Entries tagged with ukdevteam - Channel 9

MSDN Flash Podcast 020 - David Gristwood and AWS talk Azure

Eric Nelson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:48:00 GMT

David Gristwood and I discuss the work of Microsoft UK around Azure before a 15 minute interview with Azure early adopter Active Web Solutions who make great use of Windows Azure and AppFabric.

Full show notes and an article on the same topic can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast020

Related:
In the UK we have a new Azure online Community - check it out at http://bit.ly/ukazure, join and be amongst friends!

We have also created eBooks containing articles from the folks we interview for the podcast. The latest was published end of December 2009. Enjoy.

MSDN eBook "The Best Technical Articles of 2009" (pdf or online)
MSDN eBook "The Best Technical Articles of 2008" (pdf or online)

Real World Azure Projects – Sharpcloud

David Gristwood — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:13:00 GMT

David Gristwood meet up with the founders of Sharpcloud, a startup and member of the Microsoft BizSpark program, to find out how they build their newly launched Sharpcloud application, which is a visual, social and analytical environment that allows users to discuss and view information to help their strategic planning. The user interface is very rich, very dynamic, and is based on Silverlight, whilst all the backend processing and storage runs on Windows Azure. Find out why they chose Azure and Silverlight, and how they have architected their solution. See it in action at www.sharpcloud.com

Real World Azure Projects - Factonomy

David Gristwood — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:34:00 GMT

David Gristwood talks to Graeme Bryce, from Factonomy, about the framework they have built on the Azure platform, which is being used by MoneyDasboard.com. In particular, he finds out what first attracted them to the Azure platform, what design choices they made around Windows Azure and SQL Azure storage, and what approaches they have taken to handling upgrades and maintenance.

MSDN Flash Podcast 019 - Windows Mobile Widgets

Eric Nelson — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:37:00 GMT

Paul Foster and I discuss his new role as technical editor of the MSDN Flash newsletter before talking about Windows Mobile Widget development (at 5min 30seconds in).

Full show notes and an article on the same topic can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast019

We have also created eBooks containing articles from the folks we interview for the podcast. The latest was published end of December 2009. Enjoy.

MSDN eBook "The Best Technical Articles of 2009" (pdf or online)
MSDN eBook "The Best Technical Articles of 2008" (pdf or online)

Thanks for listening.

MEF & Silverlight 4 Beta - Part 6, Locating Defaults & ExportProviders

Mike Taulty — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:28:00 GMT

Part 6 of a series of screencasts looking at the new Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in the Silverlight 4 beta.

MEF is a framework that simplifies the design of extensible applications and components. It can flexibly and dynamically discover a set of loosely coupled components and analyse their dependencies in order to compose them together at run time.

In this screencast we take a look at how we can provide defaults in a CompositionContainer such that an application can be sure that it has an implementation of a plug-in if no additional plug-in is discovered by MEF. This leads to a discussion about ExportProviders and how they provide an extensibility point for MEF.

Tips for viewing:

Each video in this series has a 3.5 minute standard introductory "header" on it so once you have seen that header you may like to skip it on subsequent videos
For the time pressured - I find that I speak so slowly that you can speed me up to approximately 1.5-2.0 times normal speed and still listen comfortably.

I'm working to get together a Live Meeting in early 2010 with people from the MEF team in order that people can chat more about MEF in Silverlight. Stay tuned.

The next screencast in this series is ( not yet available ). "That's all folks!" but subscribe to the feed above for notifications when more come online...

MEF & Silverlight 4 Beta - Part 5, the PackageCatalog

Mike Taulty — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:28:00 GMT

Part 5 of a series of screencasts looking at the new Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in the Silverlight 4 beta.

MEF is a framework that simplifies the design of extensible applications and components. It can flexibly and dynamically discover a set of loosely coupled components and analyse their dependencies in order to compose them together at run time.

