The Windows Communication Foundation is one of the fundamental key components of what is now called .Net 3.0.  However, this enhancement comes with a price, a steep learning curve. Without this book by Juval Lowy I doubt many programmers would have the proper guidance necessary to make good design decisions. You see that is what Juval Lowy set out to do in his latest book and I think he did a fabulous job! This book is not for the novice programmer it should be warned, but rather the experienced developer who desires to push his or her skills to the next level.

From the very first chapter this book had me hooked. I rarely read technical books all the way through in one sitting however that is exactly what I did with this book. The first chapter starts to explain in plain English what WCF is exactly and from then on the content just gets deeper and deeper.

Now it must be said that I am not an software architect by any means however this book helped to give me more of an architectural viewpoint which could only improve my skill set. The design guidelines and best practices are clearly laid out so that anyone with some programming experience should be able to understand. This is not your average computer text which gives a chunk of code and then explains what it does.  There really is nothing average about this writer and book.

If you believe that anytime in the near future you will need to understand WCF for your work I would highly recommend picking up a copy of this book. It is not for the feint of heart but the journey is well worth it.

The Windows Workflow Foundation is part of what is now .Net 3.0. Since this is the direction that we all seem to be heading in getting some solid information on subject is paramount. Fortunately we have a good resource in the book Foundations of WF by Brian R. Myers.

The premise of this book is to provide an introduction to the concepts, techniques and quirks of the Windows Workflow Foundation. It is not an exhaustive text explaining every nuance of the framework. Rather, this seems to be a somewhat of a high level approach of introducing the subject matter.

Throughout the text of the book plenty of example code is provided. As I really have no means at this time of testing the code myself I can not validate its accuracy. I am assuming the technical editors of the book have already done this but I have been fooled before.

What I did find disappointing is that only one chapter covers the integration with the Microsoft Office Server System 2007. This is disappointing to me as this is the new realm of where software developers are now able to venture into. However, I would like to point out that this chapter does cover the subject matter fairly well however it would be nice to see more titles from Apress covering this subject.

To give an overview of what is covered I will include the table of contents as such:

Chapter 1 – Introduction to Workflow and Windows Workflow Foundation

Chapter 2 – First Workflow

Chapter 3 – Conditional Activities

Chapter 4 – Flow Activities

Chapter 5 – Rules Based Workflow

Chapter 6 – Workflow and web services

Chapter 7 – Interacting with workflow

Chapter 8 – Custom Activities

Chapter 9 - Deploying Workflow Applications

Chapter 10 – Employee and performance review application

Chapter 11 – Integration with Office 2007

The chapter covering the reference application is actually also quite good. The application is not something I would deploy in a real world scenario per se but it does cover many of the fundamentals necessary to get a firm grasp of the concepts in action.

Overall I believe this to be a good work and worth the money if you wish to be introduced to Windows Workflow Foundation. However if you are looking for something more in depth look elsewhere as I believe more in depth texts are starting to become available.

Foundations of WF: an Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation (Expert's Voice in .Net)

Recently I have had the pleasure of reading a great book called Accelerated C# 2005 by Trey Nash. I found this book to be both insightful and informative on many levels. Now I am already familiar with C# 2.0 so this book did not necessarily teach me anything particularly new to the language. However the points that Mr. Nash brought out while using C# have helped quite a bit.

This book is not your normal C# training manual. Rather, the approach of the author is to take you through the language as if you were an already experienced programmer. I find that approach to be a bit refreshing from the standard explain a bit about a subject, show the code move on approach to writing these types of books.

Of all the chapters that I found to be particularly good were the chapters on Generics and Delegates. Generics are still a new subject for me and any new insights I can get on how this is supposed to help is much appreciated! The material in that chapter I believe to be worth the price of the book alone.

To give you a listing of what is in store if you should buy this book here is a listing of the table of contents.

