.NET Developer

SharePoint web services access give The Request Failed with HTTP Status 401: Unauthorized

2009-10-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

Scenario: Consume the SharePoint out of box webservice (People.asmx) to mimic PeoplePicker functionality in ASP.NET website

ASP.NET Environment: Windows Server 2008 with IIS 7.0

MOSS Environment: Windows 2003 SP2 with IIS 6.0

Details: Both ASP.NET and MOSS environments are part of the same domain. ASP.NET web application runs under a service account in IIS which is part of domain

Issue: Trying to access SharePoint web service from asp.net gives an error "The Request Failed with HTTP Status 401: Unauthorized".

Tried running browser under the context of domain user and accessed the people.asmx url. It works fine and WSDL is visible

Tried Impersonation but it made no difference

Tried giving permissions to the domain user on the site collection - didn't work

Solution: Give permissions to the domain user on the web application.

Central Admin -->Application Management --> Application Security -->Policy for webapplication --> Select the web application --> Add User

Add the domain user to the users list and give him required permissions on the web application. That fixed the issue

Identity training kit setup certificates error on Windows7

2009-08-05T11:00:00.001-07:00

I was trying to setup Geneva Framework Beta 2 on a Windows7 RC machine to tryout few samples from Identity developer training kit. Geneva framework was successfully installed. However when I tried to install code snippets and certificates on my IIS 7.5 for working with samples it was throwing the following error.

“‘httpcfg.exe’ is not recognized as an internal or external command”.

The error was slightly misleading as httpcfg.exe is something related to IIS 6.0. A little investigation in the batch file revealed the error. The SetupCertificates command file inside the setup\scripts folder is having the problem. In the command file it is validating if the system IsVista and using netsh if not using httpcfg.exe to install the certificates. There is no validation for Windows7. This is causing the error.

Once you update the command file to use netsh for installing certificates on to the IIS, it certificates installed successfully and was able to run the samples.

Modify STS Reference Option not visible

2009-08-05T10:59:00.001-07:00

Recently I have been working on some POCs on Geneva Framework. I have been using a windows 2008 server standard edition as my development machine. I am having a Visual Studio Team System 2008 with Service Pack1 on top which I have installed Geneva Framework Beta 2. I was trying out some examples from Identity Developer Training Kit which were working fine.

However there were some issues with test projects in my Visual Studio and I have re-installed my VSTS. After re-installation when I right click on my Geneva claims based application, I am unable to find the “Modify STS Reference” Option. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing Geneva Framework multiple times but with no luck. I got stuck on this. One of my friends suggested to check in visual studio folder if the uninstall is deleting all the foot-prints its creating. I have checked in the visual studio folder at the following location

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates”

No templates were present after Uninstall. However after little more investigation I found out that the issue is not with ProjectTemplates but with ProjectTemplatesCacheDir. The Claims aware templates were cached at the following location and uninstall of Geneva Framework is not removing the foot-prints.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplatesCache\Web\CSharp\1033

I have uninstalled Geneva Framework Beta2 and manually deleted the project templates of claims aware applications in the above path and reinstalled the Geneva Framework. That brought back my “Modify STS Reference” option.

Workflow Compilation Error

2009-04-30T12:36:00.001-07:00

Problem: Whenever I create a new workflow project and try to compile it, its always failing and unable to compile. The configuration of my system is as follows:

Windows 2008 Server Operating System on my Desktop, Visual Studio 2008 with SP1 Installed. I have also installed windows Azure components on top of Visual Studio.

Though the issue is on Windows 2008 server, I believe similar issue would exist for Windows Vista too. Whenever I try to Compile a windows workflow project in Visual Studio 2008 its failing with following error.

