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FOLLOW UP: Reston Developer Conference 04DEC08

Vlad and I would like thank everyone for attending the conference!  Here are the downloads:

What I’ve learned about Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0 (and beyond), Silverlight 3 (and beyond)deck

"Oslo" and "Dublin" Overviewdeck, code

Windows Azure Overviewdeck, code

SQL Data Services Overviewdeck

.NET Services Overviewdeck

All the demos I showed are available through the Azure Services Training Kit and the .NET Services SDK available from:

http://www.microsoft.com/azure/netservices.mspx

-Marc

Raleigh Developer Dinner – Post Event Blog

Thank You! to everyone who attended the developer dinner. It was great to have the opportunity to finally do this in the Raleigh area and you should expect us to do more of these types of events.

As promised here are some resources:

Joel Reyes

Accessibility in Windows 7

Just published on the Engineering Windows blog, a great article about accessibility in Windows 7

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/11/30/accessibility-in-windows-7.aspx

-Keith

Part 2 of my Interview with Pat Helland

I had such a great time with Pat talking about the future of computing.

In Part 2 of my interview with Pat Helland he talks about the framing of unreliability and eventual consistency of transactions.

 

Check it out on the Channel9 ARCast!

 

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast.TV/ARCastTV-Pat-Helland-on-Memories-Guesses-and-Apologies/

 

 

Enjoy!!

-Pat Weikle

MISSED THE PDC? Catch the content live at the MSDN Developer Conference

We’re bringing the PDC to you! For just $99 you’ll get the best of the PDC in your own backyard and hear all of the exciting announcements around the Azure Services Platform and Windows 7. Other sessions include the latest developments in .NET, Silverlight, Surface, Parallel Programming, Live Mesh, and more.

Register today so you can stay current in an ever-competitive job market, enhance your engineering skills and gain access to the next generation of tools and technology. The cost to attend is just $99. And, did we mention that attendees will get some cool giveaways?

If you are a developer who missed the PDC but enjoys diving deep into the Microsoft platform or you are responsible for the technical strategy of your organization, then the
MSDN Developer Conference is for you. Check out www.MSDNDevCon.com
to register today!

When registering, please use RSVP Code: MDCCOMM

Hope to see you at the MDC!!

 -Nandita

Microsoft Public Sector Technology Conference - December 4, 2008, Reston, VA

I am pleased to announce the agenda and details for the Public Sector Technology Conference in Reston, VA to be held on December 4, 2008.

 

ACTION REQUESTED: Please register today as space is limited!!!

 

Event Date & Time: December 4, 2008, 9:00 – 17:00 Eastern Time

 

Event Location

Sheraton Reston Hotel
11810 Sunrise Valley Drive 
Reston, VA 20191

 

Registration Information: Click here

 

December 4, 2008 9:00AM – 5:00 PM Eastern Time

 

About the Conference

We invite you to join us for a day of developer-oriented technical sessions, featuring .NET Framework 4.0, Microsoft Modeling Platform, Windows Application Server Extensions for Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Services, Windows Azure, and the Azure Services Platform. The conference consists of sessions that discuss recent Microsoft technology announcements at Professional Developers Conference (PDC) on Cloud Services. These exciting technologies enable entirely new types of applications to be built in record time. The conference begins with a session on .NET Framework 4.0 which marks the next generation of developer tools from Microsoft. This session will provide a developer focused overview of numerous advancements in .Net Framework 4.0 that enable emerging trends such as cloud computing and help democratize Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) with a unique solution that brings all the members of a development organization into the application development life cycle, and removes many of the existing barriers to integration. The next session discusses the Microsoft Modeling Platform that enables a model driven approach to building distributed applications. You will also learn about a set of Windows application server extensions that together provide a standard hosting environment for WCF and WF services in this session.

The session on Windows® Azure will provide an overview of the cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. This session will help you understand how Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage internet or cloud applications and a consistent development experience through its integration with Visual studio. The final session on Microsoft® .NET Services, a set of Microsoft-hosted, highly scalable, developer-oriented services that provide key building blocks required by many cloud-based and cloud-aware applications can help developers learn to focus on their application logic rather than building and deploying their own cloud-based infrastructure services.  SQL Services is a set of hosted database services that supports high-scale distributed applications using SOAP and REST interfaces.  Learn how to model data for high availability and scale, and see how to create new applications in the cloud or extend on-premises applications and services. You will also discover the ability to create, retrieve, and update all types of data-from blobs to flexible entities to schematized entities in this session.

These sessions will target Developers, Architects and Web designers, be very much demonstration oriented, and will be delivered by seasoned developers with experience in Government and Public Sector. Seize this opportunity to immerse yourself amidst these exciting new technologies!

Who Should Attend

Developers, Architects, Web Designers and technical managers who wish to get an early look at the next advancement in Software Development. 

