If You Go Down To Willow Farm

The PDC 2008 Hard drive give away!

Denzamoo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:04:53 GMT

Microsoft have announced that every attendee will receive a cool, PDC2008-branded, 160GB external hard drive loaded with software! As far as it is know, this is the first time that external hard drives have been given out in such large quantities at a conference. All the goodie software will be on the drive!!!

Windows 7 'bits' for PDC attendees

Denzamoo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:01:42 GMT

As promised, we published 17 additional Windows 7 sessions this morning. If you were wondering how much you'd hear about Windows 7 at this year's Professional Developers Conference, you now have the answer: a lot. A few of the session descriptions simply say "TBD"...and that's not because we're unsure about what we plan to talk about. ;-) I can tell you that we have even more sessions that won't be published until the event itself.
If that's not enough, we're also giving every attendee a pre-beta copy of Windows 7. Yes, you heard that right. You'll be able to install your own copy of Windows 7 and play with it on your hardware. This is a very limited release, and PDC2008 attendees will be the first to get it. Gotta love the PDC!
Finally, we announced a bunch of new keynote speakers, including Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, Bob Muglia, and David Treadwell. This is a powerhouse lineup, and they have a lot of exciting announcements to make.
Only one month to go! Please keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times, and remain seated until the ride comes to a complete stop.

Quoted from Mike Swanson's blog

BizTalk 2009 - The next version.

Denzamoo — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:20:02 GMT

Following on from BizTalk Server 2006 R2 released on October 2, 2007,Microsoft has been working on BizTalk Server 2006 R3. In a recent announcement Microsoft renamed it to simply BizTalk Server 2009. It is scheduled to be released in the first half of next year. A first community technology preview (CTP) has already been sent out to select BizTalk customers, and a second public CTP will be available later this year at PDC.

Oliver Sharp, general manager of BizTalk Server, stated that BizTalk Server 2009 will be a full release of the product that takes advantage of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, and .NET Framework 3.5:

In particular the platform updates enable greater scalability and reliability, new Hyper-V virtualization support, and many advances in the latest developer tools. BizTalk Server 2009 also delivers some of the top features that have been requested by our customers, including a new UDDI v3-compliant services registry, new and enhanced LOB adapters (Oracle E-Business Suite, SQL Server), enhanced host systems integration (updates to MQ, CICS, IMS, CICS), a new Mobile RFID platform and management tools, enhanced B2B capabilities (updates to EDI, AS2, SWIFT), enhanced developer and team productivity through ALM integration with Team Foundation System and Visual Studio, and a new release of ESB Guidance 2.0 patterns and practices.

Sharp also stated that the customer base for BizTalk has doubled over the past four years and laid out Microsoft's goal for BizTalk Server releases: approximately two years apart, with service packs in between. Every full BizTalk Server release will integrate the previous major release with the latest service pack and new functionality. Microsoft has now posted a roadmap for BizTalk for now and the future.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk,Microsoft,BPM,ESB

IE8 Beta 2 - Extraction Failure when installing

Denzamoo — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:09:48 GMT

Just wasted a few minutes trying to install the latest and greatest beta of IE8. Kept receiving the very unhelpful message: "Extraction Failed"

And then the penny dropped - simply Run As Administrator!

Technorati Tags: IE8,Install failure,Extraction failed

Introducing Zermatt

Denzamoo — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:18:34 GMT

Nice article by Sebastian Iacomuzzi: Intro to ZZermatt.

Zermatt is a set of .NET Framework classes. It is a framework for implementing claims-based identity in your applications.

When you build claims-aware applications, the user presents an identity to your application as a set of claims. One claim could be the user’s name, another might be an e-mail address. The idea here is that an external identity system is configured to give your application everything it needs to know about the user with each request she makes, along with cryptographic assurance that the identity data you receive comes from a trusted source.

Microsoft announces Zermatt!!

Denzamoo — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:01:06 GMT

“Zermatt” is the codename of a .NET framework that helps developers build claims-aware applications to address challenging application security requirements using a simplified application access model. It is currently in beta, and the first final version is expected towards the end of this year. This framework consists of a comprehensive set of libraries that facilitate the use of "claims" in applications - in Microsoft's words: make them "claims-aware". This greatly simplifies the development of applications that will work within federated environments and the new identity metasystem technology that Microsoft is developing, and will give a push to adoption of the new identity technology.

Download the bits of the Beta of “Zermatt” Developer Identity Framework.

Technorati Tags: Identity,claims,.net

Browser Memory Hogs......

Denzamoo — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:09:39 GMT

Have a look at the following investigation by Sam Allen.....

