CrossTalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering

If you haven't checked out CrossTalk yet, I'd suggest you do. There are some great articles and the back issues can be downloaded.

Check it out here.
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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 SDK (Software Development Kit) 1.2-Aug07 Available

A new release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 SDK (Software Development Kit) is available.

Overview (from MSDN site)

The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 SDK is designed for solution providers, independent software vendors, value-added resellers, and other developers to learn about the new Office SharePoint Server 2007 enterprise application and platform. It features conceptual and "How to" articles, sample code, and programming references.

What’s New in this Release for the MOSS SDK

• Installation enhancements: You now have a choice of installation location when you’re installing the SDK. Browse to your preferred folder during setup. The default installation path for MOSS is C:\Program Files\2007 Office System Developer Resources\.
• Start menu navigation: This release features a new Start menu shortcut for quick access to documentation (compiled HTML Help, or CHM for short) files and the Welcome Guide (ReadMe.htm), which is a landing page with links to all the tools and samples. In Windows Server 2003, click Start, Programs, 2007 Microsoft Office System Developer Resources, Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK to open: MOSS 2007 Technical Articles and Visual How-Tos, Office Forms Server SDK Documentation, Office SharePoint Server SDK Documentation, Welcome Guide, Windows SharePoint Services SDK Documentation. In Windows Vista, click the Windows Vista Start button, All Programs, 2007 Microsoft Office System Developer Resources, Office SharePoint Servier 2007 SDK to open: MOSS 2007 Technical Articles and Visual How-Tos, Office Forms Server SDK Documentation, Office SharePoint Server SDK Documentation, Welcome Guide, Windows SharePoint Services SDK Documentation.
• Offline experience improvements: All of the technical articles, visual how-to articles, and book excerpts are now packaged—plus the Excel Services and Excel 2007 Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 Job Submission Developer Guide—into one searchable CHM file. Browse offline for content published on MSDN out-of-band with the SDK. (Known issue: Several links in the MOSSSDK_TechArticles.chm and WSSSDK_TechArticles.chm do not work in a strictly offline scenario. Also, WMV file screencasts or downloads associated with articles are not packaged in the CHM, to keep the download size manageable. Workaround: Browse to the content on MSDN online; for ease-of-use, the CHM file TOC is the same as the MSDN Library TOC.
• New tools included with the MOSS SDK:Developer tools and samples for the following areas of MOSS development (new tools in bold):
  • Business Data Catalog Samples and Utilities
    • Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor
    • Sample Pluggable SSO Provider
    • WSHelloWorld Web Service
    • WSOrders Web Service
    • Excel Services User Defined Function Sample
    • WSOrders Custom Proxy Sample
    • Amazon Web Service Sample
    • AdventureWorks Metadata Samples
    • SAP Sample
  • Document Management and Content Processing Samples
    • Comment Scrub Document Converter
    • Term Replacement Document Inspector
  • Search Samples
    • Sample Protocol Handler
    • Custom Content Source
  • Records Management and Policy Samples
    • De-Duplication Router
    • Document Integrity Verifier
    • Records Center Web Service Console Application
    • Search, Collect, and Hold Tool
    • Sample Custom Barcode Generator
    • IRM Document Protector
  • Workflow Samples
    • Custom Workflow Report Query Generator
    • Custom Workflow Report XLSX Injector
    • Visual Studio Workflow Templates
    • Enterprise Content Management Workflow Activities
    • List Item Activities
    • Hello World Sequential Workflow
    • State Based Approval Workflow
    • Modification Workflow
    • Replication and Contact Selector Workflow
    • Intersystem Purchase Order
    • Confidential Approval Workflow
    • Group Approval Workflow
    • Approval Workflow Sample
    • Multi-Stage Workflow
    • Server-side Collect Signatures Workflow

Full details can be found in the Welcome Guide of the SDK, accessible through the Start menu.

Get it and read more about it here.

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What subset of .NET 3.0's WCF will be supported by the .NET Compact Framework 3.5?

What subset of .NET 3.0's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) will be supported by the .NET Compact Framework 3.5?

Andrew has laid out a nice table answering that question here.

A Framework for Software Product Line Practice, Version 5.0 is Available!!!!!

The Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon has released their Framework for Software Product Line Practice, Version 5.0.

You can read about what is new in the framework in this article released a few weeks ago, and here in today's news release.

You can check out A Framework for Software Product Line Practice, Version 5.0 here.

