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What is in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0?

Drew Robbins — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:39:38 GMT

Did you see the announcements over the last month on Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0? Are you still wondering what is new and improved in those products? There is a lot!

I’ve been developing on .NET since the beta of 1.0 and I can tell you that this release is as exciting as any of the previous releases. There are a lot of improvements both in the technology and the way that we’ll build applications on the .NET Framework.

There will be a larger learning curve for this release than for previous releases – it will still feel familiar, but to take advantage of the new technologies, you’ll need to invest some time to learn how to use them. There’s enough there that it’s worth taking time now to understand what’s coming.

What’s the best way to do that? Here’s three ways you can start learning today:

Get your hands on the product by downloading the Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC. This is a pre-configured VPC that you can use to start learning about the new features. There are even walkthroughs for each technology that show you how everything works.
Check out the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit. This kit has several presentations and hands-on-labs that will walk you through various parts of Visual Studio and .NET Framework technologies.
View the videos on Channel9. There are two themed weeks of videos that really do a great job of covering what’s coming in Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. Everything from languages, to IDE enhancements, debugging and team system are covered. Here is a complete list of the videos across both weeks:

Visual Studio & .NET Framework 4.0

Introduction by Jason Olson

Overview
- Visual Studio 2010 Overview, Jason Zander
- Key Themes for Visual Studio 2010, Soma

Languages
- C# 4.0 Implementation and Design Questions, Anders Hejlsberg
- VB 10, Lucian Wischik
- C++ 10: 10 is the new 6, Amit Mohindra

The IDE
- Being Code-Focused with Visual Studio 2010, Karen Liu
- Test-Driven Development and Visual Studio 2010, Karen Liu
- Future of Visual Studio Extensibility, Rico Mariani

Concurrency and Parallelism
- Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework 4.0, Stephen Toub
- Parallel Patterns Library (Native Parallelism), Rick Molloy
- Parallel Debugging Tools in Visual Studio 2010, Daniel Moth

Web Tools
- Sharepoint Development with Visual Studio 2010, Reza Chitsaz
- Web Development and Deployment with Visual Studio 2010, Vishal Joshi

Visual Studio Team System

Introduction by Brian Keller

Architecture
- Cameron Skinner: Visual Studio Team System 2010 - Architecture
- "Top-down" design with Visual Studio Team System 2010
- "Bottom-up" Design with Visual Studio Team System 2010 Architect
- ARCast.TV - Peter Provost on what’s coming for Architects in Visual Studio Team System

Business Alignment
- Achieving Business Alignment with Visual Studio Team System 2010
- Agile Planning Templates in Visual Studio Team System 2010
- Enterprise Project Management with Visual Studio Team System 2010
- Requirements Management and Traceability with Visual Studio Team System 2010

Software Quality
- Better Software Quality with Visual Studio Team System 2010
- Manual Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2010
- Historical Debugger and Test Impact Analysis in Visual Studio Team System 2010
- Lab Management coming to Visual Studio Team System 2010

Team Foundation Server
- Brian Harry: Team Foundation Server 2010
- Branching and Merging Visualization with Team Foundation Server 2010
- Enterprise Team Foundation Server Management with Mario Rodriguez
- Team Foundation Server 2010 Setup and Administration
- An early look at Team Foundation Build 2010 with Jim Lamb
- A first look at Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2010
- Update on Team Foundation Server Migration and Synchronization

Dear Zune It's Over

Chris Williams — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:25:18 GMT

Dear Zune,

I want you to know I've tried, I mean really really tried, but I give up. It's over, we're done.

I put up with your crappy software as long as I possibly could. I overlooked the clunky interface and pathetic battery life. I was initially enamored with your wifi, but since I could never find anyone else who had a zune... much less someone willing to share music, your "social" was pretty lonely.

So this is it. I can't take it any more. Today was the final straw. Not only does your software make me want to scream obscenities at old women and small children, but your subscription service has consistently failed me. The music I want isn't available and when it is, I get errors at download time. I just can't win with you... ever.

And you know, what pisses me off the most, is I defended you... yes that's right. People would ask me, why I was putting up with you... and I would always smile and take up for you and you still let me down time after time. I've come to realize it's not me, it's you.