"The author developed a program to snapshot memory usage per process every 3 seconds on Windows. Using this he recorded 3 hours of memory usage for five different browsers under real-world usage scenarios: Safari 3.1, Firefox 3, Flock 1.2 (a browser based on Firefox 2), Opera 9.5, and Internet Explorer 8. A million data points indicate that Firefox 3 has a surprising advantage over the other browsers tested. These are real-world tests and not contrived benchmarks."

Technorati Tags: Firefox,IE,Opera,Flock

Review: SlickEdit

Denzamoo — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:43:03 GMT

SlickEdit is one of the old school editors that has survived the wonder world of the new IDE. Version 13

3 has just been released and it continues to blur the boundaries between a simple text editor and a fullblown IDE. While there are no visual form designers and other such wizbang graphics, what you get is an editor that you can use for many development tasks, including building, running, and debugging complete applications.

Ten versions down the road, and we now have almost too many features to list, but let's hit a few of the highlights. You get multiple windows and configurable everything, with colour-coding for all the languages your heart could desire. There is also a variety of language-specific indentation, auto-completion, and code prettification functions designed to save you typing while making your code look right. Add in a slick diff and merge tool, integration with loads of source code control systems (Subversion support is new in this release), searching that lets you use regular expressions or skip strings or comments (or limit your searching to strings or comments, for that matter) or what ever. You get a C-based macro language and just about any keyboard shortcut man (or woman) can imagine. And then there is built-in class and definition browsers making it super-easy and super-fast to jump to parts of your code. So overall SlickEdit is very fast; if you're used to waiting for an IDE to churn, you'll be pleasantly surprised with the responsiveness here.

From there, move on to the actual coding stuff. For example, you can open up a Visual Studio .NET solution directly in SlickEdit v13, build or rebuilt it, run it, even debug it with a full selection of watches, single-stepping, and other advanced debugging features. If you're working in C++ you also get a whole mess of refactoring features in the editor. Java developers get new support for Java Live Errors and the Hot-Swap Debugger (essentially edit and continue for Java), plus the ability to run JUnit tests from within the editor. The user interface has also been modernized from previous versions, with slicker icons and dockable windows for a more modern feel.

If you want to take the program for a spin, there's a trial available for download.

Find it here....

SharePoint Log on nags

Denzamoo — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:44:46 GMT

If you keep getting nagged for log ons when using sharepoint this will solve the problem almost 100% of the time. The trick is to use the Windows managed Stored username and password feature. To access this,

1. Simply go into Control Panel
2. Click User Accounts
3. Go into Managed Passwords and click Add
4. Type the URL of the server (without HTTP), for example portal.us.com
5. Enter your credentials and click Ok

Now anytime Windows attempts to access ANYTHING on this server it will use the use those credentials and your prompting issue should go away.

The downside to this is if you change your password, you need to remember to come change it here.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MOSS 2007,Vista Tips

Microsoft Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool

Denzamoo — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:56:51 GMT

As we use more and more virtual machines, particularly for development, there is a risk because they don't get updated by pushing critical security or virus updates and then they are fired up six months later we can have a security problem.

Microsoft has a solution for their virtual machine environment adding to the virtual machine management tooling - the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool. This turns on your VMs, updates them and shuts them down automatically. You can find information about getting on the Beta at the link below.

Get it here

Technorati Tags: Virtual Machines,System Centre

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions User Guide, Version 1.1

Denzamoo — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:59:09 GMT

This is the User Guide, Samples and Walkthroughs for the tools for developing custom SharePoint applications with the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, version 1.1 (VSeWSS 1.1). The user guide has sections:

Starting out in SharePoint Development
Walkthrough of the VSeWSS User Interface including the WSP View
The Team Site Project
The Blank Site Project
The List Definition Project
The Web Part Project
The Workflow Projects
Project Item Templates
Best Practices with VSeWSS
Changes from 1.0 to 1.1

Get it here!!!

Technorati Tags: MOSS 2007,Office Dev,WSS 3.0,VS2005 Extensions,WSS 3.0 Tools

Develop for SharePoint on Vista

Denzamoo — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:47:42 GMT

If you are a developer for SharePoint your best friend has been Virtual PC or VMWare. It’s now time to introduce a new friend, Bamboo Nation's SharePointOnVista go here for more info

Technorati Tags: MOSS 2007,Deve on Vista,WSS3.0

Ten Tips for Using SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services

Denzamoo — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:42:21 GMT

Learn ten tips to improve your use of SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services from the SharePoint - Excel Services forum.

Go here to download

SharePoint Placeholders Explained

Denzamoo — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:24:08 GMT

Thanks to Mike Breeze for this one.

New BizTalk Series poster - BAM

Denzamoo — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:17:47 GMT

Get it here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/7/c/d7c1bc18-8a77-4d94-88f8-217689c71325/BAM%20poster.pdf