PUBLIC MARKS from tadanderson

Last week I download and fired up the SCSF Drop 10 Alpha. It is pretty sweet. It comes with a WPF Quickstart - Quickstarts.WPFIntegration.sln.

This is the Pattern Bible for Distributed Computing. It pulls together 114 patterns and shows how to use them in the context of distributed software architectures. It also claims to reference 150 patterns in other publications.

Five Silverlight presentations from MIX have been posted to the Silverlight Video section of the Mircosoft Silverlight web site.

The ASP.NET Futures is now available for download. They have wrapped a ton of tools into this download.

We recently got another La La La La La La {with fingers in ears} session. Where we were told to stop wasting their time and money by planning. We should never be planning, we should always just be developing.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been scouring the web for information on .NET 3.0, WWF, WPF, WCF, the Smart Client Software Factory, Web Client Software Factory, and the Web Service Software Factory. Here are some of the best links I found.

There is now a CodePlex site dedicated to the Smart Client Software Factory using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

The Beta 1 release for Visual Studio Orcas and .NET FX 3.5 is available for Download

Silverlight (Known as WPF/E previously) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.

Over the past few months I have had to review a lot of resumes, and go to a lot interviews where the candidate blatantly lies on their resume about their technical skills. Out of the last 10 I reviewed only 1 of them was honest about their skill set.

With Orcas right around the corner, It appears to me we are getting nothing new for the Software Architect. So we are getting nothing added to an already useless architecting tool.

The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges.

This starter kit is a Visual Studio 2005 project that demonstrates using Windows Workflow Foundation for simple task oriented workflow in an ASP.NET web application.

The First International Workshop on Variability Modeling of Software-intensive Systems (VaMoS) has posted their proceedings and have made them available for free download. It covers a wide range of topics related to Software Product Line Engineering.

Expression Blend and Expression Studio will be available to MSDN Premium subscribers. This is great news!!! When they removed the Expression tools from the MSDN subscriber's area, I thought we were going to get stuck having to buy them.

Wow. Could we move any faster??? The .NET Framework 3.5 coming around the corner, and we can't find any .NET Framework 2.0 developers, much less .NET Framework 3.0. Well at any rate it is coming and coming fast. Here is some info...

TeamPlain Web Access for Team System is now a free download. Microsoft's acquisition of the company has resulted in making TeamPlain Web Access for Team System a free download.

Its give me immense pleasure to announcement .NET portal - DOTENET (URL: www.dotenet.com). It’s "Digg" style web application dedicated to .NET and relative technologies. This portal will serve as central hub to share articles, tutorials, blog post etc.

Over the past couple years I have been using Sparx EA for my UML documentation. In the past I have used Visio extensively. I have noticed quite a few people searching for the Web Application Extension (WAE) for UML lately. I have uploaded the templates that I used in the past.

The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) enable you to run Guidance Packages, such as the Guidance Automation Toolkit or those included in Software Factories. You can use the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) to author or customize Guidance Packages.

Acropolis is the code name for a framework that supports the rapid development, deployment, and management of composite client applications.

Has anyone heard of anything in the works at Microsoft to deliver a Smart Client Software Factory using WPF, WCF, and WF? I know they updated the Web Service Software Factory to use WCF, but I am wondering if they intent to do that with the Smart Client Software Factory as well?

I love delivering software projects on time. It is one of the highest goals we set as architects. Being able to give an accurate estimate comes from metrics measured from previous projects. When we are allowed to give estimates, we are usually always able to hit our deadlines. There are however some projects that we just know we are not only going to never hit a deadline, but we are never going to be asked for one.

Product Line Engineering is at the heart of Microsoft's Software Factory movement. Although we have benefited greatly from the release of the Mobile Client Software Factory, the Smart Client Software Factory, the Web Client Software Factory, and the Web Service Software Factory, we still do not have any new tools to create our own. I am still defaulting to the UML Profile that has served me well in the past. This series cover the PLE UML profile and contains a Sparx EA template with the profile pre-loaded.

Two processes to keep an eye on in the upcoming months are the EssUP (Essential Unified Process) and PLE (Product Line Engineering).....