Nuno Filipe Godinho : Visual Studio 2010

PDC09 – Day Two – Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 from the Inside out

NunoGodinho — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:15:25 GMT

Bob Schmidt – Program Manager

For WF4:

Programs are data
Scheduler-based program execution
- stackless & serializable
Runtime-mediated code rendezvous
Natural Control flow
- run it the way you think of it

Authoring

WF is an activity

Can author programmatically or using XAML
Can contain other activities
Separate base classes for activities that return a value

WF program is a definition from which many instances can be created

Each instance of an activity has a unique environment (visible data values)

Execution

WF runtime just sees activities and not sequence or parallel or recurrence

WF runtime is a referee that enforces the rules of the work
CacheMetadata is how an activity describes itself

WF runtime knows when an activity is done
An activity can schedule the execution of a child activity and be notified upon its completion

There can be multiple, distinct method invocations per activity
Can Express all kinds of patterns (control flow)

There can be multiple paths of invocation …

Scheduler

WorkItem represents the invocation of a method
WorkItems can be created by:

Activity Code
External Code

Flow of execution

The Activity Code or the External Code Add a WorkflowItem
Them the elements get Pushed or Enqueued for execution
Afterwards the Scheduler will Pop it and execute it

Details

Scheduler per program instance
Manages an ordered list of work items

Threading Model

One thread at a time is used to process work items for a program instance

Simplifies the programming model of activities
Thread may differ work items in the same instance

WF runtime uses host-provided SynchronizationContext
Standard TLS mechanisms do not apply to WF

Instead use WF Execution Properties – names properties visible for a part of a workflow
Attached / detached from the current environment by the WF runtime before / after work item invocation

Activities should not block this thread

Bookmarks

Problems

What happens when your programs need to wait for input?
We want a “Zero footprint” WaitForInput()

Bookmark

A named resumption point in a WF program
Resumption will schedule an activity’s callback method
WF runtime mediates resumption – no need for the instance to be in memory

WCF Receive activity is built on top of bookmarks in order to give access to this possibility when using Workflow Services

Persistence

lets you pause an instance, save it somewhere & resume it later

has no affinity to a WF host instance, CLR instance, thread, process or machine

instances of WF are serializable

A CLR Stack is not serializable, but in WF program a stack only exists transiently, during work item execution

Sometimes you want a “no persist zone”

Automatic during execution of an async activity

Details of persistence are deliberately separate from the machinery of WF runtime

Serializable Instances

Contains

Work Item list
Bookmarks
Data (arg and values)

Environment for all executing activity instances

Activity instance info (callbacks, execution props)
Custom Data from persistence participants

Doesn’t contain

Workflow Definition
Why?

several instances can share the same workflow definition
management of definitions is responsibility of the host

PDC09 – Day Two – Developing Advanced Applications with Windows Azure

NunoGodinho — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:56:04 GMT

Steve Marx – Technology Strategist

Now we can have the ability to have more than a Web and a Work Role, since we have several different types of Roles.

Example:

IIS Role
SMTP Role
…

Now the there is the new Storage API that is currently being shipped with the SDK and not only a sample.

Some new features:

Inter-role communication
Non-Http endpoints
Role instance lifecycle
VM Sizes
Full-trust in the Cloud
Local Storage

Upgrading the local storage

How to model you application

Draw the boxes and arrows
Each box is a role

Which receive traffic from the internet
Which need IIS?

Receive Traffic: Input Endpoints

Different ports on same domain
There’s always load balancing
Declared in ServiceDefinition.csdef
Handled by IIS

InputEndpoint

Defined the protocol, port and name of the endpoint that will opened in order to listen for the requests
Protocols supported

Http
Https
Tcp

RoleEnvironment is the class that allow us to communicate with the Windows Azure fabric, for example in order to know the Configurations

Aside about Email

Spammers will use Windows Azure then the IP ranges can get blacklisted

Best Practices: Use a relay service in order not to have your mails marked as SPAM

Send mail via a rely mail
Receive mail is fine

Searching

Lucene.NET

Popular search API
.NET port of original Java implementation

Index data

Bring index up to speed on startup
Continually update index

Serve searched (via WCF)

