Foo Theory

So we’re back from Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC09) which was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center this past week.

The focus of PDC is future and emerging Microsoft technologies, product roadmaps, and industry trends – making it the premier, developer-focused Microsoft event. It is not held every year. The workshops, keynotes, and sessions were excellent with few exceptions and, as expected, there were a number of important announcements.

Unlike last year we didn’t come back with multiple gigabytes of pre-release bits; none in fact. Truth be told, though, with the rapid and open pre-release cycles on the many key products and technologies soon to release, any bits would be stale quickly. So get out to MSDN Developer Centers, CodePlex, and the like and pull down the latest as needed.

Take a look at the swag attendees did walk away with though (below)…

Key Themes and Announcements

By no means is this comprehensive but a punch list of key themes and announcements we, as as professional developers and Microsoft technology consultants should keep an eye and provide feedback to the product teams on and share with our colleagues, customers, and the community.

“Three Screens and a Cloud” 

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Chief Architect, described Microsoft’s long-term cloud computing strategy as “three screens and a cloud”:

“A journey that started 4 years ago with our Software as a Service platform vision, now materializing. I believe that the world some number of years from now in terms of how we consume IT is really shifting from a machine-centric viewpoint to what we refer to as three screens and a cloud: the phone, the PC, and the TV ultimately, and how we deliver value to them.”

As a very satisfied iPhone user (a WinMo/HTC convert) and someone who has been less than blown away by the Xbox 360/Media Center story, there is work to be done here. As an architect and developer I’m impressed by the leaps made by Microsoft; providing the tools, platforms and technologies to deliver sophisticated, connected solutions. And as a consumer, I’m very excited and look forward to seeing the strategy play out to when “it all just works - seamlessly.”

Providing web-centric experiences, served by private clouds in data centers or by the world wide, public cloud and extended through applications on your desktop, smart phones, and televisions certainly summarizes the current software + services strategy. And Ozzie also let in that, along with the back-end – servers, tools, and cloud computing, and the experience at the top of the Microsoft stack – Windows, IE and Silverlight, Office, and SharePoint, that in Spring, at MIX 2010, Microsoft will make announcements about progress on the Windows Live Platform and about developing applications for the “next generation of the Windows phone.”

So given Microsoft’s commitment, and the tools now at hand, it is as much up to us as technologists to plan for and build solutions that leverage and deliver on the “n screens and a cloud” and “software + services” stories.

Cloud Computing: “Software + Services” 2.0

It was announced that Windows Azure will release in January, with billing starting in February 2010. The November release of the Windows Azure SDK, available now, includes updates to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, which extends VS 2008 (and included in VS2010 Beta 2) allowing us to easily model, develop and test, build, deploy, and run Web apps and services for Windows Azure.

The AppFabric: a Unified Development, Configuration Management, and Deployment Model

Today, application architecture, design, and tooling considerations are vastly different for on-premises versus cloud-based applications. Now using Visual Studio 2010 and leveraging the AppFabric, applications can be designed and built once, promoted across environments to either Windows Azure or on-premises infrastructure, and delivered securely to our customers; whatever deployment model, service level or scale they require.

In addition, Windows Azure capabilities such as VMs, along with AppFabric, provide us with flexible options for migrating existing on-premises .NET applications to public and private Windows Azure environments.

Windows Azure Platform AppFabric i

The Windows Azure platform AppFabric provides secure connectivity as a service to help developers bridge cloud, on-premises, and hosted deployments. You can use AppFabric Service Bus and AppFabric Access Control to build distributed and federated applications as well as services that work across network and organizational boundaries.

From simple eventing scenarios to complex protocol tunneling, AppFabric Service Bus gives developers the flexibility to choose how their applications communicate, and to address the challenges of configuration and management of firewalls, NATs and dynamic IP, and disparate identity systems.

AppFabric Access Control enables simple, secure authorization for RESTful web services that federate with a variety of identity providers.

Windows Server AppFabric ii

Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies that make it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on IIS. Windows Server AppFabric has these core capabilities:

• For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data. This feature was previously codenamed "Velocity"
• For composite applications, AppFabric makes it easier to build and manage services built using Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. This feature was previously codenamed "Dublin."

