From the Blogosphere

Microsoft Predicts Azure Success

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:45:00 EST

I read in an article on cloud computing where Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, predicted a successful venture into cloud computing with its Azure service – even if most people don’t know it’s there. Sounds kind of ironic, yes? But then again, I guess the cloud is most successful to IT business folks and consumers when it runs so smoothly and problem-free that they don’t even know it’s there. Azure, set to launch on January 1st, will run customers’ applications on its servers and provide capacity through its massive data centers. “For consumers, the best result of cloud computing is that they don’t notice it,” Ozzie told Reuters at Microsoft’s annual developers conference.

Daddy, Where Did Windows 7 Come From?

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

This from the Windows Blog: “An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed. If you’re interested in learning more about the design of Windows 7, I suggest reading this AP story with Julie Larson-Green as well as these WSJ (membership required) and Fast Company articles. And here is one of many blog posts on the E7 blog discussing the design process of Windows 7.”

Microsoft's Ray Ozzie on Mobile Applications and the iPhone

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:15:00 EST

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, recently commented in an interview with CNET, "Yes, iPhone has a lot of momentum, unquestionably. But I think the phenomenon we're in right now is the app phone. And if you look at the depth of apps that are on these phones, they're not very deep. It's not like Office or AutoCAD, where there are just thousands of man years that have gone into developing these apps. They're relatively thin apps that are companions to some service."

Business Apps with Silverlight 4, RIA Services & Visual Studio 2010

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

I had a great time at PDC2009 talk, but I was disappointed that I could not demo in both C# and VB… So here is the next best thing: A full play-by-play of the demo, but all in VB! Enjoy. I am starting off with the new Business Application Template that gets installed with RIA Services. For this demo, I am going to used a customized version of the template.

Would You Like to Touch My Mono?

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:00:00 EST

At one point I was actually thinking about writing a book for .NET developers to learn Cocoa but other plans, time constraints, and life issues all got in the way. I have posted countless times comparing the worlds of Cocoa and .NET and have twice presented at Apple's WWDC comparing both the desktop and mobile programming environments of Apple and Microsoft. So you can imagine the raw, unfiltered, pure geek joy that coursed through my veins when I heard about Monotouch, a programming library coupled with an IDE (MonoDevelop + Interface Builder) that would let me write my iPhone applications using C# and the .NET Framework (the mono version).

On Installing/Upgrading SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov_CTP

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

On a Windows XP Professional with XP3 attempts to upgrade/install SQL Server 2008 failed. The correct authentication was not recognized and only a few files were created.

Conclusions:

First attempt: To upgrade an existing SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (evaluation) [Mysorian] failed in the last step of the upgrade. However the following files were added to the SQL Server folder on the machine. It appears that the upgrade process created not only Upgrade files but also install files as shown here.

Second attempt: Tried to install a new server[Ganga]: failed.

Later in the maintenance mode, the repair option to repair the failed fresh install worked but cannot connect to the named instance of SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov CTP.

Named instance Ganga of the fresh install

Error Message:

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: -1)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=MSSQ...

The splash screen of the SQL Server 2008 in Management Studio appears to belong to R2 November CTP as well as the short cut for the CTP programs. However the following files were added to the SQL Server folder [MSSQL10_50.GANGA] on the machine.

Building Amazing Business Apps with Silverlight 4, & Visual Studio 2010

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:45:00 EST

I had a great time at my talk today at PDC2009. I was able to spend much of the time in a demo… Here is a summary of that demo so you can walk through it on your own machine:

Nice Screens, Shame About the Dancing

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:30:00 EST

I have not seen the stores in person, but from a distance I really, really like what Microsoft has done with its retail presence. Sure it looks vaguely familiar to Apple's stores, but big whoop. The wall to wall screens are brilliant.

However, I am now second-guessing whether I'd actually want to step inside a store and be trampled by line-dancing geeks rocking out to Will.I.Am and Fergie. Sheesh.

I'd love to see the look on the guy who walked up to cash to buy his Windows 7 upgrade and got stuck watching this horror show. "Umm, can I, excuse me, can I pay for this ... EXCUSE ME!!!"