Asynchronous Work without a Queue

Queues deliver messages to one worker only
We need every worker to see the message

Solution

use Table instead

Build your own secondary index
Order references

Initialization of Roles

Now we have:

OnStart() – “busy” state, initialization
Run() – do work
OnStop() – traffic stops, graceful shutdown

Internal Endpoints

Declare endpoints in ServiceDefinition.csdef
API to find out what port to listen on RoleEnvironment in Order to know if the port or anything change about the endpoint since the last call

How to Get More RAM

RAMDiectory pouts everything in memory
Choose the VM Size:

Small
Medium
Large
Extra-Large

PDC09 – Day Two - Keynote

NunoGodinho — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:04:10 GMT

Steven Sinofsky

Developing Windows 7

Learning

Solving Problems + Innovation
“Engineering 7” Blog made a very interesting Dialog even without having any code of the product, just about the decisions that were being made
Ecosystem Readiness
Developer Pre-Beta, Beta, RC rhythm
Telemetry

Telemetry

Seed Feedback Button
Hardware and Device Diagnostics
Reliability Analysis Component (RAC)
Software Quality Monitor (SQM)
Windows Error Reporting (WER or “Watson”)

Developing Internet Explorer

Learning

Responsible Engineering
Trustworthy computing
Real-world Interoperability
Innovative Technologies

Updates

Standards Progress

ACID
HTML 5

Performance Improvements

Javascript

Ecosystem Innovations

IE 9 with 3 weeks of development is looking interesting in terms of performance and interoperability
Using Direct2D and DirectWrite to provide better graphics rendering and Hardware Acceleration without any change of the current sites

Windows 7 Call to Action

Integrate with Windows 7 Desktop
Develop 64-bit
Focus on fundamentals in your code
Build on new APIs in Windows 7
Watch more videos today on Channel 9 about Internet Explorer 9

Scott Guthrie – Developer Division

Silverlight 4

Focus

Media

Web and and Microphones

gives you access to the raw access to the input and so you can make the changes you want on that stream, like using PixelShader with it

Multicast streaming

IIS Smooth Streaming

Silverlight Media Framework available today on CodePlex

Output protection
Offline DRM support

Business Applications

Printing

Print Preview Dialogs
Printing Configurations
This is a Print API that you can change however you want and not only a screenshot of the screen

Rich Text
Clipboard access

Local and Central clipboard support

Right Click
Mouse Wheel
Implicit Styles
Drag and Drop
Drop Targets support
Bidi & RTL
HTML

Hosting HTML inside Silverlight application
We can interact with the HTML contents as being a brush

Commanding and MVVM
Data & Networking

Sharing Assemblies across SL and .NET 4.0
Data Binding Improvements
UDP Multicast support
REST Enhancements
WCF Improvements

Main one is TCP channel support

WCF RIA Services

All the capabilities of RIA Services and with all the capabilities of WCF
Works well with OAuth

Visual Studio 2010

WYSIWYG Design Surface
XAML Intellisense
WF and POCO Support

Additional Control
Beyond the Browser

Windowing API
Notification Popups
HTML support
Drop Target support
Opening the Sandbox

Trusted Application

Custom Windows Chrome
Local File System
Cross-file Network
Keyboard support in Full Screen Mode
COM object support in Windows

using dynamic keyword of C#

Access to Several devices form the client machine

Silverlight Performance

Twice as fast

uses JIT like the normal .NET Application

30% faster startup
New Profiling support

Google Chrome will support SL4 also

Schedule

Beta

All the features seen today
VS2010 Tools
Expression Tools

RC
Final Release

First half of Next Year (MIX’10 ????)

Kurt DelBene – Office and Sharepoint 2010

Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure

Unified Business Platform

Unified Communications
Business Intelligence
Enterprise Content Management
Collaboration
Enterprise Search

Office and Sharepoint Development Platforms

User Experience

Based in Services and in a Object Model that can be extended in order to create better User Experience

Application Services

Expose all the capabilities in the Applications as services to be consumed without loosing any of the features that we have access inside the solution

Content and Data Management
Interoperability with LOB integration

possibility to more easily integrate the external LOB applications inside the products

Tools and Deployment Flexibility

New Tools for Sharepoint Development
Debug capabilities are currently in the Tools

Now Debug really works. Awesome.

