Do you want to learn more about Visual Studio.Net?  Do you not have enough time to slog through a book?  How about some nice relaxing videos where you can learn all about Visual Studio.Net?  Check out www.learnvisualstudio.net and their rather nice library of training videos.  If you’re a member of the Atlanta .Net User Groups, you can get a 10% discount on membership.  Send me an e-mail to let me know that you’re interested and I’ll get you the contact info you need.

— Matt Ranlett

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I am having a problem with Outlook.  Actually, the problem is with disorganization in my life and I want to try to use Outlook to help me sort things out.  I've got lots of stuff going on at the moment - at work, at the user groups, and in my personal life.  So I thought having all this stuff in the calendar and tasklist in Outlook would certainly help out a bit.  Then I could use some of the tips Kirk mentioned in his blog and try to keep myself on track better.

Here's the problem:

I have 2 computers - 1 work desktop and 1 laptop.  I'd like to keep the calendar in the laptop up to date with everything, but I have a tendancy to spend so much time in front of my desktop at work that I find most of my life is managed through the calendar there.  The desktop Outlook is hooked to an Exchange server, the laptop is not.  I want a way to synchronize my calendar, tasks, and notes from my desktop to my laptop.  I don't need this to be two way synchronization.  I don't want my e-mail from work "infecting" my laptop.  I don't want to have to manage multiple profiles to get this to work, and I don't want to have multiple calendars in the same view.  I want everything on one calendar.  How do I do this?

I thought that this list of helpful advice from SlipStick might help out, but I was so confused by the array of conflicting advice that I gave up.

Does anyone out there have a solution to this issue?  Thanks!

-- Matt Ranlett

It looks like the new name of Windows will be Vista!  No more of the formerly know client as Windows codename “Longhorn”

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx

—Brendon Schwartz

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Last night was the first time I’ve ever attended one of the Atlanta SPIN meetings.  This group seems to be targeted at project managers and seems to cover topics like Scrum and CMMI.  These are great topics, but outside of my personal area of interest so I probably won’t be going back unless they get another headline speaker like Mr Randy “Granville” Miller.  I will say this about the group – they had the most formal meeting and leadership structure I’ve ever seen in a community user group!  We had about 35 people in attendance, which one of the SPIN leaders said was extremely good turnout for their groups.

Randy Miller has an impressive pedigree in the Agile development community – he’s worked for years at Borland and Microsoft to bring eXtreme Programming and Agile techniques to the masses.  He’s written several books, including an upcoming book soon to be released.  Randy came to the SPIN meeting to talk about his work with Microsoft and the Microsoft Solutions Framework (he actually got “yelled” at for starting his talk too early!).

For those unfamiliar with MSF, you can learn a lot on the Team Systems MSF homepage.  Essentially, MSF is a set of software tools which help you stick to a software development process.  For example, you have a business analyst talk to a customer and write up a list of requirements.  The list of requirements is broken down into small tasks by project managers.  The developers estimate how long each task will take and hand the task list back to the PMs.  The PMs schedule the development cycles and turn the tasks back over to the development team.  The devs work like mad getting quality stuff (including automated test (we hope) out to the test team and finally everything is built for the customer.  In this development process, there are some tools helping you get through the process.  The business analyst might use Excel spreadsheets.  PMs might use MS Project.  Devs and Tests might use Visual Studio.  Visual Studio Team Systems can actually link all of these tools together with the built in issue tracking and reporting system so the experience of managing the software development process is seamless.  MSF for Agile is one type of software development process.  There are countless other methods which can be used with VSTS – Scrum, CMMI, Iterative, Rational, Waterfall, etc.  That’s actually the coolest part of MSF – it can be completely customized to your particular method of development.  MSF for Agile, out of the box, is simply a set of recommendations and process guidance for Agile development.

Randy spent 99% of his time showing us the tools, only resorting to PowerPoint to display a graphic and web links.  We watched as he started a brand new project and talked us through adding requirements, planning out iterative cycles, breaking larger tasks into smaller tasks, reporting on the status of those tasks, etc.  The “business analyst” persona created a spreadsheet of requirements, which was checked into a SharePoint work area.  The spreadsheet was imported to Project, which automatically populated the VSTS work items.  We did some fake scheduling and prioritizing and we were ready to develop.  We looked at several reports showing our status and what things would look like as they went wrong.

