Tuesday, 27 April 2010 09:07 by
SyntaxC4Adoption of a new platform always starts out extremely slow, this is no exception in the world of Cloud Computing. I’m no different, I didn’t immediately start picking up Windows Azure as soon as I heard about it. Yet being a young developer i wasn’t sure if I could make the leap to the Cloud platform. Now that I’ve taken the dive, I couldn’t believe that I hesitated in the first place.
If you are like me and are still debating on taking a look at the cloud, what are you waiting for? If you’re worried about not being able to use Bing, Google or your own favourite search engine. Here are some resources in order to get you started:
Wait No More…
The Microsoft Partner Network just came out with a reason not to wait any longer. The offering is a new Workshop: @Home with Windows Azure. This is a full 2 hour workshop that includes a 75 minute Hands on Lab! That’s no all, just for giving up 2 hours of your day, Microsoft will give you a full 2 weeks on a Full Featured Windows Azure account AT NO COST! The account will auto-expire after the two week period.
Thursday, 22 April 2010 18:20 by
SyntaxC4Today I ventured down to the Scotia Theatre in downtown Toronto to witness another phenomenal “screening” of ObjectSharp’s “At the Movies” event which today featured many of the enhancements to Visual Studio 2010, and .NET 4. If I were a movie critic [which thankfully I am not], I wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. Luckily, I’m a Developer and give this presentation a rating of 5 ASP.NET AJAX Stars out of 5. This was not my first “At the Movies” event and by far won’t be my last, they just keep getting better!
Heading up the day of the SOLD OUT Show was a fantastic performance by Bruce Johnson with a High Level overview of the advancements in the .NET Realm. He covered the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) [with a cool extension to Visual Studio itself], Parallel Programming [with key points at enhancements in threading] with a Stellar example of “Work Stealing”, Code Contracting in .NET 4.0; and the integration of Azure and SQL Azure into Visual Studio.
After the break Paul Laberge of Microsoft Canada stunned the crowd with the awesome features of Expression Blend including the spectacular Prototyping tool Sketch Flow. The release of Silverlight 4 is one of the most influential since Silverlight 2 when the .NET Language was integrated into the Plug-in. Silverlight 4 now allows for Rich media usage like Web Cam & Microphone access, Native Multicasting, online and offline content protection; Rich User Experiences with support for Right-Click Context menus, Copy and Paste, and Google Chrome Integration. Furthermore, Silverlight 4 has entered into the World of Advanced Business Applications with new Printing Support, advanced Data binding support, a large library of Forms Controls, and Internationalization (Language Targeting).
Paul also did a demo to show how to utilize both Visual Studio 2010 & Expression Blend to separate the Developer and Designer Roles. “XAML is a Language that both your Developers and Designers can speak”, Paul explained, XAML creates a common ground so everyone is on the same page. Separating the Concerns in your project can allow a team to avoid software that ends up as depicted below.
Just before Lunch Angie Lim hit the stage to let Developers know that there are many ways in which Microsoft is trying to help. There are various “Spark” programs that give the tools businesses or developers need in order to be successful. Guelph Coffee and Code has a great post that explains each Spark Program, or you can ask for more in depth information from Angie.
After the Lobby cleared from the Lunch break, The crowd were wooed by the presentation styling of Barry Gervin and David Lloyd. Barry took the audience into a magical adventure, with an overview of the new Code Reporting, and Visualization features of Visual Studio 2010. These features offer Developers an easy visual representation of how the application functions, which could increase the speed of a learning curve when getting acquainted or re-acquainted with a legacy project.
David took to the stage to in full force covering the Bigger and Better Team Foundation Server. His demonstration featured an “advanced” calculator, focusing on unit testing, build automation, and Gated Check-ins. David reached out for his QA Specialist Debra Forsyth to run through a QA Cycle on his Calculator.
Debra ran through her test cycles by demoing the new Test & Lab Manager. Test Manager gives much more power to the QA teams, allowing them to Record test cases to gain a library of Automated tests. Debra made developers sweat when showing that there are no more “could not reproduce” excuses. Test Centre allows Quality Assurance testing to take screen shots, and even videos of each step of the testing process. With the advanced Testing Framework, and Lab management features of Visual Studio 2010 don’t be surprised to find many developers like this when you arrive at work in the morning:
To put the over 400 developers that attended the At the Movies session at ease, ObjectSharp broke out the Snacks and Energy Drinks. During the break the ObjectSharp staff went around engaging the crowd in personal chats. Barry Gervin came around to the group that I was in, here’s a picture of the chat also involving Sasha Krsmanovic from Telerik.
