In preparation for our upcoming .NET 3.5 Roadshow  (http://www.dotnetroadshow.com/) I am posting setup instructions for those who need some tips on setting up an environment to work with the latest technologies. If you can start using Visual Studio 2008 (Beta 2 available now), I highly recommend it - it gives you the latest .NET 3.0 tools for your WCF, WPF and WF projects. But, for those still using Visual Studio 2005, I have provided those links here as well.

• Windows XP/SP2 or Windows Server 2003
  • Enable IIS
  • Enable MSMQ
  • Install .NET 3.0
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F5-25634C3BF043&displaylang=en
• Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008
  • Enable IIS/WAS
  • Enable MSMQ
  • NOTE: .NET 3.0 is already installed
• Windows SDK for .NET Framework 3.0
  • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C2B1E300-F358-4523-B479-F53D234CDCCF&displaylang=en
• SQL Server 2000/2005 or SQL Express
• SQL Server 2005 SP2 (if applicable)
• If you use Visual Studio 2005, install these add-ons:
  • Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WCF and WPF – Nov 2006
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F54F5537-CC86-4BF5-AE44-F5A1E805680D&displaylang=en
  • Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WF – Nov 2006
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5D61409E-1FA3-48CF-8023-E8F38E709BA6&displaylang=en
  • Visual Studio 2005 LINQ CTP – May 2006
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1e902c21-340c-4d13-9f04-70eb5e3dceea&displaylang=en
  • Visual Studio 2005 ADO.NET vNext CTP – May 2006
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B68F6F53-EC87-4122-B1C8-EE24A043BF72&displaylang=en
  • Visual Studio 2005 Entity Data Model Designer Prototype CTP – May 2006
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=74bda7b2-9ca9-4eea-a33f-31942ddc9dbe&displaylang=en
    • NOTE: this doesn’t work so well, better to install VS 2008 Beta 2 extension for this
• If you use Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 (preferred), install these add-ons:
  • .NET 3.0 tools are built-in to VS 2008
  • LINQ and related tools are built-in to VS 2008
  • At the time of this writing the Entity Data Model and related tools were not available for Beta 2.

On my newest machine, I have a fresh installation of Windows Vista Ultimate that I installed Office 2007 to. After running Outlook 2007 the first time, Office 2007 goes through a configuration step that requires a reboot, but I received this error:

Error 1719: The Windows Installer service could not be accessed

There is an updated KB entry with recommended steps to fix the problem here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315346/en-us

This entry doesn't mention Vista at all, and in fact, I was able to repair the problem on my Vista machine just by running the following command line instructions, in this order:

msiexec /unregister

msiexec /register

So, if you have this problem, give that a go first...then consult with the KB entry if you still have issues.

I delivered 15 webcasts on WCF this summer, from July through September. Each webcast is 1 hour in length, touching on the fundamentals and practical approaches for your WCF development efforts. Here are the links to the archived webcasts!

NOTE: On page 3 of the registration process you can print the slides.

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 01 of 15): Overview

Monday, July 02, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344312&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 02 of 15): Contracts

Monday, July 09, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344314&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 03 of 15): Contract Versioning

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344318&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 04 of 15): Exceptions and Faults

Friday, July 13, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344322&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 05 of 15): Bindings

Monday, July 23, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344330&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 06 of 15): Hosting

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344338&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 07 of 15): Messaging Patterns

Friday, August 10, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344342&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 08 of 15): Instancing Modes

Monday, August 13, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344344&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 09 of 15): Concurrency, Throughput, and Throttling

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344346&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 10 of 15): Security Fundamentals

Friday, August 24, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344348&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 11 of 15): Federated Security

Monday, August 27, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344351&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 12 of 15): Reliable Messaging

Wednesday, August 29, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344353&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 13 of 15): Transactions

Monday, September 03, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344355&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 14 of 15): Message Queuing

Wednesday, September 05, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

o http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344357&Culture=en-US

· MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 15 of 15): Extensibility

Friday, September 07, 2007 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032344359&Culture=en-US

A big thanks to everyone who attended my two sessions at Tech Ed Orlando on CardSpace. I also really enjoyed all of the great questions during and after each session, I can see a lot of momentum building around CardSpace, other identity selectors and providers, and approaches to federated identity models. Very exciting stuff indeed.

