WindowsDevPro Blog

Developer News from Dev Connections 2008

SheilaM — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:22:00 GMT

Developers don't come to the Dev Connections conference for big announcements about major new products from Microsoft. They come for intense hands-on sessions with experts in various Microsoft technologies. Some of the expert speakers are from Microsoft and many are not. Their candor about the products gives the conference its unique appeal.

Check out the tongue-in-cheek webcasts made by conference attendees who completed the sentence "If I ran Microsoft" at Windows IT Pro's ITTV.net website.

On a more serious note, here's a round-up of developer news blogs and podcasts from the conference:

New ASP.NET Chart Control Announced

SQL Server 2008: What's in It for You?

Silverlight and SQL Server Podcast

The Greening of SQL Server Blog and Podcast

DotNetNuke Development Blog and Podcast

PDC 2008: ADXSTUDIO Supports SQL Development and Cloud Services

SheilaM — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:40:00 GMT

At Microsoft PDC 2008, ADXSTUDIO (www.adxstudio.com) announced support of Microsoft cloud services for their Web Content Management system and CRM Developer Toolkit products.

“Cloud-based computing significantly lowers the barriers that developers face in building modern web applications, while at the same time eliminating the capital expenditures and lowering the operational expenses required to bring new web products to market,” said Doug Schneider, President of ADXSTUDIO. “We felt it was important for us to be early adopters of Microsoft’s cloud services so that our customers can realize these benefits while building modern websites on a strong content management platform.”

“Our strategy has always been to integrate tightly with new Microsoft technologies,” said Shan McArthur, VP of Technology for ADXSTUDIO. “We are continuing to demonstrate this at the PDC with support of LINQ, ADO.NET Data Services, Model View Controller (MVC), Live ID, Windows Azure™, SQL Data Services, and Dynamics CRM.”

For more on cloud computing see Cloud Computing: How Will It Affect Corporate IT?

PDC 2008 Product Preview from Embarcadero: Delphi Prism

SheilaM — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:45:00 GMT

At the Microsoft PDC, Embarcadero Technologies (www.embarcadero.com) previewed Delphi Prism, which the company describes as "a next-generation .NET development solution."

Delphi Prism’s integrated managed code database engine targets Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, allowing developers to use the Delphi Prism programming language to build Windows .NET applications using the latest Microsoft .NET 3.5 technologies, such as WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET and LINQ. Delphi Prism also targets Mac OS X and Linux with open source CLR technologies such as Mono and Cocoa#.

According to Michael Swindell, vice president of products for Embarcadero Technologies, “Like a crystal splits light into multiple colors, Delphi Prism splits program code into multiple technologies knocking down platform, framework and database barriers. By fusing Web, RIA and desktop .NET application development with a powerful .NET database engine and heterogeneous ADO.NET connectivity, Delphi Prism will deliver an end-to-end managed code solution that targets Windows first and foremost, and Mac and Linux for added flexibility.”

A key to Delphi Prism’s multi-platform capabilities is the Oxygene technology licensed from RemObjects. Oxygene is a powerful Common Language Runtime (CLR) compiler engine that supports a variety of CLR-based platforms such as Microsoft’s .NET and the open source Mono runtime.

According to their press release, key features and benefits of Delphi Prism include:

· Complete solution for .NET Windows development: With fully CLS-compliant assemblies, developers have total access to all language and runtime features of .NET 3.5., including ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, WinForms and LINQ. Additionally, Delphi Prism can be installed as a plug-in to Visual Studio or run as a standalone development tool.

· Powerful full-featured Delphi Prism development language: Allows developers to write managed applications using a modern, powerful and easy-to-use object-oriented language with roots in Delphi and Object Pascal, and features such as generics, sequences, queries and parallel computing.

· Supports Mac OS X and Linux development with Mono CLR : Provides support for compiling to multiple CLR platforms, including Mono for Linux and Mac OS X. Complete Cocoa# support is included for building rich Mac OS X Cocoa-based user interfaces.

· Integrated Blackfish™ SQL ADO.NET database engine: The integrated Blackfish SQL database engine is a high-performance, light-footprint, SQL-92 compliant transactional database. Fully .NET based, it can be deployed embedded in-process or server. Blackfish SQL stored procedures can be written in the Delphi Prism language or any other CLR-compliant language such as C# or Visual Basic .NET. A Blackfish SQL engine runtime deployment license is included with Delphi Prism.