Chapter 1 – C# Preview

Chapter 2 – C# and the CLR

Chapter 3 – C# Syntax Overview

Chapter 4 – Classes, Structs and Objects

Chapter 5 – Interfaces and Contracts

Chapter 6 – Overloading Operators

Chapter 7 – Exception Handling and Exception Safety

Chapter 8 – Working with Strings

Chapter 9 – Arrays, Collection Types, and Iterators

Chapter 10 – Delegates, Anonymous Functions and Events

Chapter 11 – Generics

Chapter 12 – Threading in C#

Chapter 13 – In Search of Canonical Forms

The final chapter of this book, chapter 13, was particularly good in defining some of the best practices when designing and building software. The revelations that this chapter showed me I believe in the long run will help me to be a better developer. Now I do not necessarily agree with all of the best practices outlined in this chapter I will give it some thought when designing software in the future.

Personally I would recommend this book for anyone wanting to get into writing C# programs rapidly. This book is however designed for an experienced developer and I would recommend if you are new to programming that you shy away from this book to start and then later pick yourself up a copy.

Recently I have been reading some really great tutorials on the Validation Application Block by David Hayden on his blog. For those that do not already know David Hayden is one of the few great bloggers out there that actually create well crafted blog posts that actually help us out. He certainly makes me look bad that is for sure, I have to work much harder to get to his level. Perhaps that is osmething I can work on next year? Perhaps, my friends.

This is what he has written about so far.

Validation Application Block in Enterprise Library 3.0 - Using Validation Facade Class - Part I

Validation Application Block in Enterprise Library 3.0 - ValidationFactory Class - Part II

Validation Application Block Ruleset in Enterprise Library 3.0 - Enterprise Library 3.0 Tutorials - Part III

Validation Application Block - Rules in External XML Configuration File - App.Config Web.Config - Enterprise Library 3.0 - Part IV

Validation Application Block - Business Layer and Data Access Layer Integration - Part V

If it were not for David Hayden's efforts I am sure many would be blind as to how to proceed in utilizing this tool that Microsoft has provided. Good work as always David!

Well I guess many of have heard already that Internet Explorer version 7 is soon to be available as a priority download to all Windows XP users. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Personally I believe that this is a very good thing as Internet Explorer 7 is supposed to drastically increase the level of secrurity and usability for all. Also the level of compliance to standards is known to be improved on this release IE7 and the level of CSS compliance is quite similiar to the ever so popular Firefox and Mozilla browsers.

One of the best new features of this browser is the integrated RSS capabilities of this browser. Now I am a huge fan of the RSS Bandit aggregator but I would like to try something new. Also the tabs feature is quite nice, especially if you have been used to using Firefox as the functionality is quite similiar.

I believe that this browser will help improve Microsoft's reputation by delievering a high quality, high secure application. Now go update your computer with this new version. I think you may be very pleased.

Just a quick reminder to those that read my blog that we here in Sarasota will be having another meeting for our small but rapidly growing .Net Developer Group. The details are as follows:

November 2006 Meeting:

Introduction to WCF - Windows Communication Framework - by Jeff Barnes (Microsoft) 

Just as a friendly reminder to all those here in Sarasota that we have an upcoming Sarasotadev meeting sponsored by INETA. I recently received a reminder from Stan Schultes reminding the group that Tim Huckaby is coming to give a presentation on Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions and Smart Client Development. It should be an interesting event.

The details I received were the following:

August 2006 SarasotaDev meeting:
Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions and Smart Client Development - by Tim Huckaby

This meeting will be on Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 6pm. Location: Sarasota Community Foundation, located at 2635 Fruitville Rd., Sarasota, FL 34237 (just west of Tuttle on the north side of Fruitville).

This two hour session will overview Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and then Tim shows off his bag of tricks for developing smart client apps. This is a must-see session - Tim is immensely entertaining and knows his stuff like no other...

Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions with InfoPath, WF and SPS V3
In this session you will learn how to build custom workflow solutions with Visual Studio 2005.  You’ll learn how to integrate those workflows into SharePoint, and how to interact with workflows using InfoPath.  This session focuses on the power and developer productivity of workflow solutions built on WF.  WF is a powerful technology and this session will delve into the tips and tricks, positives and negatives when designing and building workflow solutions with WF.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), a platform component and part of the Windows plumbing included with the WinFx runtime, has an extensible programming model and runtime components to make powerful workflow solutions.  Couple WF with the latest version of SharePoint Portal Server (v3.0) Infrastructure and InfoPath Forms backed by managed code and you have quite a powerful set of tools, plumbing and infrastructure to build powerful and scalable workflow solutions with ease. 

This combination of technologies addresses one of the biggest challenges that .NET solution developers face today – workflow.

Smart Client Development
In the second hour, Tim will highlight smart client development by showing a bunch of demos from his developer bag of tricks.

Tim Huckaby is a Microsoft Regional Director and well-known international speaker.

On Tuesday, September 12, 2006 we've got a visit lined up by Microsoft's David McNamee of Tampa, who will talk about the upcoming Microsoft Office 2007 Server System (MOSS).

On Wed, October 11, 2006, we've got another superstar lined up in Miguel Castro, an author, speaker, and independent consultant in the NY/NJ metro area who specializes in building web server controls and .NET applications.

Rory Blyth has put together a nice set of screencasts on how to develop applications on Windows Mobile 5.0. These screencasts cover the whole range of topics that you would need in order to get started developing on this platform. I have personally viewed several of these screencasts and the quality of their presentation is what you would expect from Rory - meaning quite darn good.

You can catch all of these screencasts that are uploaded to Channel9 through the following links.

• An Introduction To Windows Mobile Development
• Building a Simple Web Browser With the .NET CF 2.0
• A Simple Data Driven Windows Mobile App Using SQL Server Mobile
• Data Synching: Part One
• Data Synching: Part Two
• Windows Mobile 5.0: State Notification API
• Windows Mobile 5.0: Pocket Outlook Object Model
• Windows Mobile 5.0: Camera API

I can only hope in the future deliever the same amount of material at the same level as Rory. He sets the bar for us all.

Perhaps you may have noticed that none of my posts actually ever contain any code. The reason is simple I have never found a nice way of posting code on my blog without it looking like crap. However I believe there may be a solution to my problem. You see there is this guy named Noah Coad who developed a way for all of us to create well formated code in our blog posts.

Basically what Noah did was create a Word Macro that will automatically format code pasted into the clipboard that you then want to place into Word and then from Word you place into whatever blog engine you desire. Now I have to admit I have not actually tried these macros out but I can assure you that his code on his blog looks pretty darn good to me so I am willing to try it.

Find out more details on how Noah Coad places well formated code on his blog by going here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/noahc/archive/2006/07/06/658458.aspx

Later on I will attempt to have more in depth postings using this template. Hope this helps someone out there.

I recently came across Matt Hester's blog. Turns out he has some really great performance tips for improving Virtual PC. Some of these tips I would have never thought of had he not blogged about it.

The tips come in a three part series with the first part here.

http://blogs.technet.com/matthewms/archive/2005/09/09/410546.aspx

The second part of the three part series is here.

http://blogs.technet.com/matthewms/archive/2005/09/23/411478.aspx

The third part of the three part series is here.

http://blogs.technet.com/matthewms/archive/2005/10/07/412159.aspx

With those blog posts you should have Virtual PC running quite smoothly and fully optimized so as to not hang during a crucial presentation or developing the next big thing. Hope this helps.

I am sure many of you who read my blog are already aware of Microsoft releasing Virtual PC for free today. This is great news as it will allow me to beta test products I have been very wary to do so because I did not to ruin my production machine. However, I have also found out that VMWare has also released their VMWare Server for free today as well. This is beginning to look a lot like the browser wars of the mid 90's.