Interesting capability to import a Sharepoint solution to start the project
Possibility to deploy the solution in a sandboxed solution. Interesting in terms of security
Deployment

Simply upload the package generated by Visual Studio 2010 into the sharepoint – Real All-in-One working for deployment also. Now it looks really good for Sharepoint Development.

Announcing the Office and Sharepoint 2010 Public Beta to download www.microsoft.com/2010

Office 2010
Sharepoint Server
Project Server 2010
Visio 2010
Mobile is also available today in the mobile marketplace

Sharepoint has a Silverlight WebPart out of the Box.
Sharepoint 2010 now has the Office Ribbon

Announcing Duet Enterprise for Microsoft Sharepoint and SAP

Consume and extend SAP from Microsoft Sharepoint 2010
Available on the Second-half of 2010

Announcing the Outlook Social Connector

Windows Live, Sharepoint Server, Linkedin
Has an Open SDK that can be used to develop new connectors for this connector

PDC09 – Day One – Code Visualization, UML and DSLs

NunoGodinho — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:31:12 GMT

Cameron Skinner – Product Manager in Visual Studio, responsible for the Architecture Tools in VS2010

Why?

Complexity remains a serious problem

Found everywhere

Code
Requirements
Organizational Politics
and so on…

VS2010 attacks these problems by increasing

Shared understanding between team members
the understanding of existing systems
the ability to gain and maintaining the control over it

Who?

Developers are trying

to understand existing code
focused on the “right fix”

Architects are trying

to understand the Domain and how it relates to implementation
get the solution for the existing projects

Product Capabilities

“Understand the Code”

Architecture Explorer
Sequence Diagram Generation
DGML Graphs and “Standard” Graphs

“Maintain Control”

Layer & Diagram & Custom MSBuild Tasks
Work Item Integration

“Understand the Domain”

UML 2.x Designers

All this capabilities are only in the Ultimate version of VS2010

“Understanding the Code”

In Visual Studio Options, “Mark the Show Misc Documents in Architecture Explorer”

Dependency Diagram

Very interesting Dependency Diagram that represent you application and all the interaction of the solution and you even can search who in your solution is using a specific assembly and what is being made with it.

If we use MEF, Unity or any other Dynamic connection this won’t be possible to see in the Dependency Diagram, since it currently represents only the static dependencies.

Think of Dependency Diagram as read-only, since if you make any change on it he won’t change any of the code of the solution associated.

The Dependency is a DSL that was generated for this version of VS2010.

We can select just the elements that we want to view in the Dependency Diagram and define which level of information we want to have, like:

Assemblies

Namespaces

Types

Methods

We can even filter by access modifiers:

public

private

protected

internal

protected internal

We can navigate to the code from the Dependency Diagram.

Doesn’t work on unmanaged C++, but is currently being done but no date for the release now.

We can interact with the Diagram and extend the DGML model but in a simple model

Possibility to define the level and the center of the dependency that you want to see

Butterfly mode enables the viewing of only the types that are just linking to your central defined element

We can generate the Dependency Diagram based on a Custom selected elements

Note: We can Calculate the Complexity by right-clicking on the Project and selecting the “Calculate Complexity” option of the Context Menu, but this isn’t currently available inside the Dependency Diagram.

Architecture Explorer

Capabilities to filter information about your solution

Ability to look at the Logical and Physical View of the Solution Projects and filtering what you want to filter in terms of inbound or outbound navigation, and this way we’ll have more information's about how our solution is working and how we can maintain it.

Sequence Diagram

Now you have the ability to define the depth of the diagram in terms of levels and them expand if you want more directly on the diagram

Designed to be collaborative and to persist the changes made on the Model, and it will identify the changes that were made on the diagram and associate that change to a new Work Item.

