There's going to be a lot of fun stuff to do at TechEd.  I'm talking about stuff beyond the conference sessions themselves (and there are some of those which look so cool I'm already drooling)

Mobile Madness - they give you a new smartphone to run a scavanger hunt with - winners keep the phones

Parties

Parties

and more!  Much more!

-- 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

I am not sure where most people find tools to motivate themselves, but I tend to find music inspirational.  As far as music goes Hans Zimmer is the best composer to me.  You may ask who he is, if so check out the movies he has worked with.  Rain Man, Backdraft, Radio Flyer, A League of Their Own, The Lion King, Crimson Tide, The Rock, The Preacher's Wife, As Good As It Gets, The Prince of Egypt, Gladiator, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, The Contender, and much more!  I really feel that with motivation you can push yourself beyond the limits that you thought were possible.  I suggest checking out one of his albums (scores) and see for yourself.  Usually when I feel like I am tired or can’t do anymore I put on some Hans Zimmer and complete what needs to be done.

—Brendon Schwartz

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My vacation consisted of 1 movie (The Longest Yard – very entertaining), 3 meals out, 1 concert in a park (Edwin McCain), 6 hours in the office on Saturday, and 8 hours of billable support calls!  I’m still looking for my day off!

— Matt Ranlett

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I’m not sure why, but figuring out WMI with Microsoft's resources seems to take forever.  I have spent a couple days looking over WMI and trying to figure out how to use it the way I want.  I didn’t find any good .NET resources until the 3rd day when I had already started to figure out what I needed.  That being said, this is the best resource for .NET and WMI that I have found. www.enterprise-minds.com by Klaus Salchner.  He has wonderful examples and the best articles on how to use WMI with .NET.

The one major thing that is missing with WMI are the tools to make it understandable and simple.  I know it is mostly for sys admins that do scripting, but it shouldn’t be so difficult to find out how to use it.  If anyone has worked with WMI leave us some links or resources of better places to find things.

Here are the resources that I finally found that were useful.

• Klaus Salchner – www.enterprise-minds.com
• Using WMI
• Windows Mangement Instrumentation (WMI)
• Managing Applications Using WMI
• Querying with WQL

—Brendon Schwartz

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I am Kung Fu Master. I like to be in control of myself. I dislike crowds, especially crowds containing people trying to kill me. Even though I always win, I prefer to avoid fights if possible. What Video Game Character Are You?

-- 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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So I’m getting ready for an international business trip (more details in a later blog) when I notice that my brand-spanking new passport has my name spelled wrong!  I’m apparently Matthew Steven Rancett.  Rancett?  I even gave them my old passport with my name spelled correctly!  It’s RanLett!  The lower case L and C don’t look anything alike and they’re located on opposite sides of the keyboard!  Come on, people….  Now I’ve got to call the Passport office and see if this is going to be a problem.  And I need it in 2 weeks!

— Matt Ranlett

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I’m not talking about the original Showtime series.  I don’t know who’s been reading this blog, and for how long, so I’ll catch you up.  After six years of marriage, Deanna moved out of the house in October of 2004.  Our divorce was finalized the following January.  In the time between now and then, I’ve met Kim.  We’ve been dating for several months now.  I’ve spent a lot of time sorting out my feelings these past several weeks, and now I feel like my head is on straight.  So last week I used the L word and told her that I love her.  I think I could possibly have been more romantic, but I’m a computer programmer, not a soap opera star.  Anyway, she says she loves me too…

Anyway, I figure a week went by, so I’d share with the rest of the world…

You may now all go back to your regularly scheduled programming.  Pun intended.

— Matt Ranlett

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Check out the unofficial list of unsolved codes and ciphers, including the Beale Ciphers which might have been the inspiration for that utterly uninspiring movie National Treasure.  Included in the list are some ancient scripts which have defied translation for nearly 4000 years!  Don’t forget about the coded messages left behind by the Zodiac Killer – not all of these have been broken and the killer has never been caught.

— 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

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[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.