So that's it then. I suppose I should tell you, not that I really owe you anything, but before you hear it from someone else... I'm buying an ipod tonight. I used the iTunes software before we met and it was a wonderful experience. I tried to put that behind me, but I can't. So, I'm going back to what makes sense for me at this point in my life.

Good luck, but please don't call me anymore. It will only be too hard for both of us.

Improve installation experience in Silverlight 2.0

Jacek Ciereszko — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:25:14 GMT

Do you like install plug-in image for Silverlight 2.0? Do you think that user, who don’t know anything about Silverlight, will click it?

Usual the answer is NO!

What we should care is a user’s experience from first moments. If he disappoint on first install’s image, he probably won’t come back to our application.

What we can do about this?

We can customize installation process, so it will be more user-friendly and intuitive. We can give him information that everything is ok, that he should click installation button and nothing bad will happen!

To change installation process, we can create and show user our own “install plug-in” image. Let’s do this now!

For html files

<object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%">
   <param name="source" value="ClientBin/SilverlightApplication1.xap" />
   <param name="onerror" value="onSilverlightError" />
   <param name="background" value="white" />
   <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="2.0.31005.0" />
   <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" />
   <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=124807" style="text-decoration: none;">
        <img src="ClientBin/InstallSL.png" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style: none" />
   </a>
</object>

To set our image, we should only change “src” value for <img tag and point it at our image. We can even modify entire html code, write nice information about application, video, links to others pages, etc.

For aspx files

<asp:Silverlight ID="Xaml1" runat="server" Source="~/ClientBin/SilverlightApplication1.xap" MinimumVersion="2.0.31005.0" Width="100%" Height="100%">
 <PluginNotInstalledTemplate>
      <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=124807" style="text-decoration: none;">
          <img src="ClientBin/InstallSL.png" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style: none" />
      </a>
 </PluginNotInstalledTemplate>
</asp:Silverlight>

For ASP.NET (aspx) files we have to add parameter "PluginNotInstalledTemplate" and as a value insert html code. It can be, for example image with information about application or entire html code. In this example, I used the code from html example.

How to in easy way test our installation image

To test how our pre-installation html code looks like, we don’t need to uninstall every time Silverlight plug-in, we can use instead of it, additional features in Internet Explorer.

All you have to do is open “Tools” -> “Manage Add-ons” -> “Enable or Disable Add-ons”

Now find Silverlight plug-in and turn it on/off. Your application will restart automatically and pre-installer will appear.

My example

As a example I would like to show pre-installer image for my Solitaire Game.

Game looks like this:

When user don’t have plug-in to Silverlight, game looks like this:

But when we change pre-installer image, then game could look like this:

p.s. Polish version: http://jacekciereszko.pl/2008/11/obrazek-instalacyjny-silverlight-20.html

Best Regards,
Jacek Ciereszko

Guns N' Roses Chinese Democracy review revisited

Chris Williams — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:16:00 GMT

I may have been a little harsh in my initial criticism of Chinese Democracy.

(I stand by my statement that this is not (nor should it be confused with) Guns N' Roses... more like Axl's solo project.)

On my most recent drive to South Dakota (6 hours) I forced myself to listen to Chinese Democracy the entire way. Nice and Loud. Around the 4 1/2 hour mark, something happened. I started to catch myself singing along (even with the really bad songs, which I maintain there are a couple.)

Maybe it's not so bad. Axl definitely showboats a bit too much, and there's at least one song that probably belongs in an off broadway production of something... god help me if I know what. But overall... I'm warming up to it. most of it.

There's definitely some clever humor present in the lyrics, I found myself chuckling more than once as I listened to it for the 6th or 7th time. (In fairness, it takes that long to understand the lyrics on some of the songs. liner notes are for wimps.)

So, I'm not writing the CD off as total garbage, and I suppose it's worth buying, though if you can preview it for free you definitely should... I have a feeling not everyone will feel they got their money's worth.

Still... if you're looking for what most people think of as Guns N' Roses, this ain't it.

more snow

Chris Williams — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:06:45 GMT

oh look it's snowing in South Dakota. yay.

Makes driving to work fun. Nice and slippy slidey.

Some of it has melted into slosh by now, which means driving around tonight when it refreezes should be fun.