Randy was a great presenter and I’m sorry that he only had an hour to talk to us.  I felt that he had more to say if only he had the time.  Oh well.  If you were unable to make it to the presentation, I hope that my blog entry piques your interest and you start to learn more about the extraordinarily flexible toolset that Visual Studio Team Systems offers.

-- Matt Ranlett

Microsoft has just released version 5 of their Automotive operating system.  Check out this summary news story on Tom's Hardware.  For more details, go to Microsoft.com's press release area and read all about how Windows Automotive will allow connected systems in your car.

-- Matt Ranlett

I’m really excited to share this – I’ve been keeping it semi-secret ever since I found out about it.  While I was at Tech Ed, I won a contest sponsored by Microsoft and the Excell Data Corporation.  The grand prize was a portable media center from Creative!  The same model Michael has.  It finally came in the mail last Friday and I’ve been playing with it ever since.

It’s really a cool device, about a third larger than my cellphone (although it does have a protective case that makes it seem much larger than it really is).  The thing (and case) actually does fit in my pocket, but not entirely comfortably.  Anyway – about the device itself:  think of it as an iPod capable of displaying movies!  It is way more than that, but that seems to get the message across the best.  It runs Microsoft’s Portable Media Center shell on top of Windows CE – which means it turns on and off instantly.  It plays music – both WMA and MP3 (WMA results in a slightly smaller file).  It shows photos (JPG is the only format I’ve tested).  It plays videos (WMV videos, but the process of putting AVI and MPG videos onto the machine encodes them into usable WMV format).  It even allows you to play music while watching a slideshow of your favorite photos!  The 20 Gb drive holds so much stuff that with 465 songs, 173 pictures, and 66 videos (including a full length movie) I’ve only used up 3 Gb.  I took a 2 hour movie (The Missing with Tommy Lee Jones) off a DVD and encoded it down to 318 Mb and put it on the thing.

Check out this great review from a Media Center MVP

I don’t know if I’ll attempt developing for the device, I’ve got lots of stuff on my plate at the moment and I never have free time.  I’m sure I’ll be randomly posting about what I do with my PMC (like, if I ever write a useful program for it).

-- Matt Ranlett

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November 7th!!!

Lanuch party announcements to come...

-- Matt Ranlett

Bill Baker, the general manager for SQL Server Business Intelligence with Microsoft is coming to present to the SQL Server User Group.  To accomodate Bill's busy schedule, the SQL Server group will be meeting in the Microsoft Offices in Alpharetta on Thursday, July 21st.  The doors open at 6:30 and Microsoft will be providing some refreshments.

Come one, come all, learn the magic that is BI.  Be sure to register at the SQL Server group website

-- Matt Ranlett

The kind folks in the UK sent me a link to a series of short (15 minutes or less) webcasts called MSDN Nuggets.  Waiting for something large to compile or for some kind of batch process?  Spend the time constructively and watch a short video that teaches you the power of docking Winforms components or something.  Bonus, all the presenters seem to have that fun UK accent…

— Matt Ranlett

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I freely admit that I’m a Microsoft fanboy when it comes to the Xbox vs PS2 discussion.  Sure, the PS2 has like 10 times the number of games, but 90% of them suck!!  The original Xbox had so much going for it (hard drive, online play, etc) when it came out that I couldn’t even consider the PS2.  Sony seems to be coming back with some improved features for the PS3, but Microsoft is widening the gap, crushing the PS3 with provable hardware superiority:

(from Bit-Tech.net)

• 3 CPU cores, each with a form of HyperThreading for 6 simultaneous instructions
• The graphics engine of the Xbox 360 is nearly 2 years in the future for PC cards
• Heatpipe based liquid cooling = quiet in the living room
• Wireless controller that charge batteries via USB (plug in when not in use)
• Built in Media Center Extender (dammit – now I have to buy a Media Center PC)

( from the “Xbox Live Director of Programming”, a 4 part series )

• Xbox 360 has more general purpose processing power and more memory bandwidth than PS3
• The PS3 excels at floating-point operations, which are less important in the time of GPUs
• Xbox 360 has a faster GPU w/double the texture samplers of the PS3
• Xbox 360 has over 5 times the RAM bandwidth for SPEED!