Works on all versions of .NET Framework

Doesn’t generate the code on by changing the Sequence Diagram, just identifies the changes that need to be done

“UML Diagrams”

There’s a new Modeling project in VS2010 that will have all the Diagrams
State Diagrams will be supported as well as all other diagrams from UML
UML Diagrams supported in this version of VS2010:

Use Cases
Class Diagram
Sequence Diagram
Activity Diagram
Component Diagram
Layer Diagram

Very interesting to define the architecture
Capability to validate the architecture by doing static code analysis in order to check all the dependencies and references between the several Layers, and defining the architectural problems as errors in the Error List.
We can get a visual information regarding the layers that are invalid due to the architectural validation
Just for static elements right now, but can be made by extending the pipeline of the Validation of the models

Very interesting Session and a great step for getting real architecture tools inside Visual Studio.

PDC09 – Day One – Application Server Technologies – Present & Future

NunoGodinho — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:23:09 GMT

Cloud: Fifth Generation of computing

Cloud - 2010+
SOA - 2000s
Web - 1990s
Client-Server - 1980s
MainFrame – 1970s

Technology Disruptions

Cheap Processing and Storing
Virtualization
Advances in Networking
Advances in Web Technologies
Emerge of Service Platforms

Application Trends

Service-Oriented
Composite Applications
Model Driven
Scale-out
Elastic
Failure Resilient
Always available
Multi-tenant
Staged Production

AppFabric

Windows Server and Windows Azure platform
Composition

Bases

Windows Azure or Windows Server with Microsoft .NET Framework Available

Main Capabilities

High Availability
Scale Out
Multi-Tenant
Management

High Level Services

Service Bus
Caching
Workflow Hosting
Services Hosting
Monitoring
Access Control

2010 Wave

WCF and WF

Customer Momentum

Adoption of WCF and WF

> 27% year over year growth in developer adoption
Top 5 technologies used by ISV’s

.NET 4.0

Configuration simplification
Service Discovery with WS-Discovery support
Routing Services
REST service improvements

Intuitive flowchart modeling style
New activity model and runtime
Fully declarative authoring and composition
Designer performance and re-hosting
Change from XOML to XAML

Deep integration between WCF and WF

Workflow Services with Supporting activities
Integrated hosting and messaging
Enterprise grade messaging for workflows

Windows AppFabric

Manage Services and Workflows

Infrastructure for enhanced workflow and service hosting, configuration and control
Integration with IIS Manager and PowerShell

Monitor services and Workflows

Infrastructure for storing workflow and service monitoring
Dashboard for information’s regarding the usage

Distributed in-memory application cache (Previously known as “Velocity”
Server/Service symmetry

Symmetric application development, deployment and management
Common scale-out and availability fabric

Server/Services Connectivity

Service Bus for Connectivity
Access Control

Announcing Microsoft Biztalk Server 2009 R2

Customer Momentum

Adoption of Biztalk Server

10kç customers
80% global 1000

Innovations

Platform alignment

Windows Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2008 R2
VS2010

Productivity Gains
B2B Scenarios Made Easy

Summary

.NET 4.0 (WCF/WF)
Windows Server AppFabric
Microsoft Biztalk 2009 R2

Futures

Server-Service Symmetry

CTP of Windows Azure platform AppFabric in CY10

Common App & Programming Model

End-to-End Composite Applications Model
WCF Service Authoring Simplicity and Scale
WF Activity and Rule Libraries and Tooling

AppFabric

Loosely coupled Message-oriented Event-Driven
Multi-Tenancy

Common End-to-End Management

End-To-End deployment, configuration and management
Dashboard for management

Biztalk Server

Enterprise connector to the AppFabric
Deep platform alignment

Summary

2010 Wave

Rich Framework, server and tools for building service-oriented and distributed Applications
Build upon your existing investments
Scale & Performance Windows Server AppFabric
S+S – Symmetric Host, Development and Deployment

Futures

Agility – Common Application & Programming Model
Elastic Scale and Continuous Availability – Rich AppFabric Services
Enterprise Productivity – Management Model
Multiple Workloads – Unified Application Server for ASP.NET, Biztalk Server

Very interesting in terms of leveraging all the capabilities of “Dublin”, WCF, WF, Velocity, Multi-Tenancy, Scaling Out and so on.

