January 2006 - Posts
When I was still a consultant I was a strong advocate of using unit tests and code coverage to make sure the code, and the application afterwards, reached the appropriate quality level to be deployed. As Team System and Team Foundation Server weren't available - not even in CTP or beta - at that time, I used a number of well-known community-driven tools like NUnit, MBUnit, NCover, NAnt, NDoc, etc.
One of the great add-in's in Visual Studio at that time was NUnitaddin. Jamie Cansdale developed the TestDriven.NET addin. Today Jamie announced the availability of code coverage together with unit testing for all versions of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite. He bundled NCoverExplorer with TestDriven.NET to view the code coverage results.
So far I haven't tried these tools out, but I assume they play well together and offer you the same kind of unit test/code coverage functionality as you can get with Visual Studio 2005 but for all versions of Visual Studio 2005. So no excuses anymore to not unit test and test the code coverage of your classes!
Soma announced on his blog today that Team Foundation Server will ship in March. Team Foundation Server is the cornerstone of the Visual Studio 2005 Team System. More info on TFS can be found on http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/newfeatures/default.aspx. Check the impressive list of the new features!
I know a couple of ISVs who will be very happy with this news. They have been using TFS and Team System since a couple of months and are well prepared to move to the RTM version. This blog post "Preparing to upgrade to RTM", dating from the Team System launch timeframe, can be put in practice now.
The official announcement has been made today: To better serve the developer and IT professional communities, Microsoft is evolving its EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) technical events – Tech·Ed Europe and Microsoft IT Forum. Have a look at the announcement here.
“Microsoft Tech Ed 2006: Developers” will be a deep-dive technical event addressing the specific requirements of developers while “Microsoft Tech Ed 2006: IT Forum” will be replacing IT Forum but will retain its focus on IT professionals and their distinctive needs.
The two conferences will for the first time run back-to-back in November 2006, creating Microsoft’s premier technical education platform in the region and a central feature of the IT industry calendar.
"Tech Ed 2006: Developers":
- is a 100% developer focused event. Anyone interested in building software solutions with Microsoft development tools for the professional market should attend this event. The content will be a deep dive into the technology.
- We will also offer some sessions that are more in the IT infrastructure space and this specifically for people in mixed job functions. This will be IT infrastructure content that is relevant for developers.
- There will be specific content for software architects.
"Tech Ed 2006: IT Forum":
- The slightly re-branded IT Forum is the event for IT Professionals focusing on planning, deploying and managing the secure connected enterprise.
- It is the conference for IT administrators, including system, network, database, messaging, web, applications, file/storage, security, desktop configuration, etc.
- We will also offer some sessions that are more in the software development space and this specifically for people in mixed job functions. This will be development content (like scripting) that is relevant for system administrators.
- In addition there will be specific content for infrastructure architects.
Check also out Hans Verbeeck's blog post on this topic. Hans is overall technical content owner for Tech Ed 2006.
On Tuesday February 7th Microsoft Belux organizes an ISV Community Update event. These events are especially setup for Technical Decision Makers of ISVs and are an excellent opportunity to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies of the Microsoft platform.
This time we will be covering the Business Intelligence Capabilities of SQL Server 2005. This will happen in two sessions:
- SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence: Delivering Business Insight
During this session we will provide you with an introduction in BI & an overview of the different components of Microsoft's BI offering. We will deal with the different components of SQL Server 2005 being: Integration Services (ETL-Tool), Analysis Services (Turning Technical information into business information), Reporting Services (reporting environment), Report Builder (End-user reporting tool). We will also dive into the Office portfolio & talk about the BI components that are included within Office System. (Business scorecard manager , Excell, Visio, MapPoint, ...)
- Leveraging Business Intelligence Capabilities within your applications
This session is focused on how to use the BI-Artifacts within your application. We will discuss how to integrate Reporting Services Reports within your (web and/or forms application, How to integrate data-mining (predication based on historical data e.g. credit check) into your application, how to deliver data from Analysis services into your application.