In this screencast, we look at an additional catalog in the Silverlight Toolkit Preview for Silverlight Beta 4, the PackageCatalog. This catalog adds the key ability of being able to download XAPs dynamically at runtime and ask MEF to discover and compose the types contained within those XAPs into a pluggable application.

Tips for viewing:

Each video in this series has a 3.5 minute standard introductory "header" on it so once you have seen that header you may like to skip it on subsequent videos
For the time pressured - I find that I speak so slowly that you can speed me up to approximately 1.5-2.0 times normal speed and still listen comfortably.

MEF & Silverlight 4 Beta - Part 4, Recomposition

Mike Taulty — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:27:00 GMT

Part 4 of a series of screencasts looking at the new Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in the Silverlight 4 beta.

MEF is a framework that simplifies the design of extensible applications and components. It can flexibly and dynamically discover a set of loosely coupled components and analyse their dependencies in order to compose them together at run time.

In this screencast, we look at how composition of component parts in MEF is not necessarily a static or "one-time" process and that as changes are made to MEF's CompositionContainer it can re-compose components to take account of those changes.

Tips for viewing:

Each video in this series has a 3.5 minute standard introductory "header" on it so once you have seen that header you may like to skip it on subsequent videos
For the time pressured - I find that I speak so slowly that you can speed me up to approximately 1.5-2.0 times normal speed and still listen comfortably.

MEF & Silverlight 4 Beta - Part 3, Catalogs

Mike Taulty — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:27:00 GMT

Part 3 of a series of screencasts looking at the new Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in the Silverlight 4 beta.

MEF is a framework that simplifies the design of extensible applications and components. It can flexibly and dynamically discover a set of loosely coupled components and analyse their dependencies in order to compose them together at run time.

In this screencast, we start to take a look at catalogs which provide one way in which MEF discovers the components that it can compose. We take a look at the catalogs built into the framework and what they do for us and also how MEF uses them to populate a default CompositionContainer & how you can take control of that.

Tips for viewing:

Each video in this series has a 3.5 minute standard introductory "header" on it so once you have seen that header you may like to skip it on subsequent videos
For the time pressured - I find that I speak so slowly that you can speed me up to approximately 1.5-2.0 times normal speed and still listen comfortably.

MEF & Silverlight 4 Beta - Part 2, Imports & Exports

Mike Taulty — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:27:00 GMT

Part 2 of a series of screencasts looking at the new Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in the Silverlight 4 beta.

MEF is a framework that simplifies the design of extensible applications and components. It can flexibly and dynamically discover a set of loosely coupled components and analyse their dependencies in order to compose them together at run time.

In this screencast, we take a deeper look around using the MEF attributed programming model. We look at what we can import & export, required and optional imports, cardinality, creation policies and also how we can add our own metadata for differentiation.

Tips for viewing:

Each video in this series has a 3.5 minute standard introductory "header" on it so once you have seen that header you may like to skip it on subsequent videos
For the time pressured - I find that I speak so slowly that you can speed me up to approximately 1.5-2.0 times normal speed and still listen comfortably.

MEF & Silverlight 4 Beta - Part 1, Introduction

Mike Taulty — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:26:00 GMT

Part 1 of a series of screencasts looking at the new Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in the Silverlight 4 beta.

MEF is a framework that simplifies the design of extensible applications and components. It can flexibly and dynamically discover a set of loosely coupled components and analyse their dependencies in order to compose them together at run time.

In this screencast, we talk briefly around the idea of components having imports and exports and then we drop into Visual Studio 2010 and do a quick, "magic" demo of how MEF can plug together a couple of components for us. In later videos, we'll attempt to dig deeper into what MEF is doing and how we can take more control of it.

Tips for viewing:

Each video in this series has a 3.5 minute standard introductory "header" on it so once you have seen that header you may like to skip it on subsequent videos
For the time pressured - I find that I speak so slowly that you can speed me up to approximately 1.5-2.0 times normal speed and still listen comfortably.

