dougturn's WebLog

Getting into the game with the Windows Azure Platform

dougturn — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:51:00 GMT

Cloud computing is rapidly ascending into the mainstream as a viable alternative to traditional on-premises architectures. Putting an application into *the cloud* is not as abstract is the term might sound. Deploying to the cloud is a term for allowing a company to host your applications and/or databases in a massive data warehouse, much like today’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs) host web applications on our behalf. Cloud-based technologies, such as the Windows Azure Platform from Microsoft, bring an array of benefits, as detailed below.

Why Windows Azure?

The Windows Azure Platform provides a cloud-based solution for your applications and databases, giving a low-cost, highly available hosting with massive on-demand scale. Having Microsoft deal with the nuances of unpredictable traffic loads, failover, replication, and updates is an attractive solution for many customers, who can then turn their attention to their core business. Many companies are finding significant cost savings as a result.

One prime example is Kelley Blue Book, a premier provider of vehicle pricing information to consumers, automotive dealers, governments, and the finance and insurance industries. The company developed its information-rich, high-traffic Web site using the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 and supports it with two hosted data centers. In an effort to reduce hosting costs and ease management of its infrastructure, Kelley Blue Book decided to host and manage its Web site using a software-plus-services model. After evaluating software-plus-services solutions, the company implemented the Windows Azure Platform, which proved to be a straightforward process. As a result, Kelley Blue Book is able to reduce capital expenditures for new hardware, increase its competitive advantage by focusing on delivering new features, saving $100,000 annually in hosting costs, and use IT resources more strategically.

A familiar development experience

The Windows Azure Platform gives developers a well-known development environment, with Visual Studio project templates, and a Software Development Kit (SDK) that yields a local simulation environment for testing your applications without having to physically push them out to the cloud. These items empower developers to quickly create and test applications and databases as candidates to publish to the cloud, from the convenience of an IDE they are already comfortable using.

Getting up to speed

Learning about the Windows Azure Platform is fairly straightforward, thanks to the freely available set of presentations, labs, demos, and sample applications in the Windows Azure Platform Training kit. Content spans all parts of the Windows Azure Platform, from Windows Azure to SQL Azure to the AppFabric. There are also links to all prerequisites, as well as links to additional online resources to complete the learning cycle.

Deploying Applications on Windows Azure

Windows Azure features a powerful, yet simple deployment model. By focusing on your application and abstracting away the infrastructure details, you can deploy almost any app with minimal fuss. You can watch Microsoft Technical Evangelist Ryan Dunn demo how easy this is by using list sharing and management application. You can download the source for the application from the site as well.

If you are ready to get started with the Windows Azure Platform, visit the main site today, where you will find everything you need to get started building applications for the cloud.

Five ways you can build a better application with Windows 7

dougturn — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:59:00 GMT

These days, our users have growing expectations around integrating UI with the platform. The days of mere functionality are fading, and now more than ever, developers have to deliver client solutions that cleanly mesh with the desktop, giving a connected feel to the application. At the same time, the solutions need to provide a compelling user experience to deliver attractive solutions in a media-saturated world.

Why Windows 7?

How does Windows 7 help? For starters, it has a handful of new technologies to help developers provide both a richer UX and better desktop integration. I’ll give a quick description of each of these new technologies, and point you to more detailed information from Windows 7 Technical Evangelist Yochay Kiriaty on each technology. At any point, you can try Windows 7 for yourself using the Windows 7 Test Drive site, or you can just download a 90-day evaluation to test it out locally.

Multi-touch

Windows 7 introduces multi-touch capabilities to Windows that provide support for both the OS and applications--even those applications that were not developed specifically to support multi-touch. As developers, we have the opportunity to opt into multi-touch in Windows 7 and provide additional functionality to our end users, enhancing their user experience. In the first video, join Reed Townsend and Yochay as they explore multi-touch in Windows 7. They will cover basic out of the box support for legacy applications, as well as for applications optimized for multi-touch, and explain the “Good, Better, and Best” programming model.

Smooth Animation

Smooth animations are fundamental to many graphical UI applications, and Windows 7 introduces a native animation framework for managing the scheduling and execution of animations. The animation framework supplies a library of useful mathematical functions for specifying behavior over time and also lets developers provide their own behavior functions. The framework supports sophisticated resolution of conflicts when multiple animations attempt to manipulate the same value simultaneously. An application can specify that one animation must be completed before another can begin and can force completion within a set time. The new framework also helps animations determine appropriate durations. In this video, you will see Yochay and Windows Ribbon Scenic Animation product team members Paul Kwiatkowski and Paul Gildea as they explain Windows Scenic Animation, why we need it, and which components of Windows use this technology. Paul also has few demos that show the real power of this technology.