I’m going to have to give my rusty time-management skills a workout.  I’d previously cut DNR recordings from my schedule of “Things I Can Do In A Day” because I’ve been putting in more time on job and community related activities.  I’m sure I’ve missed some great episodes (all available for download after the fact).  I was reading through the blog on www.msquaredweb.com (just who is Mark, anyway?) when I found a reference to the coolest demonstration of XHTML and CSS I’ve ever seen. 

You absolutely must check this out: www.csszengarden.com

Thanks for the link Mark!

— Matt Ranlett

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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

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I've apparently got too many e-mail addresses to manage.  I found out through an e-mail from the local radio station that I won free tickets to an AudioSlave concert.  The concert was Monday at about 9pm.  I checked my mail on Monday at 11pm!  D'oh!

-- Matt Ranlett

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

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You've all heard of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.  How about finding the shortest path from anything to anything.  Omnipelagos do this.  Check out the link between Kevin Smith (director of Clerks) and bacon (yummy pork product).

-- Matt Ranlett

Pat Piccolo has posted some of his photos from Code Camp online.  Check them out here.

— Matt Ranlett

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I made it to the Developer Expo this past Friday ( I took the day off work – burned a VACATION DAY for it, but it turned out to be worthwhile )

Kirk Evans gave us a preview of the new Visual Studio Team Services as part of the keynote.  I’ve actually heard about this stuff before, so I’ll just link you to more information about it rather than going into detail in this entry: VSTS

Structured a lot like Code Camp, there were three tracks with five total breakout sessions.  I’ll tell you about the ones I went to.

Service Orientation per Kirk Allen Evans: 

Connected Systems are not all about communications – it’s about bringing your applications to new life.  It’s about “increasing revenue and reducing costs” – Kirk’s most repeated quote.  The list of advantages to connected systems and the challenges look like the same list; info worker productivity, business agility, value chain integration, end to end security and trust, seamless access to information.  Basically, with connected systems, once you figure out how to get past the challenges, they become advantages in making your enterprise more adaptable and faster than your competition.

The problem with connected systems – getting data from point A to B to C with context.

Attempts thus far.

• REST: representational state transfer – recently hyped as web services by Yahoo, Amazon, and others.  REST = POX (plain old XML) bound to HTTP.  REST sounds like SOAP without the envelope – deliver an XML packet and use HTTP verbs to decide what to do with the XML.
• EAI – application integration through a central system.  High licensing cost, complexity, vendor lock in , scalability (single point of failure)
• ESB – Enterprise Services Bus – many interconnected central points.  Architecture or SKU(product).  Programming model silos, slow to adopt WS-*.  MS answers with BizTalk and CSF (Common Services Framework) today, BizTalk and Indigo in the future.

SOA – another step on the path to the solution.  SOA is yet another attempt at effective distributed programming (DCOM).  DCOM was too tightly coupled (you had to share types, languages, and ports) to work well.  SOA decouples and only cares about the contract (how to format) and the message (the payload).  We’re driving to connected systems (HST architecture).  To do that, use the WS-* architecture.  The messaging is based on SOAP b/c everyone can speak it.  Security, Reliable Messaging, and Transactions are provided by WS-* extensions.  BizTalk is an implementation of the WS-* specs.  Indigo is a better implementation of the WS-* specs.  It allows for secure, reliable, transactioned messages in three lines of code (as opposed to 27000 lines of code required with WSE 2.0 or 56000 lines of code prior to WSE).  XMLSchema is the canonical schema – the authoritative, common definition.  The schema doesn’t change.  XML Schema is not actually a single schema – it’s a big bucket of lots of different schemas.  Use the schema to fix the contracts surrounding the use of web services. 

FYI – I really had a blast watching Kirk present – he’s a natural, standing up in front of the group trying to restrain himself from craziness like flicking everyone off as he gets wrapped into his own stories.  He’s a great presenter – the best I saw all day.

