Lukas Svoboda: Strategy, Architecture, Governance & Technology

From what I can see Microsoft will release Exchange 2007 before Christmas this year - good news as the new version is very revolutionary. Currently I'm researching Exchange 2007 for my personal knowledge and also in order to start advising customers. Despite requiring new 64 bit hardware I can see some major benefits to the new version of Exchange. Rather than prattle on my blog here are a few links for reading and research that I've found useful:

• Paul Thurrot's Review of Exchange 2007 Beta 2
• Wikipedia History of Exchange including information on the current version

Wellingtonian Ian Morrish (and an old friend of mine from Advantage Group days) has been posting loads of information on WSS v3 and Sharepoint 2007 on his updated www.wssdemo.com website. Follow the link for tons of new sharepoint information.

Also congrats to Ian on his move to consulting services :)

I've got a customer who is having problems with a sharepoint installation where there are more than 4000 documents in a doc lib. In general this is not an issue for sharepoint but it seems to cause issues with their backup software. So I did a bit of research and found some interesting guidance on stopping performance issues with sharepoint doc libs. Resources and reading:

• Michael Ekegren Blog post on what happans when you put in 1 Million items into a sharepoint.
• Microsoft Resources - Setting up sharepoint as a collaborative filestore (good metrics on doc lib performance guidelines)
• Post on Mart's Tam Tam sharepoint Blog (Some similar quotes from the MS resource, but a few other notes)
• Microsoft General Sharepoint FAQ for background information

ASP.NET Ajax (Codenamed: Atlas) beta 2 has been released. New version, tons of changes and a new official name. Found the download and information here

For those of you non-ms people out there ATLAS (or ASP.NET AJAX for the new official name) is Microsoft's implementation of Ajax.

If Office 2007, Vista 2007 (with Windows Media Centre) wasn't enough - .NET 3.0 has also RTM'd. You can download .NET 3.0 directly from this link. A busy few weeks for Microsoft!!!

Windows Media Centre was always a specific version of Windows XP that end-users could not get. It was only open to OEMs who built and sold machines. That all changes with Windows Vista, now there is versions of vista that come with Windows Media Centre built in.

Windows Media Centre comes in the the home premium and ultimate versions of Vista.

More MS info at this link.

Probably old news to most, but Windows Vista and Office RTM versions are released on MSDN. More at this link

Mai-lan's Visio Blog on MSDN blogs has an excellent stencil for basic web service design including the famous "Microsoft" Web Services icon. I use it a lot personally in my diagrams as an image and it's good to finally find it as a vector based visio icon. Find it on this blog post

I've been playing around with a couple of vista versions on my dual opteron and have am now needing to figure out how to edit the new boot loader in Vista. This link on Wikipedia is a good explaination of what's going in the new Vista Bootloader. Very useful reference so I thought I would share it!

Article by Mary J Foley on what makes Google tick (She is a well known MS commentator, so there is plenty of contrast againest Microsoft).

One of the fourm replies, which is just hilarious!!! 

A good overview from MSDN focused particularly on the differneces between TFS Source Control and Visual Source Safe. Click here for the article

 

Now, this is a dosy, but TFS allows you to check-in code without appropriate comments. If someone overrides policy you at least want some audit trail. i.e. force checkin comments! The following blog post on the Vertigo Software Team System blog allows you to force comments at check-in. Very useful, we have implemented in Team System at Optimation.

If you ever setup Team Explorer on a new installation of Visual Studio 2005 and then go to your source control within Team Foundation Server and get a popup menu containing one entry saying "No Commands Available", the following post on Grant Holiday's blog will help you out. I had this today and it was a simple as setting the default source control plugin to be Visual Studio Team System in Visual Studio options. A simple but inobvious answer...

Just found out today that the iMate SP6 does indeed support HSDPA which is fantastic news. Not that Vodafone NZ is trumpeting it yet, but HSDPA is supposed to now be the fastest mobile network in NZ. It will be great to get > 1 Meg a second data connections to a mobile phone!

Just came across this fascinating video at YouTube. Microsoft takes the Apple Ipod and repackages it according to current Microsoft packing conventions. The results are hilarious but do illustrate Microsoft's general tendency to overemphasize every single little product feature and cram information into it's packaging. Interesting video illustrating some points that Microsoft should consider in it's branding for for the future - especially with the whole Zune release coming soon.

"Yamazaki" or as it's better known: Windows CE 6.0 has been released to market. Windows CE 6.0 will be the base platform for the next version of Windows Mobile. Press information is here, and from Mike Hall's Blog the following is some basic info on new features:

1. Operating System architecture.
   • CE 6.0 now supports upto 32k processes with 2GB virtual memory per process (CE 5.0 supported a maximum of 32 processes with 32MB Virtual Memory per process)
   • Operating system processes moved to kernel space (GWES, Device driver manager, file system manager are all in kernel space - improves performance)
   • New Kernel mode and user mode driver model (CE 5.0 only supported user mode drivers) - kernel mode drivers for performance, user mode drivers for stability - plus you can now have multiple instances of the user mode driver manager (hey, you have upto 32k processes!)
   • Strict partitioning of user mode and kernel mode (no SetKMode!)
2. Tools - The CE 6.0 development tools are integrated with Visual Studio 2005 - this gives you one tool to configure, build, download, debug, and test the operating system and the same tool to write your native (Win32, MFC, ATL, WTL, STL) or managed (C#/VB) applications.

