All posts by : Sam Gentiles Blog

1 of 38 | New and Notable 88 - Much of my early life in .NET (01-04) has been centered Adam Nathan`s masterpiece .NET and COM and COM Interop. As I have moved out of the CLR and COM Interop and into WinFX, its so good to see that Adam has as well and has decided to write a WPF book. I`m sure that it will become just as definitive as his COM Interop book. Clemens continues with Teaching Indigo to do REST/POX, Part 2 GhostDoc 1.92 (for VS2005) is out as a bug-fix release New update for DSL Tools Samples...

2 of 38 | New and Notable 85 - Composite UI Application Block in VB and C# Very important for us:  community project for building useful MSBuild Tasks Shadow Applications and Agile Development WinFS Beta 1 Refresh Capacity Testing for TFS A little bit about Async in WCF from Steve Maines Brad Wilson - The Joel Test and Agility - same goes for me/us PAG Summit Dec 13-15...

3 of 38 | New and Notable 82 - A collection of flagged items in Omea Pro, oldest to newest: Rich Turner`s Keynote slides back from Oct 12 in Orlando Petzold  - “Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind“ James Shore - Sense of Urgency Steve Eichert - TDD is About Design. AMEN! James Shore - Hustle Rob Caron has some excellent resources on Team Build How Many Users Will Your Team System Support Thats the big question and Brian Harry addresses it in a very methodical post Joel Semeniuk has a VSTS Process Template Editor out New WCF Project vs. New WCF Service Doug is looking for your feedback Scott Hanselman - Reflector Plus Plus - AddOns, Iron Python, and Other Peli Goodness Mickey Gousset has added Part 2 to his VSTS Workspaces a......

4 of 38 | Steve Maine: WAS 101 - an IIS review - I have been bugging Steve a bit-) in personal email in research on WAS hosting for Indigo so I am real glad to see this clear explanation and more to come....

5 of 38 | Down Here at VSLive Orlando - So, Robert and I came into Orlando within a half hour of each other and shared a shuttle coming in. The Dolphin is the palace I remember from years back. As soon, as we came in we ran into Ted, Peter and Cathi. After getting our speaker shirts, I went to sleep. Getting up at 4 am is not fun so I slept until dinner where we met up with our Microsoft MCS guy and my co-author Jim Lennox who is down here in Orlando for an MCS gig. We had a real expensive but good $300 Italian dinner over at the Swan. On return, hooked up with Richard Hale Shaw, Paul Sheriff, Walt Ritscher. It`s always great to see Walt, who I have developed a close friendship with ever since the 1st VSLive in San Fran this year......

6 of 38 | Speaking at VSLive this week on OCC Smart Clients - I am leaving very early in the morning for Orlando and my third VSLive this year. I am only doing one talk on Wednesday which I just changed the abstract for: Occasionally Connected Smart ClientsSam Gentile, Independent .NET Consultant11:45 a.m.Many developers assume wireless will be everywhere enabling applications to communicate to centrally located servers regardless of where the user is. Any developer that has actually tried deploying connected applications knows that this is really just a dream of an alternate universe that simply frustrates users with reality. Users want their applications to just work and their data to be available even if the network isn`t. In this session we`ll cov......

7 of 38 | Setting the Record Straight on XAML - Drew sets the record straight on XAML with a great technical post, “XAML isindeed alanguage, but it isnever compiled into C# or IL. In fact, let`s not even talk in terms of C# because XAML can be used from/in conjunction with any language that supplis a CodeDom implementation and some MSBuild target files. Right now Microsoft supplies these for both of their flagship languages: VB and C#. Let`s get back toXAML though. The truth is, it`snot "compiled" at all. If anything you can say it is "compacted" and that only happens in scenarios where it is turned into a BAML stream. That, however, is an optimization and not a necessity for XAML to work.XAML can be interpreted purely in it`s raw XML te......

8 of 38 | WPF and Two APIs - The master Petzold hits it on the head on what it`s been like for me: “The reason It has two APIs. WPF has a relatively normal object-oriented procedural API for coding with C#, VB, etc, but it also has a parallel XML-based API known as XAML, the Extensible Application Markup Language....One of the things I like about Windows Forms is that everything is done in code, including menus and dialog box layout. You can do a short program — or a whole dialog box in a larger program — entirely in one C# file. This seemed to me a massive improvement over the old Windows API approach of splitting the program between code and resource script...At first I was a little hesitant about embracing a new API......