More hardware based reviews here
CNet previews the Xbox 360 here
PlayStation.com shows off the PS3 tech specs
CNet previews the PS3 here

All of this has me so excited that I’ll probably be in line somewhere at midnight to get mine (provided I don’t pre-order or win a free one).

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

[Edit] – Microsoft has announced that the Xbox 360 WILL be backwards compatible with existing Xbox games.  The announcement was made at E3, ending months of speculation.  The post I’m linking to is actually from a Microsoft Xbox developer working on backwards compatibility.  This is fantastic because I currently own 24 Xbox games (I buy them off of Ebay at an average $9.00 per game, including shipping).  That would be a big waste if I couldn’t play my existing games on the new console.

Brendon pointed me to this link where Tim Heuer writes up an excellent post about what every SharePoint developer ought to know.  Check it out!

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

I just finished watching Mike Benkovitch’s excellent introduction to replication in SQL Server 2005 webcast and heard that MS is deprecating Attach and Go replication in Yukon.  Uh oh!  We use that at our company to prevent the distribution database from being overwhelmed by the sheer size and volume of our snapshots.  We’re going to have to come up with a new plan if this one isn’t going to work anymore.

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

Devin Rader, recently a presenter at the Atlanta Code Camp, has recently published an article on MSDN all about the new features of Visual Studio 2005’s IDE.

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

Richard Conn introduced the Academic Relations Program – where Microsoft attempts to establish a relationship with various universities around the country.  Pretty much what this means is discounted Visual Studio and Office licenses for universities and university students.  Microsoft has even started to reach into the high schools, with 20 high schools in Atlanta alone participating.  If you have a high school student or college student interested in the computer sciences, Microsoft offers some excellent internships and scholarships.  Another interesting facet of the ARM program is its tie to Microsoft Research and a curriculum available to all for teaching Microsoft technologies.

David Chappell introduced himself by making sure that everyone knew he isn’t Dave Chappelle.  Nor is he Dave Chappell from Sonic Software (who ironically also writes books and give technical presentations on enterprise messaging).  After some fun at his own expense, David jumped into his presentation by postulating that there is always some kind of application architecture for enterprise systems.  This started with mainframes, moved on to client/server systems, and then on to multi-tiered architectures.  We may now be on the verge of shifting into the fourth evolution of enterprise systems, service-oriented architecture.  The reason this shift is possible now and not before is due to the global vendor agreement on how to consume web services.  Service-oriented business logic needs to rest on a foundation that is standard and ubiquitous.  On Windows, this platform will be Indigo.

In the simplest sense, Indigo is a bunch of C# classes that extend the .Net framework with a new namespace.  Indigo communicates through SOAP messages, functioning as an über SOAP stack.  This unifies existing MS technologies (ASMX, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, WSE, MSMQ) for distributed applications.  It also provides interoperability between .Net apps and others (EJB and WebSphere).  Finally, Indigo offers the idea of explicitly building service oriented applications.

An important note is that Indigo is not backwards compatible with existing .Net distributed technologies.  .  Indigo actually implements much of the functionality of the existing technologies, including SOAP over networking channels and many of the WS-* standards.  Once Indigo is release, Microsoft will no longer be enhancing the existing technologies.  Indigo will not replace the existing technologies, and will not prevent those technologies from working.

Service-Oriented Applications are generally abstracted into Data (relations), Logic (objects), and Presentation (GUIs).  Indigo fits into this picture between the logic and presentation and can be thought of as Access to Services.  In the past, the link between Data and Logic has been the mapping of tables to object hierarchies and of SQL types to Java/CLR types.  When the object-oriented Religion hit the world, OODBMS systems hit the market, only to fail.  It turns out that mapping between the relations and objects is easier.  Similarly, when the object religion hit the relationship between Logic and Presentation, Microsoft introduce a way to expose object interfaces –> COM and DCOM.  That turned out to be very painful.  Indigo goes back to the concept of mapping between services.

Having covered the basics of Indigo’s intentions, we now looked at code. 

