June 2006 - Posts

• TechEd: Building data-driven applications with Windows Presentation Foundation (DEV338)

  The best technical session I've attended all week.... hands down.  Finally I was shown some real details about the possibilities of the technology and how I can begin using them to make myself more productive right now. The session was focused on utilizing the new capabilities of WPF from a data binding point of view.  The presenter spent the first half of the demonstration showing off all the capabilities while prototyping in XamlPad (included in the latest SDK's), and I must say I was very impressed.  Quick prototyping and styling looks like a breeze, data binding straight forward and simple... all in a light weight utility. The demonstrations bound data from simple object model models, and I was glad to see that I didn't have to see another sample of data bound via a datatable.... real objects.  Separation of your objects and visualization is a breeze with the DataTemplating features. List bindings, and synchronized collection viewing over multiple controls... very sweet... all the messy event firing, event handling, and ui toggling code can almost be completely eliminated!  You have to see the demo.  Built in support for sorting, grouping, and filter on collection views... I like it. Two way data binding (make sure you are implementing the INotifyPropertyChanged Interface on your objects) is yet another very nice feature.   There was much more that I'm sure I've missed.  If you are interested in, playing around with, or are already using WPF... you have to watch the video from this session. Posted Jun 15 2006, 01:19 PM by jvogt with 1 comment(s)

• TechEd: Windows presentation foundation: Creating windows and web applications with WPF

  I haven't spent a lot of time on working with WPF, and I wanted to take this opportunity to get a better feel for what was coming.  The presentation focused on using the WPF API's and Object Model to help you focus on three main areas: Managing your application State management Configuration management Deployment Navigating your application SDI Structured Navigation Hosting your application Windows Web The demonstration was really well done, the presenter took an existing web application http://www.kayak.com/ and used its exposed services to build a better presentation.  No fancy animations, or weird 3D user interfaces... just a better UI focusing on user experience and the capabilities of WPF. The most interesting parts were understanding the navigation model, and getting a better look at the interoperability between the windows and web (XBAP) WPF applications. If this is something you're interested in I would highly suggest taking a look at the presentation or slide deck. Posted Jun 15 2006, 09:51 AM by jvogt with no comments

• TechEd: Be more productive with SQL Server 2005 tools (DAT323)

  One slide, and over an hour worth of demos.  The presentation was mostly aimed at DBA's, and it was evident in the presentation that they've taken all the SQL Server related tools to the next level. All database services are nicely integrated into a single tool leveraging the power of the Visual Studio platform... very nice.  If you are using the XML Data Type, no more frustrations with trying to extract or visualize the xml, because that is built right in via hyperlink and xml editor. Resizable dialogs!  It's about damn time. Fantastic management capabilities that will help you track down, analyze, and fix problems such as blocked/blocking queries, running tasks against multiple SQL Services within a single job, maintenance plan creation/editing/viewing, database tuning advisement, and built database reporting. Many other very cool features demonstrated as well.  To keep up with the lastest from the Microsoft team check out: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlrem   Posted Jun 14 2006, 10:24 AM by jvogt with no comments

• Managing projects with Team Systems (Birds of a Feather)

  Today I attended a birds of a feather session focused on managing projects with team systems.  I went in search of insight on how others are managing projects, using team systems, and reflections from people who are using team systems in the "real world". The converstations were great, and I was amazed by the number of people that have already adopted team systems.  Since the discussion was focused on project management a lot of the talk revolved around integration with MS Project. The general consensus in the room was that companies should take baby steps when introducing team systems and begin the movement from the ground up.  Everyone seemed to agree that the tool was written by developers, for developers... and adoption from others in the company may take longer.  Start with just utilizing the new source code management capabilities, then move onto work items, or tasks, or customizations... whatever it is you want to explore... however diving into the deep end could be too overwhelming for most organizations.  Planning and baby steps seem to be the key with this tool. One interesting insight that came out of the discussion was that time tracking within the team systems was not suggested.  Several people attempted its implementation several times with very limited success.  Sticking with a very simple stand alone time tracking system seemed to be the most useful and effective approach anyone had experienced.  One team was assigning client/job code metadata to work items or tasks within teams systems for simplified time tracking lookups... this might be something to explore. Overall, a very informative and high quality discussion.  Hopefully we can continue the discussion and take steps towards progress internally. Posted Jun 13 2006, 08:11 PM by jvogt with no comments

• TechEd: Creating a baseline architecture for smart client applications (ARC209)