Windows Vista SP2 CPP Available

Chris Haaker — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:16:06 GMT

Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 is now available to Microsoft TechNet subscribers through the download website. This is the Customer Preview Program (CPP) which will roll to general availability tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: Vista SP2,Windows Vista SP2,Windows Server 2008 SP2,TechNet,Microsoft

What I hadn’t appreciated about schema versioning in BizTalk Server

Yossi Dahan — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:08:15 GMT

Most people know that when processing a message through the XmlDisassembler, if not explicitly told which schema to use through configuration, the disassembler would try to resolve the correct schema based on the message’s root node and namespace.

Most would also know, usually through the experience of getting it wrong so many times first, that if more than one assembly contains the same combination of root node and namespace for a schema, the receive pipeline, containing the disassembler, would fail with the error “Cannot locate document specification because multiple schemas matched the message type “<your message type here>”.”

What some miss (ehm, ehm) is that this is not true if the two schemas exist in two versions of the same assembly.

So – if you have an assembly called MySchemas.dll, version 1.0.0.0, …. which contains schema SomeRootNode#SomeNamespace and you have MySchemas2.dll, Version…… which contains schema SomeRootNode#SomeNamespace (same one) – BizTalk would fail.

If, however, you have the assembly MySchemas.dll, version 1.0.0.0, …. which contains schema SomeRootNode#SomeNamespace and then create MySchemas.dll, version 2.0.0.0, …. which contains schema SomeRootNode#SomeNamespace BizTalk would quite happily ignore the former and use the latest version available.

Makes perfect sense, of course!

Stuff that rocks: g-speak, the Minority Report-like operating environment

Stacy Vicknair — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:12:45 GMT

On the Community Credit forums there was mention of this really cool spatial operating environment likened to the ones in Minority Report. Visit http://www.oblong.com for a video demonstration, which is way awesome. From their site:

Oblong Industries is the developer of the g-speak spatial operating environment.

The SOE's combination of gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels brings the first major step in computer interface since 1984; starting today, g-speak will fundamentally change the way people use machines at work, in the living room, in conference rooms, in vehicles. The g-speak platform is a complete application development and execution environment that redresses the dire constriction of human intent imposed by traditional GUIs. Its idiom of spatial immediacy and information responsive to real-world geometry enables a necessary new kind of work: data-intensive, embodied, real-time, predicated on universal human expertise.

Definitely worth a quick peak :)

Technorati Tags: minority report,g-speak,stuff that rocks

.NET Coffee Break Show on IronRuby and Silverlight

Josh Holmes — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:53:34 GMT

I was just on a cool webcast called the .NET Coffee Break Show. I did a short show on getting started with IronRuby and Silverlight.

Because the show is supposed to be just 30 minutes or so, I didn't get into my usual preaching about the Ruby programming language or why people should use a dynamic language. Instead I just stated the fact that I really like Ruby and I really like Silverlight and I especially like the combination of the two.

I've got a walk through on getting started with IronRuby and Silverlight on my blog at .NET Coffee Break Show on IronRuby and Silverlight

MSDN Southern Fried Road show

Lou Vega — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:57:47 GMT

Thanks to everyone in Charleston who came out for that event yesterday! It was a good event, lots of good information and I even got to give a short presentation on Mobile development. Thanks Chad, Brian and Glen for coming down!

Windows 7 Beta 1 for MDC Attendees, see you at the Orlando event

Nikita Polyakov — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:36:45 GMT

Though some of you that were on the fence or have not year head about the MSDN Dev Con, are now more interested in coming out. It’s a tiny price compared to PDC and is coming to a city near you!

A good group of local celebrities will be presenting along side proven Microsoft experts at the Orlando event. I will be in the attendance and around any community areas. And any social after event :)

Bayer White (Jacksonville), Joe Homnick (Boca Raton), Christopher Bennage (Tallahassee), Rob Eisenberg (Tallahassee) , Shervin Shakibi (Boca Raton), Bill Reiss (Tampa), Stan Schultes (Sarasota), and Brandon Kelly (Tampa)

This is rate that I would post an entire email like this, but check this write up! How awesome is this event going to be ? AWESOME!!

Attend an upcoming MSDN Developer Conference and you will receive a Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD.

