October 2005 - Posts
With the availability of the RTM versions of the .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 I decided to install the Team Suite edition natively on my laptop. The uninstall of previous versions and the install of the RTM version went very smooth.
If you have installed previous versions of Visual Studio 2005, such as Beta 1 or Beta 2, make sure to run the auto-uninstall tool. You can of course also manually uninstall without using the tool, but note that you have to uninstall all Visual Studio 2005 product editions before you uninstall the .NET Framework 2.0. The tool will uninstall all pre-release Visual Studio 2005 editions such as Visual Studio Express, Visual Studio Team System, Professional, and Standard edition. More Pre-RTM Uninstall Instructions can be found on http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/uninstall/preRTMuninstall/default.aspx.
Yesterday and today I compiled almost all of my demo projects and samples to the RTM build of the .NET Framework. So far I haven't ran into any big issues. Next projects on the list to be recompiled are the projects with dependencies on Team Foundation Server. It looks like I need the Beta 3 Refresh to get started with that!
In 10 days, on November 7 in San Francisco, Microsoft kicks off the largest worldwide launch tour. This tour launches SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 and provides technical education for developers and database administrators in an environment designed for personal interaction with industry experts. In addition, this event showcases the technical evidence, customer success stories, and partner offerings that demonstrate the business value of these tools.
A couple of days after the worldwide launch in San Francisco, Microsoft Belux has its local launch event.
Date: 10 November
Location: Parc à Mitrailles (Court-Saint-Etienne)
Time: 13h00 - ...
Target Audience: Developers, IT professionals, Database administrators, Web developers, System administrators, System architects, Application architects
Speakers:
- The keynote will be delivered by S. Somasegar - Corporate Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corporation.
- Clemens Vasters - Chief Technology Officer, Newtelligence AG and Microsoft Regional Director for Germany - will give you an insight in the new capabilities of Visual Studio 2005 and Team System.
- Astrid Hackenberg - Trainer and advisor SQL Server, Class-A, and international expert in SQL Server 2005 will present the new SQL Server 2005 capabilities to you
After these expert speakers, we offer a walking dinner and a launch party you shouldn’t miss. As the day after is a public holiday, there is no need to go home early!
During the breaks you will have the opportunity to get answers to all your Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006 questions from experts at the Ask-The-Experts booths.
Note that all attendees will receive a full version of SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition and Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition.
Don't forget to check the Belux Launch Site to make sure you're READY? and for additional details on this event. You can still register at http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/events/ready/howtoregister.aspx
See you there!
Earlier this week Jeff Raikes publicly announced the availability of Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005. The release of BSM 2005 together with the major business intelligence investments in Office 12 will make the BI more accessible to employees and valuable to organizations.
Business Scorecard Manager is a comprehensive scorecard and dashboard application that provides knowledge workers with deep contextual insight into business drivers. Information is delivered in a collaborative environment for effective business management and action in the performance-driven organization.
More in-depth overview of BSM 2005 and its benefits can be found on http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA012225141033.aspx. The press release is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct05/10-23BiLaunchPR.mspx.
Every third Thursday of the month the Belux Information Worker User Group (BIWUG) has its monthly meeting. This week the user group meeting takes place at the Microsoft offices in Diegem and the agenda looks great:
First we will have presentations on probably two of the top SharePoint products today:
Groove Networks, recently bought by Microsoft, is well-known for supporting an off-line story for SharePoint team sites. A local representative will present in 30 minutes what the product is all about, how it relates to SharePoint and what the short-term plans are.
K2.net is well-known for its enterprise workflow product allowing you to build very powerful solutions on top of SharePoint. A representative will demonstrate again in 30 minutes what the product is all about, how you can leverage it within your organization and what the short-term plans are.
Afterwards we will have our usual round-the-table session where we invite you to share experiences with the other BIWUG members on all kind of IW topics.
Following topics will be discussed:
- Doing document management in SharePoint – tips, tricks, resources, tools
- Mapping SharePoint Portal Server and an organization structure
- Corporate policies in SharePoint
- Additional topics initiated during the RTT itself
As usual, we will end the meeting with a drink and some socializing in a local pub. You are of course invited to join that one as well and discuss topics informally with a good pint of beer or a nice glass of wine.
More information on the meeting can be found on the BIWUG site http://www.biwug.be/.
The last couple of weeks I have been asked by a couple of enterprise customers and partners what the short and long term roadmap is for enterprise library. Some of them are actively building a standardized library for reuse in their applications. The good news is that next Thursday October 20 Ron Jacobs, product manager for the patterns & practices group, will be doing a webcast on the futures of Enterpise Library 2.0.
Summary: Enterprise Library for Microsoft .NET 1.x has been a smashing success with two releases and over 150K downloads. The June 2005 release is compatible with Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, but many of you are eagerly awaiting this next release of Enterprise Library which is specifically designed for .NET 2.0. In this webcast, we discuss how Enterprise Library has evolved to a true .NET 2.0 library.
Note that this webcast will also be made available for on-demand viewing approximately 24 hours after the live session is complete.
[Via Christophe Lauer] Microsoft IntelliSense XML Files for Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System Solution Developers
This download adds summary descriptions of types, members, and parameters to IntelliSense ToolTips in code and in the Object Browser for Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, and Microsoft Office 2003 Shared PIAs in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005.