Project “Sydney”

Project Sydney was announced at PDC. Sydney provides a means to connect existing on-premise or services behind the firewall with those running in the cloud on Windows Azure. Underlying the technologies are IPSec, IPV6, and Microsoft’s federated-identity capabilities (formerly codename “Geneva”).

Sydney can be used for a variety of business cases, such as allowing fail over of on-premises servers to the cloud (or vise versa), to running applications targeting on-premises and cloud deployments, and to synchronize on-premise and Azure-hosted databases, as examples.

Sydney is slated to go to beta early next year and to release in 2010.

Codename “Dallas”

Ray Ozzie announced the public alpha release of Microsoft’s Data Services in the Cloud. Microsoft codename Dallas allows developers and information workers to discover, purchase and manage data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform. The “data-as-a-service” offering is an information marketplace that will deliver data, imagery, and web services from commercial data providers as well as public data sources from a single location, under a unified provisioning and billing framework.

A Silverlight application was shown using the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission Images dataset during the Day 1 keynote where attendees put on a set of silly 3D glasses handed out at registration.

Dallas is available now and surfaced at Microsoft PinPoint here.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was released on October 19^th, so attendees had nearly four weeks to preview prior to the borage of information provided during keynotes and in deep dive sessions at PDC.

Microsoft announced at PDC that Go Live licenses are available for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4. So if you’ve not gotten your hands on Visual Studio 2010, it’s time to dig in and socialize the value proposition of transitioning early with customers.

Visual Studio 2010 is a significant release and has been re-designed using WPF 4.0? Cameron Skinner described the dog-fooding process as painful at times but that (paraphrasing here): “there’s nothing like a dev. finding their own (or a colleagues) bug holding them up.” Noting (half jokingly) how quickly things get resolved.

A quote from the Day 1 keynote by Ray Ozzie sums up, for me, how the Windows, Office, and Visual Studio platform and tools continue to be at the heart of what is to come: "We at Microsoft have one simple strategy - that is to focus on leverage and seamlessness in everything we do.”

Of particular interest to me is the new architect tooling: UML Modeling projects (and strategy), MEF extensibility, and T4 goodness. T4 has been there since VS2K5 but seeing it in action in various open source frameworks, being baked in as an extensibility point (along with MEF) in Visual Studio for Entity Framework 4, and shown in various sessions really re-piqued my interest.

I spoke with Cameron Skinner and team, along with some other attendees, after his session “Code Visualization, UML, and DSLs” and as a practicing enterprise and solution architect (and agile practitioner) the direction being taken by the group is compelling; not only from a modeling perspective, but from a tooling and process automation perspective as significant improvements in TFS have been made.

Some of those Team Foundation Server innovations include:

• Multi-project Collaboration (i.e. Team Project Collections)
• Process automation improvements, including deep agile support and improved workflows
• Truly innovative parallel development capabilities with branching and visualizations
• Continuous integration ++
• Project visibility and health
• Deployment, provisioning, and management options

Be sure to take a look at these Visual Studio sessions.

Entity Framework 4

From what I saw in the whirlwind session “Evolving ADO.NET Entity Framework in .NET 4 and Beyond” by Shyam Pather and Chris Anderson there have been significant improvements . The room was packed so the interest was high. As an observation, session goers (including myself) were guarded going in and generally high-energy walking out. Though you see a combination of NHibernate, Castle Active Record, Unity, and Fluent NHibernate, you also see a lot of innovative new capabilities.

Some of those things we’ve been waiting for, and delivered, include model first (as well as round-trip) development, support for POCO and lazy loading, and improved separation of concerns allowing for, among other things, a better testing story.

I did fiddle a bit late night this week, and there seemed to be issues with inheritance, but will dig in deeper and share my experiences with those interested and in posts. As a steadfast NHibernate advocate, I look forward to the discussion here.

.NET 4 and C# Language Enhancements

.NET and C# 4 now includes the dynamic types, named and optional arguments, enhanced Office programmability, and variance. Some additional areas of interest include:

• F# for functional programming
• Application Compatibility and Deployment
• Parallel Computing
• Improved Security Model
• Core New Features and Improvements
• Networking
• Web
• Client
• Data
• Communications and Workflow

There were sessions that hit on each of the areas listed so search the PDC and other sites for content; this is our bread and butter.