Note: The Windows 7 DVDs will not be ready to hand out in time for the events happening in December, but we’ll definitely mail them out to you as soon as they become available. Everyone attending the event from Houston, Orlando and Atlanta WILL get their DVD, just not at the actual event :-)

Register today and you’ll get the best of the PDC in your own backyard and hear all of the exciting announcements around the Azure Services Platform and Windows 7.

Experience Windows Azure
Create applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web, and phone
Be among the first to see Windows 7
See the latest advances in Multi-Touch Application Development
Take your .NET skills to the next level
See sessions on WPF 4.0, Silverlight 2, The Future of C# and VB, ASP.NET 4.0, Live Mesh and more

The Cost? Just $99.
And, did we mention that attendees will get some cool giveaways?

Check out the session line up…

Azure Services Platform	Client and Presentation	Tools, Languages and Framework
A Lap Around Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform	ASP.NET and JQuery	The Future of Managed Languages: C#, and Visual Basic
Developing and Deploying Your First Azure Service	Developing Data-centric Applications Using the WPF DataGrid and Ribbon Controls	A Lap Around "Oslo"
A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services	Building Business Focused Applications using Silverlight 2	A Lap Around Visual Studio 2010
Developing Applications Using Microsoft SQL Data Services	ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap	An Introduction to Microsoft F#

Register for a city near you…

Date	City
12/9/08	Houston, TX
12/11/08	Orlando, FL
12/16/08	Atlanta, GA
1/13/09	Chicago, IL
1/13/09	Minneapolis, MN
1/16/09	Washington, DC
1/20/09	New York, NY
1/22/09	Boston, MA
1/22/09	Detroit, MI
1/26/09	Dallas, TX
2/19/09	San Francisco, CA

Cool Giveaways

The MSDN Developer Conference will not only WOW you with the coolest sessions from the PDC but you will also be in the running to win one of 3 Lego NXT Robotics Kits and the WROX Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio book. Other giveaways include a Gamer Backpack filled with the latest XBox games and a Mobility Backpack full of cool hardware.

Community Courtyard

As good as the sessions are, there's always more to explore and discuss. At MDC, you'll have a chance to step into the Community Courtyard and choose what to talk about, based on your interest and passion for the subject.

Running in tandem with the presentations is an open discussion area where you will choose the subjects and the participants. Whether you want to mingle with the presenters, talk about an MDC session, a related subject or something else you have the opportunity. Borrowing from Open Space Technology and other forms of open, community-driven discussion, using fishbowls and free-for-alls, this area is yours.

Online Community

Find our tag cloud under #MSDNDevCon. Join the buzz!

MSDN Social

Facebook - Join the group

Twitter - follow the feed

Flickr - post your MDC pictures

del.icio.us - share your bookmarks

Twemes - global twitter tags

Technorati Tags: MDC,Windows Azure,Azure Services Platform,Cloud Computing,Windows 7,ASP.NET,WPF,Silverlight,Visual Studio,Parallel Programming,C#,VB,F#,Data Services

The Gift Procurement Lifecycle at the Holidays

Stacy Vicknair — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:26:43 GMT

Like it or not, if you are purchasing gifts during the holidays, you're playing a miniature game of requirements analysis. Your niece Suzie isn't just getting her new (hopefully favorite) doll and your children aren't just getting the next thing that'll be all over your house, they are receiving the final product of their own miniature project, and you happen to be the project manager.

Sure there won't be SCRUMM meetings, or code reviews, and no formal requirements analysis (well, at least in my case!). There won't be use cases, specs, and elicitation. Well, maybe elicitation ;)

But in general you'll determine all of your stakeholders, identify their needs based on age, sex, likes, dislikes, and ultimately submit your solution to the person as your final deliverable.

Happy holidays to everyone, just be sure to maintain scope and budget.

Technorati Tags: Happy Holidays

Emitting XML via LINQ

Shawn Cicoria — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:49:25 GMT

Just posted about reading XML via LINQ. Now, this post is about the opposite direction - emitting XML from a collection. The simplicity of LINQ provides a straightforward interaction with XML makes LINQ to XML for me one of the easiest and most natural ways to interact with XML.

