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June 2007 - Posts

For our company kick-off meeting (Microsoft Singapore), I'm working on a kick-butt Software + Services (S+S) demo on Windows Home Server. Source will be shared shortly but I came across an interesting challenge... how do I create a scheduled task (remember...(read more)
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One of the perks of being an employee is having all of our software available for free 24x7. Well, it turns out that YOU can also get access to TONS of our most current servers / apps preconfigured in a Virtual Hard Disk. They currently have Visual Studio...(read more)

In October of 2006, Microsoft announced the preview of the Microsoft ESB Guidance at Microsoft SOA Conference in Redmond. This consisted of the following which enabled Microsoft partners and customers to build large and small-scale ESB solutions:

* Sample code built on BizTalk Server 2006

* Architectural guidance, patterns and practices

* Reusable BizTalk Server ESB and .NET components:

* Dynamic Transformation Service

* Dynamic End Point/Configuration Service

* Itinerary based Routing & Service Invocation

* ESB Portal

* Exception Management framework

* Namespace Resolution Service

* JMS (Java Message Service) pipeline component (IBM JMS over WMQ) 

Since that time we’ve achieved significant momentum:

* Several hundred requests for the ESB Guidance

* Several dozen customers incorporating the guidance into their projects

* Dedicated Microsoft ESB web site: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/solutions/soa/esb.mspx

* Dedicated Partner site for delivering the ESB Guidance: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/solutions/soa/esbpartners.mspx

* Press on the ESB Guidance from the SOA conference

* http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=25511

* http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarchives.jhtml?articleId=193104205

* http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/04/HNmsesbsoa_1.html

* http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/100406-microsoft-offers-esb-guidelines-for.html

Due to the overwhelming demand and popularity of the ESB Guidance, Microsoft has released a new June Community Release build of the ESB Guidance on the new ESB Guidance community site, where all future iterations will be released here until our final release in October later this year. 

Although this June Community Release focused on bug fixes and refactoring the ESB Guidance for BizTalk 2006 R2, future releases will incorporate many new and augmented features such as:

* UDDI publishing and richer resolution options

* WS-MetadataExchange

* Enhanced ESB Portal and Exception Mediation

* Request-Response support for on and off ramps

* WCF Adapter integration

* New Samples and Guidance

* Third party SOA Management and Governance integration:

* Amberpoint Integration

* SOA Software Integration

We went down to Chai Chee to meet up with the folks from Advantech. They're proud sponsors of MEDC 2007 Singapore and had a few cool Windows Embedded devices to show us. After visiting, I got my creative juices flowing on all the possibilities with Windows...(read more)
We got our hands on an ASUS W5Fe with the new built-in "SideShow" device and we were curious to see who in Singapore can be the first to build a SideShow app. Well, our friends at Advanced Interactive Technologies (AIT) took up the challenge and as of...(read more)
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Not quite, but interesting nonetheless.  Check out these close-up of the Windows Vista DVD:

http://sugiero.blogspot.com/2007/06/windows-vista-dvd-who-are-those-people.html

And just in case you don't read the whole page, let me make it clear that this is an intentional design to make it harder to replicate the DVDs.

A photo is more than just a second captured in frame. It speaks more than a thousand words. It tells of a thousand stories.
Now, you have the chance to tell your stories and share them with the world! Capture the unique moments that best depict the verve of your home city and submit original works to the 3 categories below:

Food CategoryCulture CategoryArchitecture Category

Photographers who display originality and artistic flair will not only be honoured in our Gallery showcase but stand to win awesome prizes! For inspiration, check out the works from our guest photographers in the Gallery now.
Submission ends 29 June 2007 so hurry!
That's not all. Join the Project Shutter Community to connect with fellow shutterbugs and participate in a rich host of activities now!

More: http://www.projectshutter.com/

Looking for a cool demo and HOL on how to build an Outlook 2007 UI look and feel with WPF?

Here is one, done 90% in Blend 1.0 and 10% with manual XAML. No single third party control used.

WPF

XBAP demo

http://www.00001001.ch/download/HOL/WPF_XBAP/OutlookWPF/OutlookUI%20Browser.xbap

The lab manual can be downloaded from: http://www.00001001.ch/download/HOL/WPF/Outlook_HOL_WPF.pdf

The lab binaries are located here: http://www.00001001.ch/download/HOL/WPF/Outlook_HOL_WPF_projects.zip

http://www.ap-businessit.com/msforum/img/banner.jpg

Summary

The Microsoft Regional Architect Forum (RAF) Southeast Asia was held on 16th May 2007 in Singapore at the Intercontinental Hotel Ballroom. RAF is Microsoft’s premier gathering of strategic architects and other key influencers from enterprises around South East Asia. The Regional Architect Forum SEA is an invigorating and lively event, with key technology leaders from Microsoft Corporate sharing their vision with the audience. The theme for SEA RAF07 is Software + Services. Topics covered include Office Business Applications, Web 2.0, Software as a Service, Business/Enterprise Architecture. We had IASA, XMLOne and SiTF as supporting organizations for the event, with a keynote speaker from SiTF giving an overview on SOA trend/adoption in Singapore.