The Agenda

Time

Topic

Presenter

08:30-09:00

Registration

 

09:00 – 10:30

What’s New with .NET Framework 4.0?

Marc Schweigert

10:30-10:45

Break

10:45 – 12:15

Introducing the Microsoft Modeling Platform (Oslo) and Windows Application Server Extensions (Dublin) for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow (WF) Services

Vlad Vinogradsky

12:15 – 13:00

Lunch

13:00-14:30

Windows Azure – An Introduction to the Microsoft Cloud Services Operating System

Vlad Vinogradsky

14:30 – 14:45

Break

14:45-16:15

Overview of the.NET and SQL Services in the Azure Services Platform

Marc Schweigert

16:16 – 17:00

Question & Answer session

Vlad Vinogradsky, Marc Schweigert

 

-Nandita

Posted by Public Sector DPE Team | 2 Comments
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Webcast Schedule for December 2008

Register today for our upcoming webcasts!

Date

Time

Location

Title and Registration

Presenter

Audience

December 12, 2008

14:00  - 15:00 EST

Webcast

Cloud Services for State and Local Government  

Joel Reyes

Developers

December 17, 2008

14:00  - 15:00 EST

Webcast

Windows Presentation Foundation Application Model   

Jennifer Lee    Joel Reyes

Developers

December 22, 2008

14:00  - 15:00 EST

Webcast

Internet Explorer 8 Developer Features

Joel Reyes

Developers

 

-Nandita

ATTENTION WEB DEVELOPERS WCAG 2.0 Moves to Last Stage in W3C Approval Process

For those of you (like me) who are interested in Accessibility and/or need to ensure your websites remain in compliance with section 508 you'll be interested to know that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 was published as a W3C Proposed Recommendation on Nov. 3, 2008. This means that the technical material of WCAG 2.0 is complete and it has been implemented in real sites. WCAG 2.0 has now been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) membership for final review and endorsement, and final publication is expected in December 2008.

WCAG 2.0 defines how to make Web sites, Web applications, and other Web content accessible to people with disabilities. The guidelines and extensive technical supporting documentation was developed as part of the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative.

 Over the next few weeks I'll be posting more information as these guidlines become ratified and also discussing ways to ensure your sites are ready for the new requirements!!

 

Stay tuned!!

-Pat Weikle

CloudCamp Federal 08 (Washington, DC)

Just wanted to inform our readers that Vlad Vinogradsky, Marc Schweigert and myself will attend CloudCamp Federal 08 that takes place on November 12 between 15:00 - 21:00.

"CloudCamp is an unconference where early adapters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas."

It was sold out but the organizer just opened up another 25 slots so get one while you can.

For more information and registration please visit CloudCamp's website.

If you are attending, please look us up.

Cheers,

Patrick Svenburg

HOT: 30% DISCOUNT on Visual Studio

For anyone considering an upgrade to Visual Studio Team System 2008 we've just announced a promotion (shall we say an economic stimulus package for developers ;)

Details are available at -

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/promotions/overview.mspx 

Excellent opportunity to get the best developer products for the .Net platform at a very attractive price.

Vote for Visual Studio 2008!

ANNOUNCING: Developer Dinner On Demand

My team delivers a monthly Developer Dinner for US Public Sector Partners in Reston, Virginia.  At the dinners, we give 90-120 minute developer focused presentations on recently released / future developer technologies.  We have had great success with the dinners over the years.  Much of the success can be attributed to Robert Shelton who began the series a few years ago.  Robert has since moved to a new team within Microsoft.  I have the pleasure of assuming responsibility for the dinners. 

There are two challenges with the dinners we’d like to solve.  First, they have become so popular that we have to cap registration at a number that will ensure we don’t have an overcrowded room. Second, only people in the DC metropolitan area get an opportunity to attend.  Our team is focused on all customers/partners that do work for the US Public Sector (Federal, State, and Local Government).  Clearly, there are more customers/partners in the US than just the DC area:).

Moving forward, all of our dinners will be recorded and published for on demand viewing.  We’ve already had two dinners this fiscal year., but unfortunately we weren’t able to record them.  However, I am in the process of recording and publishing both of them.  I’m just redelivering the content in my office in order to record them (without an audience).  In the future, you can expect these to be live recordings complete with customer Q&A.

How do you keep up with the recordings?

First, you can bookmark http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/pages/partnerdeveloperdinnerondemand.aspx.  This will contain a running list of all the recorded dinners.  The first recording is available now!

Second, I have created a DevDinner tag on the my team’s blog:

Browser: http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/archive/tags/DevDinner/default.aspx

RSS: http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/rss_tag_DevDinner.xml

I will make sure this tag is used only for upcoming dinner announcements, follow up links/downloads from presentations, and notifications when dinners are published.