Office and SharePoint Development Enhancements

Office 2010 is now available in public beta and there are considerable, exciting improvements in Visual Studio 2010 allowing developers to more easily deliver rich business applications using Office. In addition, with Office Web Access (currently Office Live) developers will have real options to deliver connected solutions targeting both on-premises and in the cloud.

Here are links to SharePoint and Office PDC sessions.

VS Product Line-up Changes

Team System branding – no more: it was confusing. Now there is simply Visual Studio and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and the Visual Studio product line-up has been streamlined. Now there are just three flavors: Professional, Premium, and Ultimate which provide progressively more capabilities. The new line-up doesn’t erase the price tag reality on the higher end but it is easier to understand. And hell the alternative is point solution fun-and-games; on the high-end at ridiculous price tags.

One significant item of note here is that TFS is now included (no limitations, e.g. Workgroup Edition). If you own VS2010 and MSDN then you own a TFS client and can deploy TFS for team use of any size.

So there’s too much on Visual Studio to punch list but I’ll follow-up with multiple posts with a value focused perspective.

Silverlight 4

So I attended a number of Silverlight or UX-related sessions this year. Silverlight 3 was released only 4 months ago but general availability of Silverlight 4 public Beta was announced at PDC. Silverlight 4 provides improved connectivity to peripherals and improves the out-of-browser application options. Together with RIA Services and Prism, Silverlight 4 is a leap ahead for web deployed, core business applications.

Silverlight 4 is planned to release in the first half of 2010.

It was announced at PDC and RIA Services renamed WCF RIA Services. RIA Services simplifies building layered applications targeting Silverlight (and MVC), exposing WCF services and reducing the amount of work for service configuration, contract specification, data validation, and deployment; essentially UI domain services.

Here’s a link to Silverlight sessions and take a look at the Day 2 keynote by Scott Guthrie and team.

SQL Server 2008 R2

Another one of those hot off the presses technologies is SQL Server 2008 R2. Despite the naming it is a major release.

It was also announced that the tooling previously known as codename “Gemini” is now PowerPivot. This is something we need to take a look at along with the BI toolset that Microsoft has delivered along with the partner ecosystem. If you get a chance take a look the PDC workshop “Developing Microsoft BI Applications – the How and Why.” Andrew Brust did a great job of describing the BI landscape and provided pointed guidance on how to approach and transition your customers.

Here’s a link to SQL Server and BI sessions at PDC.

Window Technologies

In case you haven’t noticed, Windows 7 was recently released. In addition to Windows 7 there were announcements about the Release of Windows Identity Foundation, Windows Azure, and the AppFabric.

Take a look at the Windows technologies related sessions here.

Microsoft PinPoint

Microsoft PinPoint was announced. It is a one stop shop providing access to software solutions based on Microsoft technologies. PinPoint is a directory to discover applications, companies, and trusted technology partners through contextual searches; a sort of Apple App Store and Salesforce.com AppExchange rolled together.

“It’s All Data” – Oslo, SQL Server Modeling

So last but not least is something I focused on at last PDC – Oslo, and more generally modeling. It was announced at PDC that Oslo has been renamed SQL Server Modeling and the team (along with XML) have been brought together under Data.

The MSDN Data Developer Center has been redesigned to not only include current and emerging data technologies but also roadmap and way early (or “future”) technologies like Oslo, which includes “M” – the language, Quadrant – the tooling, and SQL Server Modeling Services.

Keep an eye on these technologies and view related PDC sessions here and here.

The Swag, PDC Edition

During the day 2 keynote, Windows and Windows Live Division President Steven Sinofsky announced that attendees would receive an exclusive “PDC Edition” Acer Aspire 1420P Tablet PC designed by the Windows team, for PDC. It was funny watching folks streaming out of the keynote about a half hour early to get theirs, only to be turned away till later in the day.

The tablet’s not yet available to consumers, which make it even cooler, and the stacked configuration (for the nearly netbook form-factor) will allow developers to leverage many of the Windows 7 (64-bit, Ultimate) capabilities, including multi-touch. Take a look at some photos of it here at the Windows Team Blog and the specs here.