  If you're thinking about creating a smart client application, Microsoft has introduced the Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF) to help you out. During the presentation an overview of the intent of a smart client application was introduced as taking the best features of fat client architectures and the best features of thin client architectures, and merging them together leaving out all the negatives associated with each.  Almost sounds too good to be true huh? Most of this framework magic is accomplished by taking advantage of the Composite UI Application Block (CAB), and the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT).  A significant amount of time during the session was consumed by describing and demonstration these tools.  If you haven't familiarized yourself with these tools already, I urge you to do so now. Overall the presentation was pretty good, and the next time I take on a smart client application, I will definitely be considering using the SCSF as a starting block.  Best part of the presentation was the demonstrated integration with GAT... very cool possibilities. Posted Jun 13 2006, 07:15 PM by jvogt with no comments

• TechEd: Pragmatic architecture (ARC207)

  Opening segment was absolutely fantastic... entertaining, engaging, informative, and intriguing! In today's world of over hyped technologies and tools, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement and come to realize that in just a short amount of time you have a highly coupled, and overly complex architecture on your hands.  This session was aimed at addressing some of these issues. However, after the introduction... the presentation took a somewhat dry look at architecture... mainly focused on common sense approaches towards software development and solutions architecture. As a solutions architect it our responsibility to understand the problem domain, understand the abilities of the team, understand the tools available to us, and possess the ability to analyze and make decisions based our on goals and resources at hand. As a solution architect, you need to think about the following while developing all of your solutions: Communication, messaging Presentation, interaction State management Computational/Data Processing Resource management (solution/system resources) Tools   Reflections: Inetium has several very good solution architects and we need to take full advantage of these people.  For many of these individuals their time is spent on non-architectural related tasks, and we often find ourselves with our heads down with busy work. Qoute from the presentation: "Don't get caught up in the coolest trap", very reminscent of Kicking the addiction. Posted Jun 13 2006, 10:19 AM by jvogt with no comments

• TechEd: Putting the user back in SOA (ARC202)

  What is Architecture? How about, "The balance between art and engineering" This simple definition became the basis of this session.  As technical engineers and architects, we often focus only on the engineering aspects of architecture.  In this session, the presenter places the focus on the art within architecture.   Key points: Connecting with your users, understanding their needs, fulfilling their desires, and meeting their expectations. As an architect you should be thinking about the following: Valuable/meaningful data presentation Fast and responsive user interaction Familiar feeling Reliability Performance online and offline Data integrity User recognition and profile awareness Customized to the way users work Focused on achieve goals of the user Keeping in line with the title of the seminar the presentation talked about tools that are available to you as you are architecting your solution.  The following is a listing of the key tools demonstrated: CSS AJAX Atlas WPF   Very little of the discussion actually involved SOA other than discussing how your application foundation can be separated from the applications/users context which can than be separated from the visualization.  However each separation was discussed in good detail. The presenter spent a good amount of time talking about handling the context of your user and application.  He recommended tracking user profiles for your users with information such as the following: Description Goals when using the system Work environment History/Background User characteristics ... Utilizing this information will help you create a user experience customized to the user of the system, and possibly improve the overall effectiveness for that person.  He also stressed involving several different people with varying talents to work on this aspect of your solution.  Developers, graphic designers, and user experience architects (graphic designer does not equal user experience expert) should all work collaboratively to create the solution.   Finally, he also talked about a form of gathering feedback and testing that he is particulary fond of, RITE (Rapid Iterative Testing & Evaluation).  Typically companies spend a bunch of time working to build a solution, and when they are ready to let their customers give it a try, they launch a big deployment and get as many willing participants as possible to put the software through its paces.  All the feedback is gathered at once, and fixes are put in place. He suggests taking those same people and have each one test the system independtly.  Deploy the software and only allow one of the people to try out the software.  Gather the feedback from that person, and immediately fix any changes that they need.  Then take the updated software and give it the next person, until everyone has tested the system.  The presenter feels that by using this approach he has been able to find more issues, and get through more changes in less time.   Overall, a very good presentation, and something I look forward to improving on.  With the introduction of Tim to our team (think art director background)... I think we are moving in the right direction! Posted Jun 12 2006, 01:44 PM by jvogt with no comments

• TechEd: CLR: Deployment, installation and configuration best practices for the .Net framework and managed code applications (DEV208)

  Not what I expected... I had to leave early :( Posted Jun 12 2006, 01:40 PM by jvogt with 2 comment(s)

• TechEd: Introducing agile into your organizations (ARC201)