Windows 7 Ribbon

Windows 7 has adopted the Office 2007 Ribbon user interface concept. The Windows 7 Ribbon command infrastructure enables developers to quickly and easily create rich ribbon experiences in their applications. Watch Yochay and Windows Ribbon product team members Ryan Demopoulos, and Sebastian Poulose as they take a deep dive into the Windows 7 Ribbon API and programming module, focusing on advanced topics such as dynamic galleries.

Windows 7 Taskbar

Windows 7 offers a new way of controlling your desktop, managing your windows, and launching applications. The Windows 7 Taskbar is a new application-launching and window-switching mechanism that consolidates the functionalities from previous Windows OS Desktop mechanisms such as Quick Launch, Recent Documents, Notification area icons, desktop shortcuts, and running application windows. Watch Yochay and Taskbar product team developers Robert Jarrett and Ben Betz as they talk about the three parts of the Taskbar. Rob will describe the architecture driving some of the new Taskbar features such as custom switchers and Jump Lists and we will address the important topic of Application ID.

Kernel constructs

OK, Kernel constructs may not neatly tie in with user experience or desktop integration. But it’s a pretty cool topic for developing on Windows 7, so we slipped it in here. Windows has certainly evolved, both as a general purpose operating system and at the lowest levels, with the release of Windows 7. Few people know the internal details of this evolution better than Technical Fellow and Windows Kernel guru Mark Russinovich. Here, Mark discusses some of the new kernel constructs in Windows 7. One very important change in the Windows 7 kernel is the dismantling of the dispatcher spin lock and redesign and implementation of its functionality. The direct result of the reworking of the dispatcher lock is that Windows 7 can scale to 256 processors. Further, this made it possible to tune the Windows Memory Manager to be more efficient. Mark also explains what MinWin really is. MinWin is present in Windows 7. Native support for VHD is another nice addition to our next general purpose OS. You’ll learn about each of these, and more, in this video.

If you would like to try out any of these new features, feel free to give Windows 7 a Test Drive, or just download a 90-day evaluation.

My new job - Content Architect

dougturn — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:47:21 GMT

As the old adage goes, the only constant thing in life is change. For the past 5 years, I've thoroughly enjoyed working as a Developer Evangelist here at Microsoft. The title always seems to raise eyebrows, especially here in the deep South, where the title of Evangelist connotes recognizable traditional images.

This job has had so many nuances over the years, but the one common thread is that it involves engaging developers wherever they are, from community to enterprise and everything in between. As much fun as this has been, I was approached about a new position, in Seattle, and in the end I just couldn't turn it down.

My new job is called a Content Architect. The position involves building, finding, aggregating, and exposing developer content to the Microsoft folks in the field, to re-present. As an evangelist for many years, I've been on the receiving end of this content, and have had a lot of ideas on how I would do it if I ran the zoo ($1 to Dr. Seuss). Now, it looks like I'll find out if all these ideas are do-able :-)

I'll be working for Thom Robbins - originator of the Code Camps, and clearly one of the thought leaders in our industry. His team, which includes several other visionary people, is another one of the big reasons I wanted to do this job.

I have to say, Microsoft continues to be the most amazing place I've ever worked, and I've worked at some phenomenal places, so the bar is quite high. It's almost like Microsoft tries to find out what you are passionate about, and then adapts your role to your passion. I know that's not exactly how it works, but I love the open-minded thinking that refuses to pigeon-hole a job. People are encouraged to think big, and are empowered to pursue their ideas.

My blog and email will continue to be the same, as will .NET University.

Glen Gordon will be aptly taking over the community side of the DE role for Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Glen has been a DE for some time, but has been more focused on the MSDN Events and online reach like GeekSpeak. and his numerous webcasts. Glen is already fully immersed in his new role.

It has been a privilege to be your DE for the past 5 years. And many thanks to the developer community here, who have made this job so much fun.

My wife, children, and I will be relocating to Seattle. It was a tough decision to leave the South, after 41 years here. But so often, the big rewards in life are preceded by taking a risk. If there were no uncertainty, there would be no need for leadership. I believe strongly in this team, and in the purpose that lies ahead, enough so to take the plunge.

