NAnt Starter series

This is a compreshensive list of articles to help you get started using NAnt. The author is a practitioner of TDD and has presented in DotNetRocks TV shows.

NAnStarter Series - Jean Paul Boodhoo

Continuous Integration using CruiseControl.NET

Continuous Integration is a relatively new development methodology being followed in some organizations to develop high quality software products. It relies on most of the Test Driven Development principles and has a lot of automation involved to do mundane tasks efficiently. One of the most popular tools for this process is CruiseControl.NET server developed by Thoughtworks. It is an open source software and free to use by any and everyone who wants to practice Continuous Integration (CI) Development model.

The article below is an excellent introduction to the CI process using CruiseControl.NET. Read on..
CruiseControl.NET from Scratch - Version 1.0

Enterprise Library for .NET 2.0

Finally released after a long wait. The APIs are not 100% backward compatible and uses some of the core features of .NET 2.0 framework.
Read on for more...

"Enterprise Library for .NET 2.0

Article: 10 Essential Articles on SOA

 

A service-oriented architecture (SOA) can allow your enterprise to react quickly to changes in the competitive environment. This FTPOnline Special Report gives you practical information to help your enterprise implement SOA quickly and effectively. Sincerely, FTPOnline Ensuring Business Agility With SOA Sonic Software's Gordon Van Huizen examines two new pillars of software architecture, the enterprise service bus (ESB) and event stream processing (ESP), and how you can leverage them to build the next generation of IT infrastructure. Get Acquainted With SOA and Indigo Learn about the core principles behind Windows Communication Foundation's service orientation (SO), so you can better understand and create service-oriented applications with Indigo. ESB vs. BizTalk Debate Heats Up in Barcelona At his Enterprise Architect Summit Barcelona session, conference speaker Dave Chappell got into a heated debate with a couple Microsoft guys over core architectural fundamentals. How SOA Can Benefit From Active EA Models Learn how ontology-based EA models enable SOA implementations by providing an active registry of business capabilities. Stories From the Field: Adoptions of SOA and Web Services Chris Haddad reviews the decisions made by your peers when prioritizing architecture components, adopting specification standards, and selling SOA to business managers. Developing a Web Services Security Strategy Develop an effective Web service security strategy. Chris Haddad provides practical information about security risks, product solutions, and implementation. Integrate SOA Portals With WSE Use the ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts framework and Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 to create a successful service-oriented architecture portal. The Importance of Mediation in a Services Network As an SOA matures and expands, incompatibilities inevitably emerge. They must be managed to achieve your goals. 5 Web Service Architecture Tenets Use these guidelines to ensure you build successful Web service architectures. 12 Steps Toward SOA Emerging patterns might help you understand how to implement SOA. And check out these resources from Sonic Software: Whitepaper: Distributed Service-Oriented Architectures Distributed service-oriented architectures allow system architects to create a distributed environment in which applications can interoperate seamlessly. This paper discusses the advantages of building distributed service-oriented architectures and identifies components for successful deployment and management of distributed processes, including Web services.   Whitepaper: Massive Scalability OSS developers have moved away from monolithic, telecommunications-specific architectures and embraced off-the-shelf multitier architectures and distributed-object middleware. Initiatives such as the OSS through Java Initiative (OSS/J) promote the adoption of a component-based approach to developing OSS solutions. This paper demonstrates OSS/J deployment strategies and patterns that accommodate performance or scalability shortfalls. Whitepaper: Raising EAI Standards This paper considers the changing dynamics of the EAI market and how these dynamics are likely to play out, focusing particularly on one aspect that could prove a real paradigm shift—the emergence of standards. The conclusion should be encouraging to any company looking to invest in EAI as a means to deliver improved business integration. Webcast: How to Manage Enterprise-Scale SOA Deployments In the fast-changing world of SOA, definitions are beginning to blur at a time when clarity is ever more critical. This Webcast will clarify the roles of ESBs and SOA management tools in operating reliable enterprise-scale SOA deployments. Webcast: The Shortest Path to Enterprise SOA For years, the rate of business change has outstripped IT's capacity to manage it. New technologies, changing regulations and continual M&A activity have stretched IT architectures to the breaking point. This Webcast shows you that what is needed now is a new approach, one which supports pervasive interoperability—not just invasive integration. Webcast — SOA: First Principles Why is SOA important now? Sign up for this Webcast to learn about advances in service-oriented architecture that make it a practical approach for integrating IT systems. Click here for more information. • The Architect Exchange • Resources for Enterprise Architects • Resources for Software Architects • Worldwide Institute of Software Architects • Enterprise Architect Magazine • Establish a Service-Oriented Framework • FTPOnline Web Services Resource Page • More Related Articles