To create an Indigo service, you must implement a service class – the methods the services provides.   You must select a host – the app domain and process the service runs in.  Finally you must specify one or more endpoints in which to access the services.  You have 2 methods for implementing a service class – mark a class with the ServiceContract attribute. Or mark an interface with the ServiceContract attribute then create a class that implements the interface.  A caution – Indigo attributes (OperationContract) and C# modifiers (public, private) are completely separate – you can tag a private method with an OperationContract, thus exposing it to applications OUTSIDE the AppDomain.  However, that same method is private within the application.  David tried to convince us that this is actually a good idea by explaining that you can create a facade of classes which invoke internal methods and expose their methods as services.  However, the facade of classes are not supposed to be called from within the application.  The group seemed leery of this – much grumbling about a new “method type” was heard.  My personal impression is that this seems to be an attempt to encourage good design (i.e. – the Facade pattern) on future projects. 

Additional options in Indigo development: One way calls adds a modifier to the OperationContract (IsOneWay=true) for events.  Duplex contracts for both the client and service invoking operations in the other.  Message contracts allow working directly with the SOAP messages.  all data sent and received by operations must be serialized and de-serialized.  The way that they are serialized is based on the data contract.  To create and pass your own types or enums, you must define a data contract (more attributes).

A quick aside: SVCUTIL can be used to generate a skeleton service class from WSDL contracts if you want to design your interface contracts before writing code, or contract first development.  By contrast, writing the code first and adding the ServiceContract and OperationContract attributes as needed is called code first development.

When defining a host, you can host a service in an arbitrary process (exe, NT service and winform/avalon processes) or host a service in IIS or the Windows Activation Service (WAS) – a lite webhost for machines not running IIS.  An app or service would use the ServiceHost generic type.  IIS/WAS require virtual directories and a .svc file.  Just like ASMX, an instance of the service class will be created when a client request arrives.

Finally, you must specify an endpoint – every client connects to a specific endpoint.  Every endpoint has 3 things: an address (where to find it), a binding (how to communicate), and a contract (what can it do).  Addresses are usually URIs.  Bindings wrap together may aspects of communication such as protocols for conveying SOAP messages (HTTP, TCP, etc) security options, support for wS-* specs, and more.  Several predefined bindings will ship with Indigo but custom bindings can be created.  An example of a predefined binding is BasicProfileBinding which conforms to WS-I Basic Profile 1.0.  WS ProfileBinding supports WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Security, WS-AtomicTransaction, and other WS-* specs.   NetProfileTCPBinding sends binary encoded SOAP with support for reliable messaging, security, and transactions directly over TCP (Indigo to Indigo only).  One service can expose separate endpoints, each with a different binding for different clients.  Contracts are the name of the class that the endpoint exposes (service class or interface).  Endpoints are likely to be defined in config files, but they can also be added directly within the code assembly.

To create an Indigo client, create a channel to a service (typically hidden by a proxy which has been created by SVCUTIL or Visual Studio).  Clients also specify a specific endpoint that they will communicate with.  That’s about it – nothing very complex.

Services built on Indigo can be reliable, secure, transactional, and queued.  Indigo also offers reliable messaging; raw SOAP doesn’t guarantee reliable message transfer but some of the Indigo bindings such as WsHttpBinding, support WS-ReliableMessaging.  However, WS-ReliableMessaging doesn’t directly support message queuing – this is still an area where the vendors can’t agree on a standard.  Since that the world in general and Microsoft in particular has caught the Security Religion, Indigo allows for security configuration via authentication, message integrity, and message confidentiality.  Indigo also uses the .Net security model and the PrinciplePermission concepts.  Indigo transactions are built on the new 2.0 System.Transactions namespace.  Now transactions are separate from state management (different from Enterprise Services, COM+, and MTS).  Indigo apps can use System.Transactions explicitly or can use OperationBehavior attributes (which use System.Transactions under the covers).  Indigo supports queuing by running on MSMQ as the transport.  This means queuing only works on the Windows platform.  There are predefined binding choices which wrap queuing.

When considering upgrading to Indigo services, keep in mind that all existing apps will continue to work.  However, if you do decide to upgrade, keep in mind the following questions.  Will my Indigo app and apps built with existing technologies be interoperable and will my apps be portable?  The Indigo team says yes to both questions for ASMX.  Remoting will not be interoperable.  Enterprise Services interfaces can be wrapped with an Indigo-supplied tool.  ES clients will communicate use an Indigo moniker.  WSE 1.0 and 2.0 are not interoperable or portable.  WSE 3.0 will be interoperable AND portable, but it hasn’t been released yet.  MSMQ is interoperable using MsmqIntegrationBinding, but portability is not a simple task. 