Richard Weeks from Avanade presents the Enterprise Library:

The Enterprise Library wraps several of the PAP application blocks (Data, Config, Crypto, Security, Exception, Logging, etc).  The goal of the enterprise library is to simplify the use of these blocks.  For example, the extremely slick Configuration tool (add to the Tools menu by customizing the menu) will create all the XML in the App.config file based on a user friendly GUI as opposed to writing the XML on hand.  The Database block allows you to connect to a DB, execute a stored proc, and bind the results to a grid in three lines of code.  The logging component makes logging so easy it’s almost hard to believe.  One line of code – Logger.Write(“text here”) – that’s it!  Based on the config, we were logging to two places at the same time with independently configurable levels of detail.  The exception component allows “exception policies” to be defined and log, wrapping an exception with another exception, replacing an exception with another, or create your own action.  The exception policy tool was really sweet – complete with a list of potential exceptions (reflection, anyone?) you can select from.   Dan and I both enjoyed this presentation – it looks like something really useful.

 Kevin Heldt from Internosis Inc walked us through the development platform for SharePoint:

We looked at the Sharepoint Object Model and how to program against it.  The first two demos were us creating an entire portal site and then adding documents to that site through a separate Admin tool we created in code.  Next we looked at Web Parts and how web parts can be used to provide ASCX type functionality within SharePoint, including creating a Provider – Consumer model to create a data binding relationship between different SharePoint webpart components.  Finally we looked at the process to deploy a SharePoint Web Part to a SharePoint site.

 Scott Bounds from the Microsoft Communications Sector presented Microsoft Identity and Access Management:

How do you handle all the different logons required for all the different applications, both internal and external to an individual organization?  In the past, everything was separate, today we try to integrate and pass security around, in the future we are heading towards federated systems.  The MS core foundation for authentication is Active Directory, a central focal point for network and user management.  AD Application Mode (AD/AM) for LDAP is for local app data.  AD/AM is basically Active Directory but with only LDAP and replication, none of the other authentication stuff AD supports (like the SAM and Kerberos).  It runs as a non-OS service.  Addins like the Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 (MIIS) tie lots of different 3rd party applications like SAP, Sun One and other stuff (non-MS stuff) for user synchronization and provisioning.    The goal, as Win2k3 heads towards Service Pack 1, is to reduce the cost of password maintenance.  Plus, you can do mapping between identities so you can expose user credentials to extranets and external users.  This allows separate companies to authenticate each others users across trusted relationships.

 Leslie Sistla from Microsoft gave the presentation on SQL Server 2005:

SQL Server 2005 comes with some new Enterprise Data Management features such as a new isolation level, database snapshots, database mirroring for high availability.  Also Developer productivity and business intelligence features.  Developers get the ability to integrate with Visual Studio and can use multiple languages.  You can write T-SQL for data intensive function and .Net languages for CPU intensive functions and you can seamlessly step cross-language..  You also get a new XML data type.  Recursive queries and try/catch exception handling are now supported in SQL Server 2005.  SQL2k5 fits into the SOA model by providing direct web service access to SQL Server.  Query Notifications enable responsive multi-tier caches.  Service Brokers work with distributed messaging and queues.  In Reporting Services 2005, the Business Intelligence Management Studio (separate from the Management Studio) will be able to design reports without Visual Studio.  Coming in 2005 with SQL Server Visual Studio 2005 is a Local Mode where you can run reports without requiring an IIS server.  The expected introduction of SQL 2005 brings with it some significant ADO.Net enhancements.  I’ll blog more about that stuff later.

There was a lot of good information packed into these sessions.  I’d have loved to make it to 3 or 4 of the discussions I couldn’t attend.  At some point the content will be placed online.  I’ll post links to it when I get it. 

— Matt Ranlett

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A while back, a post on the Atlanta .Net Regular Guys site and a post on the Cerebral Kitchen site explored Digital Rights management and the iffy use of technology to protect IP or intellectual property.  (Here is the original post, but all comments have been lost during the transition from .Text to DasBlog).  The end result of the conversation seemed to be that everyone agreed IP requires protection but current technical implementations of digital rights management software are either completely ineffective or way to restrictive.  I just found this article where Microsoft Research seems to agree that the illegal spread of digital content is unlikely to stop, especially since it’s so easy to find what you want on the darknet – the collection of networks and other technologies that enable people to illegally share copyrighted digital files with little or no fear of detection.