And so, the next chapter begins... :-)

ASP.NET University in Atlanta GA - July 16

dougturn — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:13:06 GMT

Brian Hitney and his community have pulled together a *brand spanking new* .NET U course for ASP.NET development. If you are not familiar with .NET U, it is a 1-day free training for developers, with the extra spin of making all the content available for you to re-present if you want to. It straddles pure training, and equipping other speakers, user groups, companies, etc.

Brian and Glen Gordon will again team up to deliver this class.

Here is the outline:

1. ASP.NET Overview

a. Project types, setup, configuration

b. Authentication/authorization

c. Caching

d. Httpmodules/HttpHandlers

e. IIS 7

2. AJAX

a. Overview, history

b. Working with Javascript in VS2008

c. AJAX fundamentals

d. Webservices (ASMX and WCF)

3. MVC

a. Why MVC, what it offers

b. Dive into the specifics of the components

c. Getting Started

d. Testing

4. Virtual Earth / Live Services

a. Most of the talk is centered around consuming VE

b. Overview of cloud services, things coming down the pike.

This is a great offering, and is free to the public. Registration information is at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/glengordon/archive/2008/07/02/asp-net-university-to-premier-in-atlanta-on-july-16.aspx

This will be held at the Microsoft Alpharetta offices. I think I might even attend this one, it looks so good :-)

Kim Matlock interviewed on ASP.NET Podcast

dougturn — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:48:27 GMT

If you've ever wondered about who is behind TechEd, and all the goings on that accompany a conference of this magnitude, this interview with Kim is pretty fascinating stuff.

Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff are launching Deep Fried Bytes Podcast

dougturn — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:02:00 GMT

If you don't know or follow Keith and Chris, you should. and here's an easy way to do so:

http://keithelder.net/blog/archive/2008/05/29/Deep-Fried-Bytes-Podcast-Is-Live.aspx

Yes, it's true, Deep Fried Bytes was actually available as a URL. :-)

Silverlight 2.0 Webcast series kicks off in 3 weeks

dougturn — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:35:25 GMT

Lindsay Rutter, a DE from near Philadelphia, is kicking off a 6-part webcast on Silverlight 2.0. This is a great opportunity to get a look at some of the upcoming features, so you'll want to tune in. You can get all the details and register here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/lindsay/archive/2008/05/27/upcoming-silverlight-2-webcast-series.aspx

Birmingham's Steel City SQL User Group - May meeting

dougturn — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:59:21 GMT

May Meeting

The May meeting of the Steel City SQL user group will be next Tuesday the 20th at New Horizons Learning Center on Beacon Parkway. New Horizons has offered to sponsor the group by providing pizza for the meeting (Thanks New Horizons, for doing that!), if you are planning to attend please RSVP so they can get an accurate count for the food.

Networking

As the goals of PASS are to Connect, Learn and Share, they will begin the May meeting as usual with a thirty minute networking session to allow attendees to connect with other SQL Server professionals beginning at 5:30pm.

Presentation

SQL Server Guru and Microsoft MVP, Kevin Boles, will be presenting SQL Server 2008 - New Stuff for Developers this month beginning at 6:00pm. Kevin is a SQL Server expert, working exclusively with the product since version 6.5. He has 15 years of IT industry experience and holds pretty much every SQL Server certification available. He teaches both public and private courses and has been consulting for the last 10 years. He is a regular speaker at area user groups and Code Camps.

Nice explanation of threading options in Silverlight 2.0

dougturn — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:13:13 GMT

http://adoguy.com/2008/05/06/Executing_Code_on_the_UI_Thread_in_Silverlight_2.aspx

Nice info (as usual), Shawn.

New User Group is forming in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

dougturn — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:06:50 GMT

Details are here:

http://hubcitynug.org/

It's a great time to get involved with helping run the UG. Many thanks to Keith Elder and Aubrey Cote for getting the ball rolling on this.

Make sure you get on the mailing list (available on the site) to stay up to date on this.

Huge weekend community event in Orlando, wedged between TechEd weeks

dougturn — Wed, 07 May 2008 05:00:46 GMT

My colleague Joe Healy has assembled an amazing weekend of activity, nicely squeezed between the Developer and Infrastructure weeks at TechEd Orlando. There is a site that lists all the activities, which include Code Camps, .NET Us, Open Space discussions SQL seminars, and a bunch of other awesome stuff.

Since I am helping him out with the .NET U stuff, I figured I'd blog that stuff here as well.

