C# Distilled

Agile Development

It seems to me that almost anyone you hear say that they use Agile Development really means they don't use any kind of methodology at all. With the release of Visual Studio 2005 Team System many people believe they are using a methodology just because they selected one with the creation of a Team Project in Team Foundation Server. In the next few days and weeks I'll explore what Agile development really is and why business pressures are not an excuse for a lack of integrity and professionalism among software engineers.

Why do people dislike the Zune?

Check out this funny blog posting by John Kennedy about the new Microsoft Zune:

Why do people dislike the Zune?

Windows Vista RTM Available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads

Microsoft last night made Windows Vista build 6000 (RTM) available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads and the Microsoft Connect website for those who have access.

It has been a long time since the PDC in 2003 when many of us first heard about this new operating system, but it has been well worth the wait and contributing to the beta program was fun too.

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Pro's will RTM November 30th

WOW, what a month this has been already with Microsoft releasing to manufacturing the latest versions of the Windows operating system and the ubiquitous Office toolset. Another important milestone for developers came almost silently along with these releases, the .NET Framework 3.0 which brings several important additions to the technologies many of us are using today with the .NET Framework 2.0.

It appears though that Microsoft has even more goodies in store for us developers before the month is out. Microsoft will release to manufacturing the latest member of the 'Team System' family, Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Pro's on November 30th. If you've not heard much about the 'Data Dude' addition to Visual Studio then you'll definitely be hearing more about it from Microsoft in the coming weeks and months. Essentially the latest release will bring lots of excellent features for the database developer including tighter integration with source control for database projects and also unit testing for SQL Server stored procedures.

If you're lucky enough to have Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite then this latest edition will be available to you at no additional cost, so get those download engines ready...

For more information go to http://www.teams-deliver.com/.

Microsoft Office 2007 on MSDN Subscriber Downloads, Vista this Friday...

Microsoft Office 2007 is now available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads and the Product Keys are also now available, all I need now is a copy of the RTM build of Windows Vista to install the latest version of Office upon. Hopefully Windows Vista will be available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads later today or in the next few days...

Windows Vista Released to Manufacturing

It's finally happened; Microsoft has today released to manufacturing the latest version of the Windows operating system which has been in development for five long years. Windows Vista marks an important milestone for Microsoft and as Jim Allchin said "This is a good day ... An hour ago we signed off [on the RTM build]. We're ready to ship".

Keep an eye on the MSDN subscriber downloads as you'll likely see Windows Vista and Office 2007 there early next week. The MSDN subscriber downloads page today indicated that it would be down for upgrades late Friday. It's likely that Microsoft is anticipating some serious traffic on the site once those .iso images appear.

It appears that Windows Vista will RTM with the build number set to 6.0.6000.

Central California .NET Users Group - Exception Handling

Tomorrow evening I'll be doing a presentation on Exception Handling and the C# Distilled Diagnostics framework to the Central California .NET Users Group.

We'll be discussing best practices surrounding exception management, design patterns for the creation of custom exception types, in addition to the exception management support within the C# Distilled Diagnostics framework.

.NET Framework 3.0 Released to Manufacturing

Yesterday, Microsoft released the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) build of the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 which brings the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) into the hands of .NET developers currently using the .NET Framework 2.0.

Unlike previous releases of the .NET Framework, the latest release does not bring along new versions of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) or even the core assemblies that constitute the Base Class Library (BCL). In essence the .NET Framework 3.0 represents some additional assemblies which contain types designed to provide enhanced communications, presentation, and workflow.

Although this may not make your job any easier convincing your IT department to let you install it onto production servers, the risk in adopting this version of the .NET Framework over previous releases is substantially reduced as your applications will continue to run within the version 2.0 CLR.

Another technology included with the .NET Framework 3.0 is Windows CardSpace, which is designed to help users store the various digital identities we all use daily. With our credit cards and various membership cards, Windows CardSpace provides a unified store for all digital identities.

You can download the .NET Framework 3.0 here.

Along with Friday's release to manufacturing of the Microsoft Office 2007 System, we should be seeing the release to manufacturing of Windows Vista any day now.

