Microsoft

For whom is sleeping

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:52:49 GMT

Have you heard of Project Natal? If not then you’re definitely sleeping…

Fortunately I hereby provide you a real nice video that should hook you up :)

Until next time ;)

The world is upside down...

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:37:41 GMT

This was my felling after I read this post.

In a positive way, things are changing inside Microsoft. Some years ago you would never seen some prerequisites to install like this:

Runtime: Java EE 5 on Sun Glassfish v2 + Sun WSIT/Metro (JAX-WS extensions), Tool: Netbeans 6.0 IDE.

But now Microsoft is willing to work together with their partners/competitors, struggling for a better "interoperable" world. This shouldn't be a surprise. In the past 21st of February they released a communication stating:

1. ensuring open connections
2. promoting data portability
3. enhancing support for industry standards
4. fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

If you're wondering, the above requisites are for a sample inside the R11 release of BizTalk Services that shows how to use the BizTalk Services Identity Security Token Service (STS) to secure the communication between a Java client and a Java service providing federated authentication and claims-based authorization.

Bravo Microsoft!

Until next time ;)

Technorati Tags: microsoft, interoperability, java, biztalk services

He's the man!

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:48:13 GMT

Check Tiago's interview in the Techdays' videos site.

http://videos.techdays.pt/View.aspx?video=135&viewType=Tag&filterValue=

Until next time ;)

Technorati Tags: TechdaysPT08, Tiago Pascoal

TechDays 2008 - day #2 review

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:19:06 GMT

Sorry, but yesterday I simply didn't had the time to write my review for the Techdays' second day. So, here it goes, one day late.

INT04 - Qual é o Contexto desta Conversação? Activando Conversações Longas em Serviços de Workflow. Serviços "Duráveis" (link)

This was the second session, that I saw, presented by José António Silva (see here and here). Again, he presented it well although it wasn't supposed to be presented by him (in his words). But, like he said, he really wanted this session to be presented. And he was right. Back when the WF and WCF were released for the first time, there wasn't any integration between them. but with the .NET 3.5 release it's possible to expose our workflow as a service. He explained that was possible using the extensibility architecture available in the WCF. This is known as Workflow Services.

ARC01 - Software + Services: The Convergence of SaaS, SOA and Web 2.0 (link)

Without a doubt, one of the best sessions that I have watched in this year's Techdays. Beat Schwegler is awesome! Bruno was right when he recommended him to me. He basically went thru three basic topics: SaaS, SOA and Web 2.0. All that sum together is equal to S+S. Then he covered how we can build an S+S application, run it, consume it and finally how to monetize it. One example that he gave a really big focus was on the Eve online. Other examples were the Microsoft's Photosynth and the British Library's Turning the Pages. A really great presentation.

INT06 - Viagem ao Centro da Núvem – O Internet Service Bus (ISB) e os BizTalk Services (link)

in the first day, Jota brought us an explanation of the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). This session was a continuation of that. He said that the Internet Service Bus (ISB) is an evolution of the ESB to cloud computing. The Microsoft's implementation is known as BizTalk Services. Thru that, the messages are sent to the ISB and who is subscribed in the ISB same address receives it. The technologies beneath it are the WCF (for the connectivity), CardSpace (for the authentication) and the Workflow (not yet implemented). One of the main advantages is that the communication can pass over NAT. Also it can be a major disadvantage because it raises some security issues.

I've already have something in my mind to try this out :) ... Oh and yes...Jota once again didn't disappoint us. He's really good!

INT03 - Construíndo Soluções EDI/AS2 com o Microsoft Biztalk Server 2006 R2 (link)

I'm truly sorry for Rui Pereira, but this session was very boring. He could have made it little more interesting. Basically he went thru the EDI\AS2 support in the BizTalk Server 2006 R2. AS2 is a secure transport layer built on top of HTTP. EDI is a set of messages schemas, used in many integration systems (I'm currently working in one of them - reason why I stayed to end). In EDI there are two standards: X12 (that's more used in the US) and the EDIFACT (used more often in the Europe). He also explained hot to configure the EDI/AS2.

SRV04 - The Old New Thing: Stories from Inside the Windows Team (link)

I can now say that I'm fortunate to be one of the people that listened some of the stories that Raymond Chen has to tell. He's incredibly funny and is a truly a story teller. He was the responsible for why I wasn't in Tiago's second session. He only had one slide that at the same time was the agenda. It stated: "Tell stories" :)

Sorry but I won't tell any of the stories here.

Until next time;

Technorati Tags: TechdaysPT08

TechDays 2008 - day #1 review

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:37:23 GMT

I've been, since this morning, at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa attending the Microsoft's TechDays. And the first day as passed.