We are having 3 .NET Universities run concurrently on Sunday. All registered attendees will receive their .NET U Alumni t-shirt, a .NET U *graduate* certificate, and a couple of books. And we may just drop class pictures on the site as well. Here are the courses with the Registration links:

.NET U presents: BizTalk Basics - A 4-part technical overview of BizTalk Server 2006, covering the essential aspects of getting BizTalk rolling in your IT department. This series is being delivered by BizTalk guru extraordinaire Jeff Barnes. Jeff is also including a bonus topic on RFID.

http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=128288

.NET U presents: SharePoint Fundamentals - a 4-part series discussing everything from installation through Web Parts with Windows SharePoint Services. This track is being delivered by some of the top SharePoint talent in the community, including Josh Carlisle, Mikhail Dikov, Jacob Sanford, Doug Ware, and Ted Pattison.

http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=128289

.NET U presents: Building Service-based applications in .NET - This session includes thorough technical primers on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows WorkFlow Foundation (WF), WorkFlow Services, and the new *Web programming* model in WCF (REST, JSON, and RSS). Rockstar presenters Bill Zentmayer, Bayer White, Noah Subrin, and Glen Gordon will show you the way to get started building service-based applications with the .NET Framework.

http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=128291

Hope to see a bunch of you there. Remember, this event is a free, community event, and not just for TechEd attendees. So feel free to come down, catch some sun, and enjoy a monster weekend of content.

Augusta, Georgia .NET User Group meeting on May 29

dougturn — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:43:55 GMT

The next Augusta Developers Guild meeting will be held on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 6PM at Augusta State University. Karl Shifflett will be presenting Mole Visualizer For Visual Studio. Please RSVP so we know how much food to order. More information is available at our website http://www.augustadevelopers.org.

Meeting Summary
When: Thursday, May 29th, 2008 @ 6PM
Where: Augusta State University, University Hall, Room 170 ( Directions )
Who: Karl Shifflett

Agenda
6:00 Food and Networking
6:20 Announcements and Sponsors
6:30 Presentation
8:00 Closing and Giveaways

Topic - Mole Visualizer For Visual Studio
The Mole Visualizer For Visual Studio has taken the developer community by storm. It has been written up on major developer blogs all over the world including several at Microsoft. It has been downloaded by tens of thousands of developers worldwide.

This presentation will cover using Mole on WPF, WinForms, ASP.NET, WCF and WF Visual Studio project types. Mole is a very complex Visual Studio Visualizer designed to not only allow the developer to view objects or data, but to also allow the developer to drill into properties of those objects. Mole allows unlimited drilling into objects and sub-objects. When Mole finds an IEnumerable object, the data can be viewed in a DataGridView or in the properties grid. Mole easily handles collections that contain multiple types of data. Mole also allows the developer to view non-public fields of all these same objects. Depending on the type of object you are visualizing you can view properties, fields, IEnumerable collection data, an image of the data/control, and run-time XAML. Mole also allows editing of displayed properties, including properties in the heap.

Presenter - Karl Shifflett
Karl is a software architect, Microsoft MVP, Code Project MVP and MCAD from Charlotte, North Carolina. He has been designing & developing business applications since 1989 and transitioned to .NET in March of 2003. In April of 2007 he joined the list of WPF and Microsoft Expression fanatics & evangelists. Currently working on new full featured City Government and Utility Billing WPF product. Karl is an exciting and enthusiastic speaker who is a regular at the Enterprise Developers Guild events, Raleigh Code Camps and has presented in Columbia and Charleston SC. He is a member of Team Mole that delivered Mole Visualizer For Visual Studio to the world. His blog: http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com

MSN/Live ranked above Google, Yahoo, and Facebook in survey

dougturn — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:10:46 GMT

Thought this was an interesting survey.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9082558

I'm still not sure exactly how you specifically classify someone as a *Web 2.0 developer*, but whoever they are, they gave us nice marks in this survey.

Chad Brooks shows off the Ford Sync for Fox 6 in Birmingham

dougturn — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:01:15 GMT

That's the first time I've seen Sync. I have to say, it's pretty cool.

http://blogs.msdn.com/chabrook/archive/2008/04/10/ford-sync.aspx

Nice blog entry and SL content by Bob Familiar

dougturn — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:50:25 GMT

Check out Bob's blog, which includes a 4-part series on Silverlight 2.0. Wow, monster blog entry, Bob! nice job!

http://blogs.msdn.com/bobfamiliar/archive/2008/04/04/rich-internet-applications-using-silverlight-2-0.aspx