You can download the Microsoft Virtual PC here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D58729D-DFA8-40BF-AFAF-20BCB7F01CD1&displaylang=en

You can find out more information about the VMWare Server release here.

http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/server.html

You can download VMWare server here.

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

What does this mean to you and me? A whole lot as the cost of hardware is relatively cheap and now you can fully use all your resources of each server. I know of several very large companies that run their production web servers on VMWare servers, I am not going to tell you who as that could be a potential security breach for them. However though this does tell you the robustness of these products.

Have you ever wondered how to integrate the LLBGenPro with ASP.Net 2.0? Do you need an easy to use walkthrough that demonstrates how to do just that? Well you are now in luck as Frank Bouma, the inventor of LLBGen Pro, has done exactly that.

You can find details here.

Now what would be cool is the Atlas functionality can be integrated into these examples so as to really demonstrate a powerful web application example. Just a thought. I am sure someone is working on such a thing right now.

Even though the Atlas toolkit is still in CTP, that is beta for the rest of us, there is a Automation Test Harness released to make testing your web applications just that much easier.

You can download the Atlas Toolkit here.

You can out how to test the toolkit thorugh Shawn Burke's Blog here.

And finally you can visit the Codeplex Atlas Control Toolkit page here.

I am really looking forward to the enhanced functionality provided by the atlas framework. Personally I have always felt that web applications have been lacking. This framework solves the problem.

I have recently became a fairly avid user of the CSLA.Net framework by Rocky Lhotka. I find that the framework fills in some of the gaps that I need when I am developing applications. Since I am somewhat new to this framework I am just happy as all get out that there is a new forum where I can ask questions regarding this piece of code.

The forum can be reached here:

http://forums.lhotka.net/

It is powered by Community Server which is also something I am a bit of a fan of as I hope to eventually start a community based programming site with it when I get the time.

So if you have any questions regarding this particular framework and how it may be able to help you or at least clarify some issues that was not covered in the books then this is the place for you.

Just a short note right now I guess.

I recently subscribed to Scott Guthries blog. I am really glad I did! You see it was Scott that informed me of the article on how to integrate credit card processing into a ASP.Net application. You can read the article here.

http://www.west-wind.com/presentations/aspnetecommerce/aspnetecommerce.asp

Also today was another good day in that Scott informed his readers that the ASP.Net Provider model source code is open to the public.  This is great news on those that want to see the inner workings of the new way ASP.Net 2.0 handles things like Membership, Roles and Sitemap among many others. You can find the blog post on this subject here.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/04/13/442772.aspx

If you have not subscribed to this blog and are only slightly interested in ASP.Net or .Net Programming then you should do so pretty soon. The informaton that Scott conveys in his blog is a lifesaver.

Also from Stan Schultes is a note that Russ Fustino our local Developer Community Champion is going to present. Be sure to attend this one as our low attendence in the past has forced Microsoft to cancel regular meetings in this area. We need to show them that there is a market here for these MSDN presentations. The details is as follows:

Coming on May 9: Russ Fustino, our Microsoft Developer Community Champion, returns with an MSDN session in his famous Russ' Tool Shed series. Please make an effort to attend this (and the morning TechNet session). If our attendance is high, they come back. If they don't get enough audience, well, you know what happens :)

The MSDN session (for developers) from 1-5pm (event code: 1032291809) has the following topics:

• Create customizable user interfaces with web parts and ASP.NET 2.0
• Language enhancements in .NET Framework 2.0
• Exploring Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0

The TechNet session (for IT pros) from 8am-noon (event code: 1032291919) has the following topics:

• Implementing security for wireless networks
• Responding to computer attacks
• What's next for Microsoft security?

Since both subjects should be of an interest to a developer you could make a whole day out of this!

