ZogBlog

Seven Pillars: integrated, extensible, componentized, delegated, secure, compatible, supportable

IIS - a colorful past
• 1996 - v1 & 2 ships for NT 3.5 / 4.0
• 1997 - V4 part of NT4 Option Pack
• 2000 - V5 installed by default in Win2K (admittedly a mistake)
• Fall 2001 - Code Red and Nimda
• 2003 - V6

IIS today is now secure by design, secure by default and has a new process architecture for app failure (health detection, automatic recycling of apps). ZERO IIS6 critical security hotfixes since RTM.

IIS7

Configuration & Admin Tool: Metabase is dead... use applicationhost.config instead. IIS and ASP.NET settings can now be stored in the same web.config! Therefore, you can XCopy web settings along with content. This also allows you to share web settings across multiple servers.

UI: inetmgr broken/configusing, uses the crappy MMC... so kill it. New tool allows you to manage IIS and ASP.NET config; manage sites without being a machine admin; view health, diagnostics, users; extendable.

web.config can allow a site manager to modify what used to be an admin-only configuration! Multi-user hosted IIS7 here we come.

Users and roles can also be managed in the config & admin tool.

Today all core server features implemented in w3core.dll. That's now broken up into multiple modules... this allows you to customize the IIS footprint. Basically you just install what you want... per site/app.

Diagnostics: View real-time server state information, control state of sites/apps/appPools/appDomains, log detailed trace events, automatically log event traces on error conditions, extend trace logging with your own events. Demo shows that you can see which pages are causing the high cpu usage so you don't have to restart w3wp.exe.

He showed compatibility by running PHP on IIS7.

Security: reduce attack surface through componentization, configure / manage sites and apps w/o admin privileges, easily secure web sites using unified authn/authz model, filter requests using built-in module.

Summary: distributed and delegated configuration, tremendous extensibility, rich diagnostics, committed to compatibility, rock solid security.

Tags: [PDC05]

Cool. I got a Monad pen light. I can add this to the extra PDC shirt that I got at the .NET Rocks show yesterday.

OMG... when the hell is this going to be released. I've been waiting patiently for years. Shells, nested prompts, confirms... everyone claps. Yeahhhhh!

Monad will replace MMC, CMD, CMD scripting and WSH! Old CMD (when will this piece of crap die - Monad should host itself) will also support SH, CSH and KSH (Wow - who's making these?). Inspiration is of course the 30 year old Unix Shell (duh!).

ObjectFlow Engine: Cmdlets emit objects, synthetic type system, engine manages pipeline objects, utilities are object manipulators.

Monad exposes Cmdlets (command line tools) and Providers (navigable drives). Monad provides an interactive shell, strong language support (CMD, COM and .NET scripting styles), single parser/argument validator, utilities and formatting. Monad uses standard CSH commands like (ls, clear, cat, ps, etc).

Management Cmdlet Demo: Using System.Management.Automation, add Cmdlet attribute to your class and then have that class inherit from Cmdlet as well. Describe parameters with another attribute. Good to go, build your functionality right there in VSTS (naturally they are using C#).

-whatif switch tells you what would have happened had you run your (or a builtin) cmdlet.

Provider: a way to expose your cmdlet as a drive (visible in the filesystem).

Commands: get-help, get-command (UNIX which), get-member (object info).

Tags: [PDC05]

Unimpressive. First 15 minutes are stuff covered in the PreCon (and for me, in all the blogs I read). He did bring out a Source Control Explorer that I hadn't seen before - though it looks just like the IDE. In fact if you weren't paying close attention you wouldn't be able to tell the difference (as I often missed the switch due to typing). One thing I do notice is that the time on his laptop is 3 hours ahead - probably still set to EST (as I understand that TFS is being built in North Carolina.

Team Build function: Allows you to script a nightly build. This script is built with a "New Team Build Type Creation Wizard" in the Source Control Explorer. You can specify where the build is run / files saved. The build script could be copied to other machines.

Team Foundation Data Tier: Databases for Work Items, Source Control, SharePoint, Logs and a Data Warehouse (for reporting?).

Team Foundation App Tier: Holds the file cache where old versions are in memory (vs. being recreated from the store).

Team Foundation Client Tier: Whatever client that is consuming this... Excel, Project, VS.

Build Machine: Centralized build cluster(?)

Version Control Proxy (came with July CTP): Teams not located in the same area can get the same content locally through the Proxy. Downloads go down from several minutes to several seconds.

Atomic Commits: Essentially transactions for multiple transactions.

MSBUILD: Coolest. Thing. Ever. Takes an XML make format file (similar to NANT?). MSBUILD Tasks: CreateWorkspace, GetSource, LabelSource, TestToolsTask, GenCheckinNotes, CreateNewWorkItem, DeleteWorkspace. MSBuild Files: TFSBuild.proj (Yours.targets, MS.TF.Build.targets), WorkspaceMapping.xml (specifies mappings), VCOverrides.vsprops (consumed by vcbuild), TFSBuild.rsp (Command line override file?).

Good coverage of the all the extensibility points... apparently showing all of the holes that MS is not filled. Some, like automated common activities on the client, integrated authentication, and event chaining on the app tier, should have come out of the box. Numurous comments about this being v1 are echoed among all MS employees I've spoke too. To me this is v2.0... the fact that they keep calling .NET 2.0, 1.0 tells me that they aren't very confident about it. Especially since (to ME) TFS is a natural evolution of VSS.

Some Indian guy is now on stage... hard to understand him... something about HP (makers of widely used StupidStart) APPRISE followed by the worst slide at the PDC. I have no idea what he's talking about; something about TFS Eventing according to the very next slide. He drones on for awhile and then puts on a recording(!!!) with walkthrough of APPRISE by an indian who is also difficult to understand - more so because of it being a recording, but don't forget that bad english accent that we have all come to know and love. Thank you India Technical Institute (ITT). Your contribution is surely appreciated by all - especially by all the guys walking out now. Man, even the presenters are bored standing around waiting for this to end.

Bottom line: most of the session was about VSTS - NOT TFS. :( Or maybe TFS has very little in the way of a management interface...

Tags: [PDC05]

It's 8:20a and I just got my seat. Left side, second main session near the camera. Naturally I can't see over the big and tall people. Taking pictures would be useless. Only two (oops, there's a third) non-descript women in viewing range. All in all... I got shitty seats. But who didn't? The entire front was already "protected before I even arrived. We're talking probably about a 1000 seats. Scoble was intermingling in the area... so I'm guessing they were press seats.

BTW, does anyone have any idea how weak I look blogging this event on a PowerBook? Sheesh. I've turned down the brightness so I can get longer battery life... maybe it'll last.

They are playing "I'm Coming Out" now. Usually the music is themed... so what the hell does this mean? Now they are playing the "To Be Real" song. Just curious - who's faking? Now "Stayin' Alive"... ahh, ahh, ahh Stayin' Aliiiivvvveeeeeee Oh baby!Now on to Sting's "Da do do do" song. "Their logic ties you up and rapes you"... who are they talking about?

Blah. Movie where Napoleon Dynamite slaps Bill Gates. Blah. Don Box arrives. Cool code demo's showing integration of XAML, Avalon, Indigo, Atlas in VS2005. More blah.

Microsoft is discounting a Magneto product... $850 off... and BT headset for $9.95. We get 30GB of bits.

Numerous women run out half way through. Must be a bladder thing.

ConnectionString girl leaves early (say 30mins).

Tags: [PDC05]

If Microsoft was going to pull a fast one on us geeks they would have stationed numerous hot chicks throughout the auditorium... instead of the smelly guy I was walking behind towards the seating area. Whew... BO problem.

Tags: [PDC05]

Post operation failed. The error message related to this problem was as follows: Specified cast is not valid.

I hate it, hate it, HATE IT!!!! There is no reason for it... it just randomly shows up. I've never been able to discover the error. I've googled it.. with ZERO success. AHHHHHHHH!H!H!H!H!H

I'm alive... no discernable hangover thanks to my good genes (thanks Dad). Of course I wasn't wasted just woozy.

The evening started with a taxi ride over to the Westin ($6). I must have walked around the Westin for about 30 minutes asking random geeks where the Channel 9 meetup was. At one point I ran into hot Aussie woman with her husband. She immediately pointed out a plaque on the elevators that said something about "True Lies" being filmed in the hotel. What?! Ok, so I notice most things... about women, not random elevator plaques. Her outfit was particularly nice. I'll leave that to your imagination (except for the black pumps). Plus I hear Australian men aren't particularly passive (think Russell Crowe).

So I met up with a few geeks who invited me to join them for dinner. Turns out they were half Microsoft / half random attendees (kind of like The Fly... remember that?). All guys and one Asian cutie. I don't think she ever said her name... Anyway, we ate at the Standard Grill across the street from The Standard. The hostess tells me that there is a dance club on the roof of The Standard So without further ado... any PDC hotties that want to dance better get ready (I'm talking to you Italian woman... but ConnectionString honey and Auburn girl are always welcome. :D Email monkees are standing by (no really, I trained them myself). Offer not valid in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania or South Dakota. Coupons given to women who can pass a short tech interview (eg. What does IDE stand for? What language do you use C# or VB.NET) Must redeem coupon on dance floor during the week of the PDC. Please send coupon request and answers to shartzog at g mail.

Tags: [PDC05]