Geneva Framework goes WIF – Windows Identity Foundation

NunoGodinho — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:41:31 GMT

Geneva Framework has received a name change and now is called WIF – Windows Identity Foundation, since is the technology that will work with all types of Identity in the Microsoft world.

“It provides developers pre-built .NET security logic for building claims-aware applications, enhancing either ASP.NET or WCF applications. Windows Identity Foundation makes it easeir to build richer, more secure applications (cloud and on-premise) without being a security and identity expert. It will boost developer productivity, as a result, and enhance app security through a standard approach to federation, strong authentication and identity delegation.”

I’ve made a simple wrap-up of the several interesting articles about WIF, and they are:

Listen about WIF on .NET Rocks
Download the RC of the WIF here.
Learn more about the Id Element.
Cool sample using WIF on FabrikamShipping application
Download the WIF RC Training Kit here
See Claims-Driven Modifier Control

“Simple ASP.NET server control which allows you to use identity for driving the behavior of your frontend UX, without requiring you to see even a single line of code”

Have good reading and tests with WIF

Entity Framework 4.0 News

NunoGodinho — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:05:50 GMT

In the last few days I’ve been seeing several element of the Entity Framework 4.0 that come with the .NET 4.0 and I there are several interesting news that I thought I could wrap up a little bit in this post, and so lets start with the news.

Providers made for version 3.5 will work unmodified
- Great news for all the ones that develop their own custom providers in order to work with Entity Framework, and of course a nice information to know that the provider model is not being changed on this version.
- In order to know more about the several changes read here.

New CTP for the ADO.NET Entity Framework Features that work with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 version
- Interesting news since in some cases we needed this in order to continue working with features like Self-Tracking Entities, and some new stuff is also here, like enhancements in the Code-Only EF model, in terms of:
  - Fine grained control over the model
    - Specify Navigation Properties inversed
    - Property Facets
    - Complex types
  - Customizing Mappings
    - Change Table and Column Names
    - Custom inheritance
    - Entity Splitting
    - Joining Table Mapping
- Read more here

Model First with Entity Framework
- Now we can develop our EF model first and even extend the Database Generation Workflow and DDL generation Template.
  - This is very important and shows how this EF version is extensible and lets us define what we want to happen, and how it will happen, and this is a great power for the ones that are using EF or using other ORM technologies and need more power into their models.
  - Uses WF 4.0 as the way to provide extensibility for the Data Generations. Very interesting indeed.
- A very good post of the PM of the Entity Designer of the EF, Noam Ben-Ami here.

Foreign Key Relationships
- This has always been a challenge with the different ORM technologies that I’ve used, and in the EF 4.0 a lot is being change, from using Implicit Associations to Explicit Associations.
  - “In .NET 4.0 we’ve added support for FK Properties and FK Associations to the Entity Framework. It’s still possible to use Independent Associations and the two can be mixed in models. We’re excited to offer FK Associations because they simplify many common Entity Framework coding tasks. Hopefully this walkthrough has given you a feel for how you can use FK Associations and Properties.”
- Read more about this here.

Automatic Generation of Stored Procedures Return Types
- Sometimes we need for a stored procedure to return several values, like a table, and in order to make this easier the EF team decided to provide a way to easily return a collection of complex types from Stored Procedures, and so in this new version the designer allows us to define with type of results the Store Procedure will return and then it will generate the need type on the Database.
- Very interesting also, read more here.

Walkthroughs about Code-Only and Self-Tracking Entities.

Hope this helps you knowing a little more about Entity Framework 4.0 and where to find more information’s.

TechEd EMEA 2009 – Session “Deep Dive in Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0” – Part 2/4

NunoGodinho — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:59:07 GMT

After the part 1 in which we talked about the Changes from WF 4.0 Beta 1 to Beta 2, in this part 2 we will talk about the new Flowchart Workflow.

And so first of all let’s start by identifying the challenges that we currently have when using Workflow development, and they are:

Defining Workflows based on flowcharts made by Business Analysts and Users
Making Workflows easier for Business Analysts and user validation
Unit Testing Workflows

In order to do this I’ve started by searching the web about samples of flowcharts built by Business Analysts, and I’ve found this one here.

