David Boschmans' Weblog

Moving my blog to http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/

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:

Blog home: http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/default.aspx
RSS 2.0 Feed: http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/rss.aspx
Atom 1.0 Feed: http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/atom.aspx

Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you will continue to do so at http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/default.aspx!

Origami revealed!

Find out about Origami:

Browse to DigitalKitchen at http://www.d-kitchen.com/launch_center.htm
Click Work
Click BrandTheatre
Click Microsoft Origami and watch

[Via Steven Bink]

Windows Desktop Search Extensibility

The latest version of Windows Desktop Search (WDS) is optimized with features that help the enterprise IT manager easily customize, deploy and manage the installation of desktop search across all users and computers in their organization. Information on using WDS in the enterprise can be found on http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/enterprise/default.mspx.

Since the release of Windows Desktop Search some ISVs have asked questions about the extensibility of WDS. These extensions of WDS are mainly on the UI level and enabling new contents and data sources for search. An example is using WDS for searching content available in a SharePoint site. Some good resources on the extensibility of WDS can be found through the Developer Resources link of the desktop search home page:

MSN Developer Center - The developer center on MSDN that showcases the tools and technologies you can use to develop applications that interact with services and data available only on MSN.
Windows Desktop Search Extensibility for Partners (Beta) (SDK) - Explains the (beta) extensibility options and their implementation.
Add-ins for Windows Desktop Search - Add-ins for Windows Desktop Search allow indexing of even more file types and are automatically detected when downloaded. New file types begin indexing as soon as they are downloaded.
Developer Forum on MSDN Channel 9 - Windows Desktop Search uses plug-ins called Plug-ins that let Windows Desktop Search index new file types. MSN Search Feedback at Channel 9.
Developer Newsgroups - Discussions on MSN Search
IFilter information - How to Write a Filter for Use by SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Other Microsoft Search-Based Products (MSDN Article)

These are some good resources for ISV looking to integrate desktop search results in their own business application by using the desktop search query API.

Crossbow or Windows Forms and WPF Interop

Already heard of "Crossbow"? If not then you might want to check out the MSDN TV Episode on "Crossbow" - Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation Interoperability.

Mike Henderlight introduces the "Crossbow" technology and describes how you can use it to build hybrid Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation applications. The interop from a WPF application using Windows Forms controls is actally realized by referencing the System.Windows.Forms and WindowsFormsIntegration assemblies. Next you create a WindowsFormHost control that allows you to host a Windows Forms control as an element of a Windows Presentation Foundation page. Add a windows forms control (eg. a button) to the hostcontrol and add the hostcontrol to the WPF window. Running this shows a simple windows forms button displayed on a WPF window. All of this can also be done through XAML.
And of course hosting Windows Forms controls from a Windows Presentation Foundation is possible too. This is realized by using the ElementHost class. This class can be used to host a Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code-named "Avalon") element.

The latest version of the WindowsFormsIntegration.dll to use is the one of the Cider drop CTP. From Mike's post you can learn why it's important to pick the right version of the WindowsFormsIntegration.dll.

There's also an article that's worth reading on Windows Presentation Foundation Interoperability in Dr. Dobb's.

Free Second Chance to Pass Your Microsoft Certification Exam

For a limited time, you can get a free second shot at any Microsoft IT Professional, Developer, or Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions) Certification exam. Just register for this offer before your first exam, and you'll get two chances to pass. Regiter now.

More details and a Q&A on this limited offer can be found on https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/wizard.aspx?wizid=30a930e9-bd99-40c6-bfa1-b2dc8929491c&lcid=1033

After you register, you'll be able to take advantage of special training and certification deals offered by our Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions. Their Microsoft Certified Trainers will give you expert training that will help put you on the fast track to increasing your skill set, expanding your knowledge base, and passing your exam.

Offer expires June 30, 2006.

Work in progress - Developer and IT-Pro Days

I'm snowed under with work for our Belgian Developer & IT-Pro Days 2006, so not a lot of blogging or feed reading lately. But the good news is we're on track with the organization and content of the event. All development related sessions are 100% confirmed. All session abstracts (day 1 & day 2) and most speaker bios can be found on-line. Next thing on the agenda is the review of the slide decks and make them available to the attendees. They should be accessible to the attendees by the end of next week.

In the meantime our Belgian webteam has been working hard on publishing two new articles on the local MSDN site.

The first article is authored by Peter Himschoot and covers "C# 3.0 and LINQ".
Anders Hejlsberg, chief designer of C#, unveiled C#’s newest version at PDC2005. Some of the most notable innovations are extension methods, lambda expressions, anonymous types, type inference, and LINQ (.NET Language Integrated Query). In this article we are going to look at these new features of C#, focusing on LINQ.

The second article is written by Jelle Druyts. Jelle covers "The Command Pattern In Windows Presentation Foundation".
Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly codenamed "Avalon"), or WPF for short, is a brand new Microsoft framework for developing very rich and powerful Windows applications. It will ship as part of Windows Vista, the next major version of Windows that will be released in the coming months, but WPF will also be available on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003. There is much to be said about Windows Presentation Foundation and its numerous new and enhanced capabilities, but this article will in stead focus on an old trusted friend, who has finally been given a dedicated room in the big house of Windows User Interface development: the "Command" pattern. This design pattern basically abstracts all actions the user can perform in an application into the notion of "commands"; it has been implemented in many different ways on top of various UI frameworks, but now, it has finally made it into the gut of the system itself. Note that this article is based on a public preview of WPF, so it's possible that there are implementation details that will change over time as the product matures into completion.

Both authors will also be speakers at Developer & IT-Pro Days and when you would have questions for them you will be able to find them in the community area during the breaks.

Arlindo Alves on the blog

Arlindo Alves recently joined our Belgian DPE team as IT-Pro Evangelist. His first job is definitely a hard one: content owner for the IT-Pro related content on Developer & IT-Pro Days 2006.

To reach out to the Belgian IT-Pro community Arlindo decided to start a blog at http://blogs.technet.com/aralves/default.aspx. Oh, btw it looks he's already enjoying the recent update of CommunityServer, which has quite some fixes I've been told. Even the photo galleries seem to be enabled ...

Anyway, subscribed to the RSS feed!

Servicing Visual Studio 2005: Q3 2006

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.

TFS Release Candidate Sign-off

Where earlier this week Soma announced that TFS will ship in March, Jeff Beehler now announces that the .iso images of the Release Candidate build of TFS will be on the MSDN download center next week.

"The CD images have been handed off to the team that handles the uploads to the MSDN download center and according to current estimates, we should have bits available for download sometime on Tuesday, February 7th."

So for the Europeans expect TFS RC to be available on MSDN on February 8th!

TestDriven.NET and Code Coverage for Visual Studio 2005

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!

Team Foundation Server ships in March

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.

TechEd Europe 2006: moved and reformatted

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.

ISV Community Update: Business Intelligence Capabilities of SQL Server 2005

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.

Get the conversation started on the DAM or ADAM Blog

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:

Using Memory Mapped Files in ASP.NET using VB.NET
MemoryMappedCache is a small project can be used to host a proactive loaded cache using a Windows Service.
Exception Handling in C# with the "Do Not Catch Exceptions That You Cannot Handle" rule in mind
Exception handling in C# with the "Do Not Catch Exceptions That You Cannot Handle" rule in mind.

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 Developer Security Resource Kit

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.