And check the "Oh please God don't let my buddies see this" look on the face of some of the staffers."

As spotted in Gizmodo ...

Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) Release Candidate Is Out

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:45:00 EST

I'm not sure how all this managed to slip by me, but apparently last Friday the Windows Identity Foundation Release Candidate was unleashed on the world. Now keep in mind that this is not the ADFS v2 server, this is the foundational plumbing on which ADFS v2 will run. Good news, though, is that if you're like me and you're using WIF to build your own STS websites, then the RC will suit you just fine and you don't have to wait for the ADFS v2.

Anyway, if you'd like to get your hands on some WIF action, click here for the download link.

It doesn't appear as though there are a lot of changes in the framework itself, though I think there are some possible breaking namespace changes but, I'm still downloading it so I don't know at this point. Also, you might want to pick up the Identity Training Kit. It has been revised and there's a new installer for the samples that works on Windows 7 that actually works and installs the SSL certs properly. Previous versions of the ID kit required lots of manual futzing around to get things to work properly with UAC and permissions and the whole "Internet Zone" download issue.

Enjoy!

Microsoft to Open Source the .NET Micro Framework

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:30:00 EST

(I'm currently in Tokyo, so I'll leave my insights into this news for another time)

Today, at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles, Microsoft announced the release of version 4.0 of the.NET Micro Framework, but also that they are open sourcing the product and making it available under the Apache 2.0 license, which is already being used by the community within the embedded space.

The .NET Micro Framework,a development and execution environment for resource-constrained devices, was initially developed inside the Microsoft Startup Business Accelerator, but recently moved to the Developer Division so as to be more closely aligned with the overall direction of Microsoft development efforts.

See complete blog post here >

SQL Server Management Studio Support for SQL Azure

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:00:00 EST

The long awaited build of SQL Server Management Studio with support for SQL Azure is available today for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be generally available for the rest of the world as of tomorrow. The download page can be found here. This support is included as part of the November CTP release of SQL Server 2008 R2. This release not only includes SQL Azure support from within SSMS but a wealth of other SQL Server 2008 specific features. Check out this blog entry for more.

Microsoft Exchange 2010: HELO New Architecture

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:30:00 EST

Microsoft has made some fairly substantial changes to the core architecture of Exchange 2010. Given that messaging can only be described as business critical today, it’s no surprise that many new aspects of Exchange 2010 and in particular its new architecture are designed to improve availability and management of its messaging systems.

Exchange 2010 includes many changes to its core architecture. In Exchange 2010, new features such as incremental deployment, mailbox database copies, and database availability groups work with other features such as shadow redundancy and transport dumpster to provide a new, unified platform for high availability and site resilience.^[1]

The core change in architecture will be felt not just by server and Exchange administrators, but by network and application delivery network administrators as well. With Exchange 2010 users no longer connect directly to Mailbox servers even when using Outlook in native MAPI mode; instead, all user access to e-mail, regardless of protocol, is achieved via Client Access Servers (CAS).

This specifically changes:

1. Outlook data connections go to RPC Client Access Service on CAS instead of connecting to Mailbox servers

2. Address Book Service on CAS replaces DSProxy interface and handles all Outlook Directory connections

3. Public folder connections connect directly to the Mailbox server, but through RPC Client Access Service running on backend

This may change network routing, host and domain naming, as well as the configuration of intermediaries as persistence is a requirement for Outlook, Outlook Anywhere, OWA, EAS, EWS, ECP, and Remote PowerShell. MAPI traffic over a VPN now flows along with HTTP, POP3, and other Exchange protocol traffic which may require adjustments to firewall and other security-related infrastructure configurations.

Also potentially a new requirement for network and systems’ administrators will be the need to provide load balancing for internal CAS connections given the increased load on this tier and the requirement to use CAS. This may require additional routing or changes to existing network routing architectures and will absolutely increase the load on the CAS tier as the highest volume of utilization certainly comes from internal connections. Considerations include capacity planning based on the roles of servers required for internal connections as it is likely there will be a requirement to increase the number of servers available in this tier. Microsoft offers guidance on sizing of servers based on role that will be valuable in this process. The impact of multi-role server deployments is not available at this time, although this is traditionally one of the architectural choices that has led to the use of load balancers as an integral component to a successful high-availability, well performing Exchange deployment.

