noticed a difference, have you? Here is the official announcement:
"MSDN and TechNet are full virtualized right now with Hyper-V, and we had a dramatic cost savings when we went and did the virtualization of these very high volume Web sites within Microsoft. Of course, we'll be deploying it throughout our datacenters both for our internal IT as well as for our external facing properties in the coming months." - Remarks by Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business Las Vegas, April 29, 2008
A recent survey found that Microsoft ranked first in Web 2.0 for Developers. Specifically it focused on things like Web Services, API's, ease of use, and how much money one can make. Unfortunately last year we ranked last, but with all the new items coming out, we are certainly giving it a turnaround. I talk about these things all the time to my customers, but its really pretty amazing the number of things that we have available today. I decided to put together a comprehensive list of web based capabilities that Microsoft offers today. Right now this is just targeted at Developers, but maybe I will expand it in the future.
Our most prominent set of Web 2.0'ish developer oriented things are surface at dev.live.com, and the fall into several broad categories:
- Authentication - Think LiveID (formerly known as Passport). We already have 300+ million users on LiveID. Its a proven system.
- User Data - Contacts, Photos, Spaces. Store simple application data as well (based on ATOM).
- Search and Maps - Virtual Earth. There are some really great applications out there using VE. See one of my posts below, on The Weather Channel's usage.
- Messaging - Messenger, Alerts, Agents. Agents have been around for a while, but now they are getting really easy to use! Great for help desks and the like.
- Infrastructure - Silverlight Streaming (think content streaming over Microsoft's CDN), FeedSync. This stuff really enables the Live Mesh platform. Live Mesh gives you 5GB of storage so that you can sync up your computers everywhere (work, home, mobile devices, phones, etc...), Custom Domains
- Resources - some really great SDK's, .Net controls, etc.....
And thats just the Live team. There are also a whole lot of initiatives underway with other teams like SQL Server, Biztalk, and Exchange:
- Internet Service Bus - think publishing services without regard for firewalls. Think the ability to make callbacks to smart client apps that are behind firewalls.
- SQL Server Data Services - Store your data in the cloud. Sounds interesting? Check out the web site.
- Exchange Hosted Services – Not only can we do your inbox storage, but you can also outsource lots of other common email type tasks, such as encryption, filtering and archiving. Coca-Cola is doing it, why not you?
And I can forget to mention these applications that really haven’t fallen into a category in my mind:
- Popfly - Create games, mashups, or web pages! A wonderful mashup tool that is really targeted at non-developers.
- Silverlight - create RIA's using .Net!
- AdCenter - Advertise on our properties using adCenter. It’s really much more than that, but its a great start of an explanation.
As I mentioned before, I will continue to update the list as new things come along and as I find out more. There is no way that I have listed everything that falls into this category. Also, note that there are lots of things that I can not even mention right now. Things are in the works that will make this list look puny, and rather boorish. Good luck, and let me know what I have left out!
For those of you who were wondering about support for SQL 2008, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and .Net Framework 3.5 with Biztalk server, Steve Martin just blogged about the upcoming release of "R3" which is a refresh of the Biztalk bits.
Some of the new features that will be added:
· New web service registry capabilities with support for UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) version 3.0
· Enhanced service enablement of applications (through new and enhanced adapters for LOB applications, databases, and legacy/host systems)
· Enhanced service enablement of “edge” devices through BizTalk RFID Mobile
· Enhanced interoperability and connectivity support for B2B protocols (like SWIFT, EDI, etc)
· SOA patterns and best practices guidance to assist our customer’s implementations
I really like the first bullet, which is a nice addition. We have been sorely lacking in support for UDDI 3.0 for quite some time. There will be a CTP later this year, and you can sign up for the TAP (Technical Adoption Program) on the Microsoft Connect site.
For those of you who would like to hear the Architects point of view at the Atlanta Launch, please join us for breakfast at the Georgia International Convention Center. The details are below:
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Please join us for breakfast to discuss how Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 impact the architectural landscape. This morning session is a great way to kickoff your day at Microsoft’s Hero Happen {here} launch.
Date: April 29, 2008
Time: 7:30am – 8:45am
Location: Georgia International Convention Center
2000 Convention Center Concourse
College Park, GA 30337
770-987-3072
Room: Italian Room I & II
AGENDA:
7:30 – 8:45am– Windows Server 2008 / Visual Studio 2008 – Architect’s Point-of-View
We will focus on how technologies such as IIS 7.0, Microsoft.NET Framework 3.5, LINQ, and ParallelFX can lower your total cost of development and improve your team’s ability to creative innovative business solutions with Microsoft technologies. We will also discuss the new ALM tooling and designers found in Visual Studio 2008 (e.g. Vista, Office, Mobile, Web/AJAX, and Silverlight) can help centralize all your development efforts in one IDE.
