This CTP was released December 21st, so I have been updating my existing book chapters to make sure things still “work” if you know what I mean. Here's the instructions to build a machine or VPC for this latest release.

1. Operating System: XP Professional with SP2 or Windows 2003 Server
2. SQL Server: Install SQL Server 2000 or 2005, but you can skip this step if you want to use SQL Express which is installed with Visual Studio 2005 if you elect to.
3. Visual Studio 2005: include SQL Express if you didn't do step 2. NOTE: I like to keep a VPC handy up to this point, and make copies of it as I need to rebuild for future WinFX CTP releases.
4. WinFX Runtime Components (Dec CTP): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BD3BA2D5-6ADB-4FB2-A3AA-E16A9EA5603F&displaylang=en
5. Windows SDK (Dec CTP): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2297BDC9-B5AE-4B8A-B601-EEF54A52867A&displaylang=en
6. Visual Studio Extensions for WinFX (Dec CTP): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D1336F3E-E677-426B-925C-C84A54654414&displaylang=en

A few things you might want to know after completing this installation:

• The installation directory for the SDK has changed since earlier CTP: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v1.0\
• To get at the samples for W*F you must unzip the rather large AllSamples zip file located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v1.0\samples (NOTE: this can take 1 hour on VPC...and I have a pretty fast machine with lots of RAM!)

I'll be posting links to my WCF book code updated for Dec CTP this week...with a really cool new site update, stay tuned!

I just presented the ASP.NET session for the launch yesterday in Anaheim...lots of people indicated how excited they are about the improvements to ASP.NET...and I agree. I promised some tips on “getting started” with all the new features, to guide you on your way. If you look at these sections in the MSDN library, including articles written by myself and others...that should help!

This article link will take you to the ASP.NET\Infrastructure articles (look at the treeview on the left!): http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/asp2local.asp

If you scroll down in the MSDN on the left side, you'll see a number of other categories, all based on ASP.NET 2.0...this is a good start for reviewing a collection of articles on ASP.NET 2.0.

My pal Jennifer Ritzinger at Microsoft has kicked off a new Channel 9 series highlighting women with cool jobs in technology. The first interview is with Angela Mills who is the Group Program Manager for Indigo (WCF)...my favorite new technology. She talks about what it is like guiding the process of building the next generation platform...she's awesome.

Oh, another cool interview I saw there (haven't heard yet) from the speech writer for Steve Ballmer...what a job! He doesn't something like 200 speeches per year, and you know they have to rock!!

Anyhow, check it out:http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/WM_IN

Oh, and don't confuse WM_IN with a Windows message :) Gosh, that gets me thinking...the last time I messed with anything WM_XXX was when I programmed ATL/C++ in the late 90's...gosh it's good to have .NET!!!!

I posted some WCF samples earlier in this blog, and they were built against a (then) unreleased version of the bits. Now you can get them too, here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E5376297-DA10-4FC3-967D-38C96F767FC4&displaylang=en

This build works with VS 2005, the steps to build a machine:

• Install .NET 2.0 framework first. You can do this by installing SQL 2005 first, then VS 2005...or just install VS 2005 if you don't want to create a VPC with SQL...and install SQL Express with VS instead (part of VS installation).
• Install WinFX Runtime Components November CTP. These are the bits you need to do WCF and WWF among other things.
• Install Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX. You need this to get IDE integration for WCF.
• [Optional but fun] Install Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WWF. Not required for WCF, but fun with WWF! Same deal, need integration with the VS environment.
• Windows SDK for WinFX Runtime Components November CTP. In here you get additional tools including trace utilities for example. Its a must-have.

Enjoy! Check out my earlier Indigo posts for code samples. Some are built for PDC bits, later are built for these bits... thought I can't absolutely guarantee it since I am using early builds before they are public. Let me know if you find incompatibilities so I can try to help.

In a recent exchange on this forum: http://forums.asp.net/1126817/ShowPost.aspx a few people are looking for tools to help them with the localization process. WARNING, the thread is really long, it will take you two hours to get through it!!! I have already made a lot of remarks in the forum, but it is pretty clear that although ASP.NET 2.0 has taken some of the pain away with the new tools they provided including:

• Generation of local page resources
• Declarative expressions that generate code to link control properties to local or shared global resources
• ResourceManager lifetime management
• Automatic culture selection from browser settings

...people (of course) still want and need more. I have a perspective on this that is based on my experiences, but you all may have other challenges that differ, so this blog entry is an attempt to collect feedback from you on the tools you'd like to see improved for localization of Web sites. Here's my synopsis of what is needed, and the roles that use the tool:

Improvements to developer tools (VS IDE):

1. Help me associate control properties to local or shared resources and manage my shared resources as well if I have made those links. Currently this can be done with IDE extensibility, no tools on the market.
2. Don't let me compile without notification that resource should be regenerated due to changes in the page. In other words, developers are concerned that the page changes might be out of sink with resources associated to the page...and not resolved because the developer forgets to generate resources again.
3. Provide a tool to automatically (programmatically) generate resources for all pages. 
4. Help me link a resource entry to a database field. THis would be like data binding, with a custom localization expression linking a $Resource entry to a database field, which implies I need a way to configure the connection string for design time as well. This would still look like an explicit localization expression for a shared resource, but connect to the database instead. THis can be done with extensibility but no robust solutions currently exist.
5. Perform change management to reconcile changes to invariant resx (local or global) and make sure keys are reconciled with variant (NOTE: I don't agree that this is necessary in the IDE, I think it belongs in change management, but let's keep it here and see what people think).

Change management tools:

1. Create a difference report for resources on check-in (VSS or VSTS or external tool that can be run against selected source files).
2. Allow the difference reports to be reconciled from last translator shipment to the latest build (what resources were added, changed, deleted in the invariant version? reconcile this against variant resources)
3. Pull all resx into a single file, allow translators to edit that single file, the push all translated values into appropriate individual resources again (easy, with XML, and clients have done custom work on this, no tool on the market that I know of)
4. Pull database content and file content for translators into a localization package for editing by translators offline, then reconcile after changes are made (lots of variations here, what tools do people use today for database access besides running reports and pushing in translated values with script?)
5. A way to manage this process and keep track of all relevant files/changes
   

I know this is not an exhaustive list, but it is relevant to the discussions on the thread I mention above.

Please comment or add requests in this blog entry. I speak with this team at Microsoft with some regularity, and have told them about this blog entry...and they are just a great group so they are really interested in hearing this feedback!!!

Thanks again for participating in this webcast today. Here are a list of resource for globalization as I mentioned in the webcast:

http://www.dasblonde.net/PermaLink.aspx?guid=8d2a4b2c-c2f4-4dab-9bb6-b3218bf17c71

Remember to review the webcast slides for reminder of what we went through, covered a lot of ground!

Also, there is a rather long discussion re: localization tools happening on this thread: http://forums.asp.net/1126817/ShowPost.aspx

I will post a separate entry to collect feedback from you all on tools that you would like to see available for your localization efforts.

Thank you to everyone who attended the webcast this morning on interop. I wanted to share with you some resources I have on interoperability, and some future plans happening at IASA.

First, resources:

• My latest article on The Server Side .NET summarizes my webcast demonstrations and more...plus links to the code: http://www.dasblonde.net/CategoryView.aspx?category=Interoperability#a96e93182-d627-4625-b671-9b024c9381d0
• Architcture podcast on WS*, see podcast 1-4 here: http://www.microsoft.com/architecture/default.aspx?pid=share.podcast&abver=FEEB2E89-4412-4C58-A7F8-9B2CA0E0BDAC
• WSE links that have code showing off customization of WSE for interop among other things:
• http://www.dasblonde.net/PermaLink.aspx?guid=b2518a69-c715-49e9-b2bc-e71415263032
• http://www.dasblonde.net/PermaLink.aspx?guid=e3db75c6-02c5-4b0d-a681-b733035f112f

IASA plans:

• Earlier this year I kicked off 3 interop events for IASA (International Association of Software Architects). They were user group driven events, where java and .NET communities (among others) united to enjoy some human interop as well as get some top notch interop experts to show their stuff. If your user groups want to do this locally, IASA can help. And don't worry, we are non-profit...and the events can be free if there is enough support of the community and sponsorship. All we need is to get the user group leads to buy in and say “we want an interop event too!!!“
• We are building knowledge communities (just now!) related to architecture, including interop...I have not had a chance to post much there yet (blogs links, articles) but we 'd love to get your feedback, and referrals if you run across something poingnant that should be referenced here...let me know and participate in the growth of the community resource!

More stuff...

• I found some very interesting things as I tested WSE 3.0 and Workshop 8.1 SP5 - keep an eye on this blog for more on that!
• WebLogic 9.0 is the go forward stack to use, since it supports more WS* and will have an integrated IDE summer-ish 2006...to replace Workshop today. Use Workshop if you need WS* today and can't take the time to be a plumber...if you can, use the WL 9.0 stack now (already released with better WS-Security among other standards support)
• We have another big interop event coming at SD West 2006, so you can expect some content out of that one in Q1 2006, including some of the original Apache Axis founding members helping us out!