This architectural change means that all traffic is available to be load balanced by an application delivery controller rather than the old model where only some traffic could be routed through the load balancer. This means all traffic can take advantage of additional functionality provided by application delivery controllers such as message security, application acceleration, and high availability configurations for increased reliability.

Example of a load balanced Exchange 2010 environment compared to a load balanced Exchange 2007 environment

Given that all client connections are now via CAS servers it is important to note that Microsoft is in the process of updating its high-availability and scalability design guide for Exchange and expects to publish it in the coming months. This paper will include more specific information on the role of hardware load-balancers for Exchange. Additionally, vendors should be updating any existing deployment guides specifically for Exchange 2010. F5 has already done so, and it is available here for your perusal [PDF].

This architectural change should have a positive impact on the cloud-based deployment of Exchange as the standardization on access via CAS servers means scalability can be more easily achieved via additional instances of CAS with granularity perhaps taking it even further by basing scaling needs on the role which the CAS server is playing in the overall architecture.

^[1] Microsoft TechNet library for Exchange Server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298026(EXCHG.140).aspx

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,Microsoft Exchange,Exchange 2010,CAS,high availability,scalability,load balancing,architecture,deployment,Microsoft,new

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Manage Your Windows Azure Storage Using Cloud Storage Studio

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:45:00 EST

Cloud Storage Studio is a standalone WPF application to manage your Windows Azure storage. You will need to have .Net 3.5 installed on your computer to run this application. Here is the feature list of Cloud Storage Studio (at a high level. Storage account management, Table/Entity management.

LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework on top of SQL Azure

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EDT

As mentioned in my previous blog post, you don't get full designer support on SQL Azure within SQL Server Management Studio. In addition, you don't get designer support for LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework, either. So what do you do if you want to take advantage of these awesome object mapping tools but the designers don't work directly against the cloud?

Conveniently enough, if you follow the tips in the previous blog post, you would have already created a local copy of your SQL Azure database. The "trick" (not really a trick at all, just not immediately obvious) is to point your EF or LINQ to SQL Visual Studio projects at your local database. This will give these mappers the schema and relationship information they need in order to create the appropriate conceptual<->relational mappings.

For LINQ to SQL, all you need to do is replace the connection string that it adds to your app.Config file with the connection string supplied by the sql.azure.com portal. Remember to include your password in this connection string because the portal copies a version of this string to your clipboard with the password of myPassword. At this point you should also be thinking to yourself, "Wow, I just put a cleartext password in a .config file. It's a really good thing that this code isn't going to sit on someone's desktop and will be protected in the cloud."

With Entity Framework, the connection string is a little more complicated. There's some entity stuff in there that points to the various model definition files in the project and then there's an embedded connection string. Replace the embedded connection string (take care to maintain the escaping of nested quotes, etc) with the one the SQL Azure portal supplied and change the password to reflect the right password.

At this point you should have been able to generate a model from your local database and then change the connection string so that the actual data comes from the cloud database. It might seem a little inconvenient but it isn't really all that bad. It just adds a few extra steps to your SDLC when you need to change the schema of a live application.

The feeling I got when I ran my first LINQ to Entities query against a cloud-based SQL Server database was overwhelming. Sure I love new technology as much as the next guy, but the possibilities that are being opened for developers by Windows Azure and cloud computing in general are so numerous it's hard to contain myself.

This is a damn good time to be a developer.

Top Low Hanging Fruit to Performance Optimize Your Web Site

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:15:00 EDT

Web Page Performance was one of the big topics at the Ajax Experience in Boston this week. Steve Souders - author of High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites - talked about the top things to look into when analyzing web page performance.

Consuming Services with WCF

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:30:00 EDT

Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is an effective framework for implementing services as well as service consumers. Whenever you deal with WCF communication objects you need to pay attention to the disposal of the resources that these objects hold. However, these disposal mechanisms are not that straightforward and are very much related to how resources need to be cleaned up. The how and why of cleaning up service resources is the topic of this article. Although the samples herein are focused on consuming services using synchronous communication, they are equally relevant for asynchronous communications...