· dbExpress framework for building heterogeneous database applications: Seamlessly integrated into the ADO.NET framework, dbExpress, Delphi Prism provides developers with easy heterogeneous access to a wide variety of popular databases. Additionally, ASP.NET developers can provide support for membership, roles, profiles and the other features of the ASP.NET provider interface for multiple backend databases.

· DataSnap client creation: Supports development of multi-tier clients. With Delphi Prism, developers can interact with Delphi DataSnap application servers developed with Delphi 2009 for Windows and earlier versions. Clients can access server methods, as well as the traditional IAppServer interface-based DataSnap servers.

· Use a wide array of Visual Studio plug-ins and components. Provides access to the rich Visual Studio and .NET ecosystem, including Visual Studio plug-ins, MSBuild actions and third-party components from commercial, open source and freeware vendors.

Delphi Prism will be generally available later this year in English, French, German and Japanese languages.

For more SQL Server news from the PDC, check out the podcast from Dave Campbell:

http://www.sqlmag.com/Article/ArticleID/100649/Dave_Campbell_on_Azure_and_SQL_Server_Services.html

PDC 2008 Product News from SOA Software

SheilaM — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:45:00 GMT

At the Microsoft PDC conference SOA Software, an SOA Governance vendor, announced added support for Microsoft’s extensions to the Windows Server "Dublin" application server and Windows Communication Framework (WCF) version 4.0. SOA Software also previewed its new governance models for the “Oslo” modeling platform at the PDC.

SOA Software extends traditional models of enterprise security within Microsoft’s .NET Framework and Windows Server by including a unified governance automation best-practices framework for WCF service providers and consumers.

"At PDC, Microsoft is previewing some of the coming enhancements to the .NET Framework and Windows Server, which advance the capabilities of our application server while still allowing developers to use their existing skills with Microsoft Visual Studio, the .NET Framework and IIS,” said Burley Kawasaki, director in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft Corporation. “SOA Software’s governance automation products combined with Microsoft’s .NET Framework and “Dublin” extensions to the Windows Server application server help customers to maximize their SOA vision.”

According to their press release, "SOA Software’s framework brings a governed SOA methodology to developers, including centralized policy management for WCF and continuous compliance and validation for Microsoft Team Foundation Server. This framework provides custom bindings, channels and service hosts that make the job of implementing and enforcing enterprise-wide security a transparent and consistent quality of the 'Dublin' run-time architecture. The cost and effort required for coding, deployment and operations are greatly reduced because security, compliance and audit become things an administrator checks off via a centralized console, and the resulting policy documents get pushed to Windows application server for implementation, enforcement and monitoring."

"The .NET Framework 4.0 enhancements - along with the improved manageability and standardized application hosting capabilities provided by “Dublin” - provide enterprise customers with a best-in-class platform for developing, deploying, running and evolving their composite applications," said Frank Martinez, executive vice president of SOA Software. “These enhancements will allow customers to unify both lightweight composition and process-driven integration techniques through a consistent unified declarative programming model for rich composite applications. This will help simplify the way in which SOA Software’s Integrated Governance Automation solutions can be used to preserve the fidelity of the governance models, structures and mechanisms supporting their enterprise SOA programs.”

PDC 2008 Product News from JNBridge

SheilaM — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:14:00 GMT

At the Microsoft PDC 2008 JNBridge, which provides Java and .NET Framework interoperability tools, announced a new version of its JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server. I asked Wayne Citrin, CTO of JNBridge for his reaction to the Microsoft announcements at the PDC, "Microsoft's Azure provides more opportunities for JNBridge," Citrin said.

With the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server an enterprise can integrate BizTalk Servers into any existing JMS (Java Messaging Service) infrastructure, allowing
messages to be passed seamlessly between systems in a heterogeneous environment. According to Citrin, the company listened closely to feedback from customers added support for transactions and 64-bit platforms in the latest version of the adapter.

