David Boschmans Weblog : Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007

Developer news and interesting resources

David Boschmans — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 23:33:00 GMT

A lot of things happening in the .NET world these days. While going through my unread RSS Feeds I summarize some interesting links:

Expression Tools for Developers now on MSDN [Via Soma & ScottGu]
After MIX07, there's TechEd US. Frank created a sidebar gadget for TechEd US. [Via Miguel Castro]
SaaS Architecture Workshop: download the workshop slides and hands-on-labs [Via Fred Chong]
MSDN Whitepaper: "A Performance Comparison of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) with Existing Distributed Communication Technologies" [via ClemensV]
Zürich Airport application available as WPF XBAP. Ronnie Saurenmann delivered an excellent presentation on this app at TechEd Developers last year. [Via Tim Sneath ]
Bart De Smet moving to Redmond! Congrats Bart!
Microsoft.community: a new community platform developed by Microsoft [Via Doug Seven]

The next two weeks I'll be enjoying some holidays with my family. An opportunity to recharge my batteries. No blogging is to be expected during this period. But as the C# 3.0, VB9 and LINQ Overview sessions caught my attention during Dev & IT Pro Days, I'll be doing some reading on these technologies. Meanwhile, don't break the internet!

Dev & IT Pro Days 2007: Wow!

David Boschmans — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:51:16 GMT

After the Belgian Developer & IT Pro Days 2007 it took me a couple of days to get back to my PC. But it was worth the recovery time :-)! Microsoft has been using Wow a lot lately, but for this I'd like to use it once more: WOW!

Below a summary of facts of the biggest ever edition of Dev & IT Pro Days in Belgium:

350 Developers attended the Web-Development pre-Conference Day, delivered by overall great guy Jeff Prosise.
250 IT Professionals attended the Virtualization pre-Conference Day
Opening Keynote with David Chappell
1350+ Developers & IT Professionals attended the conference and got in-depth training on the latest Microsoft products and technologies.
70+ sessions for Developers & IT Pros, and two dedicated tracks for Academics & Architects
50 top speakers and 1 singer-songwriter
Closing Keynote with Chad Hower
A dozen of side meetings with speakers and PMs from Redmond
A DataNews special on some of the main topics of the conference :
- Microsoft Expression Studio
- Visual Studio & ASP.NET AJAX
- Powershell
- System Center
- Forefront
An Open XML workshop by Doug Mahugh and Craig Kitterman
25 Partners participated in the event with very good feedback as a result
A top crew from DDMC of 46 people
6500 minutes of recorded sessions
1000 meters of internet connection cable
8500 liters of soda and water
3 trailers of logistical materials
10.000 Sandwiches
...

Check out some pictures at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matuvu/sets/72157600032354418/

Technorati tags: Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007

Branching Guidance for Team Foundation Server

David Boschmans — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:35:10 GMT

About a year ago at our Dev & IT-Pro Days 2006 Steven Wilssens delivered a session on advanced version control and branching strategies with Team Foundation Server.

Despite Steven was announced as a speaker this year, he just notified me that - due to an overload of work for Mix07 - he won't be able to make it to this years' Dev & IT-Pro Days 2007. With the event only a couple of days away this is very short notice. But we'll do what's possible to have another excellent speaker covering the topic.

Back to the original subject of this post: Team Foundation Server. Yesterday Jeff Beehler announced the availability (finally I would say!) of Branching Guidance for Team Foundation Server. A couple of highlights from Jeff's post:

"While the product documentation will tell you how each of our tools works, it doesn't provide insight into the best practice usage of each. The guidance that we recently released attempts to fill that gap in the area of version control and how to best work with branches."

"What you'll read in this guidance isn't some theoretical description of how things should work in a perfect world but instead has been pressure tested and proved to be effective through actual TFS projects. In fact, you'll find examples pulled directly from our own teams experiences as well."

Go get the branching info on Microsoft Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance from http://www.codeplex.com. This also means that the TFS Product Team is ready to take your feedback and incorporate it directly into the guidance.