Microsoft Office 2007 Released to Manufacturing

On Friday, November 3 at approximately 2:30 PM, the Microsoft Office team signed off on build 4518.1014 as the 2007 Microsoft Office system and released it to manufacturing. Jensen Harris discusses the milestone on his blog, including the much deserved ship party for everyone in the Office team; and also reflects on the three years during which Office 2007 was taking shape.

The Microsoft Windows team is also expected to sign off this week on a build of Windows Vista which will then become the final RTM (release to manufacturing) build. After taking some time to browse through the various blog postings, some more acurate than others, the expectation is that the final RTM version of Windows Vista will be version 6.0 build 6000. Although this is also just speculation until we see confirmation of that.

Both Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista should soon be available for download on MSDN and it will be nice to finally be running the RTM versions of these great products.

8th Air Force - U.S. Air Force Cyberspace Command

Today the Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne said that the 8th Air Force would become the new Air Force Cyberspace Command. You can read more information that the Air Force homepage. Today's military cannot operate without secure Internet based communications; today and in the future warfare will take place as much in cyberspace was it has done within more traditional environments. Undoubtedly the Air Force Cyberspace Command will be very active in counter-terrorism activities, the enemy is technologically aware and it is nice to see that the Air Force will be evolving to meet any threat that we may face in the future.

Intel Core 2 Quad

Just as many of us were getting used to using a dual-core processors within our notebooks and desktop machines those folks at Intel have been hard at work producing a new processor previously known by the Intel codename Kentsville. Kentsville, now known as the Core 2 Quad is based upon the Intel Core Microarchitecture and brings quad-core processing to the desktop. It is expected to be available in November and the word on the street is that you'll be able to order machines from the likes of Dell and HP beginning November 2nd 2006.

Intel has indicated however that the first quad-core processors to be available will be the Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor which will likely cost over $1000.00 each given the launch price of the current Extreme dual-core processors. On a happier note though the launch of the quad-core processor should provide a nice price reduction for those interested in purchasing machines with the Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

According to Intel press releases we're also likely to see quad-core in a new line of 5300 series Xeon processors for servers and workstations in 2006 with a low powered version following early in 2007.

Bug causes Microsoft to push Vista RTM to Nov. 8

The latest update on when to expect a copy of Microsoft Windows Vista RTM (release to manufacturing) is indicating that the RTM build will occur on November 8th. This is apparently after an unexpected bug was found in build 5824 on October 13th and subsequently fixed the following week in build 5840. As such the Windows Vista team now expects to release to manufacturing on November 8th.

You can read more at the Computer World website.

Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2 RTM (Build 5730) Available Now

Yesterday Microsoft released the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) version of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2. Build 5730 can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx.

Internet Explorer 7 includes several notable changes from the previous release, including the tabbed layout and the inclusion of support for RSS feeds within the browser. Another welcome addition to the browser is a phishing filter which will warn the user if the site they are visiting is suspected to be fraudulent.

Windows Vista Build 5744 Released

Today Microsoft released what is expected to be the final build of Windows Vista before to leave Redmond before the final RTM (Release to Manufacturing) code. Windows Vista build 5744, like its predecessor build 5728, is built on the final RTM source code branch. I'm presently downloading this build and will post some screenshots later today. The previous build was very stable indeed and the performance characteristics were impressive. In fact the only reason I've not yet adopted build 5728 as my primary operating system on my laptop is that my Dell Wireless 5700 EVDO ExpressCard does not yet support Windows Vista, and unfortunately Dell does not release pre-release drivers. 

Windows Vista Build 5728 Released

Today Microsoft released Windows Vista build 5728 which is built on the final RTM source code branch and so this will prove to be an interesting build. Once I've installed it sometime tonight I'll blog about the build quality and any changes from previous builds that we've seen. It remains to be seen if this build will be provided to MSDN subscribers or not.

CodePlex Project - CSharpDistilled.Diagnostics 1.0.0.15

Today I've just uploaded the latest release of the CSharpDistilled.Diagnostics project which allows the publication of exceptions using the ASP.NET 2.0 provider design pattern. This release is likely to be the final Alpha release before the Beta and so it is important that you send me any feedback that you would like to see incorporated into the Beta and RTM builds.

