DevCan 2004

I'm co-chairing two tracks of DevCan coming up in Setp/Oct in Vancover/Toronto (exact dates to follow) - see www.devcan.com for more.

I'm doing the architect track and web track. If you have ideas for content you'd like to see, or have a topic you'd like to present in either of those categories, send them to me. You don't have to be canadian, but it helps :)

New Service Packs for 1.0 & 1.1 .NET Frameworks imminent

.NET Framework 1.0 SP3 and 1.1 SP1 are in tech preview at the moment. Had a nagging bug and want to know if it's fixed?

The contents & links to Tech Preview Downloads can be found here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/downloads/updates/sptechpreview/default.aspx

 

BizTalk 2004: New Training Course for Developers

We now have a course available for BizTalk 2004 in our Toronto office. I get so many of these requests about BTS2K4 these days. Matt Meleski, who is our BTS guru is teaching the first one on July 5th. Matt's been using BTS 2004 right throughout the beta.  BTS has improved dramatically over 2002, it's quite amazing. I hope I have a chance to sit in on part of it.

TechEd 2004 Sesion Slides & Videos Available Online to Public

The site doesn't yet contain everything but things are trickling in.

http://microsoft.sitestream.com/TechEd2004/

Smart Client Deep Dive

Myself and Adam Gallant delivered an MSDN Deep Dive last week about developing Smart Client applications. I covered the overview & secure data access sections. The samples and IssueVision (1.0 C# & VB) along with the slides are available over here. Thanks to those who came out.

Update: If you want to take advantage of getting this stuff (and more) on the DevDays CD, you can fill in the form here.

SOA Challenges: Entity Aggregation

Ramkumar Kothandaraman has a good article just released on MSDN discussing SOA Challenges: Entity Aggregation. Aggregation is a much better name than “composable entities“ since it's definition implies that property sets of an entity grow as more child entities are merged into it. This also implies that you need a mapping layer and conflict resolution to resolve duplicate property names or just rename them for that matter.

This is becoming an important technique for passing xml documents up the stack of web services, each one adding their own value to the entity - or aggregating in a master/slave hierarchy topology. Either way, one of the subtle things about entity aggregation is that you can also think of it as a lightweight form of multiple inheritance for the properties of your domain objects. Is that useful or am I just bent?

Layered Design and DataSets for Dummies

Scott Hanselman does a nice 30 second intro into layered design. If any of this is new to you, run quickly to read this.

Scott does a quick bash at Datasets (although doesn't say why) and in my new role as DataSet boy I have to disagree with him and evangelize how simple datasets can make a lot of the code written by the typical programmer: CRUD stuff for example. He even mentions “Adapter“ in describing a data access layer - come on, use the DataAdapter - don't be afraid. In general, if anybody tells you to never do something, you need to question that a bit and dig into the reasons why a technology exists. Of course things may just end up being rude and the answer is indeed never - but always try and get the why.

We've been running a developer contest at the end of some of our training courses (the big 3 week immersion ones). The competition has developers build a solution build on a services oriented architecture which includes smart client, web services, enterprise services/com+ and of course data access. It's only a 1 day event, but the teams are built up of 5-6 people each. Inevitably, if one team decides to use datasets/dataadapters and the other team doesn't, the team that choose the dataset wins. This competition isn't judged or skewed for datasets by any means. But inevitably this is the thing that gives the other team more time to work on the interesting pieces of the application (like business logic: features and functions).

I over heard Harry Pierson tell a customer last week that they shouldn't use datasets in a web service because they aren't compatible with non .NET platforms. This isn't true. A dataset is just XML when you return it out of a dataset. And you probably more control over the format that is generated via the XSD than most people realize. If you want a child table nested, no problem. You want attributes instead of elements, no problem. You want some columns elements and others attributes, no problem. You want/don't want embedded schema, no problem. You don't want the diffgram, no problem. Somebody in the J2EE world has actually gone to the extent of creating a similar type of base object in Java that can deserialize the dataset in most of it's glory. (Link to come - can't find it right now).

In February I posted a “Benefits of Datasets vs. Custom Entities“ which has generated some excellent feedback. It's still in my plans to write the opposite article - when Customer Entities are better than Datasets but I'm still looking for the best template or example entity. Everyone somebody has sent me to date is somewhat lacking. To be fair, I end up always comparing them to a dataset. The things typically missing out of a custom entity are the ability to deal with Null values and the ability to track original values for the purposes of optimistic concurrency. The answer to the question of “When to use a Custom Entity over a Dataset?“ is of course when you don't need all the stuff provided for you by a dataset. So is that typically when you don't care about Null Values or Optimistic Concurrency? Perhaps. But I know there is more to it than that.

I will say there is some crummy binary serialization in the dataset (it's really XML). This is really a problem if you are doing some custom serialization or need to do some .NET remoting. But you can change the way they are serialized (and indeed it's changed in Whidbey). There are some good examples here, here, here, here, here and here.

I'm working on an article making the cases for the custom entity, but in the meantime, datasets represent a good design pattern for entities that is easy and quick to implement by the average developer - and scalable too.

TechEd (Day 3): Hands On Lab Manuals downloads available to the public

No need to have a TechEd commnet password. You can download ALL the pdf's for the plethora of topics. Some good stuff to see how the newly announced stuff (Team System, etc.) works.

Update These links are broken, give this a try: http://www.msteched.com/TechEdLabManuals.aspx

Building Maintainable Applications with Logging and Instrumentation

I'm doing this MSDN webcast in a few weeks

10/05/2004 1:00 PM - 10/05/2004 2:00 PM (EasternTime)

In this session we'll cover the world of logging and instrumenting your application. We'll discuss the various .NET framework components as well as higher level services as provided by the Exception Management Application Block, the Enterprise Instrumentation Framework and the Logging BLock. We'll discuss the various issues with persisting information in file logs, the event log, and WMI Performance Counters. We will also compare other alternative technologies such as log4net. We'll also discuss best practices for loging and instrumenting your application and provide some considerations for when and where it makes good sense to instrument your application from experiences in the field.

Update: The slides, samples and livemeeting recording links can all be found here.

Upstaged by Ballmer

So it would seem I'm upstaged by Steve Ballmer who is coming to town the same day as the CTTDNUG presentation I was making about Whidbey.  So in the interest of the greater good - my talk has been postponed until Mar 31.

The “Ballmer Developer Briefing” is mostly about Security...if that interests you?

What do you mean “IF” - of course that should matter to you. It should matter to everybody. Writing secure code isn't just about logging in you know. It's about keeping your code safe and more importantly your end users machines and data safe and not allowing your software to act as a gaping hole into their system or data be it through spoofing or SQL Injection Attacks. Writing code these days is more of a liability than it ever has and we all have to be responsible - so do yourself and the rest of the world a favour and brush up on your knowledge of security. Either that, or hire a good lawyer.

I'm so convinced this is a an important event (and sorry that I had to cancel my presentation) that ObjectSharp is co-sponsoring a bus for members of the CTTDNUG that will travel to Toronto from Kitchener and back. And for those of you no where near Kitchener? Did I mention that parking is free?

See you there.