In order to do the same sample as me in the presentation, just follow the demo script that is attached to this post.

As a summary we can look at Flowchart like:

Typically used to implement non-sequential workflows, or in order words we can think of it as a loopback sequential workflow in which in we can define that an element of the sequence can loopback to a previous sequence element.
Can also be used for sequential workflows if no FlowDecision nodes are used
A Flowchart activity is an activity that contains a collection of flow nodes that inherit from FlowNode.
FlowNode types:
- FlowStep
- FlowDecision
- FlowSwitch
Single path of execution (each activity can only transition to one and only one activity)
Provides a more literal translation (“The way in which I think about my process is the way in which I write it down”)
Power + Simplicity
Similar to how you would draw a process in a whiteboard or Visio

DemoScriptFlowchart.docx

Windows Azure November SDK and Tools release

NunoGodinho — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:37:32 GMT

There is already available the new November set of SDK and Tools for Windows Azure, that can be found here. Also you can see here more about the new .NET Services and also here on the Windows Azure Development Center for .NET Services. Read more in this post from the .NET Services Team.

There are some breaking changes in this version so check also this post from the team.

TechEd EMEA 2009 – Session “Deep Dive in Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0” – Part 1/4

NunoGodinho — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:39:23 GMT

Just last week was in Berlin, Germany the TechEd EMEA 2009 event and in that event had a session called “Deep Dive in Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0”. This was a level 300 session and not 400 as the name could make you think, but this way we could achieve more people in terms of breadth.

In order to provide all of those that were in the session with more information and some summary of what we’ve seen and also the Demo Scripts for all that was made during the presentation I’ve prepared a 4 part series of posts that will help them, and also those who weren’t able to attend it because the room was full or simply because they hadn’t the opportunity to get to the Event.

This 4 part series will be:

- Part 1: Changes from WF 4.0 Beta 1 to Beta 2

- Part 2: Flowchart

- Part 3 : Correlation

- Part 4: Migration from State Machine to Flowchart

So let’s start this part 1 with the Changes made from WF 4.0 Beta 1 to Beta 2, since the Beta 2 was release just 3 weeks ago this seemed to me a very interesting topic just to place ourselves in the same page.

So basically we can divide the changes into the following parts:

Activity Hierarchy

Beta 1

The base of the Workflows was always a WorkflowElement class, and everything would inherit from that class and so we would have different approaches for the several types of Workflows, like Flowchart and Sequential.

Beta 2

In this new version the key changes were:

WorkflowElement goes away, and is replaced with Activity. Activity is the root type for all units of execution within the world of WF. This means that we now look at workflows in a different perspective, that is that the types or workflows are just activities that can be composed and use in conjunction with one another, and this will make the real Workflow.
Addition of ActivityWithResult which is the base for the Expression activities
Addition of AsyncCodeActivity. We got a lot of feedback that people liked what we were doing integrating asynchronous programming within activities but that there was still a fair amount of work in order to hook those up. AsyncCodeActivity is some nice sugar that makes it pretty easy to write an activity that takes advantage APIs that surface a Begin/End pair using the asynchronous programming model.

Runtime and Hosting

CachedMetadata

improved for activity authors to write code within to validate the activity tree.
One stop shop for customizing behaviors that were previously spread through methods like:

OnGetArguments()
GetConstraints()
GetActivities()

ActivityAction

Introducing DelegateArguments to pass data into and out of an ActivityAction.
In Beta 1, this required using an object of type Variable<T> that was assigned to a property named Argument

Persistence and Durable Timer and Tracking

‘Under the Hood’ category, the team has made improvements to Persistance, Durable timer and tracking which should provide a better runtime experience for the WF4 developer.

Dynamic Update

Last on the runtime front, dynamic update was a feature that had made its debut in Beta 1, but was removed again between Beta 1 and Beta 2 - and will not be present in the RTM release

WorkflowInstance renamed

WorkflowInstance was renamed to WorkflowApplication based on Beta 1 feedback from users.