 

2600 South El Camino Real Suite 300 San Mateo, CA 94403-2332	This message was sent by Fawcette Technical Publications. Click here to unsubscribe from this newsletter. Click here to manage your profile. Click here to view our privacy policy.

Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com

Web Services Security

An article about web services security and how WSE 3.0 fits into the game. A must read for all Web service architects, designers and developers.

Web Service Security

Windows XP Setup and Maintenance Tips

Windows XP Setup and Maintenance Tips

Some more tips and tricks from Microsoft for Windows XP setup and maintenance.

Beginners Guides: 101 Tips and Tweaks for Windows - PCStats.com

Beginners Guides: 101 Tips and Tweaks for Windows - PCStats.com


This article outlines some nice Windows XP tips and tricks that you can use in your day to day life to improve and improvise your system's performance. Be careful and keep all backups handy just in case things go wrong :)

Change the Default Opening Folder in Windows Explorer

It is something that you may have always wanted to do. By default the My Document folder opens up. This nifty little trick allows you to set any other location to open up by default. Try it, I am sure you'll appreciate it..

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/tips/bertleff1.mspx

ZDNet India : Microsoft flexes its muscles with Office

Good news for the Content Management folks who were looking for a better product in the marker.

MS is planning massively enhance its Content Management server experience and integrate it with the Office 12 solution. Hopefully, MS will deliver what it promises to at the right time. Read on..
ZDNet India : Microsoft flexes its muscles with Office

Atlas framework for ASP.NET

At last, a framework that was being awaited for quite some time for ASP.NET application developers. Read on more to understand how AJAX like support can be provide to your ASP.NET 2.0 application in order to provide a much richer web experience to the end users.
Hope this catches on quickly amongts the developer community.

Read on.. ATLAS for ASP.NET 2.0

Microsoft Windows Vista Developer Center : A Guided Tour of Windows Presentation Foundation

A fantastic article to start off your journey towards Windows Presentation framework. This outlines the various features that are available with the WinFX CTP and short examples about how to use it. I particularly like the idea of being able to create an RSS reader within about 10 lines of code. Talk about improving developer's prodcutivity, I think this is the way to go.

Read on...A Guided Tour of Windows Presentation Foundation

More articles are available on Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon)

FeedBurner - Mobile Feed Reader

I've been searching for something like this for my mobile for quite sometime now. Let's see if it live up to its promise.

FeedBurner - Mobile Feed Reader

Code optimizations in C#

One of the code optimizations that we always do during code review process is to check for unnecessary range checks during a looping process. The following excerpt describes the CLR optimization process to eliminate the range checks. Note a slight deviation to the code as described below would stop CLR from eliminating the range checks thus causing poor performance.

Range Check Elimination
One of the many benefits of managed code is automatic range checking; every time you access an array using array[index] semantics, the JIT emits a check to make sure that the index is in the bounds of the array. In the context of loops with a large number of iterations and small number of instructions executed per iteration these range checks can be expensive. There are cases when the JIT will detect that these range checks are unnecessary and will eliminate the check from the body of the loop, only checking it once before the loop execution begins. In C# there is a programmatic pattern to ensure that these range checks will be eliminated: explicitly test for the length of the array in the "for" statement. Note that subtle deviations from this pattern will result in the check not being eliminated, and in this case, adding a value to the index.
Range Check Elimination in C#
//Range check will be eliminated
for(int i = 0; i < myArray.Length; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine(myArray[i].ToString());
}

//Range check will NOT be eliminated
for(int i = 0; i < myArray.Length + y; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine(myArray[i+x].ToString());
}
The optimization is particularly noticeable when searching large jagged arrays, for instance, as both the inner and outer loop's range check are eliminated.