Here's some background on the JMS Adapter for BizTalk--it provides enterprises with a way to connect JMS capabilities with Microsoft’s BizTalk Server 2006 or BizTalk Server 2006 R2. According to the company's press release "the adapter uses a simple interface that hides the complexities of building a JMS client, requires no
changes to existing JMS enterprise servers, and is compatible with any vendor’s JMS server. The adapter utilizes the technologies in JNBridgePro, JNBridge’s flagship Java and .NET Framework interoperability product."

“Transactions are necessary for reliable business applications,” explained Citrin. “Without JMS transactions, if a BizTalk Server orchestration detects a problem during document processing, the incoming messages are lost. The messages may represent financial transactions – so losing them means money. With transactions, the messages are pushed back into the queue, so that when the problem is fixed, those messages can then be processed correctly, and not become lost.”

JNBridge also announced new version of its JMS Adapter for .NET Framework, which includes support for transactions and 64-bit platforms. Both adapters are available immediately and full-featured evaluation copies can be downloaded by visiting www.jnbridge.com. The new versions will be released in early November.

For other JNBridge product release information see http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99364/developer-product-releases-jnbridge-pro-40.html.

PDC2008: The Five Pillars of Visual Studio 2010

SheilaM — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:28:00 GMT

Hello from the Microsoft PDC. Now that the news has been broken about the Azure platform developers are going to want to hear more about how the next version of Visual Studio will support the new cloud computing platform.

I spoke with David Mendlen and Shanku Niyogi from the Microsoft Visual Studio team. They stepped me through the Five Pillars of VS 2010 and how Microsoft sees its developer tools platform enabling emerging trends.

Click here to listen to the podcast: http://www.ittv.net/VideoPlayer/tabid/57/VideoId/212/Visual-Studio-2010-And-Azure-Cloud-Computing.aspx

PDC 2008: Developers Get First Look at Windows 7

SheilaM — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Microsoft executives introduced developers at the PDC 2008 to a pre-beta version of Windows 7 (milestone 3 according to Microsoft’s internal schedule), showcasing how coders can work with the Windows 7 platform and other Microsoft offerings to webify, dotnetify, and meshify (Live Mesh enable) applications. As Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft put it in his keynote, “From PC to the web to the phone, and from the server to the cloud, we are focused on enabling the creation of the next generation of user experiences.” He also noted that the product is real, but “nascent” at this point in the development cycle. Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live engineering group, said that Windows 7 would RTM about 3 years after the generally availability of Vista. What’s new for developers? Well, it’s not called Vista. Sinofsky said that in response to developer (and other feedback) Microsoft plans to improve the platform, runtimes, and tools; improve performance, increase device coverage and improve app compat. He admitted that when Microsoft changed the device driver model partners weren’t ready at the launch. He noted that Windows 7 is built on the same kernel as Vista and app compat will be good to go. Open standards will be supported in Windows 7.There will be IE 8, CSS, and AJAX support. Multitouch scenarios will be enabled. There will be enhancements to the DirectX family of APIs.

Here’s what the Microsoft press release says about how the combination of its Windows and Visual Studio offerings will combine to help developers develop with the Microsoft platform: “Visual Studio and the .NET Framework will make it easy for developers to create applications for the new Azure Services Platform [and] Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 innovations will help developers build the next-generation applications for Windows 7 and take advantage of the new features in Windows 7, such as the Ribbon and support for multitouch enabled interfaces.” Improvements in using Win32, C++, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) were also discussed at the keynote.

In addition to getting the pre-beta build of Windows 7 PDC conference attendees are receiving a pre-beta developer release of Windows Server 2008 R2. According to the Microsoft press release the R2 release includes “live migration of virtual machines, power saving capabilities, and developer features to build and host the next-generation applications and appliances.”

To learn more about developing for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 go to http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/windows

And check out the Engineering Windows 7 blog on msdn: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

Windows Azure Announced at PDC 2008

SheilaM — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:30:00 GMT

During the opening keynote at the Microsoft PDC the company’s chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, announced the Windows Azure Service Platform, a new OS platform for the cloud. Ozzie explained that Azure is “a Windows offering at the Web tier.” It combines “the best of software and the best of services” Ozzie said.