The following emits a collection of objects out to an XElement (which can be streamed elsewhere as required.

   35 Customer[] customers = new Customer[]{

   36    new Customer{

   37     firstName="john", lastName="lennon"},

   38    new Customer{

   39       firstName="ringo", lastName="starr"} };

   41 XNamespace ns1 = "UGLY_NAMESPACE";

   43 XElement custs = new XElement("myRoot",

   44 from c in customers

   45  select new XElement(ns1 + "customer",

   46   new XElement(ns1 + "firstName", c.firstName),

   47   new XElement(ns1 + "lastName", c.lastName)));

This creates the following XML

    1 <myRoot>

    2   <customer xmlns="UGLY_NAMESPACE">

    3     <firstName>john</firstName>

    4     <lastName>lennon</lastName>

    5   </customer>

    6   <customer xmlns="UGLY_NAMESPACE">

    7     <firstName>ringo</firstName>

    8     <lastName>starr</lastName>

    9   </customer>

   10 </myRoot>

Hyper-V on Vista?

Shawn Cicoria — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:34:03 GMT

Need to wait for SP2...

http://blogs.technet.com/springboard/archive/2008/12/02/windows-vista-sp2-what-s-inside-what-s-important.aspx

For all of us keeping all these VPC's around or running on Virtual PC, VS, even VMWare, we'll know be Hyper-V native - that is unless you've already done the Win 2008 Workstation model...

http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/

Welcome to PHPd!

phpd — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:04:01 GMT

Hello readers, and welcome to my new blog - phpd!

PHPd is going to be my new blog for sharing my PHP programming knowledge and also details of any new PHP frameworks, new e.t.c

I hope you enjoy reading this blog!

Confusing picture?

mattjgilbert — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:28:50 GMT

Mike makes an interesting observation about the future of BAM in his post here. I think the scope for confusion and blurring is going to become wider than just BAM though. Microsoft are saying that the purpose of BizTalk is as the “Integration Server” in the jigsaw, while Dublin is the Application Server. Now you can imagine developers building fine grained services hosted inside Dublin and BizTalk providing both ESB and technology/protocol Integration services as well as orchestration but what about the common requirements like a Service Registry or a Rules Engine? UDDI 3.0 will ship with BizTalk 2009 (UDDI previously shipped with W2K3) and both BizTalk and WF have rules engines. As we move forward the picture will hopefully become clearer as to what will merge, what will remain separate and where the various offerings position themselves.

Back on GWB and Headed to CodeMash

Drew Robbins — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:07:27 GMT

The last several weeks have been a lot of fun. My team at Microsoft was busy supporting the announcements for Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 that happened at PDC and TechEd EMEA.

Jason Olson delivered a tremendous series of videos on Channel9 focused on Visual Studio 2010 that followed an earlier, very successful series for Visual Studio Team System produced by Brian Keller. Between the two themed weeks, the videos have 1.2 million views!

We finally have some time to breathe and think about what comes next. And I took this chance to follow-up on a conversation I had with Jeff Julian at PDC. He convinced me to get back to blogging on GeeksWithBlogs.net and I’m glad to be part of this community.

Another community I’m looking forward to visiting again is the wonderful CodeMash community in Sandusky, Ohio. Their next event is in January and I’ll be presenting two sessions. The speaker list looks really awesome, not two mention three tremendous keynoters.

Here’s my two sessions:

Modern Web Applications with .NET- To be honest, I’m not even sure what that means. The submission page for sessions had a really small character limit for title and this is what I came up with after 4-5 tries. Basically, we’ll be talking about what is coming in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 for web developers.

Managed Extensibility Framework – This is one is a little more straight forward. In this session, I’ll introduce the audience to the Managed Extensibility Framework coming in the .NET Framework 4.0. We’ll look at how its used to extend Visual Studio 2010 and how it can be leveraged in your own applications.

Also, I’m setting up 14 computers while I’m there to allow attendees to go through the hands-on-labs in our Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit and get some experience with the next version of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework.

XTransformationFailureException: encountered while executing the transform…

Geordie — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:00:49 GMT

I recently encounter this error. It took a little bit of head scratching to work out why we were getting the error. The possible causes were quite high as we are using dynamically assigned maps (see code below).