Session Videos and Downloads

Session videos, and in many cases the decks, are available publicly at microsoftpdc.com. We encourage you to get out there, download the video and content, and dig into these new technologies. I’d start with the keynotes so you can get a feel for Microsoft technology strategic direction and areas of focus, and then deep dive into the session.

Happy viewing!

i Content was used from the Windows Azure Platform site here.
ii Content was used from the Windows Server Development Center here.

American political journalism, not only by association, is not held in the highest regard these days.  NBC's Tim Russert, in contrast, and his enthusiasm for the "truth" is a throw-back and considered among the best of modern American journalists. 

Tim provided tough and thoughtful coverage of the most important issues and political figures of our time and strove to provide us with enough information to form an opinion.  Russert's infectious passion for the news left those of us with any interest wanting a second hour of Meet the Press or more of his time when on the air. 

Tim Russert - NBC News' Washington Bureau Chief and moderator of Meet the Press, preparing for this Sunday's installment of Meet the Press, collapsed and died of a heart attack today: he was 58.  His passing is a huge loss to American journalism: he was a beacon of thoughtful political coverage in a day when news outlets are more and more politically charged and inflammatory pundits are flooding network, cable, and radio programming. 

Though NBC News and Meet the Press will never be the same without him, I'm hopeful that thoughtful, informative reporting will prevail there and that those he inspired, mentored, and taught by example will continue to elevate the coverage of such an important beat. 

Image source: MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25145431/)

So anyone who's worked on projects with me knows I'm an advocate of using the Enterprise Library for addressing typical cross-cutting application concerns.  Enterprise Library 4.0 was released yesterday which now works with Visual Studio 2008 and the netfx3.5 and includes the Unity IoC application block. 

The Application Block Software Factory and Strong-name Guidance Package have been removed from the entlib but are said to be available as separate downloads/projects, presumably on CodePlex (haven't yet located them).  I look forward to revisiting them, though, and hope the issues have been resolved since their initial release in entlib3. 

I for one was no fan of either as they were released broken or half-baked with entlib3.  Simple ABSF app blocks needed significant manual manipulation once the guidance steps were completed.  And the SNGP dropped distinct .snk files in each project folder rather than adding links from a shared folder, it didn't address deployment scenarios, and had no options for those with existing project and solution standards. 

The Unity IoC Container (or Application Block) has been available stand-alone for some time now but it's a great addition to the entlib4 line up for managing dependencies and mapping/resolving interfaces to concrete classes at run-time or for generating instances of entlib objects.  If you've not yet taken a look at Unity you should. 

I broke my arm a couple weeks ago.  No, that's not the reason I've not blogged in a while: I've just been ridiculous busy - no excuse, I need to get on it.  So I came down off the boat in the garage and my feet got caught up in the trailer.  I came down on both hands, but harder on the right, breaking both the ulna and the radius at the wrist. 

At first, the orthopedic surgeon thought an internal fixator would work.  In layman's terms that's some space-age metal plate with screws.  The break was more of a crush, though: the ends the two bones (in the forearm) were in small pieces.  Screws don't work well in that situation so an external fixator was put on in surgery.  I won't go any further as some people won't "appreciate" it, but Google will shed some light if you're curious (and a bit warped). 

I can actually type with the right hand but, truth be told, it hurts like hell if for more than an hour or so.  And in this gig, that means pain.

I decided to check out the speech recognition in Windows Vista and did some research on the web.  Turns out there's not a lot of information out there on the subject.  So there are two (no three) things to consider 1) the microphone, 2) the software, and 3) the platform.  The microphone was the item I wasted more time on.  The built in microphone on my HP Pavilion dv9500 notebook (a powerhouse) was nowhere near good enough - it wouldn't pick up anything. 

After some additional research on microphones I decided on a gaming style headset (the Logitech ClearChat Style).  It has a noise canceling adjustable boom-style headset microphone and fits over the ears and wraps behind the head.  Its intended use is internet chat, music and gaming.  It actually worked OK but the microphones kept me from hearing things around me and speech recognition wasn't stellar. So I reached back out to Google but from the angle of "speech recognition microphone".  What kept coming up was the Sennheiser ME3 - it's said to be the best microphone out there for speech recognition.  So, I bit. 