  The first session of my conference, and one of my more anticipated seminars.  Most of us at Inetium are using agile practices... but I wanted to see what Microsoft had to say about the whole idea.  The theory is simple; put effective and proven practices in place and focus on success. For those of you who have a good understanding of agile methodologies, there wasn't anything revealing that came out of the session.  I did however, feel that there were a lot of good practical reminders that we could use to monitor and track our success.   Key ideas: Communication Everyone needs to be included: Team members Customers, clients Listen to one another Establish open communication channels Real time code reviews Pair programming Involve customer/client technical staff Collaboration Getting help when you need it All team members need to be available all the time Team focused Get the team together on a consist recurring basis Give the team time to work through individual personalities on the team and "gel". Encourage continuous education Provide "slack" time for individuals to develop and grow their desires and talents Allow people to interact and share ideas Get a coach or mentor Outside people can often make impacts that internal people struggle with due to politics Encourage questions and discussion Think egoless software development (this applies to everyone on the team) Do the right things Work on the most important things first Have the customer establish a prioritized task list. Create a plan based on the task list Re-Evaluate the task list and plan on a frequent recurring basis Have the customer define the "Exit Criteria" User stories, FIT These become your user acceptance tests Do what the customer wants and nothing else Insist on the highest quality solutions possible Avoid the Broken window Create a culture around your core values Reward individuals for team contributions, and being positive team members Remove roadblocks to success If people, policies, or whatever is getting in the way of success... remove them. Don't encourage "rock star" attitudes Everything that is done needs to be done for the good of the team Everyone owns the project project managers, bdm's, team leads, developers, testers,... everyone has equal ownership Everyone is welcome to participate project managers, bdm's, team leads, developers, testers, infrastructure...   Reflections: The presenters recommend that any team member must make themselves available to the team within 15 minutes of any request.  This is the general rule, exceptions are inevitable, but for a team to be successful... everyone needs to make themselves available.  As a member of a team, being offsite, juggling multiple projects, managing billing pressures, etc. things can often become overwhelming... and the team will suffer if you can't make yourself available.   Inetium has several individuals that are very well versed and have practical experience using agile methodologies.  While attending the presentation, I got feeling that there are a lot companies who are still in the early stages of adoption, and the need for Agile Coaching and Mentoring as a service offering is a market ready for exploration... who better than Inetium to offer such as service?  Thoughts anybody?   Don't use technical terms with your clients.  For example, instead of telling them that you need to refactor the application to make the requested changes, say something like this: "I need to spend [time] to make room for the enhancements, and [time] to add the new functionality."   In a consulting company such are ours we need to be careful to not have our people taking on too much responsibility, and spending time away from our teams.  More interaction among all the practice areas need to take place.  A lot of time and money can be saved if people focus on the above key points and build solutions in harmony with one another.  Communication and collaboration were highly stressed.   In summary, nothing revealing... but a lot great reflections... good start to the week. Posted Jun 12 2006, 12:07 PM by jvogt with no comments

• MS TechEd 2006 keynote

  Microsoft kicks off this years tech ed with 4 promises to the IT industry: Manage complexity, achieve agility Protect information, control access Advance the business with IT Solutions Amplify the impact of your people These promises were all centered around the idea that empowering people in business creates success. Filled with a lot of marketing on how companies can utilize MS products to create this business success, the presentations were generally brief and well done with a lot of lead-ins for the upoming sessions throughout the week. Highlights of the keynotes were: Windows Vista - System Center Virtual Machine Manager This presentation highlighted new tools that will enable administrators/developers to catalog, define, dynamically update, and analyze all your virtual images.  Very cool stuff, and something we definitely need to adopt at Inetium.  Gone will be the days of pinging colleagues to find a good image with all the stuff you need. Computational Cluster Management Not sure if this is something we'll find an immediate need for but will be good tool to put in your developer bag. Forefront - comprehensive line of security products  Improved security with integration into all of MS's major product offerings joined with sophisticated management utilities.  Infrastructure... this could be something to get excited about. Team Data Center (Not sure if this the actual name of the tool or product name) SQL Server refactoring, schema comparison tools, and unit testing (TSQL) fully integrated into a single IDE... very cool! Unified communication & collaboration Check out Wes's blog And the best highlight of the night... With a little encouragement from yours truly... Inetium on stage! Good night, but definitely Microsoft centric.... even with all the partners in attendance at the conference, Microsoft is clear about their vision... if you want to succeed in business, Microsoft has EVERYTHING you need. Posted Jun 11 2006, 09:38 PM by jvogt with 1 comment(s)