When?
Tuesday 7 February
12:00 – 13:30: Welcome & Lunch
13:30 – 15:30: SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence: Delivering Business Insight
15:30 – 16:00: Break
16:00 – 18:00: Leveraging Business Intelligence Capabilities within your applications
Drinks
Where?
Crowne Plaza Brussels Airport
Corporate Village
DA VINCILAAN 4
B- 1831 Diegem
You can register for this event through the Microsoft ISV portal. Register here.
AlfaPrint, one of the ISV’s I’ve been assisting in their adoption process of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, have loyal users. One of them is Dirk Stevens. Dirk is DAM Manager at Agfa and decided to start a blog: the DAM or ADAM blog. In his blog Dirk wants to share his knowledge and enthusiasm around ADAM and DAM systems in general. The goal is to create a community around ADAM, not as an enhancement request or bug report platform, but a place where equally-minded people share their thoughts and visions on ADAM.
In his first post he requests some feedback on the issues and bottlenecks every Windows platform user is facing today when handling graphical files. Windows Vista definitely does a better job than previous OS's. And Office 12 has an open XML format. Check out Brian Jones' blog if you want to learn more on the latter. In a recent blogpost he announces that "Corel will support Microsoft Office Open XML Formats".
Talking about communities: one of the developers working on ADAM at AlfaPrint, Michael Vanhoutte, wrote a couple of technical articles. They can be found on CodeProject:
Based on my discussions with Michael I think he should consider blogging. Not only “to blog” as such, but mainly to talk to the ADAM customers. Like Dirk. Michael has a deep understanding of how the software has been developed and why it was concepted like that. Dirk knows what he expects from ADAM and wants to share his thoughts with the community.
Hey guys, wat do we need more to get this conversation started?
Microsoft has released a new Microsoft Developer Security Resource Kit. This kit brings together a host of valuable references and resources for developing more secure applications. In it you'll find:
- Best practices: These guidelines, how-to documents, and checklists will help you integrate security issues into the development process.
- Training: View webcasts and get access to loads of sample code to get you up to speed quickly on key security concepts.
- Developer tools: Analyze your code for security flaws, run data queries, detect errors, and test for compatibility issues.
- Technical articles and additional resources: Link up with online community and event resources. And when you order, you can also order Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 for a six-month evaluation
In addition, by ordering a Developer Security Resource Kit DVD—you pay only shipping and handling—you will be able to receive notice of future updates to these toolkit resources as content is added and revised. It's a great way to stay on top of security issues that affect developers.
Put the resources you need to develop more secure applications at your fingertips. Order your copy of the Microsoft Developer Security Resource Kit today!
Right now the DVD is available World Wide except for EMEA.We're working on fixing this so that users can order it from the EMEA version of Get The Trials http://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/getthetrials/default.mspx.
During the Developer & IT-Pro Days 2006 we will cover these security best practices during the session "Best Practices for Implementing Application Security Using the .NET Framework". This session is scheduled on day 2 of the event.
In December at JavaPolis 2005 Microsoft showed some of the capabilities of a beta version of the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver.
Since last Friday the final release of the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. This JDBC driver is a Type 4 JDBC driver that provides database connectivity through the standard JDBC application program interfaces (APIs) available in J2EE (Java2 Enterprise Edition). The release of this Java Database Connectivity driver is important and shows Microsoft's continued commitment to interoperability. The SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver download is available to all SQL Server users at no additional charge, and provides access to SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 from any Java application, application server, or Java-enabled applet.
The SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver is JDBC 3.0 compliant and runs on the Java Development Kit (JDK) version 1.4 and higher. It has been tested against all major application servers including BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, and Sun.
This week I've been working hard on the agenda for the Developer & IT-Pro Days 2006 in Belgium. This year's Dev & IT-Pro Days take place the 7th and 8th of March in the ICC in Ghent. This technical training event offers all attendees a combination of practice oriented information and in-depth technical training sessions.