I'm opting, right now, not to use Dragon's NaturallySpeaking which speaks to the second consideration, software.  I'm not sure this is the best solution as I've not tried NaturallySpeaking.  There's not a lot of information on the web on how Windows (Vista's, in particular) speech recognition works so I figured I'd give it a go before jumping.  And besides, there is no 64 bit version of the software yet which actually speaks to the platform or the third consideration.

I can tell you that dictating this post in Live Writer has been a bit painful.  Not physically, but that speech recognition is not all that wonderful.  The Sennheiser ME3 hasn't impressed me or at least it's not leaps and bounds better than the $30 gaming headset.  This paragraph in fact took me about 40 seconds to get written - with corrections.  I guess that's not horrible and my arm doesn't hurt. 

I'm going to keep trying and I'm going to continue to train this thing in hopes that it will get better.  By the way, speech recognition has come with Windows for quite some time - yeah, in the box.  You can look into it your yourself and find out some of the commands and see if you would appreciate it more than I have so far.  I'll also be sure to post some updates and let you know how this works out.

Update [1/30/2008]: here is another hot of the press product comparison.  

So I've had a number of folks ask about Visual Studio 2008 editions recently but quick searches for updated product comparisons, till now, have been fruitless.  Yesterday, though, a colleague of mine at Statêra asked and I finally reached out to Heuer to get the scoop. 

He came through with just what I needed and followed up today with a heads-up on the pages oficial.  Thanks man!  Here's what we got:

Visual Studio Team Edition comparison matrix
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts2008/products/bb991841.aspx

Pro vs. Standard comparison matrix
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/bb980920.aspx

These will be helpful when determining what your organization needs: or when playing Trivial Pursuit Nerd (I mean Web v.Next) Edition. 

So I always import my standard fonts and colors options for Visual Studio each time I build out a new environment.  I find the defaults a bit straining for all day work.  Today, though, I was installing some developer tools and noticed while wiring PowerShell to VSCmdShell that it used the default VS Command Window colors: stark - black on white.  Of course that wasn't going to do - so I went ahead and made it the same as the PowerShell colors and fonts.  Better... 

Then, as I hadn't yet set my Text Editor settings I thought: I like the PowerShell "style", why don't I take a shot at that for my VS Text Editor as well.  Of course, some of the Display Items' defaults wouldn't work as they were either to shocking in contrast or almost not visible but not too many changes were necessary. 

I came up with this

Here's a a downloadable link to the VS Settings file with only the Options --> Environment --> Fonts and Settings exported.  I'm calling it "PowerShell Distilled": feel free to use them if you'd like.  I haven't yet checked out how all of the text editors look.  In addition to C# did take a poke at XML files and, like I say, I took a poke at it.  If you do use it and you make any changes - let me know.  I might like to incorporate the changes back into my settings. 

As a note: I also like to change my Command, Immediate, Find Results and Output Windows settings but I've not yet done that - so you won't get those settings.  I'll post an update pointing at a separate consolidated VS settings file once I do for those interested. 

Happy Holidays!

So I was doing a little research for our Thursday presentation: I wanted to included some information on CRM and it's multi-tenant capabilities.  I found my way to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM UK Blog and in the left navbar I read a headline "CRM 4.0 Has Shipped": I thought nah - RC0 only released 4 weeks ago.  Reading further - it's true! 

CRM 4.0 aka "Titan" packs significant improvements over its wildly successful 3.0 predecessor.  Highlights include Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) powered workflows, improved extensibility features, and flexible multi-tenant capabilities for partners providing SaaS hosting. 

Judging by previous product releases it'll likely be another few weeks before we can expect to download Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 on MSDN or thru other channels. 

Next week (Thursday, December 20th) we'll be presenting the ArcReady: Software Plus Services (S+S) Distilled session at the MSDN Power Series Event in Phoenix. 

Bennie and I will cover, in some detail, a multi-tenant software + services reference architecture.  The two other sessions that are being presented around ours by Joe Shirey (MS DPE) are:

• ArcReady: Windows Live Platform Overview
• ArcReady: Office as a Platform.