Activities

Correlation

ParametersContent

XPath can now be generated from ParametersContent

CorrelationInitializers

CorrCorrelationQuery and AdditionalCorrelations have been merged into a collection called CorrelationInitializers.

CorrelationScope

Reduced the need for CorrelationHandles all over the place by improving the CorrelationScope and having an implicit correlation handle.

Parameters support

Parameters activities

Removal of Parameters Activities and merging that into the Send and Receive activities.

Content

You can now use the Content property to support MessageContent (primarily for untyped Message or MessageContract ) and ParametersContent (which is for the more RPC style list of name value pairs).

Refactored Semantics on Error Handling Activities

Refactored the semantics around the error handling activities to behave similar to a “throw” in a C# catch block. The most visible aspect of this change is the addition of the Rethrow activity.

InvokePowershell

Lastly, the InvokePowershell activity is no longer shipped as part of the .NET Framework. Fear note, for it is not gone; it has been moved to the SDK samples, joining other quite useful activities.
One point worth to mention about the PowerShell activity in the SDK is that includes activity code + designer code

Added a TerminateWorkflow activity in Beta2 (it’s in the runtime category)

Interop Activity

Key Component in WF4

The Interop activity is a key component for WF4 workflows, Leverages Activities built in WF3
Interop Activity allows you to continue to leverage activities built in WF3.

Improvements

Validations and Transactions are handled within the Interop activity to more fully support WF3 activities

Whenever using the Interop activity, if you have persistence in the workflow/activities that is used in the interop, that the Persistence and Monitoring databases that will be used is the 4.0 version, since this way we leverage the use of both versions, and only need one to provide that capability.

Designer

Expand in place support

This makes it easy expand an activity within the canvas without having to drill into it. This also lets you collapse activities when you don’t want to see all of the detail

Imports designer

No more fully qualified type names within expressions

Text of flowchart lines for FlowDecision and FlowSwitch

This is a nice usability / readability fix for the Flowchart, making it easier to see which cases and conditions the lines leading from decision shapes are for.

The rehosting was made really powerful, and in the WCF and WF Samples from the SDK there’s a WorkflowSimulator that makes the ReHosting and also provide visual information about the running state of the workflow. This is really interesting in terms of providing the our customers the capability to define the Business easily.

All these information were based on the team blog that appears here http://blogs.msdn.com/endpoint/.

New Features in Visual Studio 2010

NunoGodinho — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:20:52 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 is approaching rapidly from the launch and with it a new set of features will also appear.

One that I think is very important is the Architectural Tools that come with this new version, and elements like:

Dependency Graph
- Filters using Direct Graph Markup Language (DGML) on top of the generated graph.
- Views as:
  - Dependency Matrix
  - Forced Direct Layout
  - Top to Bottom Layout

Sequence Diagrams
- Available on the Code Editor

Unified Modeling Language (UML)
- Usage of UML to define the project

Use Cases (UC)
- Creation of Use Cases
- Integration with TFS, since we can select an element in the use case and build, link or View the associated Work Items.

Layer Designer and Layer Validation
- Possibility do build the Architecture of the solution and associate some validation elements that will always be enforced during the development process.

To know more about this subject read this S.Somasegar post.

Another very important features are the Debugging and Profiling.

Debugging
- Built in Debugger for MPI programs. Now with the new VS2010 we can select a cluster head node, how many cores you want, and hit F5 to debug your MPI program.
- SOA Debugging
  - Up until now, debugging Cluster SOA was limited to basic WCF/.Net style debugging with no cluster integration.
  - In Visual Studio 2010, an add-in for Cluster SOA enables the SOA Settings tab, allowing you to choose a head node, debug nodes and services, deploy runtime libraries and clean up automatically.

Profiling
- VS Profiler can offer insight into performance issues
- Shows a comparison report across multiple runs or builds so you can easily see the effect of your changes.

To know more about this subject read this S. Somasegar post.