The seriousness of this venture is shown by the development team’s leaders—Dave Cutler (the father of Windows NT) and Amitabh Srivastava to leverage MS systems expertise to build a new platform for the Web. The platform designed for the almost infinite scalability required by the Web, but leverages the skills, runtimes, and tools Windows and Web developers currently have: .NET Framework languages, Visual Studio. It provides higher level developer services including bringing more of the power of SQL Server to the cloud via SQL Service Data Services. In addition, Azure will provide an open environment for the varied world of tools developers use—some from Microsoft, some from the Web, and others that developers create.

The point that all the keynote speakers (Ray Ozzie, Amitabh Srivastava, Bob Muglia) hammered home is that Azure is a fundamentally new platform that sets the stage for “for the next fifty years” of development.” According to the press release Azure will help web developers “build the next generation of application that will span from the cloud to the enterprise datacenter and deliver new experiences acprss the PC, Web, and phone.

The press release lists the key components of the Azure Services Platform as:

Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation, and networking
Microsoft SQL Services for database services and reporting
Microsoft .NET Services which leverage familiar .NET Framework concepts in service-based implementations
Live Services for a consistent way to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across PCs, phones, PC apps and web sites
Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content and collaboration

A limited community technology preview (CTP) will be made available to PDC attendees today, to give these developers a first crack at trying the features and functions of Azure.

What are Madison and Kilimanjaro?

SheilaM — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:59:00 GMT

Last week Microsoft announced plans for a BI-focused release of SQL Server, code named "Kilimanjaro" in the first half of the 2010 calendar year. According to Fausto Ibarra, the director of product management for SQL Server, the Kilimanjaro release is not the full-blown release of the next version of SQL Server, neither is it an R2-type release. It's a post-SQL Server 2008 release that includes the new Gemini managed self-service and analysis capabilities. Microsoft announced Project Gemini earlier this year.

Customers with SQL Server 2008 licenses, if they have software assurance (SA), will get the Kilimanjaro release, according to Ibarra. Otherwise, Microsoft plans to license it separately. The first community technology preview (CTP) of Kilimanjaro will be available in 12 months. Pricing hasn't been determined yet. As with most Microsoft releases, there will be a Technology Adoption Program (TAP) program for early adopters of Kilimanjaro, Ibarra said.

So when will the next full version of SQL Server ship? No one will say, although Ted Kummert, Microsoft corporate vice president, has said that Microsoft intends to ship the next version of SQL Server twenty-four to thirty-six months after the 2008 version. Most folks are still trying to wrap their heads around the latest version of SQL Server, so there's not a big rush to need to know the next generation product yet. The Kilimanjaro interim release is designed to generate excitement among BI professionals and business decision-makers eager to push BI into wider usage within their organizations.

The solution code named "Madison" is not a release. Ibarra verified that it's a solution and will be available to customers in 12 months through a CTP. Madison is an "appliance-like" solution that's intended to "deliver massively increased scalability capable of supporting the very largest data warehousing deployments," according to a press release. Microsoft, along with server and storage hardware providers including Bull, Dell, EMC, HP, and Unisys will team up to release an appliance (plus software and support--the "like" in appliance-like) integrating technology from the appliance vendor DATAllegro, which Microsoft recently acquired.

The Madison solution can pull together reports very rapidly from many terabytes (TB) of data. Madison will enable managed self-service for thousands of business users manipulating hundreds of TB of data to get questions answered. Microsoft says that this move into the very large data warehouse will have low TCO and high ROI.

2010 promises to be a very busy year for SQL Server customers--there will be CTPs for Kilimanjaro and Madison. Then the releases. Plus the next generation SQL Server release will be in its CTP and release cycle.

What's Happening with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0?

SheilaM — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:53:00 GMT

The news out of Microsoft today includes a taste of what's cooking with Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, plus a look at Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 (previously code named Rosario). Here's what senior vice president of the Developer Division, S. "Soma" Somasegar says about these upcoming releases, “With Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, we are focused on the core pillars of developer experience, support for the latest platforms spanning client, server, services and devices, targeted experiences for specific application types, and core architecture improvements. These pillars are designed specifically to meet the needs of developers, the teams that drive the application life cycle from idea to delivery, and the customers that demand the highest quality applications across multiple platforms. You can expect to hear a lot more about Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 in the coming months.” An area of focus for Visual Studio 2010 is what Microsoft calls "democratizing application lifecycle management (ALM)." An efficient and integrated IT team could be a more democratic team,certainly the playing field would be leveled by better modeling tools, a more efficient test cycle, and better collaboration among the various players on IT teams--from development to systems administration. Here are a few plans for improving ALM that Microsoft has in the works:

Ensuring architectural consistency
Exploring existing code assets for easy re-use
Smoothing build handoffs, check-ins, and higher quality builds
Eliminating “no repro” bugs
Quickening setup and deployment of tests and ensuring that all code changes are properly tested
Focused test planning and progress tracking

“The application life cycle is an integral part of today’s business. Regardless of core competencies, all organizations are driven by software that is created and customized to deliver a competitive advantage,” said Theresa Lanowitz, founder of voke, inc. “Enterprises that invest in an ALM solution can decrease their total cost of ownership of applications in their IT portfolio, and bring about a global approach that is an integrated and expansive system consisting of people, processes and technology. This global approach to ALM facilitates collaboration and takes the risk out of software development to produce predictable and reliable results for an optimized business outcome. Solutions such as VSTS are poised to take advantage of market opportunity by offering an application life-cycle platform to help enterprises realize this ROI benefit.” In addition, Microsoft announced that VSTS 2010 will provide a unified VSTS Development and Database product. Current software assurance (SA) customers who own Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition or Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition will receive all the following products starting Oct. 1, 2008, for free:Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development EditionVisual Studio Team System 2008 Database EditionVisual Studio 2005 Team System for Software DevelopersVisual Studio 2005 Team System for Database ProfessionalsThe products will be available to SA customers through their normal Microsoft Developer Network channel. More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa.More information about Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 is available at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9537302.

Intel Unveils Multicore Programming Tools

jeffjames — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:39:00 GMT

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this morning, Intel announced a new family of software development tools for Microsoft Visual Studio to help programmers get the most out of multicore processors. Dubbed Intel Parallel Studio, this new product family includes four new applications, each designed for a specific part of the development process:

Intel Parallel Advisor (design)
Intel Parallel Composer (code)
Intel Parallel Inspector (debug)
Intel Parallel Amplifier (tune)

According to James Reinders, director of software development products at Intel, most of these applications will be available in beta form by the end of 2008 or early 2009, with a final release scheduled for mid-2009. Final pricing will also be announced in early 2009. Developers can sign up for the beta program by visiting www.intel.com/go/parallel. According to the program website, beta program applicants must currently be using Windows XP or Vista, use the C/C++ programming languages, and be running Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/2008 (excluding Express).

According to Reinders, current trends in microprocessor design involve moving beyond 2- and 4-core processors to what Intel calls "manycore" processors, future chip designs that could have 8, 16, and even more processor cores.

In an online FAQ [PDF] that answers questions about the new product family, Intel suggests that developers who will benefit most from these applications are those "seeking to take advantage of multicore, but concerned about supporting software on multiple generations of microprocessors and several recent releases of Microsoft Windows." Intel and AMD are both heading down the manycore processor path, and products like these will help developers learn to get the most out of the immense processing power that future processors--like Intel's new Larrabee processor--can provide.

For more information on Intel Parallel Studio products, visit www.intel.com/go/parallel.

Programmers on the Catwalk

SheilaM — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:57:00 GMT

You all know you're smart--and you're respected for your beautiful minds. But are you fashion-forward? In "The Programmer Dress Code," Codethinked.com has assembled a show of some of the stylin' greats in computing. Check out how you stack up against these hairy visionaries. http://www.codethinked.com/post/2007/12/The-Programmer-Dress-Code.aspx

Say Goodbye to Netscape Navigator

SheilaM — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:38:00 GMT

We'd like to hear your thoughts on Netscape Navigator and AOL's decision to stop supporting it.

Share your memories of the browser wars.

Some background http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/01/02/3191040.htm

Are you planning to run Exchange on Windows 2008?

SheilaM — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:25:00 GMT

The Exchange development team has some tips for you at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/12/ExLonghorn/default.aspx

Windows Networking Awards for Administration Tools Chosen by Readers

SheilaM — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:13:00 GMT

To see the vendors the readers of windowsnetworking.com have chosen in the Administration Tools voting check http://www.windowsnetworking.com/news/WindowsNetworking-Readers-Choice-Award-Administration-Tools-Active-Directory-Janitor-Nov07.html