I understand that the event location will hold around 200+ so join us and others for a "day of free, live learning."  

It's nagged on me a bit how my last post mentioned only MS products and not those that I deal with after my base install: you know, those developer tools you just can't get along without (R#).  It certainly isn't all that important to that post but it got me thinking of putting together and sharing my list of "other" developer tools. 

Though it'd been a while, this time, I often rebuild my laptop as a result of new product releases (or pre-releases), conflicting client requirements, or just because I'm not patient enough to troubleshoot PC issues.  So I was catching up tonight on some reading and came across altnetpedia's tools list.  A solid chunk of the list are tools I use regularly and a number more are ones I use every day.  One was missing - Beyond Compare: I've registered and will add it if someone else doesn't beat me to it.  Here's my list. 

So, as observation, the spirit behind the ALT.NET movement is healthy and a good one.  A couple of the movement's doyen are among the bloggers I read regularly, in fact.  I find myself cringing at times, though, when reading some of those same altdotneter's "rants".  Pause - thinking...  And it doesn't feel natural to me that an alternative movement needs to be declared.  It feels sort of, umm, .NOTALT. 

I find, in an industry that requires its high-end to change quicker than the market, that such broad declarations of the obvious, as described in this What is ALT.NET page, are, well, redundant.  I mean - encouraging developers to keep their eyes open to (and fingers in) alternatives is smart.  Critical thinking and pushing, not being pulled, (and getting involved) is something to encourage.  However, we all, at work at least, need to get to value at some point (soon) and this should be a principle considered as well. 

Anyway, the Tools list is a good one: though many are, by no means, alternatives anymore or new, for that matter. 

So I've got to go to bed now and hug my tree, spoon my Mac, and dream up my next rage against the Mothership.  Then maybe I too can be considered alternative or, perhaps, mainstream...

So I went home Tuesday night with the downloaded RTM bits in hand prepped for a late night install.  The download experience was excellent: it took all of about 10-15 minutes to pull it all down while in the office - couldn't wait.  And I had it prior to the onslaught of VS bits on the wire that must have happened that night.  Isn't everyone waiting with bated breath for this release? 

Visual Studio Orcas (2008) Betas and CTPs have been of awesome quality and I've had excellent experiences with the uninstall/installs all along side-by-siding - until now. 

Hell, it had been a while since I'd wiped the machine anyway - right.  And what better time than for a VS release: one of my, if not the, primary tools. 

Yeah - that's what it took.  I should say: I'm not willing to jump through too many hoops to troubleshoot an install.  Especially, on a machine that's undertaken such Beta torture since being re-upped on.  As the pre-releases were so surprisingly smooth, and stable once up, I had no expectation this time that it would come to this.  Truth be told - it was a hateful experience. 

The Rundown

So first, while uninstalling Beta 2 the setup hung for about an hour.  It was late, the mother-in-law was in town, but I did some reading and found some nuggets, again, on Rick Strahl's blog.  He'd recommended to uninstall some components manually first.  I killed it as it was futile and after a reboot I took the suggestion.  This seemingly freed up the problem for the uninstall but it still took a really long time and, though few, confirmations were still needed.  You know, can't just cut it off mid-stream...

Took two days away from the machine as Thanksgiving came and family beacons.  Happy late turkey day - BTW! 

When I got back at it I attempted an install of the RTM bits.  What the *#@&!  It's hung after a couple of hours - no errors, couldn't find anything on the web.  The curse of early adoption - right.  So I killed it and retried after doing some research (multiple times) - it never panned out.  I figured I'd sleep on it and see what I could do Saturday morning before other duties turned up.  Saturday's attempt faired the same - no real progress. 

The backups start...

I like having a newly installed machine but not since Vista RTM'd have I re-upped so I was not looking forward to this.  Multiple backups - just in case (OneCare and manual file drops).  As backups are the most boring thing ever it took till Sunday morning for me to really get it done. 

Sunday, after going to the airport, the Vista Ultimate install commenced.  Vista installs really nice - YES, finally!  IIS is configured and SQL Server's installed (multi-step SPs ya-da-ya-da).  Office 2007 - well it took a bit but just grunt work - got it all up.  As a heads-up: if you have an MSDN subscription, don't opt for the Pro install and then individuals like OneNote, Grove, Project Pro, Visio, etc. just pull Enterprise, your list of stragglers will be smaller. 