Next up Rob Windsor displays his passion for Sharepoint 2010 in front of the twitching crowd. Rob covers how Sharepoint has evolved, explaining the Architecture change in the massive Sharing and Collaboration Web Application. Rob then stepped into how the Development process has been nicely integrated into the Visual Studio 2010 IDE. Sharepoint 2010 has expanded even further allowing for consumption of List data in Console or WPF applications using WCF Data Services. I must apologize to Rob as I missed a good portion of his presentation, due to loosing track of time during the break.
Motoring through to the end of the day, Colin Bowern takes to the stage with an Electrifying presentation filled with Shocking imagery, Lightening fast code generation using Snippets. Colin outlined the new clean code that is generated in ASP.NET 4.0, contrasting the old method of Table based coding behavior and new List based html that “The rest of the development world has bee doing for sometime.” His example of the power of ASP.NET Routing, which began as a feature of MVC, can quickly and easily provide Search Friendly URLS to any existing Website without an abundance of code. He also showed the adoption of the jQuery library in Visual Studio 2010, and a quick example of the advance HTML Templates that can be used without any server code. Colin finished up by demonstrating some of the ASP.NET MVC framework and how the use of the framework gives a developer much more control over the html output.
As everyone [The smart ones that stuck around] awaited the prizes at the end of the day, that were provided by Microsoft Canada, Telerik, and Object Sharp. This gives you an idea of the size of the crowd that this free event pulls in. Make sure to keep your eyes open for next years event announcement!
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With Microsoft’s release of Windows Azure and moving towards a future of Cloud Computing, I’ve been waiting to hear what is to be done in the Market of Gaming, more specifically the Community Contributions using the XNA Framework. Up until XNA version 3.0 Microsoft’s plan was to keep Community Content as a Closed faced application that wouldn’t be able to communicate with the outside world. XNA 3.0 delivered Xbox Live integration into Community Games, allowing hobbyist developers the ability to make their creations multiplayer. With the Resent release of XNA 4.0, which falls after the Release of the Cloud, I was hopeful to find some sort of Cloud Applicable use for community developers.
XNA 4.0 did however bridge a recent gap that would have been introduced with the Release of the Windows Phone. With the number of Gaming platforms that are being introduced it would be beneficial to tie them together with the Cloud. Lets close our eyes and dream for a moment.
Fading into Dream Land
Recently, I’ve downloaded a new game from the Xbox Live Marketplace, and I’ve become fairly addicted to this game as it allows me to be creative, as well it is extremely educational [Hey, it’s a dream right?]. I’ve been playing this game all morning but have to meet a friend of mine across town, but I’m about to reach Virtual Nirvana. I open up the save menu, and there is an option to save to a Cloud Drive. I don’t really understand what this is at the time, but think sure why not? I leave my house and head for the bus stop. As I wait for the bus I get a bit bored and pull out my Windows Phone, and go browsing through my games. I’ve downloaded my favourite game but am disappointed as I won’t be able to continue on from where I left off. I launch the Game, and it reports to me that there has been a recent game session saved to a Cloud Drive that is associated with my Xbox Live ID. The bus finally arrives, I step on the Bus and reach my seat. Looking down at my phone I realize that my game has loaded up to the exact place in which I saved it before I had left the house.
Once I arrive at my destination I save the game before exiting the bus. I stop into my friends house, he tells me he’s found this amazing game for the PC on Xbox Live. Wouldn’t you know, it’s the same game that I’ve been playing all day. Wanting to impress my friend I show him that I can load up my session by logging into my Xbox Live Account.
Snap Back to Reality
If saving to a Cloud disk seems a little far fetched [There would be a lot of security folk at my neck for even suggesting it], it could re-introduce the Latter match back into games, like PC games back in the early 90’s. Saving information from gaming sessions out to a SQL Azure database to offer a bit more than most community run games. I would really enjoy to see content being able to be delivered for an in game experience, however that opens up a large number of security talks, especially with the ability for Media Extenders to expand the content onto a PC.
I have a game idea which would benefit from fresh content being delivered from a Web Service to be injected into game play. Currently the only way to expand a game would be to create game add-ons in which Gamers could download and attach to your game, but I am still searching to find if this ability is enabled for Community Developers using XNA.
Get In the Game!
If you haven’t tried out Developing for Windows, Xbox 360, Zune, or would like the jump on Developing for the Windows Phone. Check out the XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP. Microsoft has also released a full tool set for developers that are specifically interested in Developing for the Windows Phone.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010 20:23 by
SyntaxC4
As many of you in the .NET world should be aware, yesterday (April 12th, 2010) was the launch of the next generation of development tool, Visual Studio 2010. Launched along side .NET 4.0, Visual Studio does not limit the development to it’s side kick framework. You have the ability to Develop against any of the .NET Framework releases.
Microsoft has really been listening to the community since the Launch of Visual Studio 2008 and you can clearly tell with the features that they have added into the IDE. With a new enhanced intellisense system developers can write code quicker and more efficiently. Included in the enhancements to the intellisense system is support for the jquery javascript library which is a great benefit to Web Developers like myself. Other enhancements such as multi-monitor support provides a better workflow for developers that are constantly building Tests as they write their code. Visual Studio 2010 also introduces the use of WPF into the Development tools, enabling a more robust Extension system in order for Developers and Third Party Plug-in makers to Integrate closer to the Core of Visual Studio.
In the spirit of “The early bird gets the worm” I would like to put my two sense in for enhancements for the next version of the Visual Studio IDE, or minor adjustments into the first Service Pack.
Project Backup for Migration
Yeah, I know what you’re going to say, Cory, “Visual Studio has been backing up projects for Migration since Visual Studio 2005.” I do realize this, and you’ll probably notice also that backups are still being handled in the same way they were in Visual Studio 2005.
When you install Visual Studio on your machine you’ll notice that under your “My Documents” folder there is a folder for each release of Visual Studio you have installed on your machine. When you open a project from the “Projects” folder of a previous release of Visual Studio in a newer version of the IDE, the backup files are added to a folder that gets generated in the same folder of your current project. It is typical to run concurrent installations of your development tools just incase you run into something that doesn’t quite in the newer version [Read my next feature for an example].
This will cause some controversy, and maybe perceived as somewhat short sighted as not everyone leaves the projects in the Visual Studio “Projects” folders. With that said, I believe that the original solution folder should remain unchanged. The controversy this will cause is those who do not believe in data replication, but today’s IT industry doesn’t seem to be worried about “Throwing hardware at it”. Leaving the original solution in tact allows for a fail proof backup of the project (which really should be in source code control anyway). The existing project is then recreated in the “Projects” folder for the Current Version of Visual Studio.
Version Safe Database Projects
Since Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft has been focusing on a targeting system within Visual Studio in order to enable their Developers to use the version of the .net framework that is needed for the requirements of the Project [as well as enabling the correct intellisense for the framework that is selected].
With the addition of Database manipulation within Visual Studio Projects it has created another Versioning Issue with the toolsets for database support in visual studio. The first of which that comes to mind is SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).
Recently, I’ve been working on a project that is using SSIS to migrate data from a MySQL database to a MSSQL database. I went to convert the SSIS project to a Visual Studio 2010 Project this morning, and much to my dismay the .proj file was converted, but none of the files were upgraded or viewable in Visual Studio 2010.
If a database targeting system could be put into place like the framework selection to avoid issues such as these and allowing developers to keep one installation of Visual Studio on their machine that will handle all tasks with ease, it would be greatly beneficial.
In Closing
I’m very excited to have a new IDE that supports many of the features that developers have needed for a long time. Kudo’s to the Visual Studio Product team for the release of an exquisite Development suite. I look forward to seeing the Innovation in the tools market provided by the built in Extensions Gallery and to many more great IDE’s coming out from Microsoft in the future.
If you are excited about Cloud computing or are looking at the cloud as a viable option for your business. You might want to join the Windows Azure Firestarter Event that is going on in Redmond.
This event will be taking an end-to-end look at the Cloud computing offerings of Windows Azure. You can attend the event online however you still have to Register for the event.
I’m excited to understand more of the direction that Microsoft is leaning towards with the Windows Azure Platform. I’m hoping to hear more about Windows Azure and the Xbox 360 to see if they plan to open up more flexibility for the XNA Framework developers that are bringing many community games to the Xbox Gaming Platform.