I got a note from Stan Schultes that our next Sarasotadev meeting will be April 17th, 2006. The meeting details is as follows:

Note the choice of next Monday for our April meeting - it's a bit unusual for us (although we don't have a set day of the month for our regular meetings). Turns out this is the only day the facility is available at no cost to us in the middle two weeks of April (thanks to the Sarasota Community Foundation, and Van & Jody Vangor!).

April 2006 SarasotaDev meeting:

Hands-on sessions - by our own Dave Hayden. Dave's a top-notch, hands-on kind of guy, so these are very practical talks. I've seen both - and they really kick:

• SQL 2005 - native web services, SQL SMO, CLR integration, new XML datatype
• Enterprise Library 2.0 - Applying the Data and Logging Application Blocks

This meeting will be on Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 6pm. Location: Sarasota Community Foundation, located at 2635 Fruitville Rd., Sarasota, FL 34237 (just west of Tuttle on the north side of Fruitville).

In the SQL 2005 session:

• Learn how to expose and consume your stored procedures as XML web services without using IIS.
• Understand the basics of creating and deploying CLR database objects, like stored procedures, user defined functions, and triggers.
• Use SQL Server Management Objects with C# to create database objects, script objects, and transfer database schema and data.
• Leverage schemas and XQuery with the new XML Datatype for validating and querying XML.

In the Enterprise Library session:
Leverage the application blocks in Enterprise Library 2.0 to more quickly create patterns-based, extensible applications in a consistent manner. Learn about the most popular application blocks (Data Access and Logging) in Enterprise Library 2.0 and how to use them in your applications.

Dave is a Sarasota-based consultant and a Microsoft MVP in C#. Find his excellent tech blog here:  http://davidhayden.com/blog/dave.

Seems like it is going to be a fairly good meeting. Be sure to attend if you have the time.

I just got a note from Scott Spradlin of INETA who informed me of some really great webcasts that INETA is holding in cooperation with Microsoft. This is a really great way to learn about the products from those that actually made them.

Some of the sessions are as follows:

• April 12, Crossbow - Building WPF and Windows Forms hybrid applications
• April 20, Essential Tips and Tricks for .NET Compact Framework Application Developers
• April 26, Improving your web application's user experience with Atlas
• May 4, IIS 7.0 as a development platform
• May 11, Using Cider to build WPF applications
• May 17, Using ASP.NET 2.0 and SharePoint together
• May 23, An Introduction to WinFX AddIns

You can register for these sessions at live.ineta.org. Hope you found this brief note useful.

Just a quick note that since Rocky Lhotka has sent his book off to publishing you can now get the source code for the next version of CSLA.Net 2.0 from his website. This is good news for all those using .Net 2.0. I have not yet had the chance to download and inspect it yet, because I am writing this blog post instead! <G>

You can find the code here.

When the book comes available I am sure there will be a much better explaination of how and why we should use this code framework. Enjoy!

I have some free DotNetNuke skins for all to download and use if they wish. I have a total of four skins with different color layouts. You are free to modify, alter or improve on these skins as much as you want. Furthermore there is no restriction as to how many computers you can run these skins on.

You can find them on my main personal website here. Enjoy! I will be back later with some more tutorials and other information as soon as I am done creating it. Thanks for reading!

Recently I have come across some very good resources for those that want to learn the ins and outs of ASP.Net 2.0 but do not have the time to attend a class or learn it on their own. The ASP.Net team has a series of “How do I” tutorials that covers many topics with  more topics on the way.

The topics covered are:

• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Caching (Part 1)
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Caching (Part 2)
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Create a Full-Featured Customer Login Portal
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Data
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Form Building for a "Contact Us" Page
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Localization
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Master Pages and Site Navigation
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Membership and Roles
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Profiles and Themes
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Tips and Tricks
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Web Parts and Personalization

Also, there is the ASP.Net webcast series of videos that aid in the transition from PHP, JSP and ColdFusion to ASP.Net 2.0 so if you are coming from a different language altogether this might be the way for you. This can be found here.

http://www.learn2asp.net/campaign.aspx

Now with those webcasts there is a bonus where you can obtain Visual Studio 2005 standard after watching just three webcasts. What a deal. Now you have no excuse not to learn ASP.Net 2.0.

