Real World Software Architecture: June 2007

Real World Software Architecture is dedicated to providing information and experiences from the field of Software Architecture.

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Microsoft…. When will we sleep???

A few weeks ago I wrote this blog about how my newly ordered book was out of date 2 months before it was to be published.

Another book I have been keeping my eye on has had to change its name because it can't get released before the next Microsoft release. The cover remains .NET 3.0 until Amazon can get a new image. Maybe it should be titled "Programming .NET N-Release".

Click Image to enlarge.

Does anyone else out there remember when you went to work knowing what the latest release of a language was, and all the details of how to get the most out of it? I wonder how long it will be, or if there will ever be a time like that again?

Friday, June 22, 2007

Garmin Nuvi 680 Pocket Vehicle GPS Navigator and Personal Travel Assistant Review

This post is a little out of character for this blog, but what the heck….

This is a nice little unit. I used to program GPS applications so I have used a few. The software running this unit is great. The GPS algorithms for finding the shortest or the longest route work excellently. I tested with 4 separate routes. When you deviate from your route the unit is a little slow to pick up on it, 2 or 3 seconds depending on how far you have moved, but then it starts recalculating and gets you back on track.

The maps are easy to read and the views (2d and 3d) are easily switched and zoomed.

The MP3 player works great. It plays music and when it needs to give a voice command it pauses the music and tells you what it needs to tell you. The FM tuner works well too. Although if you come in range of a station the station takes over.

The hands free calling works great. As soon I as I get in the car it finds my phone. If music is playing, it is puts it on pause until you are done on the phone and then turns it right back on.

The user interface is very intuitive and user friendly. I have hardly needed to use the manual or help.

The MSN direct features work good also. They take some time when you first turn it on to download all the information. The traffic feature has worked well. The data has been up to date so far. The MSN direct features work good also. They take some time when you first turn it on to download all the information. The traffic feature has worked well. The data has been up to date so far. If it tells you a road is closed, LISTEN TO IT!!!!! We decided not to and sat in 4 hours of traffic because we thought "No way could the turnpike be closed." This is what was ahead. We could have totally avoided it.

The movie data in my area have all been up to date and have included some theaters I didn't know existed. The gas feature usually has data (prices) that is a day or 2 old, but it did list all the gas stations in my area.

At first when I used the suction cup mount I thought it was defective because it kept falling off. After reading the directions, I discovered that I need to clean all the dust of the window before trying to use it. Since I have discovered that little trick it has worked great. We have used it in our 2 cars and truck.

We do yard sales on Saturday and my girlfriend had to make maps with MapPoint every week. Now we just put the addresses in as we go.

Having a GPS like this definitely changes the way you travel. Running errands is great. I type in the name of the store I want to go to and go to the closest one. Then type in the next one. I have discovered a lot of store locations I didn't know about.

Over all the purchase was definitely worth it.

For a very detailed review of the features go here.

UPDATE:
I decided to write a second review with some screenshots of our latest vacation showing the Garmin Nuvi 680 in action. You can read it here.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Web Client Software Factory June 2007 Release ( v1.1 ) is Available for Download

The changes included in this release are the following (From Glenn's blog- link below):

--Guidance package updated to use the February 2007 CTP of GAT/GAX

--The factory now uses Enterprise Library 3.1 – May 2007. (Read about the changes here)

--Recipes support Web Application Projects (WAP).

--Recipes create Visual Basic .NET source code.

--Dependency checker analyzes for required and optional software dependencies during installation. If required dependencies are not installed, links are provided to download them.

--Source code snippets for typical page flow development activities are included.

--Fix for the Add View (with presenter) Recipe which sometimes would not load due to an exception.

--Source code is now available as a seperate download. You no longer have to install the factory to get the source.

--Documentation is now available as a seperate download.

David has the details here.

Blaine announced it here.

And Glenn announced it here.

Download it here.

Get the source here.