As for my code, as I said I had already posted the code beforehand, but I have updated the ASP.NET sample slightly to reflect how I associated the username and password with a unique identifier for a personal card. You can download the latest version of my CardSpace samples here.

Enjoy!

Please see this updated post from the Dev Connections conference in Orlando (just past) for the code samples and references for the performance talk I stepped in to do. Some people were asking me about the post, and the update had not shown up on the blog...now it is there :)

See this link.

This is great news from Soma's blog. Now Expression Web and Blend (soon) will be available to MSDN Premium subscribers. Many of us have been hearing feedback on the subject and relaying this feedback to Microsoft...nice to know they are listening!

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/04/03/listening-to-your-feedback-expression-and-msdn.aspx

Once again a fantastic conference in Orlando. Dev Connections just keeps getting better and I always enjoy being part of it. Not to mention the weather in Orlando isn't bad!

Here are links to my code samples for each talk I delivered. Enjoy!

.NET Technology Roadmap Tutorial

• This tutorial provides an overview of all the key Microsoft technologies for today, tomorrow and the forseeable future - to help you understand and weigh choices for building web, windows and SOA applications.
• Links to the tutorial code can be found in this blog entry (keep an eye out for updates, additions over time):
• http://www.dasblonde.net/2007/03/23/MakingSenseOfTheMicrosoftTechnologyAvalanche.aspx

ASP.NET and WCF

• All of my WCF samples for my book can be found here: http://www.thatindigogirl.com/LearningWCFCode.aspx

ASP.NET and CardSpace

• Demonstrations in this talk can be found here:
  • http://www.dasblonde.net/downloads/code/CardSpaceSamples.zip

WCF Federated Security

• My claims-based samples can be found here:
  • http://www.dasblonde.net/downloads/code/ClaimsBasedSamples.zip
• And, my STS sample here (NOTE: this sample will be updated shortly with an upcoming article, stay tuned!):
  • MediaServicesFederation.zip (2.07 MB)

 WCF Contracts and Versioning

• All of my WCF samples for my book can be found here: http://www.thatindigogirl.com/LearningWCFCode.aspx
• See ServiceContracts, DataContracts and AdvancedSerialization directories.

ASP.NET Performance (Updated 06/07/2007)

Ok people, I had this in my Windows Live Writer to send a long time ago, and somehow it did not post...but since I haven't posted in a while I didn't notice. Many apologies for the delay. Does the "better late than never" statement apply here? I hope so...

• In this talk I covered a lot of ground, and theory around performance including simpler performance tips, the progression of asynchronous handlers to component distribution, and the importance of performance counters for your SLAs.
• You can look at my ASP.NET Sandboxing articles and samples for more resources on component distribution.
• ASP.NET Sandboxing - Part 1
• Code updated for ASP.NET 2.0: ASPNETSandboxing_updatedfor2.0.zip 
• ASP.NET Sandboxing - Part 2
• Code updated for ASP.NET 2.0: ASPNETSandboxing2_updatedfor2.0.zip
• See also the following data demos for examples of data caching
• DataDemos.zip
• DataAccessComparison.zip (this is a simple demo illustrating performance benefits of data reader over data set)
• My LocalizedGallery globalization example (posted here) illustrates the use of complex output caching based on custom caching by browser, culture and profile
• Asynchronous HTTP handlers:
• Rick Strahl did a great job documenting ASP.NET 2.0 threading model here
• Jeff Prosise and Fritz Onion wrote in-depth articles on the subject for 1.1 and 2.0 as well
• Here is an example showing how to create custom performance counters:
• PerfCounters.zip
• Here is an example illustrating some of the health monitoring configuration features of ASP.NET 2.0:
• HealthMonitoring.zip

I just spent the last week at SD West in San Jose...this year the conference was bigger than ever before! Thanks to everone that attended my tutorials and sessions, I really enjoyed the questions and discussions...as I hope you did. As promised, here is a list of all my resources from the conference talks. Enjoy!