Read more about Writing High Perofrmance Managed Applications here

WSE 3.0 Technology Preview version is here

The WSE 3.0 technology preview version is here. This incorporates numberous enhancements to the web service extensions. Now it also uses MTOM which has recently been accepted as a W3C standard. This should allow easier adoption of WSE 3.0 in production grade applications.

Read on...

Enterprise Content Mangement on the Java Platform (SYS-CON)

An excellent article on standards based enterprise content management system. Read on..

Enterprise Content Mangement on the Java Platform (SYS-CON): "openCMS.org"

How Visual Studio 2005 is tested

Should be an interesting read....

There are a lot of great msdn blogs and posts written for or by testers at Microsoft. Given all of these you could probably start to piece together an aggregate of what it means to test a product at Microsoft, but you might be lacking some of the end 2 end experiences.  Recently we filmed Sara Ford (an SDET for Visual Studio) go through the experience of analyzing a testcase, debugging the failure on our labs, and ultimately logging a bug discovered in the process. The results of this experiment are currently hosted on the Channel9 Devdiv site. Each segment is less than 15 minutes long. Enjoy!

1. Sara Ford - Introduction to DevDiv's Test Case Management System
2. Sara Ford - Investigating a test case failure in the lab
3. Sara Ford - Analyzing a Test Case Failure
4. Sara Ford - Finding and Logging a Bug

Josh

[vs2005news's WebLog]

Find your way using Google

Did you know... The worlds most powerful search engine now can search maps too.
Google Maps

Keep it going Google..

Asynchrounous pages in ASP.NET 2.0

Something which will always be useful to develop highly scalable web applications. Read on...

Beta 2 of Asp.Net 2.0 will have a better support for asynchronous page tasks. Instead of looking a thread until a page has bean completely proceed, you can now use the improved asynchronous feature that could increase the performance of a 3-tier application. In this post I will write about the asynchronous page tasks. [ASP.NET Daily Articles]

Weblogs Compendium - Blog Tools

Weblogs Compendium - Blog Tools

Good link containing a list of a lot of useful tools related to blogs. Hope this is updated regularly.

The intersection of Objects and Services

The following article outlines the various ideas that people have about service oriented concepts and how does it relate to object oriented concepts.
Spend sometime on this and give your opinions...

The intersection of Objects and Services

VS.NET Team System - MSF Agile mindset

One of the key elements towards using Visual Studio Team System 2005 is its ease of use towards integrating various processes and teams within a software development cycle. The Agile process of development is fast catching up with the traditional ways of development. VS.NET team system takes it to a step further by maki9ng this as the default process template for creating new team projects.

Read on...

TheServerSide.NET - TSS Featured Entry

SQL Server 2005: Pricing and Open Source

Kudos to Microsoft for intitiating the process of making SQL server open source. Lets hope that the outlined statement becomes true in due course of time. Read on..

SQL Server 2005: Pricing and Open Source

Good article describing why you should avoid GAC and prefer XCOPY for deployment of assemblies

A good set of examples why you should not be deploying all the assemblies in GAC and use XCOPY instead. Some of the comments to this are rather helpful to elaborate the reasons, specially the one which discusses about deploying only the base assemblies in GAC.

Read on ......

Avoid GAC, prefer XCOPY deployment

Breaking changes from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0

The list of breaking changes from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0 is outlined here. Read on...

Breaking changes from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0

Increase Ur Hotmail From 2mb To 25mb

Excellent tip to increase your hotmail account size from 2 MB to 25 MB.
sadikhov.com forums -> Increase Ur Hotmail From 2mb To 250mb

WSE 2.0 - A little known but powerful set of features add-on for Microsoft .NET Web Services

The web services extentions (WSE) allow web service developers and architects to use some advanced features like security, attachments, etc. in web services developed with Microsoft .NET technologies. These are not W3C authorized yet and are not interoperable between other web service providers apart from Microsoft .NET.

If you are developing web service solutions using Microsoft.NET only, then you may use the powerful capabilities of WSE 2.0. I have compiled a few links below to help start anyone familiar with .NET web services on WSE 2.0.

