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

I haven't felt like blogging much lately. Some of that is due to how much is going on at work (much more on that when I feel like it) but I have also haven't really felt jazzed about blogging lately. I want to, and am starting to devote more time to get myself into the gym and my family, both of which have higher priority, of course. I should at least empty out my flagged items in Feed Demon as the size of the list drives me crazy-).

WPF/WPF/Avalon

• My good buddy Walt wants to know "What are the Top Five Things you want to know about WPF/e?" He is speaking at several conferences this year on the subject, so if you want to influence his choices, head on over!
• Simon talks about the  Regatta Manager as his #7 Great WPF application and as the 2nd production WPF ever. It definitely seems that WPF is picking up some real momentum in real applications vs demos
• Speaking of that, Tim Sneath continues his series with Great WPF Applications #7: Skandia Cowes Week CourseSetter

Software Architecture/SOA

• Mario Szpusztra posts his whitepaper on his point-of-view on Microsoft's strategies around Service Orientation, BPM and ESB. Its a good read
• I agree with Harry on his reaction to Anne Manes of the Burton Group says the time is right for UDDI, calling it the "foundation for governance". I agree that UDDI may be a piece of the puzzle but I have seen nearly zero uptake on UDDI. As Harry says it's all about "desire" rather than discoverability
• Arnon continues his "What is SOA Anyway?" series with Part 4: SOA Defined and Part 5: Summary  

SQL Server/Data

• Congrats to Data Dude team on shipping! You can get it here, more details from Gert here

WCF/Indigo

• A nice series of posts emerged on Indigo beginning with a post that Harry sent me and asked me to review. I think Harry is right on in his How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love WCF with his realizations about the relationship between duplex contracts and durable services. As we all know, it was a V1, and stay tuned! Also in this thread are Nicholas Allan (who really exists and I met in Redmond recently!) stating that Durable is More Than Duplex. Tomas weighs in here too. Read all of this; you need to understand all this if you are working with Indigo
• Dr Nick continues the discussion with an excellent refresher background piece onPoison Message Handling
• He also addresses the How do I construct callbacks to work over a load balancer without affinity? You can't
• Clemens takes the practical road (as I would like to think I do) on this whole WS-* vs. REST nonsense: "WS-* or REST? Is there an epic battle? How does Microsoft think about a big chunk of the web development community ignoring the beloved WS-* specs and preferring "HTTP programming"? Answer: We think that people make these choices of good reasons and we like and support any way you want to write services. As a matter of fact, we're engaging with the community to make both, the WS-* stack and the HTTP/REST better to work with and make them a safer environment for, well, everyone." He makes public, "We'll have REST support and JSON support (and RSS and Atom) in the next version of the .NET Framework and we'll have broad support for OpenID in our Identity infrastructure." Stay tuned for more on Indigo Orcas when the time comes.
• Its also important, to note that, "Bill Gates has just announced at the RSA conference (and our Chief Identity Architect Kim Cameron blogged) that we're working with JanRain, Sxip, and VeriSign to integrate CardSpace with OpenID and help making OpenID more resistant against phishing attacks by allowing relying parties to request and be informed of the use of phishing resistant credentials. We'll also integrate OpenID into future Identity products"

Agile

• My mentor, Ron claims the new High Altitude Pair Programming Record but I beg to differ as Steve and I had the record at 33,000 feet and he only has 30,000 feet -))

Other

• My teammate Steve has a nice piece on Consulting Rates....you get what you pay for. If I had a nickel for every company that doesn't get this...

I'm listening to Love, Hate, Love by Alice In Chains on the album The Essential Alice In Chains