Since yesterday all sessions and most of the abstracts can be found on-line. Thanks to Wim for that!
Take a look at the list of great speakers that will be covering all these topics and please don’t hesitate to provide us now with some great feedback on the agenda. Only the attendees will benefit from this, as we still have some time to tweak things.
Developer & IT-Pro Days 2006 – The Connected Generation
Why attend?
- Technical education: During the two-day technical event, experts will demonstrate the different aspects of our platform and how networks and applications can be created, deployed and maintained. It is a technical event and not a marketing event. Participants will go home with new technical knowledge that they can apply immediately in their daily job.
- Technology Evaluation: Besides diving deep into the current products and technologies, attendees will also get a hold of information that helps them prepare for the future. Systems, applications and technologies are constantly evolving. Be prepared to face the future.
- Community and Networking: Grab the opportunity to educate and consult, to take advantage of peer-to-peer learning opportunities. Network with your peers; talk with them about the challenges that we’re facing at in IT. Check out the Belgian user groups and join them if they cover topics of your interest. The Developer & IT Pro Days is an excellent event to expand your network and to leverage the developer and IT professional community.
- International and national top speakers: Just like on the previous events, we have the pleasure to present a number of international and national high quality technical experts and speakers in their specific area of expertise.
When and where?
Who should attend?
- IT professionals
- System architects
- Network administrators
- System administrators
- Information Workers
- Software developers
- Software architects
- Database Administrators
- Web Developers
- Academics
Registration
- Register now. The first 400 persons to submit their registration will get a Microsoft Press Book for free.
Partners of Microsoft in this event can be found on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/devitprodays/default.aspx#partner
More info on the Developer & IT-Pro Days 2006 can be found on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/devitprodays/default.aspx.
See you there!
WCF (Windows Communication Foundation / “Indigo”) and WF (Windows Workflow Foundation) have announced Go Live licenses, which allow customers to use the January Go Live releases of WCF and WF in their deployment environments.
More information about the Go Live program is at http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/getthebeta/golive/default.aspx
More information on this Go Live license and technical resources can be found on
Tim Sneath's blog:
The Vista “where to get the beta” site will also point to the WinFX Runtime January CTP.
On February 16th Microsoft Belux organizes a one day workshop that provides attendees with the essential knowledge around the .NET Web Services platform, today and tomorrow. In this workshop we'll have an in-depth discussion about service contracts, have a look at the core WSE 3.0 capabilities such as security, messaging and attachments and learn how “Windows Communication Foundation” (code-named “Indigo”) unified programming model will dramatically simplify the design and implementation of secure and reliable service-oriented applications.
This long-awaited workshop rounds up with a proposal on how to build services today that can be easily migrated to Windows Communication Foundation tomorrow.
When?
February 16th, 2006
Where?
BRAINS, Domaine Latour de Freins,
Rue Engeland 555,
B-1180 Brussels (Uccle)
Subscribe?
To attend this event, please register using one of those links :
Speaker
Beat Schwegler
Beat is employed as an Architect for Microsoft EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In this capacity, he is supporting and consulting large companies in software architecture related topics and is a frequent speaker at international events and conferences.
He has more than 13 years of experience in professional software development and architecture and was involved in a wide variety of projects, ranging from real-time building control systems, best selling shrink-wrapped products to large scale CRM and ERP systems. For the last 3 years, his main focus was in the area of Service Orientation and Web Services.