Nice ASP.NET 3.5 and Silverlight Demo Application

Steve Marx has built a MIX'07 video player and he has recorded a 15 minute screen cast that goes over the details of the application. The screen cast is very thorough and is definitely worth checking out.

New stuff Steve used to build the application:

- Searching and paging via ListView, DataPager, and LinqDataSource (all new ASP.NET controls with .NET 3.5).
- Video player via the Media control in the ASP.NET Futures July CTP (uses Silverlight 1.0 RC).
- Popup biographies and “more/less” collapsible details via the new .NET 3.5-compatible drop of the AJAX Control Toolkit.
- Back/forward buttons support via the History control in the ASP.NET Futures July CTP.

His Blog is here.

The code is here.

The screen cast is here.

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A First Look at SEI's Architecture Expert Design Assistant (ArchE)

The Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon has released their Architecture Expert Design Assistant (ArchE). I was hesitating looking at it because it requires JESS and the only available option for using JESS, if you don't want to buy it, is using a 30 day trial version.

You will need to install the JESS expert system, the Eclipse platform with the GEF-runtime-3.2.2, and MySQL (mysql-essential-5.0.45-win32). The SEI does not provide any of this software, so you will need to download and install them. One really nice feature you will find with the ArchE installer is that it checks your system for the required software and then provides you links to the software you need to download.

So what is ArchE?

SEI provides this Overview and Description on their ArchE site:

Overview:
The Architecture Expert (ArchE) tool is an assistant to the architect. It embodies quality attribute theories, techniques for ascertaining the appropriate quality attribute model from an architectural description, techniques for evaluating the quality attribute model to determine a predicted response in given situations, and the ability to input legacy designs.

ArchE currently has quality attribute knowledge of some aspects of performance, modifiability, and variability.

Description:
ArchE uses three different types of input. These are the quality attribute requirements for the system being designed, the set of features that the system should support, and any design constraints such as utilizing a legacy design.

From the features ArchE abstracts a set of responsibilities that the system will compute. The quality attribute requirements also imply certain responsibilities. Finally, the legacy design includes responsibilities. From these sources, ArchE constructs a representation of the responsibilities and the dependencies among them. One type of dependency is that one responsibility may need to be computed prior to another. Another type of dependency is that one responsibility may be decomposed into several other responsibilities.

The architect interacts with ArchE to identify the dependencies among the responsibilities. The architect also interacts with ArchE to provide properties such as execution time that the quality attribute models inside of ArchE require in order to predict quality attribute behavior.

ArchE uses the acquired information and the quality attribute scenarios to create an initial architecture consisting of modules, units of concurrency and their relations to responsibilities. It then shows the architect the initial architecture, how well it satisfies the quality attribute requirements, and a series of suggestions for improvements to the architecture (based on the use of architectural tactics). The architect selects an option, ArchE applies it to the architecture, calculates how well the revised architecture satisfies the quality attribute requirements, and so forth.

Once the architect is happy with the architecture, ArchE will output an XML description of the architecture that can be imported into IBM Rational Rose or other more detailed design tools.

You can read more about it on SEI's ArchE site here and here. There is also a great User's Guide that comes with the download. You do not need to install ArchE to get access to it. It is in a separate file within the zip download.

There is a very good presentation available here.

I did fire it up today and ran into no issues getting the software needed configured in about 5 minutes. SEI did a very good job of providing a smooth installation process for what I initially thought was going to be painful.

SEI also provides a nice sample project that is covered in the user's guide. I did not provide any screenshots because the User's Guide contains a ton of them.

I will be following the ArchE product as it matures and hopefully one day be able to introduce on my projects as a tool that we use in our Architectural Business Cycle.

I will post a follow up on the ArchE tool after I have had some time to play with it.

If you would like to evaluate it or read the User's Guide, you can download ArchE here.
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Visual Studio 2008 Training Videos

There are some new Visual Studio 2008 Training Videos available on MSDN.

Check them out here.
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Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals Power Tools Release

There is a new release of the Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals Power Tools available.

Overview (from MSDN site)
This release includes 5 new refactoring types, a new dependency viewer, additional data generators and editors, 2 new MSBuild tasks for Schema and Data Compare as well as the introduction of the TSQL Static Code Analysis feature

TSQL Static Code Analysis
• Static Code Analysis - A precursor to the functionality that will be in future versions of VSTS that will allow you to perform Static Code Analysis on T-SQL code.