Here's the high level overview:

Introduction
Parallel Development
Branching Defined
Creating Isolation in Team Foundation Server
General Branching Structure Guidance
Branching Strategies
Broad Areas of Branching Isolation
Creating Your Branching Strategy
Defining Your Code Promotion Model
Feature Crews: How Microsoft Does It
End-to-End Implementation Scenario
Appendix

Download the .pdf from the site or get started here.

Technorati tags: Branching, Team Foundation Server, code promotion, software configuration management

Guidance Automation Extensions/Toolkit Feb 2007 CTP to support Windows Vista

David Boschmans — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 01:04:13 GMT

Earlier this week version 1.2 or the February 2007 Community Technology Preview of the Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) and the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) was released to the web.

The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) enable you to run guidance packages, such as the Guidance Automation Toolkit or those included in Software Factories. You can use the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) to author or customize guidance packages.
The Guidance Automation Toolkit is an extension to Visual Studio 2005 which allows architects to author rich, integrated user experiences for reusable assets including frameworks, components, and patterns.

Tom Hollander has a post outlining all fixes and improvements of this release but also detailing some known issues. The good thing is that the Extensions now install on Windows Vista with UAC enabled!

At the Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007 Jelle Druyts will be delivering a talk on GAX and GAT: "DEV301 - A Deep Dive Into The Guidance Automation Toolkit". He will be covering following topics:

Visual Studio Extensibility
Guidance Automation Toolkit
GAT Best Practices
GAT & Software Factories

The good news for the attendees is that Jelle just updated his slide-deck to reflect the changes of the February 2007 CTP releases. So expect an updated talk on GAT and GAX, right after the keynote!

Technorati tags: Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007, Guidance Automation Extensions, Guidance Automation Toolkit

Visual Studio "Orcas" March 2007 CTP is available for download

David Boschmans — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:42:54 GMT

... from the Microsoft Download Center.

Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio code name “Orcas” delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality rich user experiences. This new version enables any size organization to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and more reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System. By building these new types of applications, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information so that they can make effective business decisions.

The highlights of this CTP include:

The LINQ Project: this CTP represents a major milestone in the LINQ project.
VB 9.0 Language Support
C# 3.0 Language Support
LINQ to ADO.NET
LINQ To SQL Designer
LINQ over XML (XLinq)
System.Xml Bridge Classes added
LINQ to Objects API
ADO.NET vNext
Web
Client App-Level Services
C# Workflow Rules
XML
MSBuild
UAC Manifests in the Managed Build Process
IDE
CLR
Office
Team Architect
Team Developer
Team Test
Team Foundation Server
Visual C++

More details can be found here.

Downloads:

Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" - March 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP)
- The downloads are rather big and consist of the Orcas base image (1,12 Gb but common for all Orcas CTPs) and 8 files of the differencing images (March CTP specific).
Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" - March Community Technology Preview (CTP) (Team Foundation Server - Self-extracting Install)
- This CTP is available as a Virtual PC image or as a self-extracting install
  - VSMar2007CTP_TFS_2PartsTotal.part1.exe (700 MB)
  - VSMar2007CTP_TFS_2PartsTotal.part2.rar (159.6 MB)
Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" - March Community Technology Preview (CTP) (Self-extracting Install)
- This CTP is available as a Virtual PC image or as a self-extracting install (7 files)

Technorati tags: Visual Studio Orcas, March CTP

IIS7: The web server for Windows Vista and Beyond

David Boschmans — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:01:46 GMT

While working on the agenda for the developer sessions at Dev & IT-Pro Days 2007, I had some trouble on finding a good and knowledgeable speaker on IIS7. IIS7 or the new Internet Information Services is already available on Windows Vista but will be at full power with the release of Longhorn Server. Why bother about IIS7 at a developer event you might ask. Well there's a excellent reason for this: the next-generation IIS 7.0 Web server makes such a big difference to developers and administrators. Therefore it's important to give developers a head start in using many of its new features.

Due to the Microsoft Management Summit, taking place in San Diego, CA in the same week as Dev & IT-Pro Days 2007 it was hard to have a speaker from the IIS product team at our local event. An excellent opportunity to let our Belgian Speaker Idol at TechEd: Developers this year - Bart De Smet - take the stage and discuss IIS7.

Bart will be delivering the session "Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0: End-to-End Overview of Microsoft's New Web Application Server". More information on this session and the overall agenda of the event, can be found on the web site.