The "CompileWorkflowTask" task failed unexpectedly.
System.NotSupportedException: The given path's format is not supported.
at System.Security.Util.StringExpressionSet.CanonicalizePath(String path, Boolean needFullPath)
at System.Security.Util.StringExpressionSet.CreateListFromExpressions(String[] str, Boolean needFullPath)
at System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission.AddPathList(FileIOPermissionAccess access, AccessControlActions control, String[] pathListOrig, Boolean checkForDuplicates, Boolean needFullPath, Boolean copyPathList)
at System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission..ctor(FileIOPermissionAccess access, String[] pathList, Boolean checkForDuplicates, Boolean needFullPath)
at System.IO.Path.GetFullPath(String path)
at System.CodeDom.Compiler.TempFileCollection.EnsureTempNameCreated()
at System.CodeDom.Compiler.TempFileCollection.AddExtension(String fileExtension, Boolean keepFile)
at System.CodeDom.Compiler.TempFileCollection.AddExtension(String fileExtension)
at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Compiler.CompileWorkflowTask.Execute()
at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.TaskEngine.ExecuteInstantiatedTask(EngineProxy engineProxy, ItemBucket bucket, TaskExecutionMode howToExecuteTask, ITask task, Boolean& taskResult)

I have googled sometime trying to find a fix for the issue, though the issue does exist with Vista, most of the issues have to do with permissions. That didn’t fix my error. Doing some research on the project file by opening it in a notepad has provided me with an Interesting resolution for this problem. The following is the solution that worked for me, and I am still not sure what the root cause of the problem is.

Resolution : Open your project file in notepad find the <Import> section at the end of the file, There will be 2 Import statements typically in the following order

Change the order of the Import settings for the project type to the following order

Save and Close the Project file. Reload the project the file, if its already open in your Visual Studio. Now try to compile and run the project. It worked for me. The issue is same for both new projects created on the same machine or existing projects copied on the machine.

Hope this helps.

Note : This is my first blog post from Windows Live Writer. The experience is very user-friendly and I am liking it.

Introductory free online training to Excel Services

2008-10-31T12:11:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has published good Introductory training resources to Excel services on office online for free. The following are the list of courses published. Click on each of the links to access courses.

Excel Services I: The Basics - An overview of the value proposition of Excel Services as well as the basics for publishing and sharing workbooks using Excel Services.

Excel Services II: Requirements, Recommendations, and Permissions - Delves deeper into the proper configuration settings you need to be aware of to get up and running smoothly.

Excel Services III: Control What People See - Starts to go beyond the basics and into an explanation of how to specify exactly which parts of a workbook should/shouldn't be rendered by Excel Services.

Excel Services IV: Allow User Input - Discusses how to specify cells as parameters that can be changed when viewed via Excel Service

Debugging Resources

2008-10-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

Good list of Debugging Resources compiled here

Chart Advisor from office labs

2008-10-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

Chart Advisor is a plug-in to Excel which looks in to your data and displays appropriate charts for the data.

From Chart Advisor home page "This add-in uses an advanced rules engine to scan your data and, based on predefined rules, displays charts according to score. Top scoring charts are available for you to preview, tweak, and insert into your Excel worksheet"

Download it from officelabs

Moss/Wss site template codes

2008-10-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

From Saurabh KV's Blog

Value	Site Definition	Origin
STS#0	Team Site	WSS
STS#1	Blank Site	WSS
STS#2	Document Workspace	WSS
MPS#0	Basic Meeting Workspace	WSS
MPS#1	Blank Meeting Workspace	WSS
MPS#2	Decision Meeting Workspace	WSS
MPS#3	Social Meeting Workspace	WSS
MPS#4	Multipage Meeting Workspace	WSS
WIKI#0	Wiki	WSS
BLOG#0	Blog	WSS
BAS#0	Business Activity Services Team Site	MOSS
SPS#0	SharePoint Portal Server Site	MOSS
SPSPERS#0	SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space	MOSS
SPSMSITE#0	SharePoint Portal Server My Site	MOSS
SPSTOC#0	Contents area Template	MOSS
SPSTOPIC#0	Topic area template	MOSS
SPSNEWS#0	News area template	MOSS
SPSNHOME#0	News Home area template	MOSS
SPSSITES#0	Site Directory area template	MOSS
SPSBWEB#0	SharePoint Portal Server BucketWeb Template	MOSS
SPSCOMMU#0	Community area template	MOSS
_GLOBAL_#1	sitetemplate <- Can’t use this one! Just so you know it exists.	MOSS

Ajax Gifs

2008-09-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

Here a cool site that generates different types Ajax animated gifs. You can go to http://www.ajaxload.info/ and generate gifs to load for your application. The following are a few examples.