Message Assignment Shape Code

SapOrderMapType = System.Type.GetType(SapOrdersMapName);

//transform(MyOutputMsg) = MyMapType(MyInputMsg);

transform (SapOrder) = SapOrderMapType(CanonicalPO);

System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLineIf(TraceEnabled, "Transform to SAP schema complete.", TraceCategory);

SapOrder(FILE.ReceivedFileName) = "PO_" + CustomerNumber + "_" + PONumber + "_";

System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLineIf(TraceEnabled, "SAP Order Msg Created", TraceCategory);

The error information identifies the transform as the problem but not what the problem is. The inner exception is no additional help- ‘Value cannot be null. Parameter name: extension Exception type: ArgumentNullException’.

The problem was eventually tracked down to the custom functoids. In the last map a new functoid was added to convert standard BizTalk dates into standard SAP dates. When the project was deployed the custom functoid dll was not updated.

Interestingly this error might occur intermittently as the functiod may not be needed every time the map is used.

Sotue Lexical Analysis Engine Design Underway

Jeff Ferguson — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:16:24 GMT

The DFA creation code in Sotue is well underway. I have more to do on the DFA front (namely, supporting exclusive character classes), but I have been happy with the results I have seen to this point. With this work well underway, I can finally turn to the meat of this entire effort: the lexical analysis engine itself.

I have written the first unit test for the lexical analysis engine, and I think I have settled on an overall design for the lexical analysis engine. At this point, the design looks something like this:

string DataString = "72 (seventy-two) is the natural number following 71 and preceding 73. It is half a gross or 6 dozen (i.e., 60 in duodecimal).";
byte[] DataBytes = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1").GetBytes(DataString);
MemoryStream DataStream = new MemoryStream(DataBytes);
StreamReader DataReader = new StreamReader(DataStream);

LexicalAnalyzer Lex = new LexicalAnalyzer();
Lex.AddToken("[0-9]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
    }
);
Lex.AddToken("[ ]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
    }
);
Lex.AddToken("[A-Za-z]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
    }
);
Lex.AddToken("[().,]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
    }
);
Lex.Analyze(DataReader);
DataReader.Close();
DataStream.Close();

Let’s break this down. I’m starting with the creation of the data to be analyzed. In this case, it’s a string that I have folded into a StreamReader object:

string DataString = "72 (seventy-two) is the natural number following 71 and preceding 73. It is half a gross or 6 dozen (i.e., 60 in duodecimal).";
byte[] DataBytes = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1").GetBytes(DataString);
MemoryStream DataStream = new MemoryStream(DataBytes);
StreamReader DataReader = new StreamReader(DataStream);

Next, I create an instance of Sotue’s lexical analysis engine:

LexicalAnalyzer Lex = new LexicalAnalyzer();

I can then define my tokens. Within Sotue’s lexical analysis engine, a token definition consists of two items:

a regular expression
a delegate that is called when a match is found in the input

The first token defines a string of digits, illustrated by the regular expression read as “one or more occurrences of a character in the range of ‘0’ to ‘9’ inclusive”:

Lex.AddToken("[0-9]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
    }
);

The second token defines whitespace:

Lex.AddToken("[ ]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
    }
);

The third token defines a word, illustrated by the regular expression read as “one or more occurrences of a character in the range of ‘A’ to ‘Z’ or ‘a’ to ‘z’ inclusive”:

Lex.AddToken("[A-Za-z]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
    }
);

The fourth and final token defines any punctuation in the input:

Lex.AddToken("[().,]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
    }
);

Note two things about the delegates in the code shown above:

The delegates called when matches are found in the input don’t do anything. I will fill that in later.
The delegates shown above makes use of C# 2.0 anonymous delegate syntax. If I decide to release Sotue, as either a product or as open source, I will be sure to support explicit delegate definitions, anonymous delegate definitions, and, if possible, lambda expressions. All of these delegate definition methods will allow users to define the delegates in a way that is meaningful to them.