Interesting reading about Entity Framework 4.0

NunoGodinho — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:36:53 GMT

Entity Framework has suffered great changes and in order to know more about them I recommend the following reading:

POCO (Plain Old CLR Object or Persistence ) in the Entity Framework 4.0

Sneak Preview: Persistence Ignorance and POCO in Entity Framework 4.0
POCO in the Entity Framework:

“Why is POCO important in Entity Framework? Is important because now we have the ability to really separate the Storage Model from the Conceptual Model, and being the Conceptual Model our normal CLR Objects, that was not possible in previous versions of Entity Framework. This is a huge breakthrough for this 4.0 version. Is not perfect, and in this technologies it never is but it’s very interesting”

Part 1 - The Experience (Explains how to make this two parts of the POCO experience with Entity Framework 4.0, from making the Model to the designing of the POCO entities, as well as answering some interesting questions)
Part 2 – Complex Types, Deferred Loading and Explicit Loading (Goes further in the POCO entities and make changes shows how to implement Complex Types as well as configuring the Loading by using Deferred/Lazy Loading or Explicit Loading)
Part 3 – Change Tracking with POCO (Explains furthermore how the Change Tracking, that is so important in Entity Framework, works in POCO entities and how can it be configured by using Metadata)

Using Repository and Unit of Work patterns with Entity Framework 4.0 (Explains how to implement common patterns like Repository and Unit of Work using Entity Framework 4.0)
Entity Framework Feature CTP 1 (Announcement of the Entity Framework CTP Features for .NET 4.0 Beta 1)

Feature CTP Walkthrough: Self Tracking Entities for Entity Framework (Explains the scenarios on where to use the Self Tracking Entities)
Feature CTP Walkthrough: POCO Templates for Entity Framework (Explains how to use POCO Templates, that is a kind of T4 Template in order to generate POCO entities)
Feature CTP Walkthrough: Code Only for Entity Framework (Explains how to Entity Framework without any model like EDMX, just code)

I hope you enjoy the reading.

Microsoft Releases Roadmap

NunoGodinho — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:12:16 GMT

A lot is being announced this days regarding Microsoft Products and Technologies, and so this is a little summary of all those information's.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 Just Released

NunoGodinho — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:46:30 GMT

The Beta 1 release of Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Beta 1 was release on the last 18th of May, just last Monday, this for MSDN Subscribers and today for Non-MSDN Subscribers, and it will bring great enhancements in several levels. You can install it Side-By-Side with your existing Visual Studio Edition and try it, but don’t forget to read the ReadMe file for both Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 in order to know what to expect. I still think that is better to test this version on a Virtual Machine, but you can choose what to do.

A quick look at some of the Enhancements:

.NET Framework 4.0
- Main Technologies
  - WPF 4.0
  - WCF 4.0
  - WF 4.0
  - ASP.NET 4.0
  - ASP.NET AJAX 4.0
  - Entity Framework 2.0
  - Data Services 2.0
  - Project "Velocity"
- Managed Languages
  - VB
    - Implicit Line Continuation
    - Multi-line Lambdas
    - Statement Lambdas
    - Auto Properties
  - C#
    - Named Parameters
    - Optional Parameters
  - F#
- Other Elements
  - Parallel Linq
  - Managed Extensibility Framework
  - DLR Built-In
  - No need for PIAs – New way to Interoperate
  - Generic Covarience
  - Generic Contravariance
  - CLR running In-Proc Side-by-Side
  - Code Contracts
  - Background GC

Visual Studio 2010
- WPF-Based Editor
- New Look & Feel
- Improved WPF Tooling
- MVC Tooling
- Dynamic Data Tooling
- Sharepoint Tooling
- Click-Once Enhancements for Office
- Html Snippets
- Web Deploy
- Breakpoint Grouping
- Parallel Tasks Window
- Highlight References
- Call Hierarchy
- Historical Debugging
- Inline Call Tree
- Quick Search
- JQuery Intellisense
- Concurrency Profiler
- Breakpoint Import/Export
- Document Map Margin
- Parallel Stacks Window
- Improved Multi-Monitor

Be in touch for more information regarding this release and other releases and don’t forget to see Channel 9 and the related Visual Studio 2010 Videos and also .NET Framework 4.0.

Also check the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit May Preview 2009 that is also available for download.