Detailed Agenda
(this seminar will be delivered in English)
| 09:00 - 09:15 |
Introduction |
| 09:15 - 10:00 |
The Three Part Model and the 4 Tenets
We are going to discuss the “Three Part Model” and how a conceptualized view of the business drives service oriented analysis/design and how these artifacts can be transformed into services. In this scenario, the 4 tenets play a key role to express the needs and implications of the three different models. |
| 10:00 - 10:15 |
Break |
| 10:15 - 11:30 |
Guidance and Thoughts about Service Contracts
A contract is an agreement between two parties, namely between the service provider and the corresponding service consumer. It defines the structure of the exchanged data; it models the service interfaces and describes the different options to talk to these interfaces. The characteristic of contracts highly depend on the level of coupling between the consumer and the service. What is the common sense between them and which artifacts have to be explicitly defined? This session discusses the different aspects of a contract centric approach and explains approaches like "schema drives contract" or "contract drives schema". Contract first is the way to go, but how do you get there? |
| 11:30 - 11:45 |
Break |
| 11:45 - 13:00 |
Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0
WSE 2.0 considerably simplified the development and deployment of secure Web services by enabling developers to add message level security to applications built on the principles of service-orientation and the emerging Web Services (WS-*) specifications. This session details the WSE 3.0 release which adds significant new functionality including, enabling the ASMX programming model over multiple transports (e.g. http, tcp), substantially improved security policy to enable common security messaging scenarios, MTOM for message attachments, interoperability with Indigo and conformance to the latest WS specifications. |
| 13:00 - 14:00 |
Lunch |
| 14:00 - 15:15 |
Introducing WCF (Indigo) - The Unified Framework for Building Connected Systems
"Windows Communication Foundation" is Microsoft’s unified framework for building service-oriented applications. It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments. "Indigo" combines and extends the capabilities of existing distributed systems technologies, including Enterprise Services, System.Messaging, .NET Remoting, ASMX, and WSE to deliver a unified development experience spanning distance, topologies, hosting models, protocols, and security models. This session will provide an overview of "WCF" and show you how "WCF" will simplify the development of connected systems. |
| 15:15 - 15:30 |
Break |
| 15:30 - 16:15 |
Proposal how to Build Services
This proposal demonstrates an approach to build service contracts and how they can be transformed into service implementations. We discuss the anatomy of contracts and services and use a factory-based approach to automate the creation of most implementation artifacts such as transport bindings. BTW, this session gives you an idea how a Software Factory may look like… |
| 16:15 - 16:30 |
Closing Note |
Participation fee
The fee to participate in the unique and long-awaited seminar is 195,-€ excl. VAT.
This fee includes the location, parking, coffee pauses, lunch, material … and an extreme knowledge opportunity!
First of all: Happy New Year and Best Wishes for 2006!
After having enjoyed two weeks of holidays with my family I'm back in business! I left Brussels on Saturday and am actually spending the week in Seattle atteding TechReady2, an internal Microsoft training event.
Despite the holiday season the last couple of weeks some people involved in the Belgian community have been working hard on collecting feedback on their ideas and setting up a structure to let the community operate efficiently through user groups:
Rédo asks for some assistance on setting up a user group for French speaking people. You can help him out by answering this poll which will result in a number of topics, expectations and interests that will be covered in future user group meetings. Complete the poll at http://213.189.5.79/UGBe/UserGroupCreation.aspx. A meeting will be announced soon!
Steven Wilssens announces the first user group meeting of the VISUG, the newly created Visual Studio User Group. The goal is to get the user group up and running in January 2006. Therefore Steven organizes a fist meeting to discuss following topics:
- VISUG Goals
- VISUG Members
- VISUG Membership Conditions
- VISUG Sponsors
- VISUG Management Structure
- Offline Activities
- Monthly Meetings
- Events
- Social Events
- Participation in Microsoft Events
- INETA
- Online Activities
- VISUG website
The meeting is scheduled for January 25th from 18.00 to 21.00 and will take place in the Compuware Belgium offices (Ikaroslaan 21 in 1930 Zaventem, Belgium). Attending this very first meeting will give you the ability to help model and shape the user group. Drop Steven an e-mail if you want to attend so that he can arrange something to drink and eat.
Note that by completing the poll and attending the meeting you will be able to help drive these user groups to what you want them to be. 2006 has started pretty well from a community perspective! Exciting!