Indigo vs Biztalk.  Indigo is a platform for building services on .Net.  Biztalk is an integration tool which maps between various heterogeneous environments.  Biztalk already has adapters for technologies like MSMQ and SQL.  Expect an Indigo adapter in Biztalk soon.

There is a March CAP currently available for Indigo and we expect the Beta 1 of Indigo in a matter of weeks.

Questions from the audience included:

Indigo talks to a service, what do I get back, a Dataset?  Actually you get XML (SOAP), but the data in the message is some kind of serialized object.  So it could be Dataset or objects.

What about the rich type support of Remoting?  Indigo can serialize any .Net type when talking to other Indigo services.  However, when interacting with other environments, use contract first development to ensure data type interoperability

How will Indigo handle big objects like Datasets?  Indigo serializes an object sent to it and drops it on the wire.

MSMQ has a max message size, how does Indigo use MSMQ to transmit larger objects?  MSMQ is a transport mechanism like TCP – large files are broken up and sent across the wire in discrete chunks.

Does Indigo require full trust to run on a machine like .Net Remoting does?  David Chappell wasn’t, but Doug Turnure doesn’t think so.  Research is required.

Can you serialize custom types?  Yes with a data contract.  Alternatively you can drop in your own seralizer.

I ran across this link a while ago in my RSS aggregator and thought I’d post it here as it’s extremely pertinent: Don Box’s Five Minute Indigo Challenge.

— Matt Ranlett

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"ASP.NET 2.0 makes it even better by making you more productive, reducing the amount of code you have to write, making your Web sites easier to manage, and improving your Web site's scalability, reliability, and performance." - Dino Esposito

With over 50 new controls for security, navigation, data, and web parts, all of which increase developer productivity and introduce fewer bugs in the design process, ASP.NET 2.0 will make development faster and make the long term cost of ownership less.   ASP.NET 2.0 adds some significant enhancements, including an improved and simplified data access process using data sources which includes database caching for better performance of the web sites.  Additionally, there is now an option to pre-compile the web site so that users do not experience slow page loads when the system has to compile them.  The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 makes deploying, configuring, monitoring, and maintaining Web applications easier.  Furthermore, Microsoft has created new tools that can help you set up web sites with the correct configuration changes.

Here are some of the quick reasons that ASP.NET 2.0 has improved over 1.x.  There are many more reasons depending on the type of sites, but these are the major reasons that I see for asking your employer to move from ASP.NET 1.x to 2.0.

1. Compile on the fly; this allows the developer to create an ASPX page and the code page and put them on the server.  ASP.NET 2.0 does not make you compile the page ahead of time, so you can make a bug fix and push the file out without having to recompile the entire site.
2. Datasource controls will allow for better performance and less bugs due to the data access layer.
3. The new improved View State in ASP.NET 2.0 will increase the performance of the time it takes to deliver a page to the end user.
4. 100% backwards compatibility, so any page written in 1.x will work in 2.0
5. Cross page post backs so you can send information to another page.
6. Create caching based on the new SQLdependency which will allow you to monitor the database for changes
7. Post-Cache Substitution so that you can cache parts of pages but not the content that changes, which will increase the performance of the web servers
8. With Master Pages you can now create one template for an entire site and only have to change information in one place to make a change to every page that uses the Master Page.
9. Visual Studio has been enhanced to let you connect to a web site with many protocols now instead of just FrontPage Extensions.  Also you can open a single page in VS2005 and have the ability to edit it without opening the entire project
10. ASP.NET 2.0 allows for partial classes which will allow you to have business logic in multiple files.
11. We can now get information to the page without the user seeing a full postback with a feature called Script Callbacks.  This allows the javascript to make a call to the server for more information without refreshing the page.
12. You can now SetFocus on an object when the page starts up.
13. New controls such as the WizardControl, DynamicImage Control, FileUpload Control, and the GridView control add a great deal of built in functionality that will help prevent bugs.
14. Intellisense everywhere has been added to help developers more quickly create and debug applications.
15. The new Heath and Monitoring API will allow us to be notified if there are problems on a web page or on a web server.
16. The Panel Control is now scroll able, so you can have the web page scroll and not the browser window

— Brendon Schwartz and Matt Ranlett

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Microsoft releases a new version of Windows Mobile (version 5) with more reliability, more hardware, and more features.  Designed to compete with the Symbian OS (Nokia’s favorite OS) and Palm OS (like the Treo 650).  Microsoft Mobile now supports some great features like wireless LAN support in Smartphones and Media Player 10 Mobile.  We should be seeing some great new devices on the market soon!