Intro to Web Services (Tutorial)

• Christian Gross and myself presented this one, discussing everything from POX, REST, RSS, SOAP/WSDL, WS* and SOA.
• Code I demonstrated in this tutorial is from the .NET Web Services tutorial next.

.NET Web Services TODAY (Tutorial)

• In this session I discussed web services technologies for the Microsoft platform from ASMX to WSE to WCF.
• Get the ASMX and WSE samples here: http://www.dasblonde.net/downloads/code/WebServicesSamples.zip
• Get WCF samples from my book here: http://www.thatindigogirl.com/LearningWCFCode.aspx

Microsoft Technology Avalanche (Tutorial)

• This tutorial provides an overview of all the key Microsoft technologies for today, tomorrow and the forseeable future - to help you understand and weigh choices for building web, windows and SOA applications.
• Links to the tutorial code can be found in this blog entry:
• http://www.dasblonde.net/2007/03/23/MakingSenseOfTheMicrosoftTechnologyAvalanche.aspx

Top 10 Web Service Standards You Need To Know

WCF Contracts and Versioning

• Demonstrations in both of these talks are based on WCF code from my book here: http://www.thatindigogirl.com/LearningWCFCode.aspx
• See \Security, \ReliableSessions, \Transactions in particular for the WS* discussion
• See \DataContracts, \AdvancedSerialization, and \ServiceContracts for the contracts discussion

CardSpace

• Demonstrations in this talk can be found here:
• http://www.dasblonde.net/downloads/code/CardSpaceSamples.zip

The Amazing World of Federated Security

• This talk was mostly discussion of standards and architectures however the demonstrations I used to illustrate a few points are based on my claims-based samples here:
• http://www.dasblonde.net/downloads/code/ClaimsBasedSamples.zip
• And, my STS sample here (NOTE: this sample will be updated shortly with an upcoming article, stay tuned!):
• MediaServicesFederation.zip (2.07 MB)

I created a presentation in November of last year with the goal of helping folks make sense of the vast number of Microsoft technologies from development tools, language, data, windows, web and SOA development. This blog post holds the latest links to resources and code for each section.

System Requirements

The links below use the following technology platforms:

• Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0 
• .NET 3.0
  • NET 3.0 Runtime (installed with Vista)
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F5-25634C3BF043&displaylang=en
  • Windows SDK for .NET 3.0
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C2B1E300-F358-4523-B479-F53D234CDCCF&displaylang=en
• Visual Studio 2005 Orcas Extensions for .NET 3.0:
  • WCF&WPF (Nov 2006)
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F54F5537-CC86-4BF5-AE44-F5A1E805680D&displaylang=en
  • WF (Nov 2006)
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5D61409E-1FA3-48CF-8023-E8F38E709BA6&displaylang=en
• ADO.NET and LINQ CTP for VS 2005 (May 2006)
  • LINQ CTP
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1e902c21-340c-4d13-9f04-70eb5e3dceea&displaylang=en
  • ADO.NET vNext CTP
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B68F6F53-EC87-4122-B1C8-EE24A043BF72&displaylang=en
  • ADO.NET vNext Entity Data Model Designer Prototype, CTP
    • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=74bda7b2-9ca9-4eea-a33f-31942ddc9dbe&displaylang=en
• Visual Studio Orcas CTP (March 2007)
  • Instead of using Orcas plug-ins to Visual Studio 2005, you can install Visual Studio Orcas CTP (for now, safer to run as VPC)
  • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=cf76fcba-07af-47ac-8822-4ad346210670&displaylang=en&tm

Development Tools

In this section I reviewed the stack of development tools and explained how to choose between them.