3. Technologies - more information on supported operating system technologies will be made available at launch.

Okay, so I could not resist posting on this. Check out www.rideme.co.nz - not only is it the worst web UI since, well since I took over support of a recent badly designed commercial website (that shall remain nameless) but it's also a case of WTF? I meant what was something thinking with a name called rideme... RIDEME of all things!

I guess the comic really does say it all!

I can across this list on pocketpcadddict.com that contains instructions on hared reseting a huge of amount of current windows/pcoket PC based devices. Very useful... I was looking for details on how to reset my (borrowed) KJAM.

Okay, so the plan once I got RC1 download was as follows:

• Install Vista RC1 x32 on a new partition on my work laptop
• Install Vista RC1 x64 on a dedicated Vista partition on my Dual Opteron home machine

I haven't looked into doing my laptop yet (more on this later when I do it), but I did install Vista x64 for my dual operton machine. Initial thoughts from a quick play:

• Simple easy installation. Much easier for joe-user than XP
• The interface is simply beautiful. The usability is massively improved over XP. I especially liked the simpler shell integration as this is something I still personally use a lot (i.e. I prefer to type c:\ as opposed to opening up windows explorer)
• No Vista x64 drivers for any of my m-audio gear. I have the audiophile 24/96 sound card and an audiosport 4x4 midi box. It meant I couldn't do any multimedia testing - I really wanted to see how well certain multimedia software worked, but I'll guess I'll have to wait.
• Big speed improvements over Vista Beta 2. It seems to run much faster on my dual operton if not fly. 

Couple of interesting notes, that Vista now longer uses boot.ini for multiboot. Instead it has a whole new mechanism which is slighty confusioning if you have a couple of other OS's already loaded on your machine. Some interesting links on how config and change the new boot configuration data can be found here and here

Well it wasn't there last night when I checked, but it Vista RC1 is now on MSDN friday morning NZ time. A full couple of days ahead of schedule! MSDN sure is gonna be slow over the next few days!!!!

Recently I've fielded a few questions from colleagues and customers on what is Unit Testing and how is it done in Visual Studio Team System. I have to say that Unit Testing has become a bit of ambiguous term in the IT industry and so the term means different things to different people. I'm in favour of Unit Testing being re-badged "Developer Testing" as this is the core essence of Unit Testing in my opinion. I.e. it's testing of code done by software developers as part of the development process. The follow set of links is further background and reading:

Unit testing defined: The short definition of unit testing | The wikipedia definition of unit test | A broader summary of unit testing | Softwaredev.com articles on testing

Visual Studio Team System Unit Testing: TheServerSide.net article on testing in VSTS and VS2005 in general | OnDotNet article covering unit testing in VS2005 including VSTS, NUnit and others | MSDN Walk through on unit testing in VSTS

This comment from the TheServerSide.net article sums it up best in my opinion:

"Jay Flowers, a lead developer at Northrop Grumman, said "One does not purchase VSTS for a unit testing framework or for a source control repository. It is purchased because it is an integrated platform to help enforce and encourage your chosen process. The main thing that VSTS offers over the other frameworks available is integration into the software development process."

I firmly believe (aside from testing aspects) Visual Studio Team System is the most cost-effective collaboration platform for Microsoft Development Teams. It may not do every aspect as perfect as some other tools, but it as fully integrated and customisable. The ability to have integrated unit testing is a major selling point of VSTS.

I joined Optimation NZ over a year ago now and since then as Managing Principal I have been focusing on building a team of Microsoft consultants in Auckland. The focus rather than being that of a development team is instead a focus on activities such Architecture/Design, Project Management, Analysis and Microsoft Product Implementation. In recognition of my efforts, I've now been awarded the additional role of National Microsoft Practice Manager, which means I horizontally oversee our Microsoft capability through Optimation's technology, software and managed services teams right across New Zealand.  

In more Microsoft release candidate madness .NET 3.0 has rearched RC status. The link is not yet posted on MSDN as far as I can see, but a quick google search reveals this Microsoft downloand link to download the RC.

Coverage of this can be found on Microsoft Watch.com and ActiveWin.

Over the weekend NZ Time, Windows Vista RC1 was finally released. Full details are on the Vista team blog. Summary details here:

Jim Alchin writes:

"To the TechBeta community:

It’s official — Windows Vista RC1 is done!

We could not have achieved this milestone without your support. The quantity and quality of feedback and data we received from you has been essential to helping us progress. Thus we wanted you to be the first customers outside of Microsoft to get access to the bits. Next week, a broader set of technical customers will get them via MSDN and TechNet. But you’re the first! We wanted to get it into your hands asap so you can start giving us feedback right away.

You’ll notice a lot of improvements since Beta 2. We’ve made some UI adjustments, added more device drivers, and enhanced performance. We’re not done yet, however — quality will continue to improve. We’ll keep plugging away on application compatibility, as well as fit and finish, until RTM. If you are an ISV, RC1 is the build you should use for certifying your application.

The operating system is in great shape with RC1, but there’s still a lot of testing to do. You’ve come through for us so far, and I’m asking you to once again put the pedal to the metal and send us feedback. Windows Vista is going to touch hundreds of millions of lives all around the world. Thanks for everything you’re doing to help us give them the best experience possible.

Jim"