Month: April 2006

Today I finally registered for the Microsoft TechEd 2006 conference which will this year take place in historic Boston Massachusetts. Microsoft TechEd and Microsoft PDC are an absolute must for serious software developers and architects using Microsoft technologies and personally I’ve been attending these conferrences since the Microsoft PDC conferrence in 2003 when Microsoft announced Longhorn (Microsoft Windows Vista), Whidbey (Microsoft Visual Studio 2005), and Yukon (Microsoft SQL Server 2005). If your coming to Microsoft TechEd 2006 and have never been to Boston there are several places in and around Boston that are definitely worth a visit. Faneuil Hall, built … Continue reading Microsoft TechEd 2006 – Boston MA

Unfortunately I’m not about to divulge Microsoft’s plans for the Visual Studio Orcas Class Designer but rather discuss some enhancements that I’d really like to see included in the Orcas release of this wonderful addition to the Visual Studio environment. If you agree with any of these suggestions then I would encourage you to surf on over to the MSDN Product Feedback Center and then vote on the suggestions. The FDBK numbers below are hyperlinked to the suggestions within the Product Feedback Center. FDBK24225    Display Custom Attributes on Class Diagrams Class diagrams should show custom attributes adorning the types … Continue reading Visual Studio Orcas Class Designer

On April 19th Microsoft released SQL Server 2005 SP1 which includes newly added support for database mirroring which according to the Microsoft press release has been already put into production environments by 20 major customers. In addition to introducing support for database mirroring, Microsoft has also released updated editions of SQL Server 2005 Express SP1 which now includes support for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), full text search capabilities and the newly released SQL Server Management Studio Express. SP1 Readme http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b0167129-5ac8-49c4-90bd-0493f3773081&DisplayLang=en SP1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cb6c71ea-d649-47ff-9176-e7cac58fd4bc&DisplayLang=en Express Edition http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=11350b1f-8f44-4db6-b542-4a4b869c2ff1&DisplayLang=en Express Edition with Advanced Services http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4c6ba9fd-319a-4887-bc75-3b02b5e48a40&DisplayLang=en SQL Server Management Studio Express http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c243a5ae-4bd1-4e3d-94b8-5a0f62bf7796&DisplayLang=en Express Edition … Continue reading SQL Server 2005 SP1

It seems to me that software affects so much of our daily lives, almost to the extent portrayed in the movie ‘The Matrix’. Software project managers today seem to focus solely upon time and cost and all too often ignore the quality aspect of the time, cost, and quality triangle. I’m presently working on a project where performance is a key requirement and as such I developed an architecture and associated framework, discussed in my masters dissertation, which exhibits significant performance improvements over the standard .net DataSet in terms of serialization. It also supports asynchronous communication and many other things … Continue reading The Scourge of the Software Project Manager