Amazon’s Answer to SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, the hosted cloud database offered by Microsoft. The newest service form Amazon, the Amazon Relational Database Service, or Amazon RDS for short, now in beta, makes it easier for you to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. You get direct database access without [...] Related posts:

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Binary Serialization and Azure Web Applications

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:15:00 EDT

You might be thinking, pfft, I'm never going to need to use Binary Serialization...that's old school. And you might be right, but think about this: Azure Storage charges you by how much you're storing and some aspects of Azure also charge you based on the bandwidth consumed. Do you want to store/transmit a big-ass bloated pile of XML or do you want to store/transmit a condensed binary serialization of your object graph?

SharePoint 2010: 12 Hive + 2 = 14 Hive

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:15:00 EDT

If you’re a SharePoint person, you of course have the following path burned into your memory forever.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extension\12

Well pretty soon, you can replace that with:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14

Apparently, Microsoft thought the number thirteen was unlucky. Now, I know they are trying to rebrand this as the SharePoint root (or something like that), but we all know that is never going to sick, so I’ll just call it the 14 hive. Anyhow, this is the new place you’ll be doing a lot of your work. Although with the new Visual Studio 2010 tools, you’ll find that you won’t need to come to this folder nearly as much. In this post, I thought I would take a brief moment to point out what I noticed in the 14 hive and make any comments as necessary. None of the underlying folders really have changed but a few things have been added.

In the root of the 14 Hive, I noticed three new folders

UserCode – files used to support sandboxed solutions
WebClients – used for the client OM I believe
WebServices – many new .svc files

If you are interested in what assemblies are present in the ISAPI folder, here is a quick list. It sounds like some classes have moved to different DLLs, but I haven't encountered any yet.

Microsoft.Office.DocumentManagment.dll
Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.Udf.dll
Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.WebServices.dll
Microsoft.Office.Policy.dll
Microsoft.Office.Server.dll
Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.dll
Microsoft.Office.UserProfiles.dll
Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Actions.dll
Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Tasks.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Runtime.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SingleSignon.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Security.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Extended.Administration.Common.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Extended.Administration.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Extended.Administration.ResourceStorage.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Extended.Administration.Matching.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Extended.Administration.Query.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.Intl.dll
Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.Actions.dll

I believe all of these are registered as version 14.0.0.0. There is a lot of new things in the hive including features, site templates, etc, but not that many structural changes from what I can tell.

Using ASP.NET MVC Action Filters to Declare Reference Data for Views

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:17:00 EDT

When we all build websites, usually we're concerned with figuring out how we're going to get the major entities into the view. We want to know how we're going to handle the shopping cart or how we're going to get the customer record onto the page, etc. But, one of the little details that almost always comes back to bite us in the ass is the use of reference data. Reference data is data that rarely changes, is frequently queried, and shows up in multiple places throughout the application. This might be anything from the list of companies currently trading on a particular stock market if you're building a financial web application or things like the list of countries, states, cities, counties, tax rules, and shipping tables if you're doing fulfillment of orders online.

Belgium ReMix and Architect Forum: 10 Years of Framework Design Guidelines

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

I had a great time at ReMix and the Architect Forum in Belgium. I had a chance to cover build an application end-to-end with Silverlight 3 and RIA Services which was basically this application. At the Architect Forum I had a chance to talk in more depth about the general application pattern we are thinking about for RIA applications. I shamelessly stole some slides from Nikhil Kothari for this one. Check out the slides.

Attending TechEd Europe?

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:45:00 EDT

Are cloud services about efficiency or negligence? About being able to outsource commodity services and concentrate on core competence or loosing control and risking getting out of compliance? Which IT services can be safely moved to the cloud and which should stay in house? Let’s get together and discuss the present and the future of Software + Services use in our companies, share success stories, lessons learned, discuss concerns and best practices.

