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Thursday, October 02, 2003
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SharePoint Portal Services
Mike Fitzmaurice, Microsoft's Sharepoint Evangelist, gave a presentation on Windows SharePoint Services. We talked about the following:
- Out of the Box feature set
- Web Parts
- Manageability
- Why SPS?
- Developer Extensibility
- Frontpage 2003
- Security
- Development topics
- Object Model
- Events
- Web Services
- Resources
BizTalk Server 2004
The last session was done by Mike Helton, President, Sunaptic Solutions. Mike gave an overview of BizTalk Server 2004 while giving client stories on the product's importance. He first gave the business reasons for suggesting Biztalk as a solution. We talked about business processes and how BizTalk can work with them. He then shows us a "Business Rule Composer" - very cool addition to 2004.
The next tool discussed was BAM (Business User: Activity Monitoring). This allows a user to specify what information that they need to get back from a process.
90% of Sunaptic's BTS engagements have resulted in a deployment of a data warehouse, due to the resulting data from these automated business processes.
BTS2004 now uses VS.NET, which may be a problem for some clients moving forward. Mike showed us how a document is described in VS.NET and an example of how the mapper is now used. Functoids are cool!
"InfoPath is to BizTalk Server as Outlook is to Exchange."
4:58:27 PM 
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This morning, I sat through a presentation from Bertrand Meyer on Eiffel and .NET. Bertrand is known for many things including Object-Oriented Software Construction from Prentice Hall and inventing Eiffel.
Bertrand runs a company called Eiffel Software. Bertand kept the entire presentation in the context of a customer, AXA Rosenberg, a global investment company, who is converting a large amount of Fortran running on VAX systems into Eiffel running under .NET.
EiffelStudio is a product that write different types of applications with the Eiffel language. This language is very portable. There are two outputs from a compile: C code or MSIL. The C code can be compiled on the intended platform or you need a JIT'ter for the intended platform.
Eiffel is also supported in VS.NET but we were not shown the support. Bertand called this product ENViSion. Did you know that Eiffel is under review at ECMA?
One interesting notion of Eiffle is "Design By Contract". The language has the ability to place requirements on the data input into a method (not just the type, but rules - see REQUIRE keyword). This construct also includes the ability to place rules on the results of the method (see ENSURE keyword).
We did not see any working applications.
Bertrand did recommend downloading a paper (previously available as draft), from joint work with Karine Arnout, on finding contracts where there seems to be none, with the .NET libraries as a first example: Finding implicit contracts in .NET components.
The web site has a Cool Things You Can Do With Eiffel! which is more exciting than the talk that I saw today. Don't let my letdown of his presentation affect the perception of his impact in computing. Bertrand is a well respected in the area of O-O and is certainly known in .NET circles as the author of Eiffel.
2:47:34 PM
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To end the day, I attended a presentaton titled ".NET And J2EE Advanced Web Service Interoperability". The presenter was David White of Microsoft's Automotive sector. Based in Detroit, David works with the big auto manufacturers and sees many mixed environments. David has an interesting style where he will give honest assesments of technology, whether from Microsoft or not, whether positive or not.
His talk focused on web services and how they are coming along for interoperability scenarios. One could tell that he is very knowledgeable about the WS-* initiatives and how they are reflected in WSE 2.0. He also talked of the importance of standards and why that is important in going forward for all of the vendors.
David also talked a lot abou the security that is built into WSE and even gave examples of what the SOAP would look like. It is extremely important to be able to add security tokens of different types (X509, Kerberos, Username/Password, XML Tokens, and Custom binary types).
The next section David talked about how to design and implement a web service that would be used in a mixed environment. This included the following steps:
- Model the data first
- avoid merging schemas
- only expose XSD types
- agree on naming conventions
- start with WSDL and work out towards the toolsets
- keep it simple
- Create the data types from UML
- create the type
- create test units
- start development
- test, test, and re-test
- benchmark performance
We then looked at the Java tools area. After listing tools from IBM, The Mind Electric, and BEA, David stated that GLUE was the best tool because it better supports the WS-* specs. Next, we had a quick look at the new functionality in WSE 2.0 which includes enhanced security model, policy driven architecture, support for mulitpile transports, and hosting environment independance.
David next showed that Microsoft is very active in pushing these standards. He discussed the publishing of J2EE Interoperability content (Patterns and Practices, on MSDN), testing with other vendors, customer participation, and partner participation.
To end, David recommend several resources:
.NET and J2EE Interoperability, Simon Guest, MsPress
Simon's web site
MSDN Articles on WSE
12:45:28 PM
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Yesterday's keynote was from Ted Farrell, architect and director of strategy for Application Development Tools at Oracle . He spoke on Grid Computing and how Oracle is preparing for that. Interesting stuff. The notion of re-assigning computers to different processes within a business due to load seems like it would be pretty important in this distributed world of ours.
He also showed the next version of JDeveloper which looks a lot like VS.NET from the short demo. I doubt it is like VS.NET but the quick look showed visual similarities. The one thing that I did like (that I mentioned yesterday) was the visual look at how pages connected to each other, which VS.NET does not really have.
Updated Note: Do not confuse JDeveloper with JBuilder. The names are very similar but they are certainly different products from different vendors. Mr. Farrell emailed me and politely pointed out my error. Sorry, Ted, for messing that up.
12:20:30 PM
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Yesterday, I attended a session on Portable.NET or PNET. It was presented by Adam Ballai who did an excellent job of explaing this effort to my ignorant senses. Here is an excerpt from the PNET home page.