SharePoint Best Practices Center & SDK 1.4

2008-09-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

From Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog, The team has released new version of SDK for MOSS 2007 & WSS 3.0. The following are links to download the latest versions of the SDK.

Check out the following links to find out whats new in the latest version of SDK for developers.

The SharePoint team has also launched a SharePoint Best Practices Center on TechNet. This highlights different best practices for Developers & IT Professionals. Different categories covered in the resource center are as follows.

and links to few additional resources. Its a great place for developers & IT Pros working on SharePoint for best practices.

ppt Plex brings zoom to PowerPoint

2008-09-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Office Labs has released a cool tool called pptPlex. pptPlex is a plugin to Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 which makes your slides zoomable. You can download the tool here. Microsoft has released a bunch of videos explaining how to use the plug-in to make your presentations more interesting.

Video: An Overview of pptPlex

More help videos are available at pptPlex page in office labs

Design Patterns posts from David Cumps

2008-09-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

David Cumps from http://blog.cumps.be has posted a set of articles on Design Patterns based on his understanding from Head First Design Patterns book. These articles are really good and serve as a overview of the book. Below are the links to the articles.

Visual Studio 2008 .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 is RTM

2008-08-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 & .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 are RTM. The following are the links to download and install. The training kit for .NET 3.5 enhancement has also been updated to coordinate with the release of ServicePack1. Download it and get going on new features.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (here)
NET 3.5 SP1 (here)
NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit (here)

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 delivers:

Improved WPF designers
SQL Server 2008 support
ADO.NET Entity Designer
Visual Basic and Visual C++ components and tools (including an MFC-based Office 2007 style ‘Ribbon’)
Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server (TFS) addresses customer feedback on version control usability and performance, email integration with work item tracking and full support for hosting on SQL Server 2008
Richer JavaScript support, enhanced AJAX and data tools, and Web site deployment improvements

The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 delivers:

Performance increases between 20-45% for WPF-based applications – without having to change any code
WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services
Streamlined installation experience for client applications
Improvements in the area of data platform, such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and support for SQL Server 2008’s new features
More details in this article

Here is a blog post covering most of the new features and detailed post from Scott Guthie when announcing beta of Service Pack.

44 Silverlight Screencasts

2008-08-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

From Channel9 : Mike Taulty recently uploaded and amazing collection of Silverlight 2.0 screencasts on how Silverlight works, controls, File IO, networking, UI design, data-binding, interacting with HTML pages, and more. If you want to learn about Silverlight, this set of screencasts should definitely help!

- The full list of screencasts:

Internet Explorer 8.0 Hands on Labs, Videos

2008-08-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

The hands-on labs for Tech-Ed 2008 cover the following new features in Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers: Activities, AJAX improvements, the new Developer Tools, improved Standards Support, and WebSlices. Click here to download the labs. The labs package contains the following labs.

Videos demonstrating IE 8.0 Features

Activities Overview - This video shows how to use Activities in Internet Explorer 8
WebSlices Overview - This video shows how to use WebSlices in Internet Explorer 8
Developer Tools Overview - This video gives an overview of new features in Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools
AJAX Navigation - This video shows how to implement AJAX navigation for use with Internet Explorer 8

Sql Server 2008 RTM

2008-08-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

Sql Server 2008 is Released To Manufacturing. The following are few interesting links to get started with Sql Server 2008.

Trail Version of Sql Server 2008 can be downloaded from here

SQL Server 2008 Books Online is now available for download on the Microsoft Download Center

SQL Server 2008 samples are now available at http://codeplex.com/SqlServerSamples.

If you're looking for the sample databases for SQL Server 2008, you'll find the project at http://www.codeplex.com/MSFTDBProdSamples/.

