Paper from Microsoft on Connected Systems

Microsoft has a new paper on building connected systems that details the Microsoft Enterprise Application Development Platform products and technologies from the server OS to the .NET Framework. This guide is a high level overview of how the individual tools work together in the creation of connected systems.

Connected systems are applications that leverage the network to link the actors and systems that drive business processes. Connected systems pull together a constellation of services and devices, to more effectively meet modern day business challenges. Building connected systems requires a comprehensive enterprise software platform, but also a new service-oriented architectural approach to address the integration imperative. An enterprise software application platform suitable for building connected systems is much more than a traditional application server, and includes such elements as:

• Client and server operating systems.
• Application services such as transactions, messaging, web application support, and security infrastructure.
• A development technology and application runtime.
• Development tools.
• Business process orchestration.
• Pluggable backend servers providing packaged functionality such as database and portal services.
• An applications management environment.
• Enterprise design patterns and practices.

To read the entire paper, click here.

Source: TheServerSide.net / microsoft.com

The Web services empire strikes back

These are series of articles written by Christian Weyer for TheServerSide.Net website. This is how he introduced them

"In a series of weblog postings I will try to introduce some of the most interesting new features of ASMXv2. There actually already have been some very good articles about what ASMXv2 offers. I just want to drill down a bit. And there is still hope to see all this (and more, with sample code and screenshots) in an MSDN article quite soon :)
"

Here is the full list
Part 1: The Web services empire strikes back - Introductory thoughts
Part 2: The Web services empire strikes back - Inner Workings
Part 3: The Web services empire strikes back - Web Services in Visual Studio 2005
Part 4: The Web services empire strikes back - WS-I BP Conformance
Part 5: The Web services empire strikes back - Custom XML Serialization
Part 6: The Web services empire strikes back - Proxy Type Sharing
Part 7: The Web services empire strikes back - Contract-first with .NET 'IDL'
Part 8: The Web services empire strikes back - Schema Importer Extensions
Part 9: The Web services empire strikes back - Making asynchronous Web service calls easier
Part 10: The Web services empire strikes back - Support for Nullable and SqlTypes

Here is the 11th....The Web services empire strikes back - Support for Generics

Cheers and Thanks for Christian Weyer for this articles and TheServerSide.net to publishing them in their newsletters.

/Gill

SQL Server 2005 XQuery and XML-DML - Part 1, 2 and 3

XML is a big deal in SQL 2005. Hence we need to understand XML, the hierarchical data structures, XML data types, manipulation of stored XML data using XMLQuery. All the while as a DBA, you were dealing with relational data structures and T-SQL way of manipulating this stored data.

I found this good article to get your started, with XML, XQuery, SQL 2005 XML data type, and of course schemas.

http://www.15seconds.com/issue/050803.htm.

Remember to get the sample codes from http://www.daveandal.net/articles/sql2005-xquery/., the authors website.

/Gill

SmartClient Development with VS2005 Series

From: Microsoft WebCasts

Smart Clients that are developed with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 offer both a robust user experience, developer productivity, and the responsiveness of rich clients, along with the small footprint, ease of deployment, and ease of change management offered by Web applications.

Register for this series and learn how to transcend the problems of rich client and Web applications. You will discover how to leave behind the complications that plague large-footprint, tough to deploy, and DLL-laden rich clients, as well as how to avoid the burdens of network dependency, poor user experience, and difficult to develop traditional Web applications.

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdnsmartclient.mspx

/Gill

STL.NET: Combining Generics and Templates

STL.NET provides a bridge between the worlds of traditional C++ templates and .NET generics. By allowing C++ developers to leverage their STL skills without precluding interaction with developers using other .NET languages, STL.NET promises the best of both worlds.
http://www.developer.com/net/cplus/article.php/3524096

/Gill

Avalon and Indigo Get Official Names with Windows Vista Beta Release

With the announcement of the release today of beta 1 for Windows Vista (formally codenamed "Longhorn"), Microsoft also announced the official names for Avalon and Indigo.
Avalon was the code name for what is now officially called Windows Presentation Foundation. WPF is often referred to as the graphical subsystem of Windows Vista. More correctly stated, it is the way in which Windows Vista will create, display, and manipulate documents, media, and user interfaces. This system is expected to use vector graphics, allow for better transparency, and more.

Indigo was the code name for what is now officially called Windows Communication Foundation. WCF is the communications portion of Windows Vista that is built around Web services. This communications technology focuses on providing spanning transports, security, messaging patterns, encoding, networking and hosting, and more. Ultimately, this WCF will deliver a consistent experience — bringing together technologies ranging from Web Services to .NET Remoting to Windows Services — for building connected systems.

It is worth noting that Microsoft had originally announced the beta for August 3rd. This release of the Windows Vista beta a week early should be a welcome surprise to many of the developers and technical IT Pros. This beta is considered a technical beta aimed at developers and techies, primarily those in the MSDN and TechNet programs.

The Windows Vista beta is built on WinFX. The WinFX managed programming model builds on the .NET Framework by adding APIs that target eight core areas. The focus of these APIs is relatively obvious: security, reliability, connectivity, search, data, mobility, user experience, and deployment.

For more on Windows Vista, you can go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/.