We look forward to seeing you and hearing your feedback.
REGISTRATION:
To Register for this event, click HERE or you may call 877-673-8368 and reference
Event ID:1032376587
I recently did a piece on the new Ford SYNC for the Birmingham FOX news affiliate. It was quite a bit of fun, even though there were some technical difficulties! Check out the first segment (out of 5). If you can find the others, by all means, let me know!
http://www.myfoxal.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail;jsessionid=91139B776BD3BBD9CED948D251D9B53F?contentId=6145279&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1&sflg=1
This new technology is something really cool - the voice recognition was absolutely amazing. It was able to pick up "Sweet Home Alabama" and just about anything that I couuld throw at it! For more information, check out http://www.syncmyride.com.
I am pleased to announce a series of briefings that are coming up soon in a city near you! The most exciting thing will be the discussions around Rosario. Please come by and check them out.
Come join your technology peers to learn about current and future .NET technologies. The focus of this 1 day seminar will be around Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team System. You’ll be provided with an overview of each role and the session will wrap up with a preview of the next version of Team System (codenamed “Rosario”).
9:00am Intro Visual Studio Team System/Team Foundation Server Business Value
9:30am VSTS Project Management and Collaboration Features
10:15am Break
10:30am VSTS Tester Features
11:15am Version Control and Build Management
12:00pm Lunch (Provided)
12:30pm VSTS Architect/Developer Professional Features
2:30pm Team System Futures (Rosario+)
3:00pm Closing /Q & A
DATES/LOCATIONS
When: March 18, 2008
Location: Microsoft Office – Charlotte, NC
8055 Microsoft Way
Charlotte North Carolina 28273
United States
REGISTRATION: To Register, click HERE or call 877-673-8368 and reference Event ID:1032367770
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When: March 20, 2008
Location: Microsoft Office – Raleigh, NC
4825 Creekstone Dr., Suite 190
Durham, NC 27703
Phone: (919) 474-4900
REGISTRATION: To Register, click HERE or call 877-673-8368 and reference Event ID:1032367772
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When: March 24, 2008
Location: New Horizons – Birmingham, AL
601 Beacon Parkway West, Suite 106
Birmingham, AL 35209
REGISTRATION: To Register, click HERE or call 877-673-8368 and reference Event ID:1032369273
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When: March 25, 2008
Location: Microsoft Office – Alpharetta, GA
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy., Suite 300
Alpharetta, GA 30004
Phone: (678) 629-5700
REGISTRATION: To Register, click HERE or call 877-673-8368 and reference Event ID:1032367769
I would like to thank the community in Jackson for having us down to speak, and in particular, New Horizon's for hosting us in their facility. As promised, I am posting my slides. Feel free to reuse these as you would.
It was my first chance to talk to Keith Elder, and I was rather impressed with a few things about Keith. First, Keith's home town has the second largest Flea Market in Mississippi. That is no small feat in Mississippi as I understand that there are a lot of fair sized "open-air" malls over there. Second, Keith's appetite is only exceeded by his imagination. The Swamp is quite an affair, and well deserves the name.
And lastly, Keith is an incredible speaker. I am glad that I went before Keith, so I didn't have to follow that act. Thanks to Keith for jumping in with us!
With the enhancements to Silverlight that are being made with the next release, we realized that naming it Silverlight 1.1 would not properly reflect the amount of work that is going into it. Specifically, we are renaming Silverlight 1.1 to Silverlight 2.0!
Expect a Silverlight beta with a "Go Live" license to be out sometime in Q1 of 2008.
Here is a quick update to the feature set that we expect to be out:
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WPF UI Framework: The current Silverlight Alpha release only includes basic controls support and a managed API for UI drawing. The next public Silverlight preview will add support for the higher level features of the WPF UI framework. These include: the extensible control framework model, layout manager support, two-way data-binding support, and control template and skinning support. The WPF UI Framework features in Silverlight will be a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in last week's .NET Framework 3.5 release.
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Rich Controls: Silverlight will deliver a rich set of controls that make building Rich Internet Applications much easier. The next Silverlight preview release will add support for core form controls (textbox, checkbox, radiobutton, etc), built-in layout management controls (StackPanel, Grid, etc), common functionality controls (TabControl, Slider, ScrollViewer, ProgressBar, etc) and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, etc).
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Rich Networking Support: Silverlight will deliver rich networking support. The next Silverlight preview release will add support for REST, POX, RSS, and WS* communication. It will also add support for cross domain network access (so that Silverlight clients can access resources and data from any trusted source on the web).