ViewState is the Froo-It of the Dev-Il

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:45:00 EDT

The other day I was running Microsoft's malicious software removal tool and, to my shock and horror, it did not remove all of my ASP.NET applications that make use of ViewState. I'm sure it's just an oversight and Microsoft will be releasing a patch for that soon... if there is one application that could be called malicious, it's an app that uses ViewState.

Social Media on Ulitzer - Strategy Nets New AUM for RIA

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:30:00 EDT

RIAbiz.com recently discussed the findings of an August 24-25, 2009 Investment News survey conducted on the Twitter habits of the financial-advisory community. Not surprisingly the survey reveals that "a mere 14.9% of financial advisers say they communicate with clients or colleagues through Twitter. Meanwhile, only 44.9% and 43.8% of advisers say they use LinkedIn and Facebook, respectively, the survey found".

@BrandonWatson Is Listening

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:12:00 EDT

One of the things that I have been loving about being back at Microsoft is working in the Developer Platform team. I have always been a geek, and have this latent developer hiding inside of me. I love designing interesting applications and services, and love to roll some code when I can, though my close [...]

What Do You Want To See in Silverlight 4?

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:45:00 EDT

It used to be so easy to slam Microsoft. There are the 800lb gorilla with all the money that have done some shady business deals - but that is very much in the past. Today Microsoft keeps doing things that make it hard not to like them. They are going Open Source and being transparent and even making mistakes (Vista, anyone?) and the 800lb almost appears humble. Or maybe I need to stop drinking the cool aid.

The Dissolution of the Rich Internet Application (RIA) Market

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:15:00 EDT

As the line between browser-based and desktop-based applications blurs, and as approaches for abstracting functionality and information from user interfaces develop, other markets will eventually merge with the currently separately identifiable RIA market. Furthermore, as the Internet continues to penetrate every aspect of our lives, both business and personal, the distinction between "Internet application" and "application" will disappear, rich or not.

Modifying The Default Unit Tests for an ASP.NET MVC Project To Use Moq

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:45:00 EDT

When you create a new ASP.NET MVC project, one of the first things that you might notice is that you get an AccountController which takes advantage of the ASP.NET membership provider to allow your site to automatically do forms-based authentication right from the very beginning. This is a very handy feature and definitely helps get you going quickly. The issue is that when you look at the unit tests for the AccountController, they are positively littered with manually mocked classes. I realize that this is because you don't want to make the default project template rely on a third party mocking library so in this blog post, I'm going to show how you can delete all of the manually implemented mocks for the identity, principal, membership service and forms auth service. The secret is using Moq. Moq is a lightweight mocking framework for .NET that was designed specifically for the .NET Framework 3.5 and LINQ. As such, definining mock expectations and mock return values is all done through lambdas in a ridiculously easy to read syntax, as you'll see below.

Is the Silverlight Adoption Rate Artificially Inflated?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:45:00 EDT

Silverlight 2.0 is a freaking phenomenal RIA development environment and I would actually, at this point, put the development experience in Silverlight 2.0 above and beyond Flex. I can do more faster and have it look better and run more efficiently in Silverlight 2.0 than I can in Flex. BUT, when you're looking for case studies, look for ones where the person or organization who adopted Silverlight did so of their own volition, without being approached by Microsoft. I'm interested in hardcore, unbiased opinions from people who have been in the trenches doing their own coding, not watching Microsoft consultants do the coding for them. There are plenty of case studies like that out there, you just have to look past the shiny bouncing balls that are the Olympics and the Oscars and all the other crap that probably cost Microsoft a hojillion dollars in marketing funds and incentives.

New Device Development Features in Visual Studio 2008

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:30:00 EST

Roughly two years ago, when I was writing an article on 'New Features for Device Developers in Visual Studio 2005' that was published in the August 2005 issues of this magazine, our program management team was already busy shaping the next release of the product, which is soon to be released as Visual Studio 2008. We spent a lot of time talking to our major customers and reviewing the feedback we got on blogs and questions on forums on newsgroups to identify what enhancements/features would be most useful to our device developers. One thing that surfaced was that device developers needed more help when it came to testing their applications efficiently. Whether that meant testing on multiple devices or under varying conditions or simply being able to write unit tests, they clearly needed help getting applications to market faster by reducing the testing time.