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

Enter this contest hosted by Microsoft and compete for the chance to win $50,000.  The Microsoft Connected Systems 2005 Developer Competition is a global, skill based competition intended to highlight and reward creativity and programming excellence using SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2004/2006.  There are 15 categories for the competition, including a SmartPhone app category, a Visual Studio PowerToy category, and more.  Entries are accepted up to August 30th.  The contest ends September 15th.

Thanks to Martin Crimes for bringing this to my attention.

-- Matt Ranlett

I flipped through the Microsoft Events site and thought I’d report my findings

Management and Operations of .NET Applications Workshop – $165 – Monday, May 09, 2005 9:00 AM - Tuesday, May 10, 2005 5:00 PM

SQL Server 2005: New Features for Developers – $175 –  Monday, May 16, 2005 9:00 AM - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 5:00 PM

I think that lots of people are of the “try it first, read the manual last” mindset.  I’m one of them, and it recently jumped up to bite me on the rear.  I had previously installed the February CTP of VS2005 and played around a bit.  Then I downloaded Beta 2 and ran the installer.  It told me to uninstall Beta 1 before continuing.  I did so, re-ran the install and everything seemed to go just fine.

Then I tried to create an empty project and look at the form.  The empty form wouldn’t display and I got this error:

Browsing around on the web, I found that I was not alone, other people ran into the same problem.  Apparently there are a set of manual uninstall steps that must be followed in exact order before installing VS2005 Beta 2.  Of course, I failed to do this.  The Beta 2 install program told me to uninstall the VS tools, but said nothing about the earlier version of the framework or anything.  So I didn’t remove any of that other stuff.  I tried uninstalling anything even vaguely related to .Net and tried reinstalling Beta 2.  Same error message.  This went on for like 3 uninstall/reinstall cycles.

Finally I found Aaron Stebner’s blog posting where he talks about creating an automated cleanup tool that helps us get through the “prep the machine for Beta 2” steps.  Too late for me to bother with the tool, but he did have this post where he details the manual steps a user can go through to get the machine back in shape.  Going through the steps one at a time, I believe this step was the one that finally made things work:

I had two different versions of the 2.0 framework, and I think that something, somewhere was conflicting.  I know that shouldn’t happen thanks to .Net’s stand-beside ability.  I have no proof that this was the magic bullet to the problem (other than everything works now).  I just thought I’d throw this info online because it deserves to be easy to find online.

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

I spent a large part of the last two days installing the newest Visual Studio 2005 Beta.  This was quite a long process! 

• First of all, I’m using Virtual Machines (VMWare’s equivalent to Microsoft’s Virtual PC) so I had to get an XP VM image working. 
• Then I had to spend several hours getting my XP image upgraded with Service Pack 2 (required for VS2005) and all the latest security fixes. 
• Then I had to install and format a new hard drive in the VM because VS2005 requires 2.6 GB free and my XP VM had far less than that available on its C: drive (SQL Server 2000 is also installed).  Oddly enough, VS2005 required free space on my C: drive even through I was installing onto the E: drive.  In fact, VS2005 Beta 2 required 870 MB free on C: and 1.7 Gb on E: – and this is without MSDN!
• Once I had enough free space on the C: drive, I ran the install program and let it go for hours unattended.  When I came back, one component I had selected failed to install – SQL Server 2005 CTP.  I’d run out of disk space with 122 Mb still free!  Since I’ve got SQL Server 2000 installed, I’m not worried about that just yet.

Now I’m ready to do some ASP.Net 2.0 work!  I’m fairly excited.  I’ve got my Dino Esposito ASP.Net 2.0 book ready and I’m looking forward to creating my first website that uses a membership database.  I’m going to base my work off of Michael’s recent presentation.

