Ricardo Gonzalez BLOG

http://www.synergytpc.com

BLOG: http://www.msmvps.com/rgonzalez

https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/sessions.aspx

New sessions @ PCD available

2008-09-08T18:40:00Z

There are new session information available for the PDC 2008.

Check it out:

See you @ LA

Cheers

C# and .NET Books

2008-03-18T15:02:00Z

In the last few days I had the chance to check out some new titles from O'Reilly, one is "C# 3.0 Cookbook 3th Edition" and the other is "Programming C# 3.0 5th Edition". I'm not a real fan of language based books, but the evolution of C# through it's 3 versions, arises the need for this kind of books. "Programming C# 3.0" is a book that covers all the aspects of the language from variable declaration to lambda expressions. I like that it doesn't limits the content to sintax but includes chapters and examples that cover some important technologies related to .NET like ADO.NET, LINQ and WPF. For the beginer, I think it's a nice book.

By the other side, "C# 3.0 Cookbook" is a nice tool for the experienced C# Programmer. I like specially the LINQ, Exceptions and Generics sections, because many titles cover those topics in a "non practical fashion" but this title gives a more realistic approach to take advantage of the language and the .NET Framework. It explains many scenarios where the programmer can apply the concept directly to it's case. Congrats to Jay, Stephen and the O'Reilly team for this title.

While I was writting this, I remembered another nice title from O'reilly written by Michelle Leroux Bustamante, It's called "Learning WCF". This is a VERY nice book covering from the introductory to the advanced concepts of this amazing technology called WCF. Congrats to Michelle for this.

Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas

Software Development Consultant

MS Architect Forum 2007

2007-11-07T22:22:00Z

Last Week I was helping an MS friend, Jose Mauricio Alvarez (from DPE Andean region) with a very interesting talk about S+S --> Software + Services. This is just a specialization of the SaaS concept, extended to include client software which consumes services exposed as SaaS. Personally, I think that this is one of the most important focus shifting that has to (and in fact, currently is) happen(ing) in terms of the way your software reaches the customers, there are many advantages around it, and also many architectural challenges, specially optimizing the Multi-tenant support. The most attractive thing around it, is definitively the "Long Tail" which mean to capture all the customers that could not afford the cost of licensing and deploying the software locally. Think about it.Cheers, Ricardo Gonzalez VargasSenior Software Development ConsultantMicrosoft Regional DirectorMicrosoft Most Valuable Professionalhttp://www.synergytpc.comhttp://www.devsynergy.netBLOG: http://www.msmvps.com/rgonzalezrgonzalez@mvps.org

RAF 2007

2007-05-21T19:11:00Z

Last Week I assisted to RAF 2007 (Regional Architect Forum) @ Cartagena, Many architects from different countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru among others) came and participate of 18 sessions about Architecture, SAAS, Development Process and other interesting topics.

Congrats to the DPE Team, because this event was a complete success.

Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas

Software Development Consultant

LifeCam VX-3000

2006-08-23T02:55:10Z

Today I've received my new Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 Web cam, It has very nice features including an automatic face tracking technology, a web cam dashboard to include cute vide effects and a complete integration with Live Messenger.

Cool toy.

Check it @ http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/digitalcommunication/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=001

Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas

Software Development Consultant

Windows Live Writer

2006-08-14T16:27:55Z

I've just downloaded the Windows Live Writer tool , and this is my first post with it. One of the main reasons to me for not being a frequent blog writer, is the lack of nice tools to do it, so I think I'll start posting more than before....

try it, it's really nice and easy to configure allowing you to manage more than one blog account.

Cheers,

Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas

Software Development Consultant

http://www.synergytpc.com

BLOG: http://www.msmvps.com/rgonzalez

Impresive response

2006-05-02T03:20:00Z

Last week, I was @ Medellín, helping Microsoft with an interesting initiative called "Microsoft Installation Festival". This initiative is based on the MSDN Academic Alliance program, wich allows students to access the MSDN software an price of 0 (except office wich costs about US$30). Many students don't know that, so, the most valuable effect of this initiative is precisely to make students to take advantage of those benefits and start using the technology more intensively.