Get the documentation here.
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Acropolis at TechEd 2007 Session Videos are Available

Two of the Acropolis videos from TechEd 2007 can be watched from the links below.

Introducing the "Acropolis" Client Application Framework

Building Rich Client UI with the "Acropolis" Framework

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

EssUP with TFS is OUT, ICONIX with SPARX is IN

The EssUP (Essential Unified Process) is over a year (almost 2 now) past dates promised for the Process Template for Team Foundation Server. We have been reading the articles that have been coming out and enjoying all the publicity around the non-existent process, but we are done waiting on it.

For the past 12 months the only answers to 'when' will the TFS template for EssUP be released has been 'soon'.

I have been evaluating the new release of SPARX 7.0 beta 2. It has improved integration with the ICONIX process guidance as well as a lot of other improvements.

Here are a few ICONIX links:
Roadmap
ICONIX Process Overview
Books
Enterprise Architect Add-In
ICONIX Software Engineering, Inc.
Agile Development with ICONIX Process - 3 Part Overview

Below is a screen shot of the SPARX 7.0 Beta 2 and the ICONIX menu.

Click HERE for a larger image.

We are looking to adopted a process for some of our projects that will allow for mid to lower ceremony in order to facility a higher degree of agility. We will still use Product Line Engineering when appropriate, and the Rational Unified Process for higher ceremony projects.

EssUP was our first choice when we heard about it, but the rose colored glasses have come off with the company's failure to deliver anything except marketing propaganda (Enough of the Talk: Let's Do Implementation).

ICONIX integration into SPARX is excellent (ICONIX SPARX Page) and the process is a proven process. I would suggest reading "Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML: Theory and Practice" if you plan on going the same direction.

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Microsoft eScrum Installation and Configuration Sucks

I have to agree with this blog. After messing around with the configuration for an hour or two I can only say it can't be worth this aggravation. I gave up trying and have put it into the not usable category on my team.

I will wait for eScrum 1.1 which I would suggest the team make the #1 priority installation and configuration enhancements.

This blog got further than I did. I couldn't get the product page up. I got the process uploaded into TFS and created a new project using the template, but I agree with the last sentence in the blog, "If you want to use Scrum with TFS, stick to Conchango's Scrum For Team System template. It has it's own share of flaws but installs in about 5 minutes.".

If you have a day to kill, you can download it here.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

BizTalk Server 2006 Posters and Downloads

Below are some links to some new BizTalk Server 2006 Posters and Downloads.

BizTalk Server 2006 Capabilities (Poster)

BizTalk Server 2006 Runtime Architecture (Poster)

BizTalk Server 2006 Legacy Modernization with Host Integration Server 2006 (Poster)

BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Documentation Update (CHM)

BizTalk Server 2006 Installation and Upgrade Guides
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GOT BOK? Software Development related Body of Knowledge List

BOK == Body of Knowledge

There are several BOK around today. Most of them are pretty cool and contain a lot of information, or at least a reference to a lot of information.

Here are the BOKs I know about that relate to Software Development (there are many more that don't):

Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK)

The Personal Software Process (PSP) Body of Knowledge, Version 1.0

Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge (EABOK)

Product Development and Management Association Body of Knowledge (PDMA-BOK)

Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)

Usability Body of Knowledge

Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK)

New Product Development Body of Knowledge

Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIS&T) Body of Knowledge
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Friday, June 08, 2007

WCSF (Web Client Software Factory) June 2007 Release Candidate Ready!!!!

RC for Web Client Software Factory R 1.1

This is the first release candidate for the Web Client Software Factory Release 1.1. The June 2007 release of the Web Client Software Factory is an update to the January 2007 release and contains the following changes:

-- The guidance package uses the February 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit

-- The software factory uses the Enterprise Library 3.1 – May 2007.

-- The guidance package recipes support Web Application Projects.

-- The guidance package includes recipes that create Visual Basic .NET source code.

-- The Windows installer includes a feature to analyze the computer for required and optional software dependencies.

-- The Windows installer includes source code snippets for typical page flow development activities.