The GNU project is about making sure that computer users have certain important freedoms. If you use GNU/Linux today, you have these freedoms on a single computer. Generally speaking, the internet is also a place of freedom, because it is built on open protocols which are not in any way patent-encumbered, and which are generally implemented in Free Software. However, this freedom is threatened by a monopolistic company.
The DotGNU project is the response of the Free Software movement. We say: "Ok, MS you are pushing webservices and C# and IL because you want to catch everyone in your dotNET, but GNU is taking precisely that technology and using it to set the world free from your monopolies." For a real interesting read about how MS is taking over the world, see that last link. At this point, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
But the presentation was pretty cool. Adam showed how they had created a JIT'ter for the CLI spec, and they could compile and JIT almost anything and on several platforms. They even made up a language that has no letters (all punctuation) that is used to demonstrate what they have accomplished. Adam reported that 99% of the CLI has been implemented by the group and that the future goal is to implement the entire framework. Wow!
He also showed that they had built a CLR for ARM processors. Now this is not the Compact Framework set of classes, but the framework that they had built for the desktop. I'm not sure what percentage today that this work is of the desktop framework, but Adam says that takes 15MB on the device today. And they have not implemented remoting support yet.
When I asked about the remoting implementation's existance, he tooked us right to the source to check on its status. There were all of these empty stubs. At that point, the audience was invited to contact dotGNU and start a project implementing this ourselves. And, we were encouraged to find a sponsor to help pay for this effort. Open Source at its finest!
Adam is a smart guy, and he was polite and sincere about his work. But we sure are in different places in the development ecosystem. I'm just happy drinking my kool-aid.
Am I part of a monopoly? I'm not locked into Microsoft or .NET - I do have choice. I can go get a job doing WebSphere, WebLogic, J2EE. I can even go learn Perl to develop web pages. I don't even have to use VS.NET - there are several editors like Notepad, Borland's, and others. I don't have to use IE or Windows Media Player. I can even install other O/S's on my boxes, if I choose. But why is it that I don't have any clients asking for this? There are choices for every MS technology that I use. So, how is that a monopoly? The only way that people come to this conclusion is that MS leads the market in so many areas. That is not a monopoly.
Adam: we'll just have to agree to disagree. I give him credit though. He knows his stuff and he even sat patiently throught the next presentation which was given by a Microsoft employee. Ah, the irony!
Here's a parallel. The New York Yankees spend more money in salaries than any other team in professional baseball. They also have been the best team in baseball over the last years. How come no one is contacting our government to shut them down? I mean it's not fair that the St. Louis Cardinals are not in post season play this year. So for now, GO CUBS!
9:47:30 AM
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In ASP.NET, an ASPX page has a page declarative at the top. If you haven't seen this, be sure to go to HTML view in VS.NET. Most people know its there but a few don't understand what it does.
<%@ Page
AutoEventWireup="false"
Codebehind="Surroundings.aspx.vb"
Inherits="Wireless.HotelSurroundings" %>
The reason that I bring this up is from some comments in different sessions this week. This line is very important for a lot of reasons, one being that it creates the relationship between the ASPX page and its code behind class. But this comes in different forms.
VS.NET uses this to relate the two files together. The "Codebehind" attribute is the key player here. And it turns out that the ASP.NET ignores this word - it's a VS.NET specific entry.
Because of the way ASP.NET pages are compiled once on the server, the "Inherits" is an important keyword. This compiling is the combination of the ASPX, code behind, and into one class (which is stored in the ASP.NET temporary folders under the framework folders).
"AutoWireUp" is an attribute used for the inline developers (those who do not use code-behind). AutoWireUp is a feature of ASP.NET that will look at the function names and call automatically if they have a Control_Event naming. For example, Button1_Click would get the postback event for a button if AutoWireUp was enabled. VS.NET sets this to false because it will handle all othe event registration in the code behind (via the Handles statement (VB) or for C# in the InitializeComponent area).
[Macro error: Can't compile this script because of a syntax error.]
[Macro error: Can't compile this script because of a syntax error.]
[Macro error: Can't compile this script because of a syntax error.]
8:56:02 AM
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Tonight, I dined at a Moroccan restaraunt with Jeremy Geelan (SYS-CON's Group Editor), Derek Ferguson (Editor-in-Chief of .NET Developers Journal), John Bristowe (WSE Guru and .NET Expert), and Brad McCabe (Director of Development for Infragistics).
From the start, the evening was entertaining. At the Westin where we are all staying, we found a helpful lady to give us directions. The interesting part was that she was sitting at home and talking to us over a videoconferencing link. Cool! Derek seemed to be intrigued by this style of communication and the jokes about the lady occured from there. Enough said here.
Next, we all piled into a small rental car. John drove and Brad navigated. After some wrong turns and a little ribbing from the back seat, we finally arrived at our place of dining. This place has style and character, decorated in Morrocan flavor. The lobby had a fountain with the special lighting. In the dining area, you had the option of sitting in the floor on pillows. And we were even entertained by a belly dancer during the meal. She invited John to dance with her but ask him to sit down after others started applauding more for him. The food was excellent! It was served on a single large plate in the middle of the table. After several courses were consumed, we were served a glass of mint tea and then we were ready to call it a night.
The conversation was the highlight of the evening. We covered anything from how to improve the Web Services Edge conference, .NET, PDC, Whidbey, the component market and its issues, open source, Mono, Portable.NET, and other CLR implementations. We should have been a panel this week! This was an impressive group of people and I would commit to a dinner anytime with these guys.
1:22:50 AM
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© Copyright 2004 Jon Box.
Last update: 8/31/2004; 11:59:51 PM.
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