Keynote

The day started with the Abertura Solene and the best description that I can give to this session is: Bla..Bla..Bla..Bla, nothing of technological interesting. After that I've attended the keynote. It had some interest, specially because of Nuno's review of Mix08, which he attended. Also, in the keynote, I came aware that already are portuguese companies developing in Silverlight version 1 and 2 (two demos were presented). That's always good to now :)

Some numbers

2300 Attending
500 Students
30 Expositors
140 Sessions
30 Hands-on-Labs
25 Foreign speakers

MOB02 - Sync Framework: Optimizações em Cenários Online, Melhorias em Cenários Offline e de Roaming e Colaborações entre Dispositivos, Serviços e Aplicações (link)

I must say that this was the most interesting session that I saw today. I've left it with the conscience that I've learned something and useful. The Sync Framework has numerous scenarios that could be applied, specially in the offline client side. I'm not going to explain it here (probably in a future post) but definitely I'm going to play with it. Also a word about José António Silva (see here and here). He was good in the explanation and in the demos. But he got a little bit distracted with the time, if you now what I mean :)

VST02 - Boas Práticas na Utilização do Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (link)

This was the Tiago's presentation and, of course, I'm not going to say anything bad about it. (Man...he's my boss!) Hands off...the best presentation ever...in the world...and in the universe (Tiago, I consider the 10€ debt to you paid! :)). Now in a more serious tone, he talked about the Team Foundation Server and how to use it. Unfortunately few portuguese companies are using this fantastic product. But Tiago covered very well the basics and explained the definitions for work items, process templates, check-in and so on. Also he covered how to upgrade from 2005 version to the 2008. For the end he talked about some partners applications that extend the TFS use to Outlook, Word and Excel that enrich the user experience (TeamCompanion, TeamSpec and others).

INT05 - Utilizar o BizTalk Server como Enterprise Service Bus (link)

This was the most specific session for me and for the work that I'm doing recently, and I really wanted to go. Jota really knows about BizTalk. He covered the ESB definition and how the market evolved to reach it. Then he explained why Microsoft built the ESB Guidance. Simply, because they didn't had any product that covered the ESB definition. Although this project could be found in the CodePlex site, it already reached the final and last stage. Probably we'll hear more about ESB and BizTalk in the Oslo context.

Basically, the ESB Guidance provides architectural guidance, patterns, practices, and a set of BizTalk Server and .NET components to simplify the development of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform and to allow Microsoft customers to extend their own messaging and integration solutions. Key features are:

Dynamic services invocation
Itinerary processing
Unified exceptions handling
Management portal
Governance
Re-usable pipeline components

The ESB Guidance is only available on top of BizTalk Server 2006 R2. The most enthusiastic, for me, is that I can have a complete loosely-coupled environment. Let me explain: in BizTalk he have to configure Send Ports foe each location that we want to send a specific message. Then it's bounded to the orchestration (or subscribes to the MessageBox). That's tight! With the ESB Guidance there are no send ports. The destination is invoked dynamically. The service that corresponds to the location is discovered using UDDI. This is a very simplistic explanation and I hope that Jota could forgive me if I wrote something stupid :)

DEV06 - ADO.NET Entity Framework e LINQ To Entities (link)

Final session of the day. I'm used to listen to Luís Falcão because he was my teacher in ISEL. I had some classes with him but specially he (along with Paulo Pereira) guided me, João Manso and Pedro Rainho in our final project.

He gave a very detailed explanation around Entity Framework with examples that focused the most common cases. Simply, the Entity Framework allows us to build another abstraction layer upon our database layer. Also we can model it to reflect a more object-oriented structure, including inheritance that doesn't exists in the relational database (everything is generated). On top of that we can use Linq...and you have a very cool data access layer :)

And that's it. Expect my day #2 review tomorrow.

Until next time ;)

Technorati Tags: TechdaysPT08

Congratulations to Tiago

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 08:53:54 GMT

For those of you that doesn't know, I announce that Tiago has been awarded with the MVP for the Visual Developer Team System.

This is very good news!!! Congratulations Tiago!!!

Until next time ;)

P.S.: Next lunch is on you :)

Technorati Tags: tiago pascoal, mvp, visual developer team system

BizTalk blogs

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:04:05 GMT

Microsoft recently released and aggregator for the most relevant BizTalk blogs. Check it out. Although it's called "BizTalk blogs" it focuses also in .NET 3.5 and other technologies.

My only question is: WHY MINE ISN'T THERE?? :)

Until next time ;)

Technorati Tags: biztalk blogs, microsoft

TechDays has an official site!

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:15:37 GMT

The Microsoft technical event in Portugal, from now on, has an official site: www.techdays.pt

There you can follow the blog or subscribe for the event (33% discount for those who do that before January 25th).

Until next time ;)

Technorati Tags: techdays 2008

TechDays 2008 is scheduled

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:42:21 GMT

I hope to see you there. From March 12th to 14th of 2008.

For those of you that aren't portuguese, the TechDays is like a mini TechEd for the Microsoft Portuguese Community. There were already the 2005 and 2007 editions. I hope to see in the next year's edition more international speakers. Here are my suggestions :)

Pat Helland (I really want to hear about Metropolis)
Aaron Skonnard (More on BizTalk and BizTalk Services)
Scott Guthrie (For the latest on MS Visual 2008, .NET Framework 3.5, etc)
Nicholas Allen (The latest on WCF)
Don Syme (Did you hear about F#?)
Somasegar (For the keynote)

It these ones aren't possible, then we have to work with our in-house silver (aka "com a prata da casa") :)

Tiago Pascoal (My bet is on him for a TFS 2008 new features)
João "Jota" Martins (For BizTalk presentations)
Luís Falcão (The latest on .NET 3.5)
Pedro Félix (I bet that he can do a presentation about "Performance on LINQ")
José António Silva (SaaS vs S+S)

I know that requesting is easy...but delivering it's difficult :)

Until next time ;)

Technorati Tags: techdays 2008

WoW!!! .NET Framework source code is going to be released!!!

Rodrigo Guerreiro — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:01:37 GMT

I'm amazed about this! No more Reflector to peek under the hood.

No one can denied that Microsoft is putting a greater effort to accompany the open source wave. Two thumbs up MS!!!! :)

Technorati Tags: .NET framework, source code