GET IT HERE

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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Windows Presentation Foundation Performance Profiling Tools

The WPF Performance Profiling tools have been extracted from the .NET 3.5 SDK and uploaded as standalone downloads.

This suite of tools includes the following (from the download sites):

--Perforator: for analyzing rendering behavior.

--Visual Profiler: for profiling the use of WPF services, such as layout and event handling, by elements in the visual tree.

--Working Set Analyzer: for analyzing the working set characteristics of your application.
--Event Trace: for analyzing events and generating event log files.

--ETW Trace Viewer: Record, display, and browse Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) log files in a WPF user-interface format.

You can read more about them and check out a screen shot here.

You can download them here:
WPF Performance Suite (x86 version)
WPF Performance Suite (x64 version)
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Alex Homer on Using the Enterprise Library Validation Application Block in ASP.NET

This is a nice article on Using the Validation Application Block in ASP.NET.

Summary from the site:

This article shows how you can take advantage of the validation features within the Validation Application Block, part of version 3.0 of Enterprise Library, in your ASP.NET applications. The block supports both UI and object validation, and you can combine these approaches using the same rules if you wish. The ability to validate objects is particularly useful when working with instances that may be generated locally, exposed by other tiers of your application, or received from a remote Web Service.

The Visual Studio 2008 Stack and the .NET Framework 3.5

The following links from Daniel Moth are very interesting:

Visual Studio 2008 stack

.NET Framework 3.5

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Acropolis update, links from Brad Abrams, Some Thoughts, and Screenshots...

Brad provides some insight into the happenings at TechEd 07 and then provides a list of hot acropolis links here.

Make sure to check out the video provided through SilverLight and the links on Brad's latest post, Bonus Acropolis Information: Video, Live docs and More!

I found The Acropolis Stack image particularly interesting.

I did get it fired up last night and it is definitely sweet. A very different approach to anything I have seen before. Usually I would be very hesitant and nervous about such a layer of abstraction between the code and the designer, but having used the CAB very extensively, the PnP team that worked on it has won my confidence. According to some of the blogs out there some of the same team is working on it

I will still want to treat it as any other new COTS product and Proof of Concept the heck out of it, but the team behind it has won my confidence.

There are several sample applications that come with the install. They provide two Walkthroughs in the help file. You can download the help file with out installing. One Walkthrough for Building an Acropolis Notepad Application, which can be seen in the video introduction here, and one on Building an Acropolis RSS Reader Application .

The approach to implementing the parts through the designer was the most surprising and the most unique thing I saw in the approach the team took. Below is a screenshot of the NotePadPart and the toolbox that appears when you are designing it. Below that is a shot from the help document of the toolbox.

larger image here

Click the image for larger view.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

My newly ordered SCSF and CAB book is outdated before it is printed...

In this blog I tell the story of my overly ambitious book ordering fetish (well not really, but I should have). I pre-ordered the Programming Microsoft Composite UI Application Block and Smart Client Software Factory Book.

According to this blog, Smart Client Software Factory v2.0 is the Last Release - Acropolis is the Future, my book is out of date before it is even published.

COULD WE PLEASE RELEASE STUFF A LITTLE FASTER !!!!!!!

!@#$!@#$! @#$ $#^ <- That is cussing...
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Web Client Software Factory 1.1 - To Be Released Early Next Week

David's got the lowdown.... check it out here.

MSDN Magazine in HTML Help File Format

I never noticed this before so I thought I would point it out. Microsoft has the MSDN Magazine in HTML Help File Format available for download here.
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Microsoft SQL Server Samples & Community Projects Portal Page

Codeplex is the project hosting site for Microsoft SQL Server Samples and Community Projects. This portal page for SQL Server on Codeplex catalogs samples included with Product Releases, samples from the community, and independent SQL Server Community projects.

Check it out here.

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When will we not be waiting on computers?