-Marc

Posted by Public Sector DPE Team | 1 Comments
Filed under: ,

DevDinnerOnDemand: Overview of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

With the .NET Framework 3.5 (the version native to Visual Studio 2008) coming up on its first anniversary, Microsoft is poised to release the first update to the framework in the form of Service Pack (SP1).  This Service Pack is unlike your standard Service Pack, in that it will introduce new features/capabilities to the .NET Framework.  Some of these features where originally planned to be in the initial release of the framework and others are features/capabilities added to enhance or further secure the core .NET Framework.  The August Developer Dinner is going to focus on some of the new features as well as a few of the new enhancements, to give you an introduction of the improved capabilities of the Microsoft Developer Platform.

What you will learn:

This evenings presentation will be a running stream of demonstration focusing on new features and functionality coming in the new Service Pack for several of the key areas of .NET Development today, including Web Development (ASP.NET), Database Development (ADO.NET), Web Services/SOA (Windows Communication Foundation) and User Experience (Windows Presentation Foundation).

You will see demonstrations that will include:

  • Making data access easier with the ADO.NET Entity Framework.
  • Exposing your data access layer using ADO.NET Data Services
  • Building “Data Entry” Web-based applications faster than ever using ASP.NET Dynamic Data.
  • Making AJAX Applications faster with script combining and easier with built in support for handling browser history (i.e. back/forward buttons).
  • How to achieve up to 40% faster startup performance for your WPF applications and further improve the startup experience using a splash screen.
  • Reducing the time it takes to deploy your WPF applications using the New .NET Framework Client Profile.
  • Build services faster using enhancements in WCF.

View Recording:

SilverLightLogo Silverlight   WmvLogo WMV

The follow up post for this developer dinner is http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/archive/2008/08/21/follow-up-developer-dinner-on-net-framework-3-5-sp1.aspx.

-Marc

ESB guidance

A new set of ESB guidance has been released by the Patterns and Practices team. Details below:

 

 

 

Microsoft patterns & practices is excited to announce the latest addition to
the p&p library of software architecture guidance:

 

ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP

October 2008 Release

 

 

Quick Links:

                    MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/esb

                    Community Extensions: http://codeplex.com/esb

 

What is ESB Guidance ?

The Microsoft ESB Guidance provides architectural guidance, patterns, practices, and a set of BizTalk Server R2 and .NET components to simplify the development of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform and to allow Microsoft customers to extend their own messaging and integration solutions. The Microsoft ESB Guidance consists of a series of interoperating components that support and implement a loosely coupled messaging environment that makes it easier to build message-based enterprise applications. The services and components fall naturally into the following seven categories:

·         Web services. These expose internal services such as itinerary processing, exception management, resolution of endpoints and maps, BizTalk operations, UDDI interoperation, and transformation of message content.

·         Itinerary services and centralized store. These include agents for performing transformations and message delivery. You can resolve itinerary from the store and create custom services that participate in Itinerary processing.

·         Itinerary on-ramps. These receive external messages using either SOAP or WCF. On-ramps expose the itinerary SOAP header and perform itinerary processing, using the Microsoft ESB Guidance Resolver and Adapter Provider Framework for dynamic resolution of endpoints and metadata.

·         On-ramps. These receive external messages in a range of formats and transports, such as HTTP, JMS, WMQ, FTP, Flat File, and XML. They are typical BizTalk receive locations that optionally use the Microsoft ESB Guidance pipeline components and the Microsoft ESB Guidance Resolver and Adapter Provider Framework for dynamic resolution of endpoints and metadata.

·         Off-ramps. These implement send ports for the delivery of messages using formats and transports such as SOAP, WCF, JMS, WMQ, FTP, HTTP, Flat File, XML, or any other custom formats. They are typical BizTalk send ports that optionally use the Microsoft ESB Guidance pipeline components and the Microsoft ESB Guidance Resolver and Adapter Provider Framework for dynamic resolution of endpoints and metadata.

·         Exception Management Framework. This includes the exception Web service, the exception management API, and components that enrich, process, and pass exception details to the ESB Management Portal.

·         ESB Management Portal. This provides registry provisioning, exception mediation, alert notification, and analytics.

What’s New?

This is the first CTP release of the Microsoft ESB Guidance 2.0 for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009. It incorporates several modifications and additions compared to the November 2007 release. The following list summarizes these changes.

New Features and Components

·         New samples. This version includes the following new samples:

o   SSO Configuration provider for Enterprise Library 4.0

o   Multiple Web Service Execution Sample

o   Exception Handling Service Sample

·         New ESB Web services. This version includes the following new ESB Web services:

o   Generic Itinerary Services ( no itinerary header required)

·         New core features. This version includes the following new core features:

o   Alignment with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 ( Beta )