We made the event in 4 universities including : CESDE (Technical institute), EAFIT, Universidad de Antioquia and Universidad Salazar&Herrera with the participation of 1100, 100, 600 and 120 students respectively divided in different sessions. So, I'm so glad to help this kind of events and activities. Hope MS continues with them.

VS Express editions made free license

2006-04-22T00:29:00Z

This is very important news for all students, enthusiasts, and many people that would like to review and use the products. Even with the limitations compared with the other editions, VS Express editions cover a wide spectrum in software development.

The announcement includes

VC++ Express edition

VC# Express edition

VB Express edition

SQL Server Express Edition

Visual Web Developer Express Edition

Visual J# Express Edition

Check all details @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

Cheers,

Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas

Software Development Consultant

New releases for ASP.NET

2006-04-03T17:49:00Z

Recently I was viewing a talk about the new "Web Application Project" in VS2005, this is a new project template available for VS2005 that enables transparent migration of VS2003 WebApp projects keeping the concept of a single assembly app. Additionally, this project type does not changes any of the VS2005 binaries or settings, nor the Web Site Projects.

Nice things comming up ...

Ricardo Gonzalez Vargas

Software Development Consultant

Microsoft Regional Director

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional

http://www.devsynergy.net

rgonzalez@mvps.org

MVP again, nice news.

2005-10-12T00:15:00Z

Recently I’ve been informed about my designation as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Visual C++ for 2006.

more info ( http://mvp.support.microsoft.com )

Nice news.

Ricardo González Vargas

Software Development Consultant

http://www.devsynergy.net

Naive securty faults

2005-10-12T00:10:00Z

Today I was as speaker @ Microsoft Architect Forum. Security practices talk.

Definitively, there are many naive security faults that IT Managers, Architects, Designers, Coders and testers do while construct software.

The basics include:

- Principle of less privilege problems à users can do more than they need.

- Assume that a firewall is a complete security solution.

- No antivirus or software patches updates.

- Buggy code

- There are more options in apps than most of the user really use.

- Trusted user input (what an error!!!)

- Fool cryptography (key management, crypto algorithms)

- Think that technology is the security solution (in most of the cases, the problem starts with people and processes)

- Bad use of security tools provided by the platform

Those are the most important conclusions.

Keep them in mind.

Cheers.

Ricardo González Vargas

Software Development Consultant

http://www.devsynergy.net

Cool Feature on Office 12

2005-10-07T17:54:00Z

Support to “save as PDF” on office 12 was one of the new features announced by MS on the last MVP summit at Redmond.

More info at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/oct05/10-02OfficePDF.mspx

Cheers,

How good technology could be used SO wrong

2005-10-06T22:37:00Z

In past days, a customer (I can’t say names) ;) Asked me to help them in the solution of a .NET application deployment.

The architecture defined for this app, was based in a DNA like style, with a rich client consuming a series of COM+ based centralized components and accessing an Oracle database. The problem was in essence that they developed all the application and specifically, all the components as simple local components ( using System.ComponentModel.Component as base class for them) and nearly the time to deploy, started the process of conversion to ServicedComponents. Obviously, there were many troubles and high number of instances of components, troubles with object pools, transactions, JIT, and many others.

Another great mistake was the fact that they used intensively inheritance in components, simply to reduce little pieces of code, and not in the essential objective of inheritance that is model specialized variations of concepts in the domain of the problem.

High coupling and high number of dependencies, was also another big trouble within this application. Basically, all forms had dependencies at least with 5 to 12 components, making so dangerous to change any interface exposed by the components.

A very simple solution to many of those problems can be done with the inclusion of a Façade pattern ( GOF, 1995 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201633612/qid=1128633932/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-8849697-5773715?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) . Even having not only one façade, there could be a very important improvement of the design giving a lower level of coupling and making the impact of changes in the model much lower.

Simple solutions, for complex problems.

Cheers,

Ricardo González Vargas

Software Development Consultant

http://www.devsynergy.net