SQL Server 2008 Videos
General Videos
Business Intelligence Videos
Data Warehousing Videos
Application Development Videos
Enterprise Data Management/OLTP Videos

More Technet Webcasts for IT Pros are available Here

More MSDN Webcasts for Developers are available Here

If you are looking for assistance with SQL Server 2008 planning and installation, here are some helpful links:

Planning a SQL Server Installation
Installing SQL Server 2008
Quick Start Installation
Installation How-to Topics
Locating Previous Versions of SQL Server for SQL Server 2008 migration using Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

Once you’ve installed SQL Server 2008, these resources can help you optimize your database environment:

Configuring SQL Server 2008
Database Engine Tuning Advisor Overview
System and Sample Databases

Guidance Explorer - Patterns & Practices

2008-07-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

Guidance Explorer is a beautiful tool from the Patterns & Practices team. Most of us are familiar with Microsoft Guidance Library which contains different Checklists and Design Guidelines for developing quality .NET applications. The Guidance Explorer contains most of the Guidance Library, and displays all the guidelines and checklists at a single place in a easily accessible format. Developer no longer need to go and search for different guidelines & best practices of performance, security and writing optimized code for .NET applications

Guidance Library is hosted in Codeplex. Tool can be downloaded here and this link contains a set of quick videos demonstrating how to use the guidance explorer.

I believe this is one tool every .NET developer must install on his box for reference. Thanks to patterns & practices team for providing such excellent tool bringing together all the resources.

ASP.NET & Sql Server Hacks

2008-07-14T04:43:00.000-07:00

The following are a collection of ASP.NET & Sql Server hacks (i.e. tips and tricks) from http://wiki.lessthandot.com/ and includes some useful to know things about ASP.NET & Sql Server development.

ASP.NET Hacks
1 Applications
2 Caching
3 Controls
4 Database
5 Dates
6 Debugging
7 Email
8 Encryption
9 Files
10 Images
11 Javascript
12 Objects and Classes
13 Pages
14 Sessions
15 Strings
16 Validation
17 Visual Studio
18 Web

SQL Server Programming Hacks
1 NULLS
2 Dates
3 Sorting, Limiting Ranking, Transposing and Pivoting
4 Handy tricks
5 Pitfalls
6 Query Optimization
7 Undocumented but handy
8 Useful Admin stuff For The Developer

Bill Gates Retirement

2008-06-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

Bill Gates has been retiring from his full time work from Microsoft this weekend and will start to focus fill time on philanthropy work of his foundation. Ever since I have read "The Road Ahead" in my college, I have become a huge fan of this great visionary. And now as some one working on Software industry and that too on Microsoft Technologies, I have great respect for him as founder of Software Industry and some one who has created opportunities for millions of people. His passion and belief in the power of software and how technology can improve the lives of individuals is never ending. His vision has made computers part of our daily lives transforming the way we do different things.

I salute to this wonderful geeky business man & below are some of the videos published on his retirement.

BBC documentary on Bill Gates

Into Bill’s shoes – (06.23) Ray Ozzie. I like this one as I’m frankly interested by Ozzie as an individual and his direction. More on that soon.
Steve Wozniak: How it began (09.29)
Into Bill's shoes (06.23)
Working life with Gates (08.52)
Bill Gates senior moment'(00.20)
Bill Gates on life at the top (07.07)
Sir Alan Sugar on Bill Gates (08.29)
Tech expert on challenges(03.49)
Secretary: "Winning was key" is classic footage. (03.31)

Here is a Channel 9 video where Charles interview Bill Gates on Transitioning in to the future

Here's a video that charts Bill's journey from the early 70s to today.

Technical articles on MOSS from MSDN

2008-06-25T07:59:00.001-07:00

Here are links to set of excellent technical articles on SharePoint server 2007 from MSDN.

SharePoint Web 2.0 Fire Starter event videos

2008-06-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

SharePoint Web 2.0 fire starter was full day event conducted at Microsoft aimed at making .NET developers experts in developing on SharePoint Technologies. The live meeting recordings of the event are available for download. This is a great event covering different aspects of SharePoint from a .NET developer perspective. If you have some basic understanding of SharePoint and .NET and would like to get a kick start, these videos are definitely a good place to start.

Click on the below links to view live meeting recordings of the SharePoint fire starter event

OpenXml Developer Map Poster

2008-06-06T02:37:00.000-07:00

I love posters and believe they are the best way to get a high level view of a topic. Just found a new Poster on Open Xml.
Open Xml Developer Map gives important elements of Word Processing ML, Spread sheet ML, Presentation ML along with Open packaging conventions and lots of links to dig deeper. Poster can be downloaded from MSDN in both pdf and xps formats here.