Web Services Enhancements (WSE)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/building/wse/default.aspx

WS-Security Drilldown in Web Services Enhancements 2.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/building/wse/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwse/html/wssecdrill.asp

Programming with Web Services Enhancements 2.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/building/wse/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwse/html/programwse2.asp

Web Service Messaging with Web Services Enhancements 2.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/building/wse/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwse/html/wsemessaging.asp

WS-Security Authentication and Digital Signatures with Web Services Enhancements

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/building/wse/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwse/html/wssecauthwse.asp

Encrypting SOAP Messages Using Web Services Enhancements

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/building/wse/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwse/html/wseencryption.asp

Using Role-Based Security with Web Services Enhancements 2.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwse/html/wseencryption.asp

A cool site to identify US Zip codes. Check it out...

Ben Fry's Zip Decode

Cool XP Theme -- Free download

Check out the newly leaked XP theme.
After spending a lot of time looking at the same old standard windows XP theme, this is a welcome break.

Royal Theme - XP Media Center Edition

Archie 

Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

A good article and series of feedbacks which demystifies the differences between the two cool products from Microsoft to host virtual machines.

Read on....
Virtual PC versus Virtual Server

Download details: Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 SP1 for Microsoft .NET

SP2 is just out for MS WSE 2.0. The website title has not yet been updated for the new SP. Wonder what new features are added. Hope to catch up on that soon.

Download details: Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 SP1 for Microsoft .NET: "Microsoft WSE 2.0 SP2.msi"

Walk-through Exporting and Importing Project Templates and More

This is the same stuff that I blogged about few months ago.
Got templates? [paulyuk]

Thanks to Craig, you can refer to the implementation details about how it works in the following URL:
Exporting and installing

I am happy that Craig has provided more details about the actual implementation and would be glad to see this in the upcoming versions of Visual Studio .NET and the express editions, but am not sure whether this is 100% original idea of Craig.

Congrats to him for putting the details in his blog.

BlogShares - Abhi's Banter

Interesting stuff.....Never know what you will find from a Google search...

BlogShares - Abhi's Banter

Microsoft Previews Avalon for Developers

Read more about the possible inclusion of Avalon and Indigo web services within Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 much before Longhorn... but only in 2006.

The CTP version of the same is already available from the Microsoft website.

Read on.....

Microsoft Previews Avalon for Developers

Implement Custom Cache Dependencies in ASP.NET 1.x

Good article which talks about how to get cache dependencies working in ASP.NET 1.x
This is a new object which is available out of the box in .NET 2.0.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/07/CuttingEdge/default.aspx

Should check out the workings of the same and create custom snippets that can be used in our day to day apps...

Omea Reader

JetBrains announces a new addition to its family of information management products. Omea Reader is
a RSS/ATOM feed reader, newsgroup reader, and web bookmark manager with a set of powerful information organization and
management features.

As a limited time offer, valid until January, 1st 2005, it will be available for free download.

[Omea News]

I recently downloaded this from the Jetbrains website. These are the guys who brought out intelliJ and Resharper. Omea is a all in one information management system which integrates with Outlook, windows file system, your newsgroups, your rss feeds, web bookmarks. Pretty good interface and nice way of presenting what is important to you as views. Omea reader is a lite version of Omea and does not contain the Outlook integration. The RSS news feeds and Newsgroups reader is pretty good. It also has a pluggin to wbloggar to quickly post a blog directly from that interface. One of the nice features is it groups these items into categories that are defined as today, yesterday, last week etc.

Currenlty I use Sharpreader to read blogs and Outlook express to read news. Omea reader gives me one package to do both. Lets see if I stick to this for some more time...

The first time I downloaded Omea by mistake. It is a time limited beta edition. Omea reader is offering a free licence and is available for donwload till Jan 2005.

A cool tip for anyone who uses this reader....
You can import your OPML file to quickly get up to speed using this reader but one thing I missed sorely was to display all the newly updated feeds in a list. A quick way to do that would be to create your own folder, call it "All" and import your OPML feeds within this folder. Clicking on "All" will now allow you to see all the feed updates from within one folder.

MSDN2 preview

The new version of MSDN website available for a sneak preview. It is still buggy, but you can get a flavour of what is coming up soon....
I remember Sonali was testing this a few months ago in Aditi.

