Patterns and Practices

Leveraging Microsoft Patterns and Practices

Tim Murphy — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:35:16 GMT

I want to bring the Patterns and Practices group to the attention of those who have not already been exposed. I have been a fan of the P&P team since they came out with the original Application Blocks which eventually turned into the Enterprise Library. Their main purpose is to assemble guidance and tools that make it easier for all of us to build amazing solutions.

I would simply suggest you spend some time exploring the information and code libraries that they have produced. Free resources are always a great find and I have used a number of the P&P solutions over the years with success. If nothing else you may find some new ideas. Enjoy.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/

del.icio.us Tags: Patterns and Practices,Microsoft,Architecture,software development

New User Group Name and October Presentation

Tim Murphy — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:38:08 GMT

For reasons that I will not discuss here the Chicago Architects Group has changed its name to the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group. It is the same great group of people discussing topics that are of interest to IT architects of all flavors. Whether your responsibilities are at an enterprise, solution or application level there is something here for you.

For October the topic will be design patterns presented by Mike Vogt and myself. Mike has a Java background so we will be alternating between Java and .NET with the exmples. Come and join us.

del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,architecture,name change,chicago

CAG January 2010 Wrap-up

Tim Murphy — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:38:59 GMT

We had a great turnout this evening and some wonderful discussion. I really enjoyed presenting as well as seeing a lot of people I haven’t seen in a long time. At the same time there were a lot of new faces. Some of the input from tonight will definitely go to improving this talk if I present it again in the future. If anyone has comments feel free to leave them here.

The next talk I am going to work on is Document Generation Frameworks. This will mainly be around Office Open XML, but it will include ODF if I can fit it in.

Look for announcements for the February and March Chicago Architects Group events. In the mean time visit the links below for information from tonight’s meeting.

The slides can be found here.

The code is available here.

del.icio.us Tags: PSC Group,Chicago Architects Group,Dependency Injection,Inversion of Control

nPlus1.org ArcSummit Wrap-up

Tim Murphy — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:48:10 GMT

On December 7th I presented at the nPlus1.org ArcSummit. My talk was on Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control containers. Thank you to all those who attended.

When we were done Chris Woodruff and I were asked to record an episode of The Thirsty Developer. It was a great experience seeing how these shows are put together and being able to just sit down and talk with Dave Bost, Clark Sell and Chris Woodruff. I’ll post again when the episode comes out.

The slides for the presentation are available here.

The code is available here.

Technorati Tags: nPlus1.org,Dependency Injection,Design Patterns,ArcSummit

New Architecture Guide From P&P

Tim Murphy — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:36:17 GMT

I try not to be too much of a reposter, but I got a little nostalgic on this one. I remember when the first version of this tome came out and I got a free copy when I visited Redmond for the Guided Design conference. You may not agree with everything you find in here, but it is definitely worth the read to see what Microsoft thinks architecture is.

Technorati Tags: Patterns and Practices,architecture,application architecture guidance,microsoft

Microsoft Makes More Investments In Community

Tim Murphy — Thu, 03 May 2007 03:25:46 GMT

Check out this post from Tom Hollander. I have been involved before with projects that built custom versions of application blocks. This is a great way to share your learning and learn from how others have extended the Enterprise Library. I think it is a great idea. Visit the new site on CodePlex:

http://codeplex.com/entlibcontrib

Mobile Client Software Factory Podcast

Tim Murphy — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:02:00 GMT

Sometimes I envy Ron Jacobs. On a recent ARCast he talked with Daniel Cazzulino about the Mobile Client Software Factory. From the discussion it sounds like this guidance package greatly simplifies mobile development and I could see this being incorporated into future versions of the Compact Framework.

One cool thing they discuss is that they had to rework the Object Builder components to remove the realtime reflection from the Dependency Injection pattern that it uses.

The biggest surprise was that when Ron asked what is next from his guest, the answer had nothing to do with mobile development. It seems that they are working on a requirements gathering tool to initially be used within P&P, but you can be it will become publicly available. Stay tuned!

Uninstalling GAT Adventure

Tim Murphy — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 21:26:00 GMT

I decided the other day that I would like to install the latest version of the Guidance Automation Toolkit. No big deal, right? Wrong!

The toolkit itself didn't complain during the process, but GAX has been giving me hell. It seems that I had a couple of hands on labs installed that it felt needed to be uninstalled first. The problem is that the installer only knows them by their short names which aren't very helpful when you have about 20 different HOL on your machine.

I had eventually gotten it down to one that it just calls HolPackage. I can't find anything in the Add/Remove Programs window that looks like a possible target.

Finally I went to every developers friend, Google. There I found a post from Tom Hollander (should have started there anyway) that had some comments describing just this situation. It seems that when I was playing with the TechEd HOL I had installed a guidance package I had created.

Finally, success. The moral of the story is to check for an authority in the area you are haphazardly romping in.