One of the biggest privileges I have is the quality of people I get to hang out with here at Microsoft.  Within the Visual Studio Languages GO team and the DLR team there is a loyal group of us (actually I am a noobie) who walk down from Redmond campus to the same Chinese place multiple times during the work week.  Each time there is a subset of us that make it but almost always there is enough for a quorum and we head on down. There is not a single one of these lunches that goes by that I don't get new insights, a few new facts, a good laugh, and a few blog ideas.  Not just technical stuff.  A big subject of today's lunch was Dino's trip to Burning Man (wow, I want to go), but we also covered things like the economics of persistent data stores in the cloud, changes in the way Microsoft views Open Source, and Tina Fey's portrayal of Sarah Palin.  It reminds me that much of our most important activities and learning are NOT in meeting rooms but are at lunches and in hallways. 

I took some pictures around the table at lunch today.  Ok, they don't look like a brain trust with their mouths full but believe me these guys are the sh*t.

Curt (IronCurt, Dev on IronPython and IronRuby), John (IronRuby PM), and Tomas (Lead Dev on IronRuby).

Jim (Tester IronRuby), Dino (Lead Dev on IronPython), and Harry (PM for IronPython)

Jimmy (PM on all sorts of IronRuby and IronPython stuff), Bill (PM for DLR), and me.

I can think of many times in my career when I would not attend these types of lunches.  Too much work to do.  Funny thing, I think I got more accomplished at lunch today than two of my scheduled meetings.

rem

I am back at Microsoft!  In October of 2007 I left my developer role on the XML Team and headed out to a local Redmond consulting firm and then to an Internet startup uboost based in Honolulu.  I recently came back to be Lead Program Manager on the Visual Studio Languages Growth Opportunity (GO) team.  If you are interested I wrote a blog on my experience on my blog at http://blog.remlog.net here.

 I am having a great time getting getting geeked out on languages and working with a tremendous team.  More blogs on my personal blog and crossposted here where it makes sense.

 Dave

At  my XLinq PDC2005 talk and in the XLinq Overview Document one of the differences I mentioned between XLinq and DOM is the treatment of XML Names in XLinq.  XLinq's abstraction for XML Names is a class called XName which is the only way an XML Name shows up anywhere in the API.  You seldom have to construct an XName since there is an implicit conversion from string.  For example to construct an XElement with a local name Foo that has a namespace of http://myCompany.com you could do the following:

XElement foo = new XElement("{http://myCompany.com}Foo",  ... any value or children of Foo ...);

So what is that string there with the curly braces in the constructor you ask?  XLinq calls it the Expanded Name.  This idea is very much inspired by James Clark's paper on XML Namespaces in which he talks about Universal Names defined as a local name and a qualifying URI.  In his article he shows that XML Names are fundamentally these Universal Names (or what XLinq calls Expanded Names) and prefixes/default namespaces are simply shorthand for representing this full name (in a way that would work with XML 1.0 since XML was initially defined without XML Namespaces).   He gives example in his paper of how default namespaces and prefixes map into Universal Names. 

This is essentially what XLinq does in its API.  When the XML is loaded into memory the default namespaces and prefixes are resolved to their corresponding Expanded Names and that is they way you deal with them in the API, via XNames.   Namespace declarations (xmlns attributes) are retained as attributes in the in-memory tree and on output are used to associate prefixes with namespaces all over again.  In other words from XLinq's perspective default namespace declarations and prefix declarations are purely serialization options.  If you want to associate a prefix with a namespace in your output, say when creating a document from scratch, then you add an xmlns attribute right where you want the prefix defined.  There are helper methods in XLinq  planned (CreateNamespacePrefix, CreateDefaultNamespaceDecl - or something) but I put some notes at the end of the XLinq overview doc on how to do that manually if needed.  The only trick is knowing the namespace of the xmlns attribute (http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns).  For example to declare the prefix ns and associate it with http://myCompany.com you could add the following attribute where you want it defined.

new XAttribute("{http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/}ns", http://myCompany.com),

Anyway, I think James Clarks article on XML Namespaces is one of the better explanations on the subject and understanding that XML Names are really namespace+local name simplifies working with names in XLinq.  I find that the XML code that I write, which pretty much always has namespaces involved, is quite a bit clearer and cleaner than the equivalent DOM code.