Event details/contents

Total number of attendees: 151 (pre-reg) + 22 (walk-ins) = 173 attendees

The agenda, speakers’ presentation slides and handouts are available at http://www.ap-businessit.com/msforum/downloader.html.

There are a total of 4 Corp speakers, namely Michael Platt, Atanu Banerjee, Khawar Ahmed and Fred Chong.

 

Key Highlights

67% of attendees feel more positive on Microsoft’s architecture and the progress made

57% of attendees are more likely to deploy Microsoft’s solution

72% of attendees have indicated that they will be building .Net applications in the near future

 

Key Lowlights

Not enough real life scenarios, case studies, in depth technical discussions and demonstrations

Availability of presentation materials to the attendees during event

Not enough seating and handouts due to overwhelming turnout

 

Acknowledgements

Special thanks and acknowledgements to SITF, XMLOne and IASA for supporting RAF 07.

Special acknowledgements to the distinguished speakers: Michael Platt, Atanu Banerjee, Khawar Ahmed, Fred Chong, John Eldridge, Erik Renaud (keynote), Lawrence Lim (SiTF)

Special thanks to the regional DPE team for driving and funding this event : Marcos Pindeo, Roberto Winckler

Special thanks to the following organizations for setting up booths outside the ballroom : IASA, SiTF-NYP SOA Centre, NetAssist (CWSP certification), MS Press, TechEd registration

Special thanks to marketing support : Neha Chhabria and event organizer APComm

Without them, none of this would have been possible. Thank you everyone for making this event a great success!

 

Some Pictures

IMG_0010.JPGIMG_0019.JPGIMG_0028.JPGIMG_0043.JPGIMG_0062.JPGIMG_0102.JPGIMG_0138.JPGIMG_0114.JPG

IMG_0093.JPGIMG_0117.JPG

Microsoft Singapore is proud to present the Singapore national champions on June 15.  To kick things off, our Managing Director, Mr. Barney Lau, will be giving a demo-packed speech on Software + Services.  We'll be covering things from Popfly to XNA to Photosynth.  So definitely register and drop by if you're interested.

More details: http://mssg.earth9.com/singapore/edm/2007/06/12/IC_awards.html

To register, please email Mandy at mandy@techmexeventsasia.com.

-----

XNA

We're also running an XNA hands-on training.  Drop by to learn how to build games for Windows and XBox 360.  RSVP to Andrea to book your slot email andrea@techmexeventsasia.com or call 6550 8963

-----

Jonathan Leong

Lastly, we're also inviting Jonathan Leong to come down and give his best wishes to the team (Singapore Imagine Cup Champions) that will eventually represent Singapore in Korea.

Jonathan Leong
  (Artiste Networks)

Wow... for MEDC Singapore 2007, I did not expect the high amount of interest in XP Embedded. Well, Singapore has spoken and I heard you loud and clear. Look out for more XP Embedded sessions to come from our local .NET user group SGDOTNET ( http://www.sgdotnet.org...(read more)

Hello, with all the noise about Silverlight these days, I was bothered by the lack of talk about the Streaming platform as a place to showcase content.  Beyond being a great place for developers to explore, I though this would be a great place to publish video's to share. 

 

The problem is, why do I have to use VS to create a project or use templates from expression decoder that I susequenty strip down in order to publish the content.  There has to be a better way!

 

 Along comes Roxio Labs with this cool WPF Editor that lets you edit your video prior to positing it up to the web site.  I thought I would give it try.

I started by using Espression Media Encoder to cut a piece out of another clip.  The platform limits the content to 22MB.  I could have just as easily used Vista Movie maker and any other tool but that way I would not have this wonderful screen shot to upload.

 

After that I dropped the file onto the editing screen and clicked on share

 

 

I had previously configured my Streaming Account Details, remember it is free to sign up, and it promptly started transcoding. (Why when I went to all the trouble to transcode in the ifrstplace but I guess it does not have the smarts to figure that out.)

 

It then began uploading and I was able to post the reference provided by the tool

to my Web Site!

 

Handy little tool that simplifies a few things!

The Web 2.0 disruption is driven by social and business drivers and the increased level of broadband connectivity.  Web 2.0 is about enabling consumers through community collaboration and social aggregation.  New solutions to old problems are being discovered and embraced by a new generation of internet savvy consumers who believe in a global marketplace rather than a geographically constrained one.  OnLine communities are emerging like Prosper that may displace portions of the FSI.  Prosper is an online community that allows individuals loan money to other individuals.  The power of the individual is also being amplified through membership in online communities and Enterprises need to understand how to engage at a community level as well as a personal one.  Another example is a Hong Kong Web 2.0 startup called Bullpoo (so named because they believe that Bull markets are always followed by Poo markets). Bullpoo allows users from around the world to collaborate and share investing knowledge through blogs, discussion, and virtual trading. Bullpoo calls this "social finance" and considers itself as a type of social networking platform for the finance industry.

The Mobile Embedded Developer Conference Singapore is rapidly approaching.  Find out more here: http://verychewy.com/.

