February 2004 - Posts

• .NET Compact Framework Book

  I'm just reading reading the book Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework. This book gives a very good start for programming with the .NET Compact Framework. It covers architectural concepts as well as programming techniques and has many code examples. Chapters include accessing local data and remote data, synchronization, localization, security, packaging & deployment... The authors are Dan Fox and Jon Box. I've met Dan first when he was doing a presentation at TechEd Barcelona in 2001. That year I had a presentation about .NET Remoting. Jon Box belongs to the group of Microsoft Regional Directors, and is INETA speaker. Christian Posted Feb 29 2004, 01:10 PM by CNagel with no comments Filed under: INETA, Personal

• Microsoft Business Framework

  Kevin Ransom, Development Lead of the Microsoft Business Framework starts blogging! In the first blog Kevin writes about the features of the framework. The Business Framework is based on Whidbey, ObjectSpaces, Whitehorse... Very interesting are also the comments Kevin made about some questions: the value of MBF for ISVs, and the relationship of MBF XML Serialization with the .NET XML Serialization. The other MBF blogger: Dan Dosen, Program Manager Tim Brookins, Architect Christian Posted Feb 28 2004, 11:02 AM by CNagel with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Whidbey & Longhorn, Framework

• INETA - 500 Groups

  With INETA worldwide we reached the count of 500 user groups! INETA Europe: the actual count is 71 groups. Let's see what month we will reach 100 :-) Christian Posted Feb 26 2004, 08:30 AM by CNagel with no comments Filed under: INETA

• Chapter 10 - Queued Components

  Message queuing allows disconnected communication. Queued components adds an abstraction layer to message queuing. Instead of sending messages to a queue, methods can be invoked in a recorder. The recorder creates messages to put it into the message queue. On the server side the message is received, and the player invokes the method in the queued component. In chapter 10 of my upcoming book I'm showing message queuing concepts, how to create and use queued components and queue monikers. After showing a simple example with a queued component and a client using a queue moniker, I'm showing error handling with an error component that implements the interface IPlaybackControl, and some other interesting concepts. Christian Posted Feb 21 2004, 01:31 PM by CNagel with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Book Writing

• New INETA User Groups in Europe

  INETA Europe is growing! These recently added .NET User Groups are now members of the INETA family: Austria, SQL Server Usergroup Austria Portugal, PontoNetPT Switzerland, PocketPC and Smartphone Usergroup Switzerland Poland, Grupa .NET Russia, MS SQL Server Group Welcome! Christian Posted Feb 20 2004, 12:36 AM by CNagel with 5 comment(s) Filed under: INETA

• CodeZone and INETA

  CodeZone has information about INETA very prominently placed! CodeZone is the developer community website for Europe, Middle East and Africa. We have great plans with INETA Europe! Christian Posted Feb 19 2004, 09:44 AM by CNagel with no comments Filed under: INETA

• ObjectSpaces - The Move from XPath to OPath

  Matt Warren blogs about why the ObjectSpace team did the move from XPath to OPath: The Power of the Dot. Great post! I think ObjectSpaces is a great technology that will play an important role with enterprise applications. See my blog about Enterprise Services and ObjectSpaces. With my upcoming .NET 2.0 Boot Camp I'm giving ObjectSpaces a big place. Christian Posted Feb 18 2004, 10:06 PM by CNagel with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Whidbey & Longhorn, Data & XML

• Presenting to Win - The Art of Telling Your Story

  Harald Leitenmüller (Microsoft Austria) mentioned that the book Presenting to Win - The Art of Telling Your Story helped him a lot with preparing his morning keynote (Alex Holy and his team: Beat Schwegler, Mario Szpuszta and Harald Leitenmüller) for the .NET Day in Vienna. I'm just reading chapter 6 of this book, and it is really great. There are many good ideas from Jerry Weissman that help doing great presentations. The chapters: You and Your Audience The Power of the WIIFY Getting Creative: The Expansive Art of Brainstorming Finding Your Flow Capturing Your Audience Immediately Communicating Visually Making the Text Talk Making the Numbers Sing Using Graphics to Help Your Story Flow Bringing Your Story To Live Customizing Your Presentation Pitching in the Majors Here is a link for my friends in Germany/Austria/Switzerland: Amazon.de - Presenting to Win - The Art of Telling Your Story. Christian Posted Feb 15 2004, 03:07 PM by CNagel with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Personal

• MVP

  Today I've received an email to be awarded as MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for Visual C#! That's a great birthday present! There are a few Microsoft Regional Directors who are also recognized as MVPs. Most got MVP first before reaching the RD status; I'm RD for some years; now I'm MVP, too :-) Christian Posted Feb 14 2004, 11:57 AM by CNagel with 21 comment(s) Filed under: Personal

• Whidbey GAC & 64 bit

  With Whidbey the directory structure of the global assembly cache changed. Using the Alpha version of Whidbey I cannot see the shared assemblies by opening the explorer to look at <windir>\assembly (using Windows XP). Of course it is possible to use the .NET 2.0 Framework Configuration utility to display these assemblies. The reason for this is that the directory structure changed. The 1.0/1.1 shared assemblies are in the directory <windir>\assembly\GAC. The .NET 2.0 command line utility gacutil installs the shared assemblies into the directory <windir>\assembly\GAC_Neutral. Besides the directory GAC_Neutral there is a directory GAC_32 that keeps custom marshaler and Microsoft.VisualC assemblies. I think the reason for this is the 64 bit version of .NET. Specific 64-bit assemblies (marshaling) will be in the GAC_64 directory, and the GAC_Neutral directory is for assemblies that are the same for both 32 and 64 bit versions. This is a great feature of .NET: moving to 64 bit no changes are needed! I remember a lot of hard work moving 16-bit applications to 32 bit! Update: with the March Community Preview the directory GAC_Neutral changed to GAC_MSIL. Christian Posted Feb 06 2004, 11:10 AM by CNagel with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Whidbey & Longhorn