This is an area we are looking for feedback.  Lemme know what you think.

cya,
rem

I will be doing a presentation at PDC this year on Using the .NET Language Integrated Query Framework with XML Data.  The presentation is on Friday (8/16) at 10:30.  Hope to see you there!

Here is the abstract:

One of the key challenges to working with XML data has been the impedance mismatch between XML and programming languages. This session introduces future advances Microsoft is making for the "Orcas" release of Visual Studio in programming languages and frameworks to help integrate XML and queries with C# and Visual Basic. The advances include a framework for navigating, querying, and transforming XML that is both easier to use and more efficient than current XML programming techniques. This framework marries the capabilities of XPath, XQuery, and the DOM with the language integrated query framework planned for C# and Visual Basic. It is suggested that you attend "The .NET Language Integrated Query Framework: An Overview" before attending this session.

Luca is doing a talk on Using the .NET Language Integrated Framework with Relational Data and blogs about it here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/lucabol/archive/2005/07/14/438824.aspx 

It was great to have Logicalis up to Building 35 Friday (1/21/05) to talk to the XML team about the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System Project that they have been working in conjunction with the Washington State Department of Licensing.  Thanks to Dan Remy (yup, my brother), Corey Snow, Bill Baxter, and Mike O'Shea from Logicalis as well as Linda Rae, Jeff Crose and Holly Burch from Washington State Department of Licensing.  Dan described the architecture of the system highlighting the big technical challenges that were overcome by use of System.Xml functionality.  Corey showed some signifcant XSLT work that he had done on the system (with lots of comments about looking forward to the XSLT debugger in Whidbey).  Mike then showed us a graphing component that made significant use of XML technologies.  It was an impressive system and it was great for the XML team to get a chance to learn about how XML technologies are getting used, what the underlying motivations resulting in XML usage, and some interesting ideas on how we can do better.  Thanks very much Dan, Corey, Jeff, Bill, Mike, Linda, and Holly.  We wish you all the success in the world and would like to keep in regular touch with you to get feedback.

BTW, we are always looking for real world XML customer scenarios so if you are a customer using .NET System.XML technology (or MSXML) extensively or perhaps a consultant with a customer that is we would love to talk with you.  Perhaps you would be interested in giving a talk to the MS XML Team like Logicalis did. 

rem

Here is the announcement I sent out to the XML team about the Logicalis talk ....

Hello my name is Dave Remy (call me Remy or Rem if you want).  I am a Lead Program Manager on Core XML Technologies at Microsoft (a part of the Webdata XML team).  Currently I am focusing on XML Schema support as well participating on several other of the core XML type technologies.  My main interest area these days is XML programming models and finding ways that developers can more easily use language technologies to harness the full power of XML. 

Prior to coming to Microsoft (Nov 2004) I was the Dev Lead for XMLBeans at BEA.  XMLBeans is now an Apache open source technology that leverages XML Schema to allow you program against xml using "strong types".  The major difference between XMLBeans and other Java/XML binding technologies was it's focus on providing a full non-lossy strongly typed programming model over an XML store rather than shredding the XML into objects.  The goal was ease of use for a large number of XML programming scenarios but with no dead ends so that you could drop into the underlying XML store (via XmlCursor, XQuery, XPath, or DOM) if necessary. 

Prior to BEA I was Chief Architect and Cofounder of GeoTrust which has now become the second largest certificate authority behind Verisign.  While at GeoTrust (overlapping into BEA as well) I coauthored the book Securing Web Services with WS Security with Jothy Rosenburg (Jothy was CEO of GeoTrust and later took the CTO role from me when I become Chief Architect).  Also, while at GeoTrust I earned my Computer Informaton Systems Security Professional Designation (CISSP).

Before BEA I was CTO at Netstock (now known for Sharebuilder).  Where we were big Visual J++ fans at the time :) At Nestock I was co-inventor the underlying Sharebuilder process which was a "dollar based investing" model rather than a "share based investing model".  Extremely low commissions and great for the dollar cost averaging type investor.  I understand Netstock/Sharebuilder continues to do well.