— Matt Ranlett

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If you have not seen Glen Gordon present you are really missing out.  Every time I see one of his MSDN Events they are always better than the one before it.  This time the parking lot was full because right after the MSDN event Star Wars 3 was showing.  Glen really showed his love for Star Wars when he got there at 7 something AM to protect his space runner from being over taken.
 
This was a very interesting MSDN and the topics were intriguing considering I had just heard the Indigo presentation from David Chappell that morning.  The reason I found it intriguing is because the first topic was on Web services and WSE 2.0.  Glen did a great job of showing how to create and consume the services.  Next Glen showed us how you can WSE 2.0 for your web services to make them more secure, trace their output, and many other options just by clicking the options from the WSE 2.0 screen.  You still ask what was so intriguing about David Chappell with Indigo and WSE 2.0 by Glen.  Well it appears that Indigo will only support WSE 3.0 so you will have to rewrite your applications that are WSE 1.0 and WSE 2.0.  I wouldn’t think that Microsoft would make an MSDN event focused on pushing these technologies without making the point of best practices for moving forward.

After a short break and the popcorn people running out of popcorn temporarily we headed back into the theater for the next presentation.  Glen started out telling us it was SQL 2005 so I was interested in that, but then he showed us so really cool features of SQL 2005 like creating a web service from inside SQL.  This was a really cool feature if you just want to expose some data without writing a wrapper class.  He also showed us how to use Reporting Services to create a URL that you can call from a browser.  Once he had the URL he created an application that called the Reporting Service (SSRS) web service.  He used the Render method of the web service and put tiff files of the report in a Winforms application.  Really cool idea!

The last topic Glen talked about was Click Once deployment; it had the most amount of questions.  It was Click Once deployment.  This was a neat feature to see, but nothing really new from the App Updater Block.  He showed us how you can easily deploy your project with a few settings for another person to download.  You have the option of creating the application to put a Start Menu item in the Start Menu or just running from the web.  He changed the background of the main form and downloaded it with the options.  To do the coding demos Glen showed off some of the capabilities of Snippets.
I really enjoyed the sessions and hope everyone there had a great time.  The content was given out in DVD format and so was VS 2005 Beta 2.  Check out both of these resources for the code shown and the tools to build them with.  See you at the next MSDN Event for ASP.NET 2.0.

— Brendon Schwartz

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So I’m in the office WAY too early.  It’s 5:30 AM as I write this while waiting for a database shrink to complete, but I got into the office at 4 AM.  As I drove in this morning, I thought about the JOLT Awards given out by Software Development magazine this year.  One of their categories is Best General Books – I decided to go ahead and get the category winner, Head First Design Patterns from O’Reilly Press.  I’ve been interested in design patterns for a while now, both as a means for learning more about application architecture and as a means of communicating about applications with other developers [Michael Earls wrote a post about this, but I’m apparently not typing the right keywords into the search engines – I can’t find it].  This book is supposed to be an excellent introduction to patterns, with implementations of each pattern and good and a bad manner.  All of the comments on Amazon.com are glowing and the book beat out my other choice (which will be my next purchase anyway) for the JOLT Award.  Not that I care about the JOLT Awards, but that means at least one person looked at both books and judged this one a better learning tool.

— Matt Ranlett

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[note] – it was Wednesday when I wrote this, I just for got to put it online.

Scott Mitchell wrote an article for the 4GuysfromRolla site and a blog post about why he doesn’t use DataSets in his applications anymore.  He got so many comments, for and against, that he wrote a followup article about the topic.  Jeffrey Palermo agrees (almost violently) with Scott in his post about why developers should stay away from DataSets. 

Shawn Wildermuth, Atlanta’s own ADOGuy, is a big fan of DataSets.  A direct quote from his book, Pragmatic ADO.Net – Data Access for the Internet World, “As far as I am concerned, the center of the ADO.Net universe is a new data structure called the DataSet”.

This conversation is interesting – people arguing about the “purity” of the code vs the convenience of datasets.  I, personally, lean towards convenience.

— Matt Ranlett

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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

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