This week has seen 2 new releases from Microsoft. The first one is a beta of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) with a go-live license. You can get the software and sign up for the go-live license from a page on the WinFX delveloper center. There is also an interview with Ari Bixhorn on the Microsoft Press Pass site that explains a little about what WinFX means.

If you are planning on doing any defelopment for the Microsoft platform in the long term future then it would be good to start getting familiar with the WinFX development platform. You don't need to sign the go-live license and start deploying your applications today but at some time in the future you will probably have to make the move to WinFX so it would be best to learn a little today so you can "future proof" your applications and avoid major rewrites somewhere down the line.

The second release was Enterprise Library 2.0. You can download it from MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/library/en-us/dnpag2/html/EntLib2.asp. A lot of work has gone into the Enterprise Library to make it useful and easy to use. Just remember that once you start using it, it is your code and you will have to be responsible for making sure that any bugs are fixed in your applications. I have used the application blocks in some projects and they have saved a lot of time but I have also had one bug in the configuration management application management block from several years ago that made me have to turn off caching of the configuration information in December or get errors about invalid dates. I found a fix for the problem out on the Internet and patched all my code but just this last December I found where someone else on the team didn't get the patched code and we had some problems in the first days of the month until the problem was caught and fixed. In any case the blocks have saved me a lot of time so I will definetly be looking into using them.

While looking at an exception that is being thrown in Visual Studio 2005's popup window for exceptions I got the following error:

ContextSwitchDeadlock was detected
Message: The CLR has been unable to transition from COM context 0x1a09c0 to COM context 0x1a0b30 for 60 seconds. The thread that owns the destination context/apartment is most likely either doing a non pumping wait or processing a very long running operation without pumping Windows messages. This situation generally has a negative performance impact and may even lead to the application becoming non responsive or memory usage accumulating continually over time. To avoid this problem, all single threaded apartment (STA) threads should use pumping wait primitives (such as CoWaitForMultipleHandles) and routinely pump messages during long running operations.

The link for more help took me into the topic on Diagnosing Errors with Managed Debug Assistants. The link is ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.VisualStudio.v80.en/dv_fxdebug/html/76994ee6-9fa9-4059-b813-26578d24427c.htm in my help file. I didn't even know that these things exist. That is one of the cool things about the .NET Framework, there are so many things provided for you that are so useful that each day is an adventure.

   I just fininshed an article titles Introduction to SQL Server 2005 Service Broker for the .NET Developers Journal. It is a high level overview of the architecture of Service Broker as well as the uses of the technology. Once it is published I will post a link here.

Read below for details on this new conference:

Microsoft invites you to MIX, our 72 hour conversation live in Vegas, to discuss with industry leaders such as yourself high-fidelity commerce, media, services and security for the World Wide Web.  Join Bill Gates of Microsoft, Amazon, and web thought leaders such as Tim O’Reilly on March 20-22 at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas to learn about the web’s next generation of content and commerce, plus the customer experience that is beyond the browser.  Registration is open!  www.mix06.com

 

The MIX conference is a LIVE conversation between web developers, designers and business leaders who create consumer-oriented web sites. Why is it called MIX?  The event is not only a place where you can Meet, Interact, and eXplore with Microsoft and others about the web, but we are MIXing things up by having a conference for tech geeks as well as business professionals who help make decisions about technologies and strategies for your company’s customer facing web sites.  When you attend MIX you’ll hear about Microsoft’s roadmap for the web, and learn the latest about IE7, Windows Media, Windows Live!, as well as “Atlas”, Microsoft’s new AJAX framework.  Register today and take advantage of the low price of $995, as well as the discounted conference hotel rate.

 

At MIX: 

 

Developers can dive deep into the latest Microsoft web technologies, including Internet Explorer 7, Atlas/AJAX, ASP.NET, InfoCard, the Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Media and others. Want to learn how to code pages for IE7 that render properly in other popular browsers? Interested in building AJAX sites quickly and efficiently?

 

Designers can learn how Microsoft’s platform technologies will allow them to create rich experiences that incorporate video, advanced typography, vector graphics, and 3D graphics. Explore new ways to differentiate your sites from those of your competitors, learn how to streamline the designer-developer pipeline and discuss strategies for improving your site’s usability.

 

Business Decision Makers will get a solid overview of how Windows Vista and the Internet Explorer roadmap can boost site revenues and unlock new business opportunities. Get the latest Vista and IE7 forecasts from Microsoft, discuss the business implications of RSS and pick up insights on how to better monetize your offerings.

 

What kind of content will be offered at MIX?  Sessions at MIX will be focused on two main scenarios that will help you stay on the cutting edge of technology, while at the same time enable you to further monetize your web offerings! 

 

Next Generation Content & Commerce

 

A plain old HTML experience is no longer good enough for your most frequent (and most valuable) users—AJAX is setting new standards for responsiveness and usability, visitors are expecting increasingly-sophisticated customization and personalization options, and rich media integration is unlocking new revenue streams. But building these richer sites can be difficult and expensive.

 

Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch (General Manager, Internet Explorer team) hosts this exploration of how technologies like IE7, “Atlas” (Microsoft’s new AJAX framework), Windows Live!, the Windows Presentation Foundation and InfoCard can take your browser-based content and commerce experiences to another level and increase earnings, while minimizing development and maintenance costs.

 

User Experience Beyond the Browser

 

As web-based content and services become increasingly indispensable, users are expecting to interact with your offerings in new ways and in new locations.

 

Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore (Vice President, eHome division) hosts this overview of your options for boosting revenues by building “sticky” experiences that follow the user outside the browser, into the living room and on the go. Some of the specific technologies that will be discussed include: RSS, the Windows Sidebar, Office 12, Windows Mobile and Windows Media Center/Xbox 360.