• Express Editions
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/
• Visual Studio
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/future
• Visual Studio Team System
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem
• Expression Products
  http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression

Language Enhancements

In this section I talked about moving from .NET 1.1 to 2.0, and discussed the key features of 2.0 that folks should be leveraging. Then, I focused on the language enhancements forthcoming with C# 3.0 and VB 9.0.

• C# Developer Center
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp
• VB Developer Center
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic

Demos:

• VB8.zip (211.26 KB)
• CSharp2.zip (326.47 KB)
• CSharp3.zip (40.65 KB)

Data Access

In this section I focused on data access technologies, designing the data access tier, and key features of ADO.NET 2.0, vNext and LINQ to give you some idea how to prepare for the next set of innovations.

• ADO.NET 2.0
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/ref/adonet
• ADO.NET vNext
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/ref/adonetnext
• LINQ
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/ref/linq

Demos:

• When you install ADO.NET vNext and LINQ there are literally 100s of samples that will really help you get up to speed here. I show a selection of these in this presentation.

Windows Development

In this section I review Windows Forms 2.0 innovations, primarily ClickOnce, and then talk about how to prepare for WPF, explaining the various deployment models. I also talk about practical approaches to choosing the right platform for your development efforts.

• Windows Forms Home
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsforms
• WPF Home
  http://wpf.netfx3.com/

Demos:

• Find my ClickOnce samples in this post: http://www.dasblonde.net/PermaLink,guid,aa492057-3a39-4ab4-87c4-5adb36d3d41f.aspx
• I create this WPF before your very eyes: WPFApp.zip (416.81 KB)
• And I also showed several WPF samples from the SDK, believe me, there are PLENTY of samples there.

Web Development

In this section I showed an ASP.NET sample application that illustrates key features of ASP.NET 2.0 and practical application of those features. Then we looked at AJAX and discussed trends on the Web compared to Windows development.

Popular AJAX Frameworks:

• ASP.NET Developer Center
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/
• ASP.NET AJAX Home
  http://atlas.asp.net/
• AJAX.NET
  http://ajaxpro.info/
• Anthem.NET for ASP.NET 1.x/2.0
  http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=151897
• MagicAjax.NET
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/magicajax

Demos:

• ASP.NET Essentials code:
  http://www.dasblonde.net/downloads/Profiles.zip
• This demo from the winner of the AJAX Mashup contest, pretty cool illustration:
  http://atlas.dotnetslackers.com/Mashup.aspx
• I also showed the monster sample that came with the AJAX Control Toolkit that illustrates literally every control - sweet!

Distributed System Programming

In this section I reviewed the typical use for earlier distributed computing technologies like remoting, enterprise services and ASMX web services with WSE, and compared them with WCF.

• Advanced .NET Remoting, Ingo Rammer
  http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-NET-Remoting-Second-Rammer/dp/1590594177
• Programming .NET Components, Juval Lowy
  http://www.amazon.ca/NET-Component-Services-Juval-Lowy/dp/0596001037
• Learning WCF, Michele Leroux Bustamante
  • Book Blog: www.thatindigogirl.com
  • Get WCF samples from my book here: http://www.thatindigogirl.com/LearningWCFCode.aspx
• WCF Home
  http://wcf.netfx3.com/

BPM and Workflow

In this section I discussed BPM, BizTalk and workflow and trends for BizTalk vNext.

• WF Home
  http://wf.netfx3.com/
• Understanding BizTalk Server 2006
  http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/techinfo/whitepapers/understanding.mspx
  

DinnerNow

To pull it all together, there is a sample you can download here: www.dinnernow.com that illustrates all of the technologies in a practical example. It includes WCF, WF, WPF, AJAX, Vista gadgets and mobile apps.