Refactoring
• “Move Schema” Refactoring - Allows a user to right click on an object and move it to a different but existing schema
• SP Rename Generation - Generate a new script that will contain sp_renames for all rename refactored objects that the user can then execute.
• Wildcard Expansion - Automatically expand the wildcard in a select to the appropriate columns.
• Fully-Qualified Name Support - Automatically inject fully-qualified names when absent in a script
• Refactoring extended to Dataset - Refactor into strongly typed dataset definitions

MSBuild Tasks
• Data / Schema Compare Build Tasks - MSBuild tasks that can generate scripts as if the user had run the Data / Schema compare UI

Schema View
• API Access to Schema View - Insert / Update / Delete to schema View and list schema objects and their associated files

Dependency Tool Window
• Dependency Tree - Show the dependencies ( incoming / outgoing ) for selected schema objects in a new tool window

Miscellaneous Tools
• Script Preprocessor - Expand SQLCMD variables and include files and command line version (sqlspp.exe) & an MSBuild version ( wraps the command line version )

Download here.
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Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line-of-Business (LOB) Adapter SDK Available

Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line-of-Business (LOB) Adapter SDK is available for download.

Brief Description (from download site)
The Microsoft© Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line-of-Business (LOB) Adapter SDK provides for a simplified programming model on top of the WCF Channel Model by adding metadata browsing, searching and retrieving functionality, and development tools for generating and testing adapter code.

Overview (from download site)
Many large enterprises have disparate systems including legacy mainframe, databases, packaged and homegrown applications that need to be integrated with each other to provide end user solutions. The technology integration becomes more complex after companies go through Mergers and Acquisitions, which are more prevalent in case of Financial and Telecom Industry verticals. Back-end systems such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle, IBM CICS, IMS, VSAM and Relational Databases are collectively known as Line-of-Business (LOB) applications. The line-of-business adapters provide legacy modernization by bridging existing back-end applications with the modern interfaces. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides a unified framework for building distributed applications, including creating adapters to existing applications.

The WCF LOB Adapter SDK provides for a simplified programming model on top of WCF Channel Model to enable adapter developers in creating service-oriented interfaces to existing systems and applications. The Adapter SDK surfaces a target system adapter as a WCF Binding. The goal of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK is to facilitate uniform development of reusable metadata-oriented WCF-based adapters that enable enterprise applications, databases and messaging platforms to integrate with each other. The same adapter binding developed using Adapter SDK can be reused in multiple .NET applications including Custom .NET Applications, BizTalk Server 2006 R2, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services. In addition, Adapter SDK provides a common metadata object model to expose target system metadata, for adapter consumers to browse, search and retrieve WCF contracts from the adapter.

The Adapter Consumer can use the adapter in an integration application similar to a typical WCF Service without having to learn a new programming model.

Some of the high-level features provided by this SDK are as follows:

• Connection pooling for connections to the target system
• Operation/Type metadata API and WCF contract generator
• In-memory metadata cache
• Adapter Code Generation Wizard
• Tools for adapter consumers to browse/search available operations and generate WCF contract(s) with selected operations

It is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Dowload it here.

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A Ton of ASP.NET 2.0 Data Access Tutorials

There are a ton of data access tutorials posted on the ASP.NET site that explore techniques for implementing common data access patterns in ASP.NET 2.0.

They are available in Visual Basic and Visual C# and include a download of the code.

Check them out here.
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Acropolis August CTP for VS 2008 Beta 2 Available

Kathy Kam has just posted that the Acropolis August CTP for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is now available.

Check out her post with the download links here.
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Programming the Composite UI Application Block and Smart Client Software Factory Book Review

Holly smokes!!!! I have never owned such a thin book with so much white space on the 199 pages that are there. I would estimate removing all the white space would bring this book down to about 120 to 150 pages.

This book does not do what I had hoped for. I posted in this blog that I was hoping for insight that did not already exist, and that is not the case. This book is a high level overview of the CAB and SCSF. The material that is there is good. The problem is there just isn't very much material, and what is there is not in depth.

I was nervous about the description of the book because it described the book as a learning workshop style of writing, but ordered it because it was written by David S. Platt. He has written some good books in the past.

I gave this book 2 stars out of 5 because if you don't want to weed through all the help documentation on the CAB and the SCSF, this book will give you a nice overview of what is available. But to get down and dirty you will need to refer to the help documentation.

This book should have been a free download labeled "CAB and the SCSF Hands on Lab".

Of course they would have to complete the code samples, which currently are labeled under construction on the author's book download site.

If you feel you need it, get it here.