The Microsoft Security Guidance Team has published an article on how to perform a security code review for managed code and more specific for the .NET Framework 2.0.
In 4 steps the activities and techniques for analyzing your results will be covered.
This way a security code review is an effective mechanism for uncovering security issues before testing or deployment begins. Use this activity to review managed code built with the .NET Framework 2.0. Check also the companion question lists to determine if your application is susceptible to the listed security issues. The companion Question Lists are:
For the ones still using the .NET Framework 1.1, check chapter 21 Code Review on Threats and Countermeasures that is part of the Patterns & Practices guidance.
Damir,
INETA President, collected his impressions of the "EMEA @ PDC" trip. For those of us who had not the opportunity to attend PDC, this is your chance to get an idea what you've missed. Collected in a
video. Thanks for sharing Damir!
Jurgen Postelmans has written an interesting post "Integrating COM+ Components with the Windows Communication Foundation ('Indigo')". In this post Jurgen shows that WCF-enabled applications can communicate with legacy systems like COM+ Applications, MSMQ and ASP.NET Web Services. And surely it's also possible to expose WCF services to COM+ client applications!
Note also that he moved his blog to http://www.postelmans.org/blog/default.aspx!
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 3 has a Go-Live License.
More info can be found on http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/golive/ and on Eric Lee's blog.
Last Thursday Microsoft Belux held its annual Partner Conference in Gent. Theme of the conference was "Going Beyond". Most partners I talked to found the conference very successful and interesting.
Bruno Segers, General Manager Microsoft Belux, kicked off the conference with a great keynote on Microsoft history and how Microsoft will evolve in the next years. After some partner testimonials and some video intermezzo the BG's (Business Group Leads) did a great job explaining what partners could expect from the different Microsoft segments. Whether you talk about infrastructure and security solutions (Michael Kögeler), the applications platform (Stefan Lamberigts), information worker or productivity solutions (Carmen Dubois), Microsoft Business Solutions (Philippe Gosseye) or how Windows Vista will bring clarity to your world (Wim Van Winghe), it was all covered in the BG's overview session and more in-depth in the solution tracks afterwards.
The closing keynote was delivered by Vincent Van Quickenborne, State Secretary for Administrative Simplification, covering the Kafka project with some great examples of administrative simplification. After that it was time for a great party!
In the morning - before the official start of the partner conference - Microsoft organized a number of summits (CPLS / ISV / IW). As track owner for the ISV Community Summit I decided to bring some future and current platform and product-related content. The first session was on the future of our platform and how Windows Vista and Office 12 will increase the ISV productivity. Next to that I gave an overview of some of the opportunities that ISV's can benefit from when using Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 as an integrated application platform. To close the ISV summit, an summary was given of the FY06 partner program and how ISVs could handle the changes.
Throughout the day I received a lot of questions on the MSDN Subscriptions and its levels (that are about to change), Visual Basic 6 to VB.NET upgrades, SQL Server 2005 Express and migration from MSDE, ... I'll address these topics in upcoming posts.
Had also a lot of great feedback from the people who attended the IW Community Summit. One of the presentations that were very well appreciated was the BIWUG-session which covered some Office 12 highlights. Good to see that the community was present for the Microsoft partners!
So, overall, great conference, lots of interesting content, a lot of people and a great networking opportunity. Let's go beyond in FY06!
In my role of ISV DE I'm working closely with a number of Belgian ISVs on the adoption of new Microsoft platform technologies. When talking to these ISVs they are always interested in receiving technical information that can help them. And blogs and rss are a very valuable tool for receiving technical information.
Microsoft would not be Microsoft if they hadn't thought about this. So, at PDC this year Microsoft launched the first stage of a new online technical community geared towards Microsoft partners – it’s called ISV Chalk Talk (http://isvchalktalk.com) and is hosted by David Holladay. ISVChalkTalk.com will be used to carry on informal, technical discussions (level 200-500) with our partners and offer a vehicle for interaction and direct feedback from the community.
What is an ISV and what is chalk talk I hear you thinking?
- ISV = Independent Software Vendor. A Microsoft partner.
- Chalk Talk = A discussion about a particular topic, often informal, illustrated with diagrams chalked on a blackboard.
If you're interested in being kept up to date on this, subscribe to the rss feed. If you have a topic that you think should be covered, let us know!
[Via ZDNet] It looks like Microsoft is planning the release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.
Windows XP SP3 will be available sometime next year--after the launch of Windows Vista, which "is the priority for the development teams," according to Microsoft France.
Microsoft has yet to reveal details about the contents of the service pack. Laurent Delaporte of Microsoft France said: "Historically, certain functions of new versions of Windows are integrated in the service packs of previous versions."
Does this mean that the Windows Vista pillars - WPF, WCF and WWF- and other features such as IE 7 will be made available through service pack 3 on XP? And what about integrating these features on Windows Server 2003? To be continued ...
Just came across this excellent article by Brian Johnson "New Security Features in Visual Studio 2005".
It explains how Visual Studio 2005 makes it easier for developers to write secure applications. Write unmanaged code that's safe, or get IDE tools that help you to build and deploy managed applications that take advantage of Code Access Security. A must-read for every Visual Studio 2005 developer!