Have you ever wondered what it takes to become an MCA? Check out this cool interview, and answer many of those burning questions!
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.
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast.TV/ARCastTV-Bill-Guat-discusses-the-Microsoft-Certified-Architect-Program/
I know its a bit late, but please join us this afternoon at 3:00PM ET for a geekSpeak on building Silverlight applications for Line of Business Applications! The registration link is here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032379983&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US
geekSpeak is a new kind of webcast series, hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. Dispensing with slide decks and scripted demos, geekSpeak webcasts bring you industry experts in a sort of "talk-radio" format. These experts share their knowledge and experience around a particular developer technology, and they are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. Learn about industry trends, new technology, real-world experiences, and more. During the webcast, you hear lively discussion and debate, and you can even add your comments to the fray. Who knows, you might even see a whiteboard sketch or an off-the-cuff demo.
In this installment of geekSpeak, Shawn Wildermuth discusses the implications of using Microsoft Silverlight 2 browser plug-in technology in line-of-business applications, and he demonstrates consuming and changing database data from Silverlight 2. In addition, Shawn shares his opinion of where Silverlight 2 fits into the broader enterprise development spectrum, including intranet, extranet, and Internet development. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Chad Brooks.
There are so many great features in .Net 3.5 (LINQ, C# language features, LINQ, workflow enhancements, REST, LINQ, etc.....) that you would really like to use them in MOSS, right? Well, the problem is that MOSS is ASP.Net 2.0 based and by default you cant use these features. As it turns out, its fairly simple to turn on the .net 3.5 framework. Take a look at this article on Codeproject: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/PMInSharePoint.aspx.
Thanks to Kirk Evans who pointed this out to me.
Some of you may have already seen this article, but I just came across it yesterday. Even though WCF has been out for a few years now, many are just now approaching it with real interest. Whether you are cautious, your organization just approved .Net 3.0 as a standard, or you just got a gig with a company that is actually up on the current technology set, this article is just for you.
Essentially, it compares the efficacy under various loads of services. Think WCF, Enterprise Services, Classic ASMX, Remoting. There are various situations where WCF does not perform as well as these technologies, but 95% of the time it flat out makes them look slow. WCF is the future, and is what Microsoft is making serious investments in. Everything else is in a holding pattern. An excerpt from the article:
To summarize the results, WCF is 25%—50% faster than ASP.NET Web Services, and approximately 25% faster than .NET Remoting. Comparison with .NET Enterprise Service is load dependant, as in one case WCF is nearly 100% faster but in another scenario it is nearly 25% slower. For WSE 2.0/3.0 implementations, migrating them to WCF will obviously provide the most significant performance gains of almost 4x.
.gif)
Have you ever used any of the Sysinternals programs? Programs like:
- ProcessExplorer - The UBER process examination tool. It will tell you everything there is to know about every process running on your computer (dependencies, etc...). Trust me, you will like it.
- FileMon - This one has saved my bacon many a time. What is that darn file permission that is giving you an error 50 miles deep in the stack? In the COM days it was much worse, but you still run into these issues when you have a fairly restricted security environment.
- ZoomIt - I use this all the time in my presentations. It allows you to zoom in deep on a particular area of your screen, and draw things using a marker on that screen. It is a great utility to do screencasts as well.
- AutoRuns - Examines your startup, and lets you know about those pesky winsock modifications (if you have ever had one, you know what I'm talking about) that leads to some nasty viral infections.
Well, to date, we have offered these via technet (http://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals), which has been great. Now we are offering these tools on an internet based "File Share", so that you can run them directly inside of a browser, or even a command prompt. If you don't believe me, open cmd.exe and type in: \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\procexp.exe
Now it becomes really easy to find those tools when you need them to debug your environments. Enjoy!
If you read my post from the other day, you will now know that MSDN and Technet are running completely virtualized. We are talking over 4 million hits per day with 5-6% CPU utilization! You can find the details of how this works here. A very interesting thing to note: Physical CPU loads showed about 21% better performance than a virtualized CPU. This, honestly, is very acceptable. The interesting part, is that requests per second per 1% CPU performance of MSDN over the previous physical server platform improved. Meaning, they are actually getting more performance per CPU with the virtualized environment.
You can also find another great BLOG posting on the details here.
A new blog has started to notify anyone of interesting events that are being held in Alabama. Of course the events dont have to be in Alabama, just near enough to be interesting!
http://altechevents.wordpress.com/
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:
*********************
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
------------------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------------------------
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:
-
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.
-
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).
-
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).
-
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
