Visual Studio 2005
Visual Studio 2005
Since I joined Microsoft Belux last year I've been thinking about moving my blog to MSDN. But ever since I didn't really saw the added value of moving my blog as both sites are using the same platform:
CommunityServer. But since a couple of weeks I've heard a lot of very positive feedback on the recently deployed 2.0 version of
CommunityServer that powers the
MSDN and
TechNet blogger sites. So far the experience is far better than on DonNetJunkies. Today I finally decided to move my blog to
http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/. I want to thank
Donny for hosting my blog since August 2004.
So please subscribe to my new blog on the MSDN blogs:
Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you will continue to do so at http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/default.aspx!
When talking to developers using Visual Studio 2005 for more than 6 months I got lots of feedback, both positive and negative. When I ask for the negative points - or better, the points that needs improvement - it looks some of them are "just bugs" or open/known issues (TFS related). Now I just came accross this "Servicing" page on MSDN. This page will provide more more information about upcoming and already shipped Visual Studio and .NET Framework software updates. On top of that it will also provide additional background, guidance, and transparency around the servicing process and how it affects you. Check their blog at DDCPX Team Blog and watch this space for availability of the SP1 of Visual Studio 2005 in Q3 of CY2006.
The Servicing page also layouts the roadmap:
The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 will focus on addressing product issues reported during the first few months the product is in the market. The types of fixes you can expect to find in this service pack follow the same general guidelines we have used previously, with the notable addition of feedback received from customers via the Product Feedback Center, which was introduced first in the Visual Studio 2005 product cycle. Thus, the types of fixes you can expect to find in this service pack are:
- The Hotfixes and General Distribution Release Updates (GDRs) released between RTM and the end of the Service Pack customer beta period.
- Any fixes addressing security issues categorized as MSRC "Critical", "Important" or "Moderate".
- Fixes for product reliability and stability issues, including those reported by customers via the Product Feedback Center, and the crashes most frequently reported via Watson.
- Fixes for common "eligible" functional issues reported by customers via the Product Feedback Center. "Eligible" functional issues are those that do not require breaking changes, architectural changes, or Design Change Request (DCR) level feature work, and that do not create unacceptable product quality risk and/or cost of implementation.
- Fixes for the top customer and supportability issues as reported by PSS.
The goal of all of our Service Packs is to increase the overall quality of the existing product features while maintaining a high level of compatibility.
This service pack is currently targeted for final release in Q3 of 2006. A more detailed schedule of external interim milestones (e.g. customer beta period) will be posted when it has been finalized.
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!
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!
The case-studies that we leveraged during our Belgian Launch Event of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 are available on-line. Check them out at http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/events/ready/casestudies.aspx
AlfaPrint
AlfaPrint started up as a DTP-bureau ten years ago, but devotes itself today entirely to software. AlfaPrint has carved out a strong position in the international market with its own ADAM software (active digital asset management).
AlfaPrint started using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 to convert the ADAM software to .NET Framework 2.0. The converted version of the ADAM software will integrate well with the new functionality offered by Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
Read AlfaPrint's case study
DLV
DLV is part of the DLV Advisory Group, an international network of about 400 specialists that provides services and gives advice to agricultural and related sectors.
In 2002, Microsoft partner Dolmen developed a tailor-made application. Dolmen converted the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 into an Microsoft SQL Server 2005 without a hitch and used the new features to do so.
Read DLV's case study
Nuon
Since the liberalisation of the energy market in 2003 Nuon has been active in Belgium as a supplier of energy to homes and businesses. It currently has 400.000 electricity and gas connections in Flanders.
Based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005's business intelligence module the diagnostic software 'Dr. Nuon' was developed. It compares information from the different sources with each other.
Read Nuon's case study
ProTime
Protime is a leading developer of time registration software. Protime was established in 1995 and has approximately 50 employees.
Protime joined the Microsoft Ascend programme and more than six months prior to the launch started working with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Protime build the team planning application entirely with Visual Studio 2005. The ProTeam software was build according to the smart client principle and uses the '1 click' installation principle.
Read Protime's case study
Solvay
Solvay, an international chemical and pharmaceutical Belgian group employs 30.000 people in 50 countries and in 2004 achieved turnover of 7.9 billion €.
With the support of Microsoft and EZOS, the SQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle (SSMA) made light work of migration the existing database, both data and procedures, to Microsoft SQL Server.
Read Solvay's case study
Thanks to the hard work of the Patterns & Practices Team the November CTP of Enterprise Library for the .NET Framework 2.0 is available on GotDotNet: http://practices.gotdotnet.com/projects/entlib.
Things you need to know:
- This build now runs against RTM bits of Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 (woohoo!)
- While much more complete than the last CTP, there are still a couple of things that aren’t done in this release. Most significantly this includes the Configuration Tool , and the Cryptography Application Block.
- This build has undergone a lot of functional, performance and security testing, but we’ll continue to do more testing after the CTP and you should understand it won’t be as high quality as the final release. It’s definitely good enough quality to start development.
Make sure to c