Visual Studio 2005 - this was quite painless but, again, it took a while: remember SP1 and SP1 update for Vista...

Visual Studio 2008 - I was in the Statêra office Monday so I kicked it off there in the morning.  I walked away as I had a conference call with a Microsoft Services colleague and came back.  SKREECHING OF TIRES AND THEN A HUGE BLUNT CRASH sound rang in my ears.  On the screen was a prompt for, and let me remind you this is an MSDN DVD ISO, disk #3 (attempting to install the .NET 3.5 framework).  My shoulders scrunched and I moped away to get a Perrier with lemon flavored stuff. 

So I came back found the file it was looking for in the ISO (mounted using Daemon Tools) and pointed it at that directory.  It wouldn't take it...  I'm turning red. 

Redemption

I did a search for VS 2008 install issues and found this cryptic MSDN newsgroup post titled Visual Studio 2008 Fails to compile on Vista Ultimate.  The title and subjects were vaguely (stretching) relevant and the post was a bit over my head as many of these types of troubleshooting posts are. 

Remember I mentioned I don't like to troubleshoot installs: I was in a pickle though, and hell, how else could I post on my experiences with the tool (or the install for that matter) - so I tried it.  The one from BFaassen about installing the files in the \WCU\dotNetFramework\dotNetMSP\x86 folder:

• NetFX2.0-KB110806-v6000-x86.msu
• NetFX3.0-KB929300-v6000-x86.msu

As a heads-up, I attempted the install of the others there, the RTM ones: they both ran successfully but reported that the KBs were not installed.  And, oh yeah, they all require a reboot if successfully installed.  WING'N IT - HUH...

I re-attempted the install after reboots and after a nail biter of a while (not too long) - the VS 2008 RTM install was successful!

WHEW!  Now to test the issue Bennie's been having: he reported that the XAML editor was not working.  I tested it by simply creating some buttons and sure enough it worked for me.  I'll take it!  NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH...

So there are a number of posts in the MSDN managed newsgroups and elsewhere showing issues with the install.  I don't have a feel, at all, for volume of problems and it could certainly be light for all I know.  I can report, though, that Bennie's up in arms over his experience too.  I opted out of beers with him last night as I could feel the flames over IM. 

Kidding of course - I wouldn't turn down a Stella: that's crazy talk. 

So Rob Bagby sent over an email that stopped me in my tracks titled "VS2008 RTM today".  Well, I intended to spend time with my mother-in-law while she's out this week but sorry Grammy (as the kids call her) - I'm going to be locked in the office.  Oh heck, I can put it off for a few days. 

Nah, who am I kidding: I'll be up all night as long as the download works out...

Let me formally request that every Microsoft developer stay off the internet while I download it today.  Yeah right - huh!?  

We're happy to announce the newest member of the Foo Theory team, Chad Mattox.  He's a friend and former Statera employee who now works for Microsoft Services (MCS) as a SQL Server Premier Fiend Engineer.  Here's a link to his weblog. 

Chad and I first met at an MCS financial services client, in Scottsdale, back in 2005.  He's an excellent consultant and has mad skills not only in the area of SQL Server but also distributed application development, ASP.NET, CRM and has an entrepreneurial spirit. 

Look forward to some great content and an insider's perspective...

So, though I had to miss it, reports from Redmond are hitting the wire about the SOA and Business Process Conference. 

First, SOA technology roadmaps and press releases for project code-named "Oslo" were announced.  The Oslo technology/product roadmap, posted by Christian Weyer, outlines Microsoft's strategy for its next generation of messaging and workflow technologies through (and initially releasing in) 2009. 

The story within the story is maturing support, from within the Microsoft server and tools stack, for end-to-end SOA application life-cycle and run-time governance.  Further, the "model-driven and service-enabled principles" referred to in the press release re-ups on the Microsoft SOA technology framework, server and tools commitment and marks maturing messages on composite applications and the "software-plus-services" play. 