For registration and agenda: http://www.microsoft.com/singapore/events/medc/default.mspx

SOA Overview

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

Learn how the Microsoft Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) vision and technology can help you realize a more agile and connected enterprise by using an IT infrastructure that can help streamline business processes, increase customer responsiveness, and improve interactions with key partners.

Presenters: Kris Horrocks and Yumay Chang, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818538

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

Messaging & Communications

Friday, June 15, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

Applications commonly communicate with other applications, both inside and outside the organization. Modern applications also must often fit into a service-oriented architecture (SOA), exposing some of their functionality as interoperable services accessible by other software. Achieving these goals requires support for service-oriented applications to communicate with other services.
In this session we’ll share with you the technology Microsoft provides to build web services that support the latest WS-* standards endorsed by all major vendors. In addition, we’ll tie it in with the previous discussion around Software Factories and show how Microsoft supports rapid development of these services through tooling support.

Presenters: Steve Swartz and Don Smith, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818539

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

Business Process & Workflow

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

In this session we will discuss the Business Process and Workflow capabilities necessary in service oriented architecture and provide guidance for selecting the most appropriate technology from Microsoft’s portfolio. We will discuss the requirements for service composition in client applications, composite services, service intermediaries, and line of business applications. In addition, we will examine the differences between general purpose workflow platforms, domain specific workflow products, and cross organization business process concerns.

Presenters: Kris Horrocks, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818540

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

Tools & Modelling

Friday, June 22, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

The advance in tooling has allowed business to drive down the cost of development by over 100% in the last 10 years. However, in the same period of time the number of successful projects has not increased significantly.  In fact it has consistently run at right around 30% of projects are deemed successful.  Software development, as currently practiced, is slow, expensive and error prone, often yielding products with large numbers of defects, causing serious problems of usability, reliability, performance, security and other qualities of service.

This talk addresses how to identify typical customer pains in software development  and shows how Microsoft tools offer a solution that enables collaboration across the extended team of project managers, architects, developers, testers, and business stakeholders and allows new solutions to be developed faster, cheaper and better though industrialization of software development.

Presenters: Erik Gunvaldson, Don Smith, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818541

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

User Experience

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

Usability is critical to the success of a application. Well-designed applications give users a greater sense of trust in the application, improve customer satisfaction and reduce support and training costs.  If an application is not easy to use, then the user will not be productive with the software. For companies that rely on their web presence to drive business, an attractive website instills customer confidence whereas an unattractive UI can prove costly when competitors are only a mouse click away.

In this session we’ll look at how Microsoft technology enables the development of attractive software and website through the use of styles and templates and how to share common design elements across your application through the use of resources.

Presenter: Brett Johnson, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818542

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

SOA Workshop Series: Enterprise Service Bus

Friday, June 29, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

This webcast explores the service oriented capabilities necessary to support mediated service communication and our guidance for implementing an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform. In addition, we will discuss the increasing need for broadly available service bus capabilities beyond the edges of the enterprise.

Presenter: Kris Horrocks, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834394

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

Federated Data

Friday, July 6, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

The data is a constant in any SOA project, and SOA project that ignores data issues is likely to fail.  In this section of the course, we will discuss the issues that should be considered when architecting the data portion of your SOA project.  Top issues include scalability, where if your new service becomes wildly successful, the database may not be able to handle the increased load.  Availability, where transform tightly coupled systems into a set of loosely coupled services that can be reused across the enterprise may actually cause the system as a whole to be more fragile.  Data consistency, where using services to break data silos can expose and exacerbate issues with inconsistent and duplicate data.

This talk shows how to solve each of these issues on the Microsoft platform. In particular we will talk about Microsoft database technology scale-up/scale-out, in asynchronous messaging support and how to do Master Data Management so that your SOA project has access to a consistent view of data.

Presenter: Roger Wolter, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818543

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

SOA Workshop for Architects: Identity and Access

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

The main reason that identity is now such a hot topic is based upon the fact that there is more opportunity to connect. High bandwidth communications via the Internet are now almost ubiquitous and span a broad range of scenario within organizations, between organizations, at home and elsewhere This has resulted in a rapid increase in the adoption of products and services available via the internet, and many of these services require some form of user authentication, but with the proliferation of phishing schemes there is no safe way to say who you are on the internet.

In this session we will show you Microsoft’s solution on identity and access can addresses these common concerns presented by the web, and how through identity federation a user can access  services that require a different set of credentials in a transparent fashion.

Presenter: Kim Cameron, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834536

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

SOA Workshop for Architects: Governance and Management

Friday, July 13, 2007

8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

As companies grow, their IT infrastructures grow along with them. But more often than not, the pace of that growth is uneven.  As applications, functionalities and people are added across the board at various points in time, the complexity of the enterprise multiplies and the harder it can be to manage and, more importantly, to keep secure.  

A dynamic system is Microsoft’s vision for what an agile business looks like—where IT works closely with business in order to meet the demands of a rapidly changing and adaptable environment. Come hear about Microsoft’s technology strategy for products and solutions that help businesses enhance the dynamic capability of its people, process, and IT infrastructure using technology.

Presenter: Jeff Johnson, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834551

2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”

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