MSDN Flash Podcast 018 - IronPython

Eric Nelson — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:04:00 GMT

A great chat with Michael Foord, author of IronPython in Action, on why a C# or Visual Basic .NET developer should look at also investing time in learning and using IronPython.

Full show notes, an article on the same topic and details of how you can subscribe to the podcast can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast018

Oh - and a very Merry Christmas from Microsoft UK!

[Just claiming podcast. Ignore this line. My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-6b1d9df815cd9734f58ff44d2d7e8790} ]

Extending ASP.NET MVC - Replacing the View Engine Pt2

Mike Ormond — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:37:00 GMT

One of the many benefits of ASP.NET MVC is its extensibility. It's possible to replace / add functionality for most of the major components. In this video we'll take a look at replacing the default Web Forms view engine (the code responsible for rendering views) with the Spark view engine which offers a very succinct markup grammar.

Part 2 focuses on converting the NerDinner Home/Index view from Web Forms to Spark. You can see companion blogposts at http://bit.ly/mospark.

Extending ASP.NET MVC - Replacing the View Engine Part 1

Mike Ormond — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:34:00 GMT

One of the many benefits of ASP.NET MVC is its extensibility. It's possible to replace / add functionality for most of the major components. In this video we'll take a look at replacing the default Web Forms view engine (the code responsible for rendering views) with the Spark view engine which offers a very succinct markup grammar.

Part 1 focuses on installing and configuring Spark with the NerdDinner sample project. You can see companion blogposts at http://bit.ly/mospark.

MSDN Flash Podcast 017 - Behavior Driven Development

Eric Nelson — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:50:00 GMT

I talk to Hadi Hariri about the differences between Behavior Driven Development and Test Driven Development - and why Hadi chooses BDD every time.

Full show notes and an article on the same topic can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast017

MSDN Flash Podcast 016 - Real Time Web and Silverlight

Eric Nelson — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:05:00 GMT

Phil Leggetter and I discuss the real time web and consuming real time data from a Silverlight client using HTTP server push.

Full show notes and an article on the same topic can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast016

Thanks for listening.

UK Silverlight Apps: iMeta Technologies Ltd

Mike Taulty — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:10:00 GMT

I've been chatting to Anthony and Jason from iMeta Technologies Ltd who have used Silverlight to build the iMeta Agility application for managing agile/scrum development projects.

The guys talk through how they came to be building on Silverlight, give a demo of the application in action and then talk a little around their WPF background, patterns they're using and how they want your feedback on the current version to help plan where they take the app in the future.

Talking Architects - Roger Sessions

Matt Deacon — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:04:00 GMT

According to Roger Sessions in his recent white paper "The IT Complexity Crisis", the worldwide annual cost of IT failure is over $6 trillion a year and what’s worse is it is on the increase. The culprit, Roger believes, is complexity, which itself is directly related to function; increase function increases complexity. If we can manage complexity then we can increase IT success – “All we need is a process for making systems simple”.

MSDN Flash Podcast 015 – SQL Azure at TechEd Europe

Eric Nelson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:54:00 GMT

While at TechEd Europe in November 2009 I had a chance to catch up with David Robinson, Program Manager in the SQL Azure team and discuss... SQL Azure :-)

We cover the "reboot", large databases, the new support for SQL Azure in SQL Server Management Studio, customer feedback and futures. V2 hints include:
- bigger database
- automatic partitioning
- spatial data types

You might also want to check out the slides of a SQL Azure session I recently delivered based on the session David gave at TechEd and take a look at these SQL Azure session recordings from PDC including those of David presenting.

MSDN Flash Podcast 014 – Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services at TechEd Europe

Eric Nelson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:50:00 GMT

This podcast was recorded at TechEd Europe in November 2009. I get a chance to sit down with Mike Flasko, Program Manager in the Data Services team. We had both presented on Entity Framework during the conference which is where we started the discussion before we moved on to talk about Data Servies and some of the announcements around Data Services, RIA and WCF which would be happening the following week at PDC.

Definitely worth a listen (IMHO).