Well folks, it's that time again...MSDN is pulling together a “best of” series for the webcasts presented this year. I'm presenting two of those web casts. The links below will take you to the master list of webcasts coming up...and remember they are free! From there you can find my two events and register.

In this webcast I'll be showing off the new globalization features. I was taped doing this presentation at Tech Ed this year, but the VS Beta was bombing on me, a few times, so we didn't have a good run at it...this time will be on the RTM and I can tell you it works just beautifully from my presentations last week at Dev Connections :)

Thanks to everyone who attended the SDSIC event last night hosted at WebSense. I had the honor of moderating the event as a favor to Brian Loesgen your usual moderator, and really enjoyed hearing from the panelists:

• Alex Shah, Team SOA (ashah@teamsoa.com) (slides)
• Tom Castiglia, Hershey Technologies (tom@hersheytech.com) (slides)
• David Pallmann, Neudesic (david.pallmann@neudesic.com) (slides)

Thank you also to the panelists for bringing their insight to the challenges with web services today, and how they worked around them. Quite enjoyable!

I for one had a great time yesterday at the launch. Bernard Wong invited Tim Huckaby and myself to help out presenting smart client and ASP.NET, respectively, while he demonstrated code from the Visual Studio 2005 launch event.

For all of you who attended, I offered some content that you might find relevant to ASP.NET and ClickOnce. All of my content references are in my most recent blog entries from DevConnections (see below) but the most relevant are these two:

• ASP.NET - http://www.dasblonde.net/#ab95d2c9b-05c9-4fde-8a47-d77526b457b4
• Smart Client - http://www.dasblonde.net/#aa0a9bfcc-b878-4a68-a50b-30b713c5e7a0

I also wanted to make sure you all know about the .NET course curriculum at UCSD Extension. You can get links to all the courses from our new community blog here: www.ucsdxcommunity.com We'll post special advanced classes here, and also link you to our new course blogs (this is new, not a lot of content yet). I am the advisor to the program (since 1993!) so if you have any special requests, ask away!

<blatant_sales_pitch>

At IDesign we do architecture consulting, but we also do training. I teach the official IDesign Master Class at UCSD 2x per year (www.ucsdxcommunity.com/masterclass) and also do on site training, someone asked about this as well. See www.idesign.net for more information about those courses.

</blatant_sales_pitch>

I hope you enjoyed the day, please keep in touch!

I have a myriad of resources for this talk, once again a jammed talk with lots of vertical topics you want to dive into.

• The short list of performance tips are in the slides. I have uploaded them for those who don't have a copy:
• Data caching - see my blog entry for the data session
• IIS and ASP.NET - this article was written long ago, probably could use an update, but I think my buddy Rick Strahl did a great job document this for 2.0 already
• Asynchronous Handlers - my colleague Brian Noyes wrote this one for 1.1, plus Jeff Prosise and Fritz Onion wrote in-depth articles on the subject for 1.1 and 2.0 as well, these concepts still apply for 2.0, but I will update the web services sample I demonstrated for 2.0 and post it here
• Enterprise System Design
• See my security articles on the server side mentioned in this blog post
• I also wrote this article describing how to leverage Enterprise Services for a scalable Web application:
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/community/authors/mlb/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/aspnetscal.asp. In the article post on MSDN, the SQL script is missing from the installation so, I reviewed the sample tonight, and decided to write up some instructions to help you run the code as well. Download this here:ASPNETScalability.zip
• Other resources:
• http://www.dotnetdashboard.net/sessions/handlers.aspx
• http://www.dotnetdashboard.net/sessions/soapext.aspx
• http://www.dotnetdashboard.net/resources/scalability.aspx

Please let me know if you can't find what you are looking for. Enjoy!

This talk was jammed with advice on building a professional ASP.NET app, and we covered a lot of ground in 1 hour...but I know you want more...so here it is, samples, references to articles...dig in!

• Main Sample - This code samples illustrates many of the points in this talk, but below I'm adding specific references for more details
• Master Pages Article - I wrote this MSDN article long ago, and they will post an update to it in the next week on the release bits...code samples on this site are up to date on RTM
• Dynamic Navigation - extra code sample
• Data Binding & Caching - my other blog entry with data samples
• Localization - my other blog entry with globalization references
• Security Articles
  • ASP.NET Security - This article will be updated on MSDN next week for release bits, until then my code samples are current on this blog
  • Sandboxing Components Part 1 - based on .NET 1.1 and Code Access Security
  • Sandboxing Components Part 2 - based on .NET 1.1 and Enterprise Services, also illustrated component distribution!
• Scalability and Consistency - MSDN article based on .NET 1.1, employing Enterprise Services and transactions

Here are the samples I used (or referred to) in this presentation, enjoy!

