November 2007 - Posts
The Avalanche of add-on's for Visual Studio 2008 has started. I thought it would be useful to keep a list so here it is.
Latest Addition : VSTS Model Power Tool : CTP
Visual Studio 2008 SDK
Web Deployment Project (RTW)
ASP Ajax Control Toolkit
Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Templates for Visual Studio 2008
Key Additions
Guidance Automation Toolkit ( Needs the GAX below to install )
Guidance Automation Extensions
Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack the feature pack extends the VC++ Libraries shipped with Visual Studio 2008 and also includes an implementation of TR1
Power Toys
Source Code Outliner
XSLT Profiler ( this is a must )
VSTO Power Tools
Power Commands
an on other useful bits
C# Keybindings poster
Visual Studio Database Edition Power Tools
Visual Basic Power Pack 3.0
Fixes and Updates
Web Development HOTFIX rollup which fixes a raft of performance and usability issues , you will need to login to connect to get the patch
Currently there are some parts in Beta
Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool - February 2008 Community Technology Preview (CTP)
Silverlight 2.0 Beta Addin for Visual Studio 2008
ASP.NET MVC Preview 2
External useful tools
SoSex Debugging extensions for .NET 2.0 : if you a looking for deep WinDbg extensions for visual studio
Key Tools
FxCop : Microsoft's extensible code analysis tool
And Some in Alpha
LINQ to XSD Alpha 0.2
if you are having any problems installing VS2k8 look here
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Well Visual Studio 2008 has been released either a few days early ( the money was on thursday ) , or a few days late ( the rest of the money was for the TechED Dev Keynote ). Which every way it is a good sight , Microsoft has put on extra download ability to help with all the eager developers who need the power NOW NOW NOW ;)
Soma has the official word on the subject.
The express editions of Visual Studio 2008 are available here for FREE.
Also sneaking in under the radar is the latest CTP of SQL Server 2008
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The Microsoft ESB Guidance for BizTalk 2006 R2 has been released. Interestingly it has moved from CodePlex!.
The first thing to do is read the manual, it is included in the installer but you will find it useful to read the manual first.
The ESB Guidance has some prerequisites that need downloading and I have gathered them all here to make life easier.
1) Enterprise Library 3.1
2) Debug View ( for tracing )
3) Hotfix for .NET 2.0
4) version 5.5 of the Dundas Chart controls for ASP.NET
>There seems to be a note to install hotfix for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Hotfix KB943871
>which does not seem to exist , I am trying to confirm this and I will update this post as soon as I have a resolution.
UPDATE: You can request the hotfix from here https://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1410&WS=hotfix
I will be producing a walk through of installing a test VPC over the next few days.
b.
if you haven't already check out P&P
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Well I knew that presenting at TechED would be hard but this week has been one of the hardest I have ever faced. During the week we had been struggling with getting the demo of the prerelease ESB working. We had practiced a good two person rotating handover presentation which looked and ran great and all in all we were generally ok, until Ewan received a phone call from his family and had to leave for home and would not be able to present.
At this point the TechED crew offered an option to cancel the session. I had the choice of walking away with no credibility loss or trying to get the session reworked in the few hours to run as a single person presentation. I felt it was better to present than not.
While I prepare for many things, having no co-speaker wasn't one, however Richard stepped in at the last minute and ran the demo that we had managed to get going and did a truly brilliant job. I think that at best I provided a serviceable presentation trying to run both halves of the prepared talk, the feedback on the day was quite positive but the anonymous feedback wasn't as kind. I missed many of my cues from the two person run through and as a result I missed about 30% of my material and I think the presentation suffered.
As a final kick in the teeth, the remote clicker failed which just made me look amateurish (I had offered to use my own but I was not allowed).
In previous discussions with Richard we had always agreed to do two half sessions which is a nice way to run a presentation and has always done well for both of us. In future I'll shy away from a rotating presentation and stick to full or half presentations, no matter how much pressure is applied.
Now if I had thought about it, I would have copied Rob Miles by running his presentation at our community events as the dry run for the material.
I think the lessons learned are run a session before at the local community which due to speaker distance didn't pan out, run only full or half sessions.
On an upside the ESB Guidance has released and I will (when I get back from Barcelona), start a series of implementation notes.
If you do have any comments from TechED I am interested to hear them.
b.
Update: I spoke to Dave McMahon the day after and he gave some good advice on the day, thanks Dave. Dave was ranked as the 7th top speaker at TechED which is not surprising as he is a great speaker.
The conference has been great , even though there has been some amazing announcements people don't seem to have grasped the gravity of what has happened. I suspect that it is a mixture of lack of comprehension and "it pie in the sky" , but it looks like OLSO will be coming hard and fast and you will see a lot on it in this blog over the next year or so.
OSLO's aim is to deliver information, processing , messaging and views on data in a single "solution" , for solution read nearly all the products in the connected systems arsenal. including (but not limed to) BizTalk vNext , Visual Studio vNext (Rosario) , .NET vNext (4?).
I think that the next few years of integrating systems and getting data and business value will be very exiting.
b.
Mike Ormand is super exited to be coming to Leeds and Bradford on our next event day (22nd of November). Mike is a great speaker and if SQL is your thing come along. if SQL isn't your thing we also have Sessions on Windows Server 2008 and in the evening we are running a community event where we will be Mix 07 in the North
b.
Probably one of the best session so far with Clemens Vasters and Steve Swartz on Software + Services in the Cloud. I think it is really important that speakers relate both to the audience and between themselves and Vasters and Swartz do it in spades. if you ever get the chance I recommend hearing these knowledgeable and brilliant speakers.
Marty Wasznicky presented on ESB and he gave one of the fastest presentations I have ever seen, he also over ran , all in nearly a full day of presentation in an hour and what an hour :) , it was great. However Marty's presentation has made me change ours for TechED and I think I will cut a lot as my session as it is a 200 session.
Wow and a third sublime talk by Don Smith of the Patterns and Practices group , this conference is awesome.
In the evening I was kindly invited to a Connected systems MVP evening meal. Richard offered to drive me and we went via Archie McPhee's the shop that sells weird and errr weirder stuff , if you want a box of dolls heads or 1 lb of plastic frogs that is the place to go , surprisingly I didn't need to get my wallet out. I met some great people at the event but whimped out due to severe tiredness. p
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