The LexemeFoundEventArgs class holds a reference to the Token class used to match input as well as a string containing the matched text (in lexical analysis terminology, the string that matches a regular expression is called a lexeme). With this in mind, the delegate code will be able to reference the items in a manner similar to the following:

Lex.AddToken("[0-9]+",
    delegate(object sender, LexemeFoundEventArgs args)
    {
        // args.MatchToken contains a reference to a Token object containing:
        //     * the regular expression
        //     * the state machines that encode the regular expression
        // args.Lexeme contains a string representing the matching data found in the input
    }
);

Once the tokens are defined, the data can be analyzed:

Lex.Analyze(DataReader);

I only hope that when the data is analyzed, a weakness can be found. It’s not over yet. (Obscure? Don’t get the reference? Shame on you. Go sit in the corner.)

Once the data is analyzed, the streams and readers can be closed:

DataReader.Close();
DataStream.Close();

The call to Analyze() will kick things off and do all of the work of reading from the stream, matching input against the DFAs representing the regular expressions in the tokens, and calling the lexeme match delegates when a match is found. I’m happy with the design as a first draft. Now it’s time to see how close I can come to pulling it off.

ARCast.TV Interview on Channel9 - 64-bit Computing Technology for Highly Scalable Applications

Steve Michelotti — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:31:42 GMT

In the past couple of years, I had the unique opportunity to lead of team of developers building one of the highest (if not THE highest) volume .NET application in the world. With more than 3 billion requests per day and an SLA of 99.99% of requests under 250ms, we had some exciting challenges. Because the application was so performance intensive, we heavily utilized a huge in-memory cache. Because of the size of our cache, we had some interesting challenges to overcome with .NET garbage collection in order to satisfy our SLA. This led us to working with Microsoft to implement GC Notifications which were released in .NET 3.5 SP1.

Of course the details of this could be a white paper unto itself but here is a 20 minute interview on ARCast.TV explaining some of the details.

64-bit Computing Technology for Highly Scalable Applications

Back for a bit...

Colin Bowern — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:07:55 GMT

It's been a few months since I last posted over at http://colin.rockstarguys.com. A few good reasons for that - one of them is a switch in roles. Jumping out of the start-up space and into the financial industry couldn't have happened at a better time. For those who are grappling with downsizing and project cancellation you might not agree with me. In my new role as Enterprise Architect I have been tasked with unifying an organization that needs to find ways to leverage their existing capabilities and draw on all sides of the organization to make smart moves going forward. Outside of that it has given me a chance to relax a bit from the long days, late nights and weekends working. Looking back towards the future the world has continued to evolve and some exciting things that were only blips on the radar during my Microsoft days are starting to appear. WPF has evolved steadily towards becoming the platform of choice for rich client applications, the cloud is finally taking shape (and there are real apps starting to show up on it), and the utopia of software engineering is remains an elusive goal for most of us.

I have setup my home dev environment to start poking around at the new Hello World - a blog engine. My thoughts over the next while are to throw something at the cloud and see how it sticks. After watching the PDC 2008 breakout sessions I'm convinced that I can take some of what I have learned in the past few years and find ways to adapt it to the cloud. So stay tuned and I will find time to share what I'm learning as I go, both good and bad. In the mean time if anyone plans to be at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit next week drop me a line and let's connect for dinner.

Upgraded my iPhone (finally)

Chuck Player — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:47:48 GMT

Well, thanks to my father-in-law's early xmas present I am now the proud owner of a 3G iPhone. I had resisted the temptation since they were released earlier this year since I am usually on WiFi and didn't see the need; the ride to work this morning provided one.

I love Last.FM and like the iPhone app but I had not used it much on the GSM phone because speeds when not on WiFi ... well, they sucked. This morning I decided to give the new 3G a try and for the 45 minute commute downtown I had only 1 very brief (15 second) delay between songs.

I will never listen to a radio station in my car again.

The difference between the 3G and GSM connection speeds is beyond noticeable. It's like cable compared to dial-up. If you're on the fence do yourself a favor and upgrade. It is WELL worth it.

Along those same lines I was the recipient of what is possibly the best customer service I have ever experienced at a Best Buy. The young lady asked if she could help me and when I told her what I wanted to do (upgrade the phone) she informed me it would be about 15-20 minutes. When I told her I wasn't sure I had the time and would come back later (and I would have) she proceeded to juggle me and her other customer and I was out of the store 10 minutes later with my new iPhone.

Now I'm off to play with VMWare. :)