Other conference news comes out of Microsoft Services and the patterns & practices groups.  The Managed Services Engine (MSE) and the Web Service Software Factory v.Next (modeling edition) were announced and are now available on Codeplex. 

MSE looks to start to address the lack of Microsoft SOA repository/registry, virtualization and run-time governance tools - though, admittedly, I need to crack it open and check it out: updates to come.  My hope here is the project matures and gets widespread community support, as in the case of EntLib, and receives product group and further P&P engagement.  Microsoft product PMs and VPs take note from the field: they've got some great feedback. 

It'd seem that Oslo is still in flux so let's put on our lobbying hats and provide feedback.  Is there such a thing as a lobbying hat?  If so - It'd probably be blue and have an LA on the front.  ;-)

The November 3rd Service Factory drop is the final (modeling edition) release for Visual Studio 2005: this release "helps developers build WCF and ASMX Web Services in C# using Visual Studio 2005."   I can't say enough about the service factory - the December 2006 release was the first and best community software factory implementation out there. 

Good stuff!  I'll be digging in over the next week...

So a lot of folks were confused the day news broke on Torre rejecting the Yankees hella-offer.  The father-in-law and I, while on vacation in Sequim Bay, WA, had good times discussing past reports of him being tough and unfair on players (by most accounts untrue - it turns out), his tenure in New York, how we'd like him on our teams.  It brought us together like baseball should... 

Truth be told, I offered food and wine to the spirits that he'd show up in Dodger Blue sometime in the next couple years. 

So I got my MLB Dodgers spam just now and - weeping...  The Dodgers announced that Joe Torre would manage the club through 2010.  Done deal!  I wouldn't have guessed in a million years it'd be that quick after the Yankees breakup and Grady's Tuesday resignation. 

I'll keep my hopes up that A-Rod will be next.  Don't worry - I'll wear my rally cap tonight to keep the spirits happy.  No hate mail - please...

Holy !@#$! I got a prescription to deal with a sinus infection on Sunday.  So after taking the first dose I had a little bit of what felt like a rush that morning: didn't think much of it as I was a bit under the weather.  That night, though, I had a seriously sweaty bout with the second dose and only half slept: a kind of dream place - partially restful (???).  Hmm - that felt weird... 

Today (Monday) was the whopper though!  I'm at a relatively new client, and while conducting some user training, I started feeling seriously dizzy - to the point that I IM'd the wife during a break considering whether to hang it up for the day.  But nah that's for whoosies!  I couldn't imagine falling out in the middle of a training session though.  And YEAH - it was close to that bad! 

While I might ham it up at home, you know - were the o'lady can "take care of you" (come on guys who doesn't), I'm not the type to get to the point of dropping.  Not without taking a head-shot...

So I pinged her again later: it was getting worse and eating a late lunch didn't help at all (trippen out right about now).  She called the docs office and ran it down to someone there.  They got back with her finally - by the time they did, though, I'd begun the re-entry.  The person responding told her to have me eat more and drink lots of water and, oh yea, don't take any more of the antibiotic: "he's showing signs of reaction to dioxin". 

Hold the Phone!

Yeah: exactly my reaction!  IM'ing, I said to her - wait a minute: isn't dioxin a carcinogen?  She said - huh?  Question to self: is dioxin a normal thing in an antibiotic (clarithromycin - kla-rith-roe-MYE-sin)?  I understand (in laymen's terms) that antibiotics basically kill you slowly and the bug (or bacteria) just dies first - but carcinogens?  WTH! 

I still feel a like I've been on the boat all night but a huge improvement.  So I'm killing some time now to write about my ride and to further slow down.  I think I'm ok to drive home now...

Back Home and And Doing Some Research

Made it home! 

So I can't find any hint of dioxin in clarithromycin and a bit too busy to spend any of time on it tonight. 

Next day: I (ok - she) called the doctor's office to find out exactly what it was that I had an issue with and whether it was an allergic reaction.  They responded back to me, leaving a message, later in the day spelling out the substance - biaxin (the lady pronounced it bi-awks-in).  AHHH! 

Ok - well I guess I feel a little better: no a lot better now that I'm off the juice.  But I'm relieved too that I've not further increased my chances of cancer...