Microsoft, who for years has heard reams of feedback and complaints about MSDN, has announced the release of the complete revamp of MSDN, dubbed "MSDN2". Of principal note is the new URL format, of the form http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/System.IO.Compression.GZipStream, which promise to be stable now and forevermore. [TheServerSide.NET: Your Enterprise .NET Community]

Helping the Small Blogs...

Helping the Small Blogs...
There are by some estimates more than a million weblogs. But most of them get no visibility in search engines. Only a few “A-List” blogs get into the top search engine results for a given topic, while the majority of blogs just don’t get noticed. The reason is that the smaller blogs don’t have enough links pointing to them. But this posting could solve that. Let’s help the smaller blogs get more visibility!
This posting is GoMeme 4.0. It is part of an experiment to see if we can create a blog posting that helps 1000’s of blogs get higher rankings in Google. So far we have tried 3 earlier variations. Our first test, GoMeme 1.0, spread to nearly 740 blogs in 2.5 days. This new version 4.0 is shorter, simpler, and fits more easily into your blog.
Why are we doing this? We want to help thousands of blogs get more visibility in Google and other search engines. How does it work? Just follow the instructions below to re-post this meme in your blog and add your URL to the end of the Path List below. As the meme spreads onwards from your blog, so will your URL. Later, when your blog is indexed by search engines, they will see the links pointing to your blog from all the downstream blogs that got this via you, which will cause them to rank your blog higher in search results. Everyone in the Path List below benefits in a similar way as this meme spreads. Try it!
Instructions: Just copy this entire post and paste it into your blog. Then add your URL to the end of the path list below, and pass it on! (Make sure you add your URLs as live links or HTML code to the Path List below.)

Path List
Minding the Planet
Luke Hutteman’s public virtual MemoryStream
Mohammad.Abdulfatah, Chronicles Of
Anand M, DotNet From India
AbhisekBanerjee, Abhi's Weblog

(your URL goes here! But first, please copy this line and move it down to the next line for the next person).
(NOTE: Be sure you paste live links for the Path List or use HTML code.)

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 PR

This is an awesome browser. Firefox was cool with all the features and clean an proper browser with no frills attached. I used the version 0.8 for quite some time now.
1.0 is way too cool. I really like the extensions available with it. The developer extension allows you to do a lot with the code. Should be easy to check with the different window sizes, css properties and images. It also shows the alt text only. Great for general web development.
Will continue to use this more frequently from now on. A definite try for anyone using a different browser.

I read somewhere that Microsoft better watch out. I sure think that was well worth the warning, Firefox is stomping home....

Another of My Website

Site Manager

Nano Net ...Another free webhost...
Womder how I will keep track of all these places..guess I will anyways..
Currently just as a redumdamcy factor...
Latest to the list is

http://new.nnsol.com/abhisekb

Web-Style Navigation in Windows Forms

IUIs and Web-Style Navigation in Windows Forms, Part 1

Good article about the future of windows forms to make things easier for users. Mainly developed on ideas by Jan Miksovsky of the Longhorn User experience team.

Looks like a better way in devloping win forms applications which are task based and has a series of operations to be performed to comeplete the task. We have usually referred to a similar type of Ui as Wizard based UI but IUI ( Inductive UI) is probably a cool term to be used for now..

Anyways lets see how this progresses and is apporved by the developer community :)

Some more stuff on the same lines....
Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines

Google Toolbar Installed

Google Toolbar Installed

Yes... After being coaxed to be installed for more than a year I finally succumbed to the temptation. Specially with Win XP SP2 being delayed yet again and popups on the rise, hope the google toolbar will ease some of my worries.

Another cool feature is the blog this button. Hope to make good use of it as I am doing now.

Rest later.. Off to bed for now...

Sonali and Abhi

Sonali and Abhi

This was on our way from Meerut to Delhi after we got married. Thanks to Vishal to capture this moment in our life...

ASP.NET 2.0 Enhancements

Apart from the other enhancements that we generally get to hear about one of the things which is really good for Web developers is the addition of dependencies for cached objects.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/Internals.asp

 

The above link talks about the various changes to the ASP.NET 2.0 internals.

 

One cool feature is the addition of sqlDependency which allows the developer to bind the cached object to a database table so that the cache can be refreshed when the underlying table is affected apart from the duration and manual options...

 

Way to go....