Developer Highway Code - Security Checklists

2008-06-04T23:32:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has published a refresh of the The Developer Highway Code. This book contains all the checklists you need to consider for developing secure applications in different versions of .NET. Though most of the checklists in book can be downloaded from security developer center on MSDN, In this book they have put together all the checklists and published it as book, which is available for free download.

From the book

"To build software that meets your security objectives, you must integrate security activities into your software development lifecycle. This handbook is a quick reference for developers that summarises the key security engineering activities that should be an integral part of software development processes. These security engineering activities have been developed by Microsoft patterns & practices to build on, refine and extend core lifecycle activities with a set of security-specific activities"

Sharepoint server 2007 Enterprise Search trianing videos

2008-05-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

From Enterprise Search blog. Enterprise Search team has recently published around 17 hours of training material on TechNet. The 14 recorded presentations are based on training modules from a three-day, in-person training course ‘Implementing and Deploying an Enterprise Search solution’. The following is the list of webcasts available.

Sharepoint Designer training videos

2008-05-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Get SharePoint Designer training on your desktop: A set of 20 videos covering various topics on Sharepoint designer can be found at office online here. Topics covered in videos include following

Adding a page to a SharePoint site
Contributor Settings Creating a custom list data form
Managing data sources Enabling editing in Data Views
Data View properties
Web part connections
Creating a workflow Collecting data in a workflow
Modify a master page
Modify the default SharePoint content placeholders
Creating pages from a master page
Changing content page layouts
Managing master pages
Create a cascading style sheet
Modifying Style Sheets
Using the CSS task panes
Creating Publishing Page Layouts
Customizing a Publishing Page Layout
Code snippets

A six-part series on getting the most out of SharePoint Designer 2007 : A set of 6 videos found here which covers the following topics.

Powerful user interface and design tools
Customize SharePoint sites
Create and modify layout pages
Create and modify rules-based workflow applications
Build composite no-code SharePoint applications
Visual Studio integration

SharePoint Designer 2007 Business Administrator Training: This video series for advanced users shows you how to quickly and easily build complex business solutions on the SharePoint platform. Topics covered include the following

Integrating Visual Studio
Using the Data View Dashboard
Creating the best workflow
Applying layout changes

Sharepoint Webcasts for .NET developers

2008-05-26T01:46:00.000-07:00

A new series of Sharepoint webcasts are being published on MSDN. These webcasts titled, Introduction to Sharepoint webcasts for .NET developers covers the following topics.

Web Parts - 20 May 9 AM PST - Robert Bogue
Data Lists - 21 May 9 AM PST - Robert Bogue
Silverlight - 27 May 9 AM PST - Andrew Connell
Event Handlers - 28 May 9 AM PST - Andrew Connell
Page Branding - 03 June 9 AM PST - Andrew Connell
Workflow - 04 June 9 AM PST - Robert Bogue
Web Services -10 June 9 AM PST - Andrew Connell
Page Navigation - 11 June 9 AM PST - Andrew Connell
User Management - 17 June 9 AM PST - Robert Bogue
Content Types - 18 June 9 AM PST - Robert Bogue

Visual Studio 2005 extensions for SharePoint

2008-05-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

VSeWSS 1.1 - Visual Studio extensions for Windows SharePoint Services is an addin to Visual Studio, that makes it easier to code-up solutions for SharePoint . These extensions are currently available only for Visual Studio 2005 and support is expected to be provided for Visual Studio 2008 as part of 1.2 release expected in June 2008 VSeWSS consists of two pieces:

an add-in to Visual Studio that adds some SharePoint-specific project templates (e.g. Web Part, Site Definition, Content Type, etc.)
a little utility program, called the SharePoint Solution Generator, which enables you to take site "instances," customized in SPD and the browser, and convert them into site definitions, which you can then continue editing in VS

SharePoint team has published an User Guide with Samples and Walkthroughs for using WSeVSS1.1 the User Guide consists of the following sections.