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Rich Base Class Library Support: Silverlight will include a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). The next Silverlight preview release will also add built-in support for LINQ to XML and richer HTML DOM API integration.
Of particular excitement is the new input controls. Texbox, checkbox, radiobutton, etc.... Originally, those were not planned for the release and many of us had to dig up, or roll our own input controls. Phew, thank goodness I don't have to deal with that anymore! That just means that now we can get down to the serious work of building real business solutions on top of Silverlight 2.0 in the very near future.
Technorati Tags:
Silverlight
We are hosting a Holiday Loadfest on December 3rd, in conjunction with the Atlanta .Net User Group and the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals. The first 150 people to attend will receive an evaluation copy of Visual Studio 2008. So bring your laptop! Once we make the shrink wrapped version available, we will also give those folks at FULL version of Visual Studio 2008 Professional. All in the spirit of Holiday Giving!
And even if you don't make the first 150, we will be putting up our Flat Screens and using the MPR projectors to show play some excellent games of Halo3 and dueling Guitar Hero. So come on by and have fun!
If you have not heard yet, VS2008 was just Released to Manufacturing! If you have an MSDN subscription, you can download it right off the web site. Not only that, but its been posted as an Akamai download, which means that its super fast. At home, I was getting 600-900kbps download speeds. Righteous!
Anyway, back to the topic. VS2008 has been re-written to take advantage of the new multi-core processors that are so prevalent these days. That means compile times can be dramatically reduced. Somesagar has a good BLOG posting on some of the improvements. Specifically, Visual Studio is taking advantage of some of the new thread pool improvements.
Also, I would encourage everyone to check out this document which details all of the new features in 2008.
Check out another colleague of mine (Bill Zack) who talks about the three types of LINQ flavors (SQL, Dataset, and Entity) and when an Architect should choose between the three. This is the start of some really interesting stuff that my group in putting out around Architect Point of Views. Look for more to come!
I should really aggregate these linky posts. :)
Over the years, I get asked this question quite often. How do I publish my code to IIS? Well there is a many-folded way to answer this question. Who is publishing? Where are you publishing to? I am going to use this article to lay out what the options are. Thanks to Robert McMurray for much of the content. You will see his blog referenced many times during this article.
Well, let me lay out the options that you have on IIS6:
- FTP - Hoister's have been using FTP for years. The rub is that FTP has not been significantly improved in a long time (IIS4-5 days).
- FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) - Sure, there are a lot of concerns around security with FPE, but they do work well. They reached their End of Life as of last year with Office XP. The one exception is Windows Server 2003.
- WebDAV - WebDAV came from the Exchange group and suffered many design requirements that were not really intended for use with IIS publishing. Did I just hear a groan from my readers?
Let me let you in on a little secret. With the exception of FTP (pretty much the same version that came in IIS6), you get none of the above in IIS7.
So what is the story now?
I hope that this BLOG clears up *some* of the confusion around publishing options. Very soon to come, will be details on the site configuration across multiple servers in Windows Server 2008.
And just dont have any experience with it? Or maybe you have experience, but just need to brush up. Well, we are offering a Biztalk University Class in the Atlanta office. Come and see it!
Microsoft Corporation – Alpharetta, GA
1125 Sanctuary Parkway, Suite 300
Atlanta, GA 30004
9:00 AM–4:30 PM
Register here - Event ID: 1032355784
Event Overview:
.NET University BizTalk Basics is a free, one-day training course for developers and architects! Join us to get an overview of BizTalk Server 2006. All topics are covered at a 100-level, and take-home labs will be included with the courseware. Upon completion, attendees will receive their official .NET University alumni T-Shirt and a Certificate of completion.
All materials are available for download and re-use, including re-delivery at your own company/user group. Slide notes are included in the PowerPoint files, to guide the speaker during re-delivery. Content may be found here:
· BizTalk Basics 1 - Overview
· BizTalk Basics 2 - Publishers and Subscribers
· BizTalk Basics 3 - Binding and Rule Engine
· BizTalk Basics 4 - Deployment
· Hands on Labs - to take home and try it out.
Speakers:
Karl Rissland, Technology Specialist, Microsoft
Rob Cameron, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft
Mark Dunn, President, Dunn Training
Mark Berry, Trainer, Dunn Training
Doug Turnure, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft
Continental breakfast and boxed lunches will be provided. Space is limited, so register now to get your seat at .NET University’s BizTalk Basics.
One of my peers up in the Northeast, Bob Familiar, has put together a great article on his Blog that talks about Silverlight from an Architects Point of View. Its really a rather interesting post on how to built Web Services with Silverlight.