I also wanted to give credit where credit is due – I’m using a piece of software called Alcohol 52% to mount ISO disk images as usable DVD-ROMs.  My laptop doesn’t have a DVD burner and I can’t really be bothered to copy the 2.85 Gb disk image file I downloaded from MSDN to the machine that does.  I don’t really need a physical copy of beta software.  What Alcohol 52% (free 30 day trial) allows me to do is use the ISO disk image file as if it were a real CD or DVD.  I can even share it and use it inside of my Virtual Machine.  That’s a nice bit of functionality and it really cuts down on the amount of disks I need to carry with me from place to place.

— Matt Ranlett

Check out the Guide to buying Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. We need to recommend that Microsoft put a calculator on the webpage just like buying a house.

Now it gets better.  Here is the way I see it.  If you already have an MSDN subscription then you are ok, but if don’t now is your chance to spend $2,000 dollars to become ok.  You must act quickly though to give Microsoft your $2,000 dollars now this way your subscription will run out sooner, but you will be able to have VS2005 at a discounted cost of $2,000 dollars a year.

So now if you are an MSDN Universal subscriber you must pick what type of developer you are: Developer, Architect, or Tester.  With this model, MSDN subscriptions now fall in line with the Visual Studio product.  So my question is why are we still calling it an MSDN subscription, isn’t it just a Visual Studio subscription? 

Do you own a Standard edition of VS2003?  There do not appear to be any upgrade options for you today from what I can find.  You will most likely need to either get or purchase a copy of the express edition or move up to the professional edition of VS2005.

So how much does all of this really cost?  Well I don’t think they are going to say, but here is what I can tell from Microsoft’s web pages.  These are my guesses and might not be accurate when the final release comes out.

VS2005 purchased by itself:
Visual Studio 2005 Professional has an estimated retail price of $799.
Visual Studio 2005 Team Editions for Software Developers, Architects, or Testers has an estimated retail price of $5,469/year each
Team Foundation Client Access License has an estimated retail price of $499

MSDN purchased by itself (these are all 1 year subscriptions):
MSDN Universal – upgrade $2,299 full version Estimated Price $2,799
MSDN Enterprise – upgrade $1,599 full version Estimated Price $2,199
MSDN Professional – upgrade $899 full version Estimated Price $1,199

After the release of VS2005 MSDN pricing: Unknown at this point.

So if you want to know how much it costs for VS2005, I guess it depends on how many years you are going to use it for.

Don’t get me wrong I think the tools are great that Microsoft is coming out with.  I just think it is tough to figure out how much money you are going to pay anymore to create Windows applications.  I think that the unknown might start turning more people off from developing Windows based applications unless they do it as a job.  Tell me what you think and if the prices are too high or just right.

One last note not to forget you also have these costs.  Your guess is as good as mine on the cost.

"The Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server is sold separately on a Server/CAL basis. Each of the Visual Studio 2005 Team Editions for Software Developers, Architects, and Testers includes a CAL for the Team Foundation Server. To learn more about Team Foundation Server, click here."

--Brendon Schwartz

I’ve seen cheaper, but you know you have some excellent people backing you up if you need help…

http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/products/online/wh/detail.mspx

— Matt Ranlett

Starting March 21st there will be a 10 part series on how to manage SQL Server 2005.

You can start signing up now for the webcasts.

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetsqlserver2005.mspx

--Brendon Schwartz

If you are interested in BizTalk there is a FREE training session that you can attend.  Thanks to Kirk for putting up the link.

http://blogs.msdn.com/kaevans/archive/2005/02/16/374511.aspx

--Brendon Schwartz

Make sure you don't miss Glen's webcast on SQL Mobile and .NET Compact Framework 2.0.  This would be a great follow up to the mobility user group if you were there.

--Brendon Schwartz

It looks like they have added a new edition to make sure that you smart guys have something new to learn for your MCP tests and now you the prices are about the same, anywhere from FREE-over $25,000.  Here is the link to read more about it.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/feb05/02-24ExpandedProductSuitePR.asp

The SQL Server 2005 product line will consist of the following:

• SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition , a complete data and analysis platform for large mission-critical business applications
• SQL Server 2005 Standa