In the last release the associated SQL Server 2005 database creation script added additional tables to store information regarding the AppDomains, Assemblies, and Threads associated with the exception(s) being published. In this release the database has been expanded to include tables to store information regarding the profile of the machine upon which the exception occurred. These are the Machine, Processor, and GraphicsProcessor tables.

In version 1.0.0.3 the .pfx code signing key file was accidentally released with a password protecting it and this has been fixed with the last two releases.

FEEDBACK: Please provide feedback either through this blog or by using the discussion forums on the CodePlex website. Your feedback is important in developing this framework.

.NET Framework 3.0 Release Candidate

In addition to releasing the Release Candidate of Microsoft Windows Vista, this Friday also saw the release of the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Release Candidate.

Unlike previous releases of the .NET Framework version 3.0 does not introduce a new version of the Common Language Runtime; the CLR remains at version 2.0. The Microsoft .NET Framework introduces four new enhancements.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), previously known by the codename Indigo, introduces a new framework for the development of message based distributed architectures.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), previously known by the codename Avalon, introduces the next generation framework for the development of user interfaces. Avalon introduced the new XAML markup language.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) provides the engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications.

Windows CardSpace is designed to help users to store the various digital identities we all use daily. With our credit cards and various membership cards, CardSpace provides a unified store for all digital identities.

You can download the .NET Framework 3.0 from here.

Windows Vista Release Candidate - Build 5600

Yesterday Microsoft made available to select testers the final Release Candidate for Microsoft Windows Vista. Windows Vista Build 5600 is from the Release Candidate source branch with build numbers 5400 to 5699, the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) code branch begins at Build 5700 which was recently seen at Microsoft TechEd 2006 down under in Australia.

Continuing the improvements seen last week in Build 5536, the final Release Candidate is significantly faster than some of the earlier builds released outside Redmond. In Build 5472 though the Task Monitor could have its Opacity set which was a nice feature, however it seems this has now been removed in build 5536 and 5600. Hopefully, Microsoft will bring this back within the 5700 code branch so we can see that in the final RTM build expected this November.

In builds previous to 5600 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition warned of compatibility issues when installing and it is nice to see that in Build 5600 Visual Studio installs without any such warnings. It is nice to see Microsoft Windows Vista now on finals towards the November RTM build that some of us have been anticipating since Microsoft PDC 2003 and before.

Microsoft WMI Code Creator 1.0

While working on the C# Distilled Diagnostics project which is available from the Microsoft CodePlex website, I began working on using WMI to establish the processor architecture of the machine where an exception was thrown.

On Saturday morning I took my laptop down to Starbucks to discuss the project with a friend I knew while at Intel, he suggested that I take a look at Microsoft's WMI Code Creator 1.0. Even if you don't have a business need to know the voltage that your processor(s) are using or the amount of Level 2 Cache that the processor(s) have, I'd really recommend taking a look at this utility, it is very cool indeed.

Windows Vista Build 5536, Where's 5700, Where's 64-bit, Where's the Windows SDK?

After connecting several times tonight to the Microsoft Connect website hoping to see a download of Windows Vista build 5700, it was a little less than exciting to see a new download of Windows Vista available that was significantly earlier than the build I was hoping for. Microsoft have provided build 5536 and although I'm aware that internal builds will always be a few ahead of what Microsoft lets us MVP's take a look at; 5536 is significantly earlier than build 5700 demonstrated at Microsoft TechEd 2006 Australia and the associated Internet Explorer RC build that released earlier today. Below is a photograph of Windows Vista build 5700 taken by Long Zheng at Microsoft TechEd 2006 in Australia.

It seems we'll just have to wait until the public release of the Windows Vista Release Candidate sometime later this month or next month. Come on Microsoft there are more than just a few of us that would like to check out 5700, not to mention the associated new builds of the .NET Framework 3.0.

Another strange thing is there is only 32-bit versions available for download tonight and no sign of a download for the associated Windows SDK or DDK.