This is a very cool video about the history of computing. It is definitely worth watching. I watched it yesterday while I was waiting on a virtual image to copy over the network. In it they talk about the speed of the processors and the great increase we have had over the years. Whoopee… NOT!!!!

For the past 15 years I have been spending a lot of my time sitting and waiting on computers.

I started by waiting on chips to be burnt and compilers to compile. That was before our beloved internet.

After the internet came about I was waiting to get my turn to log into my BBS. At the time my job was fixing pixels in images for a publisher, where I waited on images to rip across the network and for the files I was working on to painfully update on the Sytex machines we were using at the time. When I got home I would sit and dial and re-dial for hours to get on.

Then came AOL. Hours, upon hours, upon hours, of waiting on technical help on a weekly basis.

Then came dial up and access to the real internet. One of my early contracts required me to use Oracle 8. One weekend I downloaded it over dialup. It took 3.5 days and a lot of arguing with my family about the phone lines being tied up for so long.

Web sites were a wonderful thing. I cannot even fathom a guess at how many hours I spent waiting on publishing to complete.

So then machines started getting faster and faster, but the internet didn't. So waiting and waiting on downloads became an almost daily thing.

Today I am downloading on a 1 Gig connection. But now I am using entire virtual systems to do my work. I spent last night zipping one of my current Virtual image into a rar. That only took 7 hours. I had to do it to make room for my new downloads.

Now today I get to download 9 700 MB files to my portable hard drive through my USB, so I can spend an hour or so unzipping them. My computer's hard drive is full of other virtual images that I also need, so that is why I have to put this onto my portable drive. The image will not be running very fast from there, so I will get to check out Orcas and Acropolis in a nice very slow environment. I figure nice and slow will be good. That way I won't miss anything :-) This is about the 4th or 5th time I have gone through this exercise.

I can't tell you how many times I have defragged and compacted virtual images or how many hours I waited while doing it.

It is a marvelous era we are in, but I can't see a future where we as programmers will not spend a considerable amount of our time waiting on our buddy the computer to finish what it is doing.

Luckily there is still the old fashion book for me to read while waiting. But if you watch the video I point to at the beginning of this blog, you will see that we may soon be holding a piece of plastic instead.

Microsoft's patterns & practices Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Guide

Not sure if this is new news or not, but Microsoft's patterns & practices released a Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Guide. It is a pretty sweet guide.

Get it here.
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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Silverlight Learning Guide- Everything in One Place

This Silverlight Learning Guide has every link you will need to get started and then some.....

Monday, June 04, 2007

Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview Released

Microsoft has released the Code Name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview.

This is from the help file that you can download from the link below:

Code Name "Acropolis" is a toolkit for creating modular, business-focused Windows client applications. "Acropolis" builds on the.NET Framework, and includes a run-time framework, design-time tools, and out-of-the-box functionality. "Acropolis" enables you to build reusable, connectable components and assemble them into working applications that are easy to change.

Modular Development
"Acropolis" uses a composite application framework to address complex, changing business requirements. Composite applications integrate functionality as components that you can easily reconfigure or replace.

For example, a composite application might display data from a remote database, but let you choose between a WPF and a Windows Forms user interface. It might also enable users to choose from multiple components to interact with the data.

Composite applications often have a portal or "dashboard" look, but this is only one scenario of many. The important point about composite applications is that units of functionality remain loosely coupled to make change easier. Whether the change is a new business requirement or a user reconfiguration, making change easier makes improvement easier.

You can watch a 12 minute overview Acropolis in Action video here, found on the home of code name "Acropolis".

There has been a new forum set up here.

Acropolis buzz - Some links to some of the people who have had time to fire it up here.

Smart Client Software Factory v2.0 is the Last Release - Acropolis is the Future

Download it here.

Friday, June 01, 2007

New Microsoft Windows Client .net site for Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation

Microsoft recently put up a new web site called Windows Client .net that replaces the netfx3 WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) section and the Windows Forms web site. The site combines the information that was previously available on separate sites.

Check it out here.

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