9 of 38 | Given Up on Vista 5219 and Repaved - I have talked about how I ran Vista since August 5th on my main laptop and the experience has been fantastic.While the Aero Glass effects are amazing with Build 5219, this build is a CTP NOT Beta 2, so I have had sufficient problems that it doen`t make sense to run it. You should also know if you are a WinFX developer expecting to do certain types of Avalon and Indigo applications, that IIS(7) is not installed at all or available for this build. All this was good for me to discover in preparing for my Advanced Indigo on Vista talk where I will mention all this. The net is that since you don`t have IIS there and there a lot of problems, it`s not really a viable build even for developing. Thi......

10 of 38 | Programmiong Windows Presentation Foundation - Since I am mostly dealing with Avalon, Indigo and WinFX in my daily life, I was extremely excited to receive my copy of Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths new book, Windows Presentation Foundation. I can`t think of two people more uniquely qualified on the Smart Client and the WPF to write this book. I will be reading this and have a review soon!  ...

11 of 38 | Windows Vista Beta 2 Aero Glass is Amazing! - So,  I said in my last post that I didn`t get Aero Glass by default on my NVidia GeForce FX Go5200 but you can change this. I found how on this post on Neowin: Start > run, type in devmgmt.mscDisplay Adapters > right click on Geforce FX Go5200goto driversupdate driversdont do win updatedont searchchoose pick from listuncheck show compatible hardwareMan: nVidiaDevice: Geforce FX 5200 (LDDM) The thing that is amazing is all the visual candy that now works such as the Sliding Full Preview Alt-Tab feature and the Windows - Spacebar Window stacking! Holy cow this rocks! The only trouble is with the LDDM Glass driver I can only get 1024X768 instead of the regular 1440X900 widescreen which makes ......

12 of 38 | SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition Sept + VS2005 Team Suite RC Working Well - I indicated that I have been doing a lot of leading-edge ADO.NET 2 data work for a client lately and spoke about connecting to SQL Express in the August VS CTP. I switched the project over to using the full Standard Edition of SQL Server 2005 September and Visual Studio Team Suite RC, and I am generally happier. I am not going to say anything bad about SQL Express but I personally find the full Yukon much easier to connect to and work with. As to the combination, I am real happy so far with the stability, performance and features. Of course, the only bummer is that I have to maintain a Beta 2 for TFS, Indigo, Avalon, LINQ, etc. etc. etc....

13 of 38 | WinFX Sept CTP Released but Will NOT Install on Vista Beta 1 - Now that Jason has made public the fact that the September WinFX CTP is online now, I can post my findings from a week ago, when I had it for the Indigo program, that the WinFX SDK part will not install on Vista! It says “The product only supports installation to Microsoft code-named “Longhorm” Beta 2.” So is this the PDC build or what build While you`re at it, you may want to look at my Microsoft Max post. Are you sensing a theme here...

14 of 38 | Anders Introduces LINQ at PDC Keynote - I`m watching the Bill Gates PDC Keynote on Windows Media, where Anders just introduced LINQ. I don`t want to say much more than he said yet (C# MVPs were pre-briefed) until after the sessions  Ok, it`s announced here. LINQ is freaking cool and will make C# and VB developer`s lives much better around data. LINQ is the .NET Language Integrated Query which brings in query expressions into C# and VB. Basically, any data that supports IEnumerable. In other words, a single, general-purpose declarative query mechanism for all data, whether it be in-memory or external. I`m not sure I can show the syntax yet on a blog but it works over XML and SQL. There is XLinq, a set of operators to provide XPath......

15 of 38 | Microsoft MAX ! on Vista! - I was real excited to see the demo app today, Microsoft MAX, leverage Indigo and Avalon. But what happens when you try to install on Windows Vista The home of WinFX and Avalon...you get that it requires and only runs on XP SP2!!  I am getting real tired of all the WinFX stuff and various tools not running on Vista and instead on XP....

16 of 38 | CCNet 1.0 RC1 Released!!! - I was really thrilled to hear via Mike that this was out, just in time for my INETA CapeCod.NET talk. I don`t know what I (and many others) would do without our daily dose of Mike in the morning who always informs me of critical things like this that I wouldn`t have known about right away as mailing lists and newsgroups just don`t work/scale for me personally. When I talk about the Power of Blogging, and why that model works for me, a large reason is Mike. This list of Major changes is drool worthy IMHO, and the ones I have marked in Bold are very important to me: Major Changes There are some big `top level` changes in this release: CCTray has been completely re-written. The version that s......

17 of 38 | No I Am Not Going to the PDC - To answer the endless questions driving me up the wall, no I am not going to PDC this year. I am doing something very exciting starting next week. I am not going to say yet but it involves Indigo, Avalon, VSTS and Yukon. ...