MSDN Flash Podcast 013 – Code Contracts at TechEd Europe

Eric Nelson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:43:00 GMT

While at TechEd Europe in November 2009 I had a chance to catch up with the two lead developers of the Pex team Peli de Halleux and Nikolai Tillmann to talk about Code Contracts.

Code Contracts contains a common library (System.Diagnostics.Contracts) for expressing pre-conditions, post-conditions and invariants which any tool writer can take advantage of. A number of tools are available on devlabs including a documentation extracter and a static analysis tool. Code Contracts works with .Net 4 and .Net 2.

Hear why Code Contracts is a better way of implementing assertions including enabling the conditons to be specified against interfaces - sweet!

MSDN Flash Podcast 012 – Pex automated testing at TechEd Europe

Eric Nelson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:35:00 GMT

While at TechEd Europe in November 2009 I had a chance to catch up with the two lead developers of the Pex team Peli de Halleux and Nikolai Tillmann.

Pex enables white box testing. It looks at your code, finds all the branches and determines which inputs will result in those branches being executed. Pex attempts to exercise every reachable statement in your code.

It works with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and is restricted to .NET programs. It is available on devlabs.

One of the features we discuss is Moles. Moles allows you to
isolate tests from the environment - to replace any .NET method with your own delegate. This makes it easy to test code which has hard dependencies on databases, web services etc.

I also did a short blog post outlining the stubs and moles capabilitie of Pex.

Pex is an incubation project - hence feedback from developers is hugely important.

Enjoy.

Meet the Azure team at PDC09

David Gristwood — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:54:00 GMT

David Gristwood goes roving with his video camera at the PDC to meet some of the Azure team who are responsible for building Azure and deciding the features make it into the product set. This is a great chance to hear some of the team talk about their areas of focus across Azure, including:

- The Azure developer experience

- What the Azure fabric controller is and how it works

- What the new Codename “Dallas” project is about

- The newly announced Appfabric and how it relates to .NET Services

- The role of the newly released Windows Identity Foundation

And last, but by no means least, take a tour round one of the new Azure storage containers that was on display at the show.

(There is a bit of background noise in some of the interviews, but that’s the buzz from all the folk attending the PDC, but we hope it doesn’t detract from the video interviews).

Entity Framework 4: Part 1 - Simple Model First

Eric Nelson — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:57:00 GMT

This is part 1 of a series of short introductory screencasts to the new features of ADO.NET Entity Framework 4, which is part of .NET 4 and Visual Studo 2010. It was created using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

In this 10 minute screencast I explore the new Model First capability of Entity Framework. Model First allows you to create your Entity Data Model from scratch, focusing on defining the conceptual model from which we can then generate a database schema and mapping.

It is based on the demos I delivered during my Entity Framework session at TechEd Europe in November (DEV305).

Links:

Companion walkthrough on my blog
The relationship between the betas and ctps explained
The related series of blog posts on Entity Framework 4
Entity Framework 4 Resources
My blog, twitter and team twitter

How Azure is being used in the real world - Azure Deep Dives

David Gristwood — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:31:00 GMT

Microsoft runs occasional Azure Deep Dive events, with a small numbers of customers and partners, to help accelerate their progress building real world solutions on the Azure Platform, and providing feedback to the product team. This video looks behind the scenes at one of these 5 day Azure Deep Dives, meets the Microsoft folk mentoring the sessions, and the customers and partners building their solutions.

Check out the video to see:

- The features in the Azure Platform that early adopters are finding most compelling

- The emerging architectural patterns being used, such as the use of queues for durable messaging

- Discussion of recently released features for Windows Azure, and some hints for new features being announced at the PDC

- Real customer and partner solutions that are being built on the Azure Platform.

Talking Architects - Angela Yochem

Matt Deacon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:31:00 GMT

"Architects need to be partners of the business" is what Angela Yochem, an Executive IT Architect with a large multinational organisation, believes is key in delivering value to the enterprise.