I came to Netstock from Corbis, the Bill G digital image company, where I was Director of Technology.  This was a great opportunity to work with the largest digital imagery archive in the world and learn a ton about image science, cataloging and search, and much more (Wired article on Corbis from back when I worked there).  I got the opportunity sit in meetings with Bill G and also to work with Eric Rudder who was Bill's technology assistant at the time.  Eric is now Senior VP at Microsoft and is my boss's, boss's, boss's ... boss.  Corbis was originally formed to do Bill's house technology which was pretty amazing to witness although I was only peripherally involved.

Prior to Corbis I was Director of Architecture at PEMCO.  This was a CIO level position running the Data Resource Management team and working strategically on how PEMCO's 4 insurance companys, bank, data processing company, and credit union's technology would grow and evolve.  I learned a lot about the difficulty of the CIO role there.  I also learned much about business in particular from Stan McNaughton the charismatic CEO at PEMCO.

I ended up at PEMCO because I had been a consultant working for IBM.  At IBM I was consulting focusing on enterprise modeling, data modeling, and in particular DB2 consulting.  My title at IBM was Advisory Systems Engineer but my role was all about consulting.  I had come into IBM to branch out of consulting and focus more on getting deep into DB2 technology but these were the days when IBM was just moving heavily into services so my background was highly valued (meaning I billed 40 hours a week, did proposals on the weekends, and whenever possible taught DB2/data modeling seminars in the evenings). 

Prior to going to IBM I had formed the consulting firm Relational Solutions based in Seattle (Mercer Island actually).  Relational Solutions was doing a great business subcontracting through IBM for DB2 consulting work at companies like Boeing, Safeco, Ernst, etc.  My partner was a great guy, David Neustadt and we had a tremendous Marketing/Recruiting Vice President named Tom Parrish.  I thought we were poised for growth but David really wanted to stay small.  Rather than press the issue I decided to take a significant paycut and go to IBM with the hope that I would get a chance to focus deeply on DB2 and relational technology.

Prior to forming Relational Solutions with David Neustadt I was a software developer for Security Pacific Bank, formerly Ranier Bank, now a part Bank of America.  Rainer bank a regional bank up in the Seattle area really had a great group of developers and I was on a rare team.  On particular guy (Mike Hackett, who I've lost contact with) had been reading a SmallTalk book (this was in the mid 80's) and decided that we could build an object oriented Customer Relationship System based on SmallTalk principles - but built using Cobol and DB2.  Really, it's true.  It had full inheritance, polymorphism, message passing, etc. and fit very well with the goals of a Customer Relationship System since you had different types of customers that had relationships with a myriad of constantly changing products and services. 

Prior to Rainier Bank I was a sofware developer at Boeing which is where I got my original training as a programmer.  Working in manufacturing was fun and a complex problem domain.  I owe a lot to Boeing, and my friend Don Maclane who recommended me there.  I really had practically no programming experience before starting there and Boeing gave me a lot of eduction and experience to get me started.

Finally, prior to going to Boeing I worked for my father's company in Los Angeles called The Games Network which was about putting video games (actually any software) over cable television.  We went through own mini dot com boom and bust with The Games Network going public, having lots of money on paper, tremendous presales, game contract committments, cable company endorsements, top of the world.  We decided to engineer our own computer that would go into people's homes and, what do you know, 6 months before launch we ran out of money.  At the same time the bottom fell out of the video games market and became  next to impossible to raise money to get to launch.  Then a supposed white knight came in who turned out to be a fraud and the whole thing came tumbling down.  This was an amazing experience for me to be a part of.  I saw the best of people and the worst (well maybe not the worst but pretty bad).  I left Los Angeles and moved back up to Seattle deep in debt (at least for a 23 year old) but determined and much smarter.

From an education perspective I dropped out of University of WA midway through my senior year (I don't think I had declared a major yet) before heading down to Los Angeles.  I received an Apple II+ as a present the beginning of my senior year, decided I loved computers, and was learning as much as I could about them.  I was having a difficult time breaking in to UW's Computer Science program becuase I had so many credits.  When I got the offer to join The Games Network in LA I jumped at the chance.  When I came back up to Seattle I started the night school route at Seattle University and after six years or so I got my undergraduate degree in Business.  I would have rather had a computer science degree but at the time there wasn't a night school program for something like that in Seattle (that I knew of).  Currently I am working on my Masters in Computer Science through Depaul University which has a great distance learning program.

On the home front (Mercer Island, WA) I am lucky enough to have a beautiful wife, Beth, and two daughters, Lisa and Laura.