Starting out in SharePoint Development - An introductory guide.
Walkthrough of the VSeWSS User Interface including the WSP View - A description of the user interface elements. The WSP view is a new tool panel which helps you put together the deployment package for SharePoint projects.
The Team Site Project - A walkthrough and complete sample.
The Blank Site Project - A walkthrough and complete sample.
The List Definition Project - A walkthrough and complete sample.
The Web Part Project - A walkthrough and complete sample.
The Workflow Projects - A walkthrough and complete sample for each of Sequential and State machine workflows. Although these project templates are not shipped with VSeWSS we added them for completeness. They are included in Visual Studio 2008 and are available for Visual Studio 2005 in the Windows SharePoint Services SDK.
Project Item Templates - A description and usage for each of the project item templates. Essentially the project templates are largely empty templates with default project items contained.
Best Practices with VSeWSS - A collection of suggestions for working with the tool.
Changes from 1.0 to 1.1 - A list of what was improved. There were lots of improvements from V1.0 of VSeWSS

For more checkout UserGuide & VSeWSS1.1 release posts on Sharepoint blog.

Update : VSeWSS 1.2 version is available for download now. VSeWSS1.2 is targeted for Visual Studio 2008. All the above listed Project & Item templates are available for Visual Studio 2008 using this release of VSeWSS.
Download VSeWSS 1.2 right here.

Rock Scroll - Visual Studio Plugin

2008-05-14T11:18:00.001-07:00

From Scott Hanselman's blog. Rock scroll is a cool tool for visual studio, which extends the scroll bar with thumbnail kind of view for your code in that file. This is particularly useful if you have long source code files. This is just a dll that can be disabled from Tools/AddIns. One more advantage of Rock scroll is it shows the code changes in the file, both saved and unsaved in different colors. I found it very useful. You can download the tool from following location.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/content/binary/RockScrollv1.msi

ASP.NET 3.5 enhancements training kit

2008-05-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

ASP.NET 3.5 Enhancements training kit contains labs, demos & Presentations on ASP.NET 3.5 extensions and silverlight controls. for more information about ASP.NET extensions, check out the set of videos published in ASP.NET site. These extensions include the following.

ADO.NET Entity Framework: ADO.NET Entity Framework is a new modeling framework that enables developers to define a conceptual model of a database schema that closely aligns to a real world view of the information. Benefits include easier to understand and easier to maintain application code that is shielded from underlying database schema changes
ADO.NET Data Services: Previously code named Astoria, ADO.NET Data Services provide new services that find, manipulate and deliver data over the web using simple URIs. Benefits include an easy and flexible way to access data over the web, while enabling the separation of presentation and data access code.
ASP.NET AJAX browser history: ASP.NET AJAX history provides support for navigating within an AJAX application by using the Forward and Back buttons in the browser.
ASP.NET Dynamic Data: ASP.NET Dynamic Data helps you quickly build a fully customizable, data-driven application without writing code. Dynamic Data provides a rich scaffolding framework that is easily extensible by using the traditional ASP.NET programming model.
ASP.NET MVC: ASP.NET MVC provides a framework that enables you to easily implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. This pattern lets you separate applications into loosely coupled, pluggable components for application design, processing logic, and display.

Update : from Joe Stagner's blog, ASP.NET 3.5 Enhancements training kit has been updated for the Visual Studio 2008 & .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. The updated may release of the training kit contains labs for ASP.NET AJAX History, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data,· ADO.NET Data Services, ADO.NET Entity Framework. ASP.NET Silverlight controls lab is not available in the this release due to the incompatibility between Visual Studio 2008 SP1 beta 1 and the Silverlight 2 SDK beta 1 release. Updated training kit can be downloaded here.

STSADM commands poster

2008-05-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

STSADM is the command line administration tool for SharePoint 2007 servers and sites. This command line tool provides access to complete set of SharePoint server operations. There are certain operations and parameters only available in command line tool and not available from sharepoint server central administration. STSADM is located in %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin folder.

The complete list of commands supported by WSS & MOSS versions of STSADM can be found at the following location.