18 of 38 | Installed Windows Vista Beta 1 on Main Laptop - Those who know me well know that I can`t stop playing with bleeding edge technology and that I get real fustrated when I can`t get something to work. For the last week, I have been attempting to run Windows Vista in a huge VPC (1.2 GB of virtual RAM). I would get so fustrated as everything took forever - it would literally take 20-30 seconds for a window to come up and some things much longer. As the VirtualPC Blog says, “Windows Vista Beta 1 does not have drivers for our emulated video card, SCSI adapter and sound card.  The video and SCSI drivers are installed as part of the Virtual Machine Additions - however there is no way to get our sound card to work.”  So aggainst all common wisdom,......

19 of 38 | WinFX SDK .NET Framework Version Incompatible with July CTP Version - I finally got the WinFX SDK installed for Indigo/Avalon and it installs/uses 2.0.50215 but the VSTS July CTP (Drop 3) drop installs/uses 2.0.50712!! So, if you try to install Monad or run ILDASM from the SDK it whines for version 2.0.50215. I guess I could write an Configuration file with a BindingRedirect as I seem to recall that the default policy of Fusion 2.0 was different, and if 2.0 was present, it used it (and the highest  version). Brad, Suzzane, Junfeng, can you confirm...

20 of 38 | BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 1 - BizTalk is a wonderful piece of technology that I am spening a lot of time with as well as Sharepoint as you might imagine from my role. The integration options that BizTalk offers are nothing short of staggering. It was a pleasure to see the announcement of BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 1. “Microsoft plans to post registration for the beta Thursday at 2 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, according to Steven Martin, group product manager for the business process and integration division at Microsoft. Once users register at the site, the beta code for the next version of Microsoft`s business process and Web services integration software will be sent to them in 48 hours, he says. "This beta represents th......

21 of 38 | Longhorn beta will have near-complete Indigo - According to Information Week and ActiveWin.com, “When Microsoft releases the first beta of its Longhorn version of Windows, it will include a nearly complete version of the product`s Web services-based communication framework, code-named Indigo, a Microsoft product manager confirmed this week. A Microsoft partner familiar with Indigo`s product development cycle told the IDG News Service at the recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) that engineers working on Indigo, which Microsoft promises will simplify the creation of Web services, had nearly finished their work. "They`re not doing a lot of work with new features at this point," said Andrew Brust, chief of new technology at C......

22 of 38 | NET Development for SharePoint Technologies Tonight - Tonight at Boston.NET, this building`s Bob German, will be presenting: SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services are .NET based server technologies for portals and collaboration. These technologies have been taking off in the marketplace, and developers who know them are in demand. This talk will provide a brief overview of SharePoint, and then will dive into development of custom solutions, including SharePoint web parts (and how they relate to Whidbey web parts), site definitions, SharePoint APIs and web services. A basic understanding of ASP.NET development will be assumed....

23 of 38 | First Indigo Book Hits the Shelf - Don beat me to a blog post-) He reports that David Pullman`s book, Programming Indigo, has hit the shelves.I had found this in my browsing last night at B&N in Nashua NH and I think they had 4, well 3 now-). It looks great and I can`t wait to dig in!...

24 of 38 | Beantown.NET This Thursday to Determine Course - Jason and I sent this out to the membership list yesterday: Meeting to determine the future of the Beantown.net User Group Thursday, July 7, 20055:30 PM - 7:30 PM Location: Adesso Systems, One Liberty Square, 7th Floor, Boston The Beantown.Net user group is now a year old.  A lot has happened in the last year with the group and its members.  Our membership has grown to more than 100 members.  We have had some great speakers covering some great topics including: Sam Gentile – Introduction to CLR Internals, Advanced COM Interop with C#, Chalk Talk on Indigo Robert Hurlbut – Code Access Security in .Net Shawn Wildermuth –  ADO.Net Best Practices Christopher Bowen – Agile Developmen......

25 of 38 | The Steve Swartz Show - Tonight, we had a social at DevTeach and Steve looked me up and sat with us for hours. Not only is he is fascinating as an Indigo Architect but on many other interesting areas of life as well....

26 of 38 | Transitioning from Adesso into Consulting - When I first sat down with John and Phil in the spring of 2004 and we discussed a role for me with Adesso, I knew that the commute and Boston itself would be a formidable challenge for me (I had never worked in Boston for 22 years) and that I would have to and want to give a significant amount of my time to Adesso, thus cutting a bit into some of my evangelist duties, family life and community activities.  However, I was excited about the Adesso product and the team and decided to give it a year and to give it my all. Though I have had a most rewarding experience at Adesso, one year later it is now time for me to transition from a full-time basis into a consulting role with Adesso, while re......

27 of 38 | New Avalon, Indigo, WinFX, and Speech API Beta 1 RC - I thought my announcement of the new Indigo and Avalog libraries was early and that there must be more. Well, there is a whole lot more including the SDK I was looking for then. See Mike Swanson`s post for all of it....