If you can't wait till Bart's session, you should have a look at these two articles on IIS7 that have just been published:

Longhorn Server revealed: Five IIS enhancements you should know about (by Jonathan Hassell at Computerworld)
Explore The Web Server For Windows Vista And Beyond (by Mike Volodarsky in the March 2007 edition of MSDN Magazine)

Excellent reading!

Technorati tags: Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007, IIS7

Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007 - Pre-conference on ASP.NET AJAX and WPF/E

David Boschmans — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 04:28:48 GMT

I'm in Seattle, WA this week attending a Microsoft internal training event. While traveling to the US I've been working hard on the agenda of our upcoming Belgian Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007. This annual primary developer event on Microsoft technologies takes place in the ICC in Ghent, 27-28-29 of March 2007.

For the first time we're organizing a pre-conference on March 27th. The pre-conference will discuss the Microsoft Web Platform and its related technologies.

Web, Microsoft, and You: Introducing ASP.NET AJAX and WPF/E:

ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework that simplifies the development of AJAX-enabled Web pages and Web applications. It is both a set of server-side extensions to Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 and a client-side library written entirely in JavaScript that is agnostic to browser types and server platforms. WPF/E enables developers to build even richer browser-based applications by escaping the bonds of HTML and JavaScript.
Together, these two frameworks represent the cutting edge of Web development and comprise the future of Web programming on Microsoft platforms. In one action-packed day, you'll learn about ASP.NET AJAX and WPF/E and come away with an understanding of where to target your development efforts for years to come. The future of Web development is today!

Session 1: The Microsoft Web Story: ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX, and WPF/E
If you build Web apps for Microsoft platforms, times are changing--and fast. First there's ASP.NET 2.0, which is arguably the richest server platform available for building scalable, high-performance Web apps.
Then there's ASP.NET AJAX, which extends ASP.NET 2.0 with a rich AJAX framework. Finally, there's WPF/E, which extends browsers to support incredibly rich and interactive content. This session surveys these technologies, overviews their features and capabilities, and sets the stage for the drill-downs in subsequent sessions.
Session 2: The ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions
The ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions are the half of ASP.NET AJAX that run on the server. They include a suite of server-side controls that make AJAX programming as simple as dragging controls onto a form, and a set of ASMX extensions that enable Web services to serve as endpoints for asynchronous XML-HTTP requests from JavaScript clients. This session drills down into the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions and provides critical information not only about they're used, but how they work.
Session 3: The Microsoft AJAX Library
The heart of ASP.NET AJAX is the Microsoft AJAX Library, which is a JavaScript framework that runs on the client and is not only browser-agnostic, but server-agnostic as well. This session takes a deep dive into the client-side framework and demonstrates how developers can leverage it and extend it to build cutting-edge Web apps. Among other things, you'll learn how the Microsoft AJAX Library adds OOP to JavaScript and how to use this knowledge to implement features that aren't possible from the server side
Session 4: Introducing WPF/E
WPF/E, which is short for "Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere", is a subset of WPF that combines XAML and JavaScript to create incredibly rich browser-based content, and it's the perfect medicine for boring, plain-vanilla Web pages. This session introduces developers to the wonderful world of WPF/E and provides a glimpse at the future of Web programming on Microsoft platforms.

This pre-conference consists of 4 breakout sessions will be delivered by Jeff Prosise. Jeff is not only an excellent speaker and teacher, he also delivered the highest rated pre-conf on ASP.NET AJAX at TechEd: Developers in Barcelona last year. The sessions that Jeff will deliver in Belgium will be different talks from those delivered at TechEd: Developers. Meanwhile the ASP.NET AJAX bits have been RTM'ed and thus new material and best practices are available. In the 4th session Jeff will take a dive in the WPF/e set of technologies. Using these technologies anynone will be able to build rich interactive applications that integrate AJAX like functionality with media (video, audio, etc).

Register before February 28th and get 15% off!

If you plan to attend and already registered: add the event to your calendar!

More info on the pre-conference and the main conference can be found on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/devitprodays/. I'll be posting updates on the agenda of the main conference soon!

Technorati tags: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007, Jeff Prosise