Microsoft recently prematurely posted the potential names for their upcoming operating system, Vista. As reported by EntMag.com, they later retracted and stated that the names were posted on the Vista help system as a merely a test.

The names included on that page were the following:

• Windows Starter 2007
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

Now I have to seriously wonder if Microsoft really needs 6 different SKU’s for this operating system. I thought the whole idea was to make things a bit simpler and not more complicated. Is this not simply going to cause confusion among the general population if there are so many versions of the same operating system in the market? One has to wonder if this course of action is truly a good idea. Just my two cents.

Rapid Module Development for DotNetNuke

I came across this really great article by Mark Hoskins on the use of various code generation tools to rapidly build modules for the DotNetNuke platform. Mark does a really great job on explaining how he goes about using these tools to develop his modules in a much shorter time frame.

You can read it here.

http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/180968.htm

Microsoft has just released some details on the upcoming version of their Office product, formerly known as “Office 12.” It is now known officially as Microsoft Office 2007. Personally I am really looking forward to some of the improvements in this Office suite. These features include an improvement to the email management, a new user interface and improved collaboration tools through the use of the Groove technology that Microsoft recently bought.

Of all the improvements that I believe that will make the most difference in an enterprise are the work flow management and the improvement in collaboration.  As I am not specifically beta testing this program I can not really speak as to these improvements.

As it turns out a story like this has also hit the web and I have assembled some of the more notable links on the web. These are:

FAQ: Looking into Office 12

Microsoft offers peak at next Office suite.

Microsoft announces Office 2007 pricing, details

Does Microsoft Office 12 equal Office 2007

I am sure that there will be more details coming down the pipeline as now that the official product has been announced. Basically the questions out there are more to deal with how Microsoft will directly integrate Sharepoint into the Office suite. Hopefully I will not keep my expectations too high so as to not be disappointed by what I expect the end product to be.

Publishing documents on the World Wide Web can seem daunting for the self proclaimed ludites out there. Let's face it HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript to name just a few of the technologies that you would need to be familiar with in order to develop a truly professional looking website for yourself or your business. Fortunately there is a solution to the problem, it is called a content management system and it is an easier way for just about anyone willing to learn to publish to the Internet.

Some of these content management systems have stemmed from the need of publishing data to the web. CNet for example created one of their own in house content management systems which they later spun off into a separate company called Vignette. Since publishing to the web began to take off in 1995 the development of these systems has really begun to progress. However my focus will be only on open source versions of the web content management systems.

The first open source system that I want to mention is called DotNetNuke (http://www.dotnetnuke.com) which is a AsP.Net based system. By far one of the more popular open source projects out there today DotNetNuke has an avid following of hundreds of thousands of users. The benefits of using this system is the rapid updates to the platform and the intense support you will receive from it community. These are two very important factors when considering an open source system, the level of updates and the support you will receive from its creators or users of the platform. Further the innovations that are built into this system make it one powerful application by any measure. For instance the skinning mechanism is by far one of the easiest to modify and customize and the scheduling processor reduces some of the more mundane tasks of maintaining any website.

However DotNetNuke does not come without any drawbacks. Since this system was eveloped in ASP.Net this means that you will need at least Visual Studio 2003 Professional or greater in order to truly modify the source and customize the system as you see fit. This can be a serious drawback as the cost of this development platform can run into the hundreds of dollars.

The second open source system that I have some experience in using is called AXCMS.Net (http://www.axcms.net) which is again built upon the .Net platform. This system is as feature rich as other open source systems such as DotNetNuke. However, this system has some definite drawbacks. First is its somewhat difficult setup and deployment problems that can seriously hinder any project. Also, there does not seem to be as an avid user base as DotNetNuke. However the system is as "solid" a