Sam Gentile's Blog (if (DeveloperTask == Communication && OS == Windows)

1. I have already said my piece on the Vista launch but also Office 2007 launches today which really rocks. The much better Outlook 2007 is worth the price of admission alone IMHO.

Vista and Office Launches

• Vista Launch Page
• Bill Gates Keynote
• European Launch
• Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
• Office 2007 Launch Page
• Nial Kennedy on launch in San Francisco
• Microsoft Debuts Vista in Global Marketing Blitz
• Robert McLaws posts on all those great Vista Updates that finally showed up last night on my Update. Can someone get me to stop playing Hold 'Em Ultimate Extra, my fingers hurt -)

Software Architecture/SOA

• Pablo asks "CRUD Service for Service - Is a Bad Practice?" I think it depends, and as Robert Wilczynski says in the comments, some kinds of CRUD are fine, but the greater anti-pattern is chatty contract/interface. What's your thoughts?
• Pablo also talks about Services in .NET Part 1
• Edward has started a new series of posts about factory basics called 'Factories 201', and he has kicked that off with a post entitled "What are they (concretely)?"  [via Jezz Santos]
• Arnon continues his excellent architectural writings on his Architect Blog with What Is SOA Anyway?: Part I, Ambiguity and Anyway? Part II, Hype
• Soma talks about Software Factories [via Harry]

WCF/Web Services/Workflow

• William Tay makes the very real case for why WS-ReliableMesaging is vital. I mean, when people *** about WS-*, I don't get how its not obvious that "the main characteristics of Web services is communication over unreliable communication channels such as the Internet employing unreliable data transfer protocols such as HTTP, SMTP and FTP" and many of us need things like WS-RM and other standards to build real service-oriented systems that actually do something. Luckily for me, Indigo bakes all this goodness in so it's just an attribute to me
• The master, David Chappell, tells us What's Really Important About SCA (Service Component Architecture)?
• YAY! Mark Mercuri tells us the good news that the current best WCF Book, Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on, has been updated withWindows Communication Foundation Unleashed (WCF) (Unleashed). Like the previous edition, this is going to be a must-have for WCF developers especially now that they have picked up Matt Winkler, the TE for Windows Workflow. I met Matt recently in Redmond and he is great guy very knowledgeable in all things WF and WCF
• I said current best book. I am currently working with Michele Bustamente to make sure her book becomes the best WCF book when it ships!
• Using XML Serialization with WCF
• Queue Scalability

Agile

• Jason asks the essential retrospective question, is it really the lack of variety that makes retrospectives stale or is it more the lack of ideas actually being executed? My head nods vigorously as I look at our team's retrospectives. Team members have done an excellent job at bringing various exercises and ideas from various books but I think why I am really disillusioned with ours and why they fizzled out, is that we didn't do a great job at executing any of the ideas. That makes them not worth having.
• Jeremy Miller talks about his Agile sessions at DevTeach 2007. is Agile sessions are all online now for DevTeach 2007 in Montreal this spring. DevTeach 2007, with its first amazing Agile track is shaping up to be one of the best Agile conferences ever. I am doing a session on Agile Architecture and we have managed to get Ayende, Roy and Oren!
• You know, let me put my plug in right now for DevTeach 2007 as the best developer conference in the world. Unlike muckety muck conferences, you get a wide variety of great speakers and get to be very close to them, interact as one developer to another which we all are.

Orcas/CLR/LINQ

• Awesome news from the NETCF team as the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 is included in the Orcas Jan CTP!! "The team has focused its efforts in 4 areas including, addressing core problems of creating distributed mobile applications by enabling mobile devices to interoperable with Windows Communication Foundation services, Implementing device specific features from LINQ, continuing to implement highly requested features and refining NETCF’s ability to diagnose and solve reliability and supportability issues."
  • New Features Included in the Orcas January CTP:
    • System.IO.Compression support, including support for HTTP compression.
    • Support for a subset of Linq’s Standard Query Operators.
    • SoundPlayer support using WaveOut allowing for multiple sounds to play at once.
    • New API in Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms for easily distinguishing Smartphone and Pocket PC.
    • Allow Nested FuncEval's.
    • Enhanced logging for interop functionality with native code.
    • Stack Trace Enhancements.
    • GAC Improvements.
    • Allow for StrongName keys greater than 1024 long.
    • To improved logging of finalizer activities to enhance product supportability.
    • Allow log files to be read at runtime.
• Querying DataSets - Introduction to LINQ to DataSet

Currently listening to The Jam - Complete Control - The Clash