28 of 38 | Indigo and Avalon Beta 1 RC Released - Quietly it seems overnight that Microsoft released the Indigo and Avalon Betas. Thanks to Drew`s post for the info and  here`s a direct link to the executable. Does it work with VS2005 Beta 2 Who knows, but I would guess yes, and I`m trying it to be sure....

29 of 38 | Sam Gentile INETA at Western Mass .NET SAPs (Software Architects and Programmers) - I love the name! I`ll be there in Northhampton Mass. for INETA on September 6th. Topic will be one of  these Topics: Indigo, Team Foundation Server/Visual Studio Team System, Whidbey...

30 of 38 | How to Make Indigo CTP Samples Run on IIS/Win2K3 - Like Paul, I had my woes with running the new Indigo CTP samples even though alphas had been fine. Thanks to his blog posting, he mentioned three steps in the Release Notes that he did and it worked! Thanks Paul! I now have Indigo running. Make sure you do these even if you think you have IIS installed. "%windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50105\aspnet_regiis.exe" –i "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Indigo Preview\xws_reg.exe" –i cscript "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Indigo Preview\InstallIndigo.js" I also used Dennis Bauer`s install order. Thanks to both! A fine example of the .NET Blog community at work....

31 of 38 | Phil and I in Redmond all next week - Blogger Dinner - So Phil Stanhope and I will be in Redmond for the Indigo SDR all next week. We are both staying here with the Indigo folks. Phil probably has a busy schedule of other meetings on campus as well but I`d like to get something together for a blogger dinner - Scoble, Crossroads Mall again The only bad night is Tuesday when we will be going out with the Indigo team. Work your magic Scoble... Send me email Redmondites if you are interested....

32 of 38 | First Night of Indigo Tough - It was a tough night to start with the WinFX SDK. First of all, the version of the .NET Framework 2 I had (and VS) were newer than the ones in the SDK. I finally got it installed but it broke Visual Studio Beta 2 such that I lost all project types except Managed C++ (at least Kate will be happy!). Then, when I tried to do things from the command line and use MSBUILD, I can`t get any of the QucikStarts to work even though I set up the Virtual Directory. Arghhh!!...

33 of 38 | Avalon and Indigo Community Technology Preview - March 05 - Yay!! The Avalon and Indigo Community Technology Preview - March 05 is now available to MSDN subscribers (Tools, Platform Tools, WinFX SDK). And you can learn it the right way - TextPad and command line compilers....

34 of 38 | Indigo CTP Documents Live - The Indigo CTP documents are now live http://winfx.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.aspurl=/library/en-us/indigo_con/html/503fae4b-014c-44df-a9c7-c76ec4ed4229.asp   Go read, get used to it, it`s your future....

35 of 38 | Speaking and Conference Schedule First Half 2005 - This is more for myself. It`s quite a year already with 3x more talks and conferences in the 1st 1/2 of 2005 than the whole year of 2004!!! 3/12 and 3/13 Code Camp III: The Madness; Microsoft Waltham MA. Four Sessions:  eXtreme .NET – Extreme Programming and Unit Testing for .NET Developers Part 1, II; Developing Occasionally-Connected Mobile CF Applications with Whidbey Compact Framework 2.0; Hardcore .NET 3/15 East of Toronto .NET UG,  outside Toronto, Canada Topic: C# 2.0 Generics 4/11 Austin.NET, Austin Texas; Topic: C# 2.0 Generics 4/12 Texas A&M .NET User`s Group, College Station, Texas; Topic: TBD 4/26 Springfield MO.NET User`s Group, Springfield, MO; Topic: Web Services: Developing ......

36 of 38 | New and Notable 71 - I am sitting in my hotel room with one computer doing a full checked Rotor build and another next to it trying to get a whole bunch of work files from VSS via VPN. You know VSS really sucks over VPN or any other mechanism other than a direct LAN connection. Yes, I know about Source Offsite but we don`t have it. I can`t wait to do away with the whole mess and replace it with the TFS in Whidbey. Anyhow, I want to comment on the Clemens/Tim Indigo discussion but feel I am not ready yet (I am pretty sure I am on Clemen`s side) so here is what else is going on: I don`t think I commented yet on the release of the PAG Enterprise Library. This is obviously a great thing. Of particular relevance to......

37 of 38 | Indigo Public Preview Date - Since I am getting questions on the last post, the dates Microsoft announced today was an Indigo CTP in March along with an Avalon CTP 2, which would also be with some version of Whidbey at the time. ...

38 of 38 | Steve Swartz Reforms Don - So, unlike some previous Indigo talk, Don actually kept on topic today with lots of content. The reason The guiding force of Steve Swartz. Disclaimer: Steve paid me $1 to write this....