As STSADM supports all the operations available in sharepoint from command line, the list of commands/parameters possible is huge and not easy to browse through and remember. Microsoft has published a set of posters representing the complete set of STSADM commands making it easy to look through the commands and remember them. The complete set of posters can be found in this document library. The following are links to set of posters available for WSS & MOSS

Stsadm parameters poster for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007:

Stsadm parameters poster for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:

From official sharepoint blog on MSDN

WPF Bootcamp 2008

2008-05-05T20:51:00.000-07:00

WPF Bootcamp is back with 2008 videos. Three days of quality wpf training by the best in industry all available for free. You can view, download videos from visitmix. The downloads are available in different versions, including for a zune. You can start watching videos here, and here is the link to HTML page for downloading the videos. The following is the list of videos available with download links

Day 1

Introduction - Karsten Januszewski
Lap Around Visual Studio - Mark Wilson-Thomas
Lap Around Blend - Unni Ravindranathan
Intro To WPF I - Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen (IdentityMine)
Intro to WPF II - Documents - Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen
Intro to WPF III - Themes, Layouts -Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen
Intro to WPF IV - Controls - Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen
Intro to WPF V - Controls Cont..- Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen

Day 2

Intro to WPF VI - DataBinding - Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen
Intro to WPF VII - DataBinding DeepDive - Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen
Intro to WPF VIII - DataBinding cont. - Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen
Intro to WPF IX - Event Model - Jonathan Russ & Robbie Ingebretsen
Q & A With The Architects - Greg Schechter, John Gossman, Rob Relyea
3D Techniques - David Teitlebaum and Jordan Parker
Applied WPF - Jaime Rodriguez
WPF Performance - Adam Smith

Day 3

WPF and Legacy Code - Henry Sowizral
Prism - Glenn Block
Hello Real World - Josh Smith (Infragistics)
WPF in Style - Alan Le (Vertigo)
Real World WPF - Josh Wagoner (IdentityMine)

WCF Security Guidance, How to videos

2008-04-13T03:45:00.000-07:00

from J.D.Meier's Blog.. Patterns & Practices team is running WCF Security Guidance Project, hosted on code plex. They have published a bunch of resources about security in WCF under Application Scenarios, How Tos and also a set of videos demonstrating the How to articles. The following is the list published.

How Tos (WCF Security)

How To Videos:

Video: How To - Create and Install Temporary Certificates in WCF for Message Security During Development (Length: 3:40 - Size: 2.3MB)
Video: How To - Create and Install Temporary Certificates in WCF for Transport Security During Development (Length: 3:45 - Size: 2.3MB)
Video: How To - Host WCF in a Windows Service (Length: 2:45 - Size: 1.2MB)
Video: How To - Impersonate the Original Caller in WCF Calling from a Windows Form (Length: 2:15 - Size: 1MB)
Video: How To - Use basicHttpBinding with Certificate Authentication from Windows Forms (Length: 2:38 - Size: 1.1MB)
Video: How To - Use netTcpBinding with Windows Authentication and Message Security (Length: 1:55 - Size: 1.5 MB)
Video: How To - Use SQL Role Provider with Username Authentication in WCF Calling from Windows Forms (Length: 3:28 - Size: 1.8MB)
Video: How To - Use WsHttpBinding with Certificate Authentication with Message Security (Length: 1:01 - Size: 757KB)
Video: How To - Use WsHttpBinding with Windows Authentication with Transport Security (Length: 2:35 - Size: 1.2MB)

Application Scenarios:

Application Scenarios provide summary before and after views of end-to-end application scenarios. The focus is on the plumbing and key architectural decisions. You can use them to quickly find application patterns that work. Each WCF Security Application Scenario includes a picture of the deployment topology and then a picture of the solution.

Intranet

Internet

Mix Sessions

2008-03-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

All the sessions from the Mix 08 are available for download and viewing at http://sessions.visitmix.com/. There is a total of 88 videos covering different topics ranging from Silverlight to ASP.NET Ajax to Cardspace to Interesting Panel discussions and keynotes. If you are unable to attend the event like me, its a great place to go checkout the cool stuff.

Lang.NET Videos

2008-03-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

Lang.NET is an annual event organized Microsoft for discussions of Programming Languages. The speakers invovled the best industry both Microsoft and non-Microsoft. The overview at Lang.NET official site says "Lang .NET 2008 Symposium is a forