Tag | Architecture Posts
Recently I attended the Business Analysis Conference in London that I spoke about in my previous post. My reason for being there was I accepted an invite to be a speaker on a panel discussing “The Role Of The BA: What Is Expected And What Is Delivered” Part of the Business Analysts role is to capture, distil and communicate business requirement to Technical staff so it was of great relevance that I played my part as the technical representative on the panel. If technical staff are to understand business ...
What is Windows CE? Microsoft says that Windows CE is “Componentized, real-time operating system for a wide range of small footprint devices” on their WEB site. That is a very precise description, but what does it really mean? Windows CE is designed for embedded systems. An embedded system is typically a device that doesn’t necessarily look like a computer, but provides some special functionality. Examples of embedded computers are GPS systems, voting machines, Automated Teller Machines, Point Of ...
Tonight in User Group land: The Twin Cities Developers Guild meets on the second Tuesday of each month, and tonight's meeting features Donn Felker of Agilevent. http://www.TwinCitiesDevelo... Topic: Testing with Mocks: Test this, test that, no problem. But what about when we need to start building full object graphs into our test in order to test an interaction or state? Yeah, Houston, we have a problem. With mocks we can streamline development by mocking out dependencies. Mocks will allow ...
What is something that is longer than a magazine article and shorter than a book chapter? Give up? It's a Wrox-Blox that Wiley has available online with some going for less than $10.00. Written by the best programmers in the their fields, Wrox Blox are short informational pieces and code that will help get you up-to-speed and keep you up-to-date. Build the knowledge you need quickly on a wide variety of topics. In the DotNetNuke world, there are several of these available for you to review and stay ...
Yesterday working in a demo about WCF-REST Starter Kit (http://www.asp.net/downloa... i had a little issue to make a query to a XML Structure that includes a xml namespace (aka xmlns), the trick is very simple to get the value from each element in the structure, you should pass the XName in Elements method including the XNamespace This is my XML structure <ItemInfoList xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/... - <ItemInfo> <EditLink>http://loca... ...
I've largely finished my presentation for the October Rules Fest 2009 conference in Dallas at the end of the month. I'm speaking on complex event processing (CEP). My plan is to provide a broad survey of CEP technologies, chiefly concentrating on the similarities and differences between event stream and rules processing. There has been a lot of interest and activity around event processing in the rules community in recent years, and not a little controversy about the best approaches and, indeed, ...
Designing Software for Scientists Creating a software design for scientists can be tricky business. Unlike the businessman, who is better off looking at the pretty database report or marveling over the catchy name of the latest Forms over Data application, the scientist can actually contribute to the implementation – provided you use the right architecture. In year’s past (I’m referring to 20+ years ago), the typical Physicist / Chemist / etc. was nearly on par with the typical software engineer ...
The Microsoft Patterns & Practices team announced a NEW Project in CodePlex: A Guide for Claims Based Identity & Access Control This new Guide introduces developers to the world of claims based authentication and access control. With the introduction and soon general availability of Windows Identity Foundation and ADFS V2, claims based identity architectures are far more accessible. The Guide uses a case-study approach to analyze commonly occurring scenarios such as WebSSO, Federation, consuming ...
Full Disclosure: I was lucky enough to be sent a free review copy by the publisher But... if I had not been sent a review copy I would have gone out and bought a copy of this book anyway. Why is that? Because I had purchased the previous edition and I knew that it would be the most in depth book on SSAS 2008 available. It has been written by members of the product team and contains a wealth of information that just could not come from any other source. I'm sure most of you have heard that Attribute ...
Over the last couple of weeks I have dedicated quite some time to knowing Team Foundation Server (from here on out referred to as TFS) and the interaction between it and Visual Studio Team System/Team Explorer. The process has not been without pain, but with pain come great lessons. So, over the next days I will be posting here what was the success story of installation in both HTTP and then the process to get HTTPS in place too. But, how about starting to lay down the foundation of what the process ...
Last Saturday I attended BathCamp near Bath and Tues through Thursday I attended Software Architect 2009 in London. I loved both conferences yet they are so very different. Hence (in a blokey way) I thought it would be interesting to summarise and compare. I was an invited speaker for Software Architect (my sessions) and proposed and had a session accepted on the day at BathCamp. BathCamp Software Architect Comment Price £20 £1000ish Location A field behind a pub near Bath! Many folks camped overnight. ...
Its been quite long time I haven't wrote much due to lot of travelling and non-core area related work (non connected systems, SOA & BPM work). Now, I am back and the good news is I will be drinking, eating and breathing some of the buzzwords..(because of the solutions I am concentrating and architecture of current project I am in) So, Some Buzzwords I am really gonna look/work and more deep dive areas are mentioned below… 1) SOA – Service Oriented Architecture, The most controversial Architecture ...
So the other day at work we were doing an architecture/design review on a project to share knowledge gained with other project teams. After making the code available one of the other architects came to me with a specific piece of the code in hand asking us to justify why it seemed so complex (in this case the comment was mainly because the code used lambda's generously and he had limited exposure to them previously). Here is the code in question: Original Approach public void Save(IJob job) { this.AutoCommit(s ...
After submitting several abstracts for the code camps in the surrounding area, I now have my October planned and what a busy time it will be! Having recently returned from the Raleigh Code Camp, which was a fantastic event(many thanks to the organizers for putting together such a well run event for the developer community), I learned that I’ll also be speaking at the NoVa and Philly.NET Code Camps. So in addition to attending some excellent sessions and catching up with some geek friends, I’ll also ...
Just a little plug for the team at Black Marble.
On 3rd December they will be hosting the Northern Architecture Forum event.
If you work in the North of England this should be an excellent event to attend with some high quality people and some interesting discussions.
Look forward to seeing anyone there
Click here for details
Wow! Last month’s meeting was terrific! Claudio Lassala’s presentation rocked. Also, the format of the meeting worked so well we’re going to stick with it for the Wednesday, October 28th meeting. This month FredNUG has another great speaker lined up. We’ll start with pizza and social networking at 6:30 PM. Then, starting at 7 PM, Antonio Chagoury will present Mash-Up Your DotNetNuke Using RESTful APIs. This sounds like an informative presentation covering a variety of key technologies. The scheduled ...
If you are in the Baton Rouge area there is a new event for you to attend! Intended for aspiring and current software architects, the BRAG Lunch is a place for an informal gathering to talk about what works and doesn’t work in real life. Our first meeting is going to start off on the Service Locator pattern mediated by Lance Dunnehoo and we’ll see where we go from there! I hope to see you guys there, and you can find out the granular details at our EventBrite page. If you plan on attending, please ...
What is Web Client Software Factory (WCSF)? WCSF is a web client development pattern recommended by Microsoft. You can use the software factory to easily create Web client applications with a consistent architecture. It helps you quickly incorporate many of the proven practices and patterns of building Web client applications What do I achieve out of this? 1. Your development time goes down a lot. 2. You will have a consistent architecture. 3. You will get a guidance automation package to guide you ...
I continue to be interested in the architecture of the plain, standard, web application. Each of the web application frameworks defines an architecture for the plain web application. Think of Rails and Django (MVC + Active Record), or sharp architecture and Codebetter.Canvas (Asp.net MVC + NHibernate + DDD). This is a starting point from which more advanced and specialised web applications can grow..... Read the full article ...
[Originally Published Apr 2004 - Updated October 2009] Everyone "understands" that Microsoft's .NET and the CLR is a "garbage collector" based environment; but is it really. First we must establish what is meant be "garbage" in this context. When an object is created there is (typically) one reference by which it can be accessed (the return value of "new"). While the program executes, there may be other references established to the same item; and established references may terminate. When an object ...
This is one of a series of posts on my preparations for sessions on Azure and ORMs at Software Architect 2009. [Initual release 22nd Sept 2009] [Updated 23rd Sept, with links from Julie Lerman] [Updated 2nd Oct, with slidedeck section] [Large Update 15th Dec – including PDC09 content, my new posts and plenty of stuff from Julie L, Tony and others] This is my attempt to pull together all (ok – most) of the improvements in Entity Framework 4.0 and aggregate useful resources against each. It is very ...
Next week I am presenting two sessions at Software Architect 2009. Both sessions are new, new in the sense that I am creating them this week and new in the sense that whilst they are on topics I have experience with, in each case there is a significant new element for me to learn. I thought it would be fun and interesting (to me anyway!) to keep a diary of my preparations to get these sessions in good shape. The two 90minute sessions are: Design considerations for storing data in the cloud with Windows ...
ASP.NET MVC Reports in ASP.NET MVC Integrating OpenID in an ASP.NET MVC Application using DotNetOpenAuth Microsoft Chart Controls to PDF with iTextSharp and ASP.NET MVC Setting Up ASP.NET MVC with NUnit for Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition ASP.NET MVC ExtJS using LINQ Using ExtJS Grid with ASP.NET Ajax WCF WebServices & C# How To Get Started With Selenium Core And ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC Cheat Sheets ASP.NET How to Implement Trackback Handler in ASP.NET How to Implement Pingback Handler in ...
I stumbled on an article here, and could help but to agree more on the same. The thought is just awesome and almost echoes what i was thinking for long but i was always in loss of words. Initially, I shunned the very thought of managing people and getting more into managing timelines, schedule and execution of the project. I looked for the role if Individual Contributor (IC) and quickly discovered that the role is almost non-existent for mere mortals like me!! So, i decided to train myself in Leadership ...
I’ve got a few speaking gigs coming up that I’m pretty pumped about, also making for a busy Fall/Winter. Edmonton Code Camp – September 18 Finally I make my way to Edmonton! I’ll be doing two sessions on Silverlight development in the afternoon. These won’t be your typical video-in-a-button-spinning talks; instead I’ll be talking about how Silverlight as a technology works: what it can do, what it can’t do, its strengths and its deficiencies. We’ll also look at patterns and architecture for creating ...
I am visiting beautiful city of Nashvillie, TN, US and involoved in rather interesting project involving WCF, silverlight and SQL server 2008. Also being used are Search server (FAST) / Lucene .Net Omniture (for Web analytics) Integration with Community server, Twitter, Facebook Velocity – Distributed caching. MemCache – Web server Cache I am also planning to use Nikhil’s MVVM Silverlight Fx at silverlight end or MEF LINQ / Enity framework - for ORM. That remind me of scenario where i had to register ...
Someone asked me about cloud computing and Azure platform and then asked me the future of MEWA in light of Silverlight 3 offline application. While i have my own thoughts on them and both do target different application segments, i will first like to demo on a Silverlight MEWA ; then SL 3 offline – online thing and of course the difference… (along with similarities) Here is step by step procedure: 1. Down load Live services… 2. Make a new project in Live services .. choose Silverlight template 2. ...
With the dawn of Silverlight 3.0 platform, i have realized more and more application will move towards RIA development. Below is a presentation of the talk which briefs on Silverlight. I have uploaded it on http://app.colaab.com/R/680... incidentally which is also a great silver light application. Though i like it more when it comes to architecture and coding related with silverlight, I have deliberately kept the above presentation light so that it makes sense to even ...
This weekend i was engaged with a rather uninteresting conversation with my wife. My wife is computer savvy but still is catching up on new technologies. Below is a brief snippet. I am hopeful that this will give you some idea on SAAS. Me: ok... Wife: What? you said something? me: Nothing. I was just talking aloud... its about SAAS. Wife: SAAS??? (for the less informed.. SAAS means mother-in-law in hindi !!!). Are you watching those hindi serials lately? me: Well, SAAS is a Acronym for Software As ...
REST REST strictly refers to a collection of network architecture principles which outline how resources are defined and addressed. The term is often used in a looser sense to describe any simple interface which transmits domain-specific data over HTTP without an additional messaging layer such as SOAP or session tracking via HTTP cookies. REST Principles: Application state and functionality are divided into resources Every resource is uniquely addressable using a universal syntax for use in hypermedia ...
One of my friends read my last post and, after an analogy involving candy stores and Japanese wrappers (or was it Japanese rappers? I think both would have worked), I decided it might be a good idea to put up some sample code to demonstrate some of the things I was talking about. I'm going to use some test code from the MVC module - mostly because I'm the most deeply into that code right now, but also because writing my own MVC framework makes me look like a total stud. At least to people who consider ...
All right, so it may have been a day or two since my last post. I was hoping I'd have the option to post-date to make it look like I was a much more diligent blogger than I really am, but oh well. Apart from just wanting to look like I blog more regularly than once a quarter, there's actually a lot of material to cover. I'm not sure exactly how I want to accomplish this, so there might be a spate of blogs close together just to cover all the things I've worked on so far and the challenges involved. ...
Well, here we are again. Last time, we talked about project structure and came up with the one we’ll use for this series. Next we’ll talk tools. We’ll talk tools like Tim Taylor talks tools: with lots of grunts for my favorites and only a little explanation about what the tools do.) This is mostly because there is LOTS of material on the interwebs about all of these tools. I tend to favor the tools that are the most widely used for two main reasons: they have been battle tested by the largest crowd ...
Alright dear readers (both of you), I told you last time that I would answer that age-old question, “How many projects should I have in my solution?” The answer is: only as many as you need. I know, I know, but it’s not a copout, really it’s not. I’ve really found that is it easier to start with fewer projects and break them out when you need to, than trying to combine projects later on. Does that mean that one project with everything in it is right? Yes. If that is all you need. I realize it sounds ...
This is a topic that has been beaten to death. I know it, you know it, but I'm still going to give my version of it, just because I can. One thing I'm going to try to do different from every other "implementation" of this topic, as actually make it practical. It's great that for good design you should follow <insert design pattern of choice here>. And for the crowd that's going to comeback with "The design pattern isn't as important, so long as your code follows the SOLID Principals", well, ...
A few days ago, I talked about a problem, that using an ORM like NHibernate could bring, when there's inheritance and lazy loading around (please refer to this post). Unfortunately, the example in this post turned out to be somewhat unclear. So here's a short follow-up with another example, that hopefully underpins my arguments a bit more precisely. The original example gave the impression that the problem occurs only when we would try to typecast around in some way or the other, which is in most ...
These days I'm very much in the market for anything will cut down on manual typing. Thus I'm dictating more of what I write (using speech recognition), and today I began to explore CodeRush: a highly extensible Visual Studio plug-in Being very smart marketers, DevExpress offers a free version: CodeRush Express, which is a somewhat stripped down, but fully useful product, and they offer a 30 day trial of the full CodeRush product. The trial, however, allows you to install both the trial of CodeRush ...
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 9 | Advanced: 6 ] FAQ | Table of Contents | Definitions What is this and where do I start? [Reposted here while my primary blog is sorted out ] From Database to DataGrid The next step in Project Turing is to create a first iteration of the Silverlight application that will retrieve data from our database. Using our technology of choice: the Data Entity Framework coupled with .Net RIA Services. .Net RIA Services will allow us to create business logic on the server and ...
I’m just pulling together next Wednesday MSDN Flash newsletter and came across this gem. The last 12 months of releases from the Patterns and Practices team: Enterprise Library v4.1 is a collection of reusable software components that help developers with common development needs such as logging, validation, data access, and exception handling. They can be used “as is” or extended or modified by developers as needed. Unity Application Block v1.2 is a lightweight extensible dependency injection container ...
Last Time… we looked at installing and setting up VisualSVN Server to be our Source Code Management (SCM) system. With our SCM system all set up, now we need to take a look at how to best take advantage of its features. We’ll look at common folder structures for code repositories and what they folder do/mean. Just about anyone who has used some sort of code repository has probably seen this structure: This is a very common pattern because it highlights the three main things you want your repository ...
Manual Labor I find occasional manual labor projects oddly satisfying. I’ve spent the majority of my career sitting behind a desk programming, or otherwise working on a computer. Putting a little bit of muscle behind a task gives my mind a chance to wander. Working on something manually taxing allows me to think of things out of order and without context. It gives me time to think about relationships. The Art of Wandering Relationships allow me to go from one topic to another without worrying that ...
Wow, what a fast summer! It seems like just yesterday several of us were saying our goodbyes at the May NoVA Code Camp in Reston, VA. I remember how excited I was on the way home from NoVA code camp. It was a great way to finish up spring code camps. While the schedule seemed a bit crazy at times, it was well worth it. The variety of sessions offered and incidental knowledge obtained via hallway, open spaces and speaker lounge conversations with other professionals makes the trek to each event very ...
Below are a few thoughts on the upcoming framework 4.0. I am not sure if the feature set is finalized, but I’ll comment on what I think are some of the more interesting features being planned for this release, as seen in the beta. Managed Extensibility Framework Plug-in architectures are a fairly common pattern for many scenarios, and I have seen quite a few over the years. MEF seems to be a nice combination of plug-in/IoC container/Dependency Injection framework. It’s use in Visual Studio 2010 should ...
In Windows Embedded CE 6.0, the kernel and OEM code are divided into the following three components: oal.exe (nk.exe): Startup code and the OEM adaptation layer (OAL) implementation kernel.dll: OAL-independent kernel implementation KITL.dll: This contains the platform-specific Kernel Independent Transport Layer support. In previous versions the OAL and the Kernel where linked together in one executable (kern.exe) which would possibly include KITL support (in this case the executable was kernkitl.exe). ...
Someone out in the ether asked a question that I have heard many times and i just shake my head. With "Dublin" on the horizon as the future distributed application server role for Windows, does it make sense for Microsoft to call this new role "Windows BizTalk Services"? my answer is ... I don't think they want to do that. Biztalk and Dublin are different products. Biztalk is an application integration messaging server. Dublin is an application server. Biztalk integrates applications. Dublin runs ...
And that mind is ... well ... mine. My name is Ralph L Wheaton Jr. and I am a senior developer with 18+ years of professional experience in software architecture/development/de... working in manufacturing, IVR, banking and, most recently, healthcare. Currently, I am focused on Microsoft technologies, specializing in Biztalk and .Net development, though I have worked on various other technologies including Unix scripting, Informix, Fortran and C/C++. My software development career started when my ...
OK, I have wound down enough to get my thoughts together. First, let me just say how utterly impressed I was with the event. I can’t think of another conference that gives you so much for so little. This conference was on par with Mix09 and it was ~$100 a person! The content was top-notch as well. Tim Barcz’s talk on mocking, Phil Japikse’s talk on Patterns, Chris Patterson’s talk on Event Driven Architecture and Clint’s talk about starting a company (what little I could see from the hall since there ...
Saas vs. S+S Saas is an architectural paradigm where a solution architecture can benefit from the economies of scale of the data and behavior of that architecture being built and hosted in the cloud by a third party in a multitenant fashion. Software + Services is an architectural paradigm where a solution architecture can achieve some of the same economies of scale as Saas while simultaneously benefiting from the synergies and efficiencies of the data and behavior of that architecture being partly ...
This past week I was reminded of the “fun” in which hosting an application within SharePoint can present. We are developing a custom application for our client in which some areas must reside within a SharePoint environment. We did quite a bit of our development in this first iteration within a web application in order to pull things together and present the client with a working end-to-end “prototype.” The architecture is composed of several layers all of which will be “in process” communications ...