 

You can view the MIX agenda and top session list at www.mix06.com.  You can also subscribe to the MIX blog to get our regular updates and find out what is new and hot with MIX. 

 

The MIX conference is $995 and registration is open – be sure to sign up today to take advantage of the low hotel conference rate at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas.

 

See you in March in Vegas! 

www.mix06.com

Just days after the release of Visual Studio 2005 I got an e-mail asking for information on best practices for Visual Studio 2005. I promptly ignored it since I tend to think of best practices as something that are built up over time and come from experience. Since there had not been enough time to come up with any new best practices I didn't have anything new to add to the discussion.

Today, while surfing I came across this article on CodeProject about the decorator design pattern. I look at design patterns as an abstract best practice. They are an accumulation of knowledge that says when presented in the past with a problem that looks like this, the following solution(s) proved valuable. I am always trying to improve my coding skills so I am interested in design patterns. I read once that there are 3 types of people when it comes to design patterns. 1. Those who don't know about them. 2. Those who know about them but don't know when or how to use them. 3. Those who use design patterns all of the time. I am afraid that for many design patterns I fall into category 2. I am still waiting for the "aha" moment when I look at a problem and can recognize it as one that a design pattern that I know will fix. In most cases I kind of just stumble onto the design pattern because I have read about it and use it because the solution has stuck in the back of my head.

I think overall the article is good, but it has the same problem that a lot of the articles and books on design patterns have; it doesn't do a good job of explaining the problem and when/how to apply the pattern. The comments offer an alternative way to solve the problem that is shown in the article but even then there is no discussion of the pros and cons of each approach other than a personal bias.

I realize that writing articles is difficult and that it is especially difficult to anticipate every question and circumstance that might come up for the readers of the article but some days I wish I could read the article that would give me the knowledge I need on how to always apply design patterns. Oh well, maybe some time in the future when books are adaptive or I become smarter, whichever comes first :) 

I just saw this a message in my inbox on the patch. I have copied out part of the message. I have not downloaded or tested the patch but I plan on looking at it later tonight or tomorrow.

Important Information for Thursday 5 January 2006

Microsoft announced that it would release a security update to help
protect customers from exploitations of a vulnerability in the Windows
Meta File (WMF) area of code in the Windows operating system on Tuesday,
January 2, 2006, in response to malicious and criminal attacks on
computer users that were discovered last week.
 
Microsoft will release the update today on Thursday, January 5, 2006,
earlier than planned.

Microsoft originally planned to release the update on Tuesday, January
10, 2006 as part of its regular monthly release of security bulletins,
once testing for quality and application compatibility was complete.
However, testing has been completed earlier than anticipated and the
update is ready for release.

In addition, Microsoft is releasing the update early in response to
strong customer sentiment that the release should be made available as
soon as possible.

Microsoft's monitoring of attack data continues to indicate that the
attacks are limited and are being mitigated both by Microsoft's efforts
to shut down malicious Web sites and with up-to-date signatures form
anti-virus companies.

The security update will be available at 2:00 pm PT as MS06-001.

Enterprise customers who are using Windows Server Update Services will
receive the update automatically.  In additional the update is supported
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.0, Systems Management Server, and
Software Update Services.  Enterprise customers can also manually
download the update from the Download Center.

I walked into work this morning and flipped the lights on like I normally do. No I am not the first one into the office just the one who can't stand to work in the dark (litterally and figuratively). I was met with the usual "we knew it was you because someone turned on the lights" and "Owwww, the light hurts my eyes" type comments. I unfortunately didn't handle it all that well and let someone have it about how working in a dark room causes me to have headaches so if they would be so kind as to let me work from home or in an office where I could turn on the lights I would be more than happy to leave the lights off for the rest of them.

While I didn't handle the situation well at all, it did bring to mind something that I have been thinking about a little lately. You see, I have noticed more and more the "mood music" at various places. I noticed it at the skating rink when I went ice skating with my family. Mostly because I would catch brief bits of songs amongst all the screaming and crashing. I would mostly find myself thinking that I am either too old or too young because I didn't recognize the song. Later at a movie theater I noticed that they had some music going before the start of the movie. That started me thinking about my work environment.

I generally work in a cubicle farm with all the attendant distractions as other people carry on phone conversations, talk about what they did in World of Warcraft the night before or what they plan on doing at lunch that day, or whatever else is going on in their lives. There is rearely a moment when there is comlete silence. I went out and bought a pair of noise cancelling headphones to allow me to concentrate on what I am doing when I need to. I have already mentioned the fact that I can't stand to work in a darkened room with a bright monitor. Another requirement is that the room be a comfortable temperature. That is a hard one since just about everyone seems to have a different idea of what a comfortable temperature is. I find that I tend to be cold when others are comfortable so I almost always have a sweater at hand so I can regulate my own temperature. Other than that, a glass of water and a window to look out occasionaly when I need to take a break and I think I could be happy working just about anywhere. I do have to admit I like working at home because I can control all of the aspects better than in a shared office. Unfortunately I don't get the opportunity as often as I would like.

So, what is your idea of the ideal work environment?

Here it is in the waning hours of 2005 and I haven't put together my predictions for 2006 yet. Considering how badly I did predicting 2005 maybe I should stay out of the prognostication game. In any case 2005 has been a very good year for me and my family. We have been blessed to be healthy and prosper. I know a lot of people who suffered through and are still sufferning from hurricanes, floods, fires, and all sorts of other natural and man made disasters can not say the same thing. It is my hope that 2006 will bring to you and yours health and happiness.