• ConfigurationUtility – illustrates how to encrypt a connection string, also shows complext data binding statements, early bound (not using Eva() evil)
• DataDemos – some simple demos of master-details and caching, not presented but consider it extra code!
• PhotoUploadApp – this is the application I demonstrated in the talk

Regarding the SQL cache dependency that didn’t quite work on stage…I forgot to “enable” it on the control, simple silly mistake…I cracked under pressure what can I say?!?

Let me know if you have any questions!

For my globalization talk, I illustrated how to architect Windows Forms and ASP.NET applications for localization, leveraging .NET resources where appropriate. Here are the samples:

• Globalized Windows Sample
• ClickOnce and Globalization
• ASP.NET Globalization

Don't forget to read the instructions for the Web application, it requires a database restore step. If you have any trouble, let me know!

Additional globalization resources:

• http://www.theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=LocalizationPractices
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/community/authors/mlb/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/asp2local.asp
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/community/authors/mlb/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/aspnet-globalarchi.asp
• http://www.dotnetdashboard.net/sessions/globalization.aspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev

Cheers!

I delivered these two WCF/Indigo talks at DevConnections last week, and this post contains sample code demonstrated in both talks.

NOTE: I am building all sample code with November 2005 bits, so they will NOT work with PDC bits. I will update these samples for the very next public CTP so you can look for that.

• HelloIndigo – a simple WCF service, decoupled host
• ComplexTypes – serialization via DataContract
• ComplexTypesV2 – serialization of base types and interfaces
• CustomMessage – my WS-Transfer implementation is not compiling with the current build I have, so I will update this when the issue is resolved
• Messaging – illustrates sessions and instancing
• SimpleQueue – simple msmq example
• WindowsAuthentication – windows auth and security context information display
• SecureService – windows auth and username auth demo, with custom membership provider

I am also posting the slides from this talk. I took this talk over at the last minute for Clemens, and we didn’t have time to get the slides in for the printed books.

VID307DesigningServicesWithIndigo.zip (55.37 KB)

I also promised a tutorial, and my plan is to get permission from my publisher to post a few labs from each chapter in my book, including the security tutorial I showed in the security session. I will update this post to let you know where that will be found…stay tuned for a few more days.

For this half day smart client tutorial, I talked about UI design, globalization, deployment, versioning, security, offline data and download on demand using the System.Deployment APIs. The sample code uploaded here is drawn from my demos, and a few extras listed here:

UI Design

• GDI Watermark
• OpacityDemo 
• GDI+
• CustomBrowser
• SplashScreen

Thread Safety

• BackgroundWorker
• BackgroundWorker (VB)
• SafeControls

Globalization

• Globalized Windows App

ClickOnce

• Tutorial Demo - includes smart client that handles offline data, deployment on demand (for globalization), security elevation
• Offline/Online Smart Client

Also, we have number of other advanced samples on the IDesign site, don't forget to check out our downloads section of the site.

Thanks for attending the tutorial, and let me know if you have any questions about the code samples.

Cheers!

-Michele

Just a quick post to let you know about a new article I completed for TheServerSide.NET...enjoy:

http://www.theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=InteropWSE

What a great conference! I talked to many attendees throughout the week in Las Vegas for Dev Connections...and was really pleased to hear about all the interesting enterprise systems (not just applications :)) that folks are buliding on .NET 2.0, and later technologies like WCF and WWF. Very cool.

Now, to business...if you attended any of my tutorial or 6 other talks...I will post a single entry PER TALK this weekend, with code. If you are looking for code I have already posted on this blog that is similar, search under the RSS for Speaking/Events. However, keep in mind, those samples will be pre-RTM for the 2.0 stuff. My posts this weekend will ALL be RTM content :)

First, I have a client to take care of today and tomorrow...so stay tuned after Sunday for the posts!

I hope you enjoyed your entire experience at Dev Connections...it has become one of my absolute favorite conferences to speak at, because of the overall quality of speakers that they have been able to get, and the organization of the entire event, not to mention the people that run it...so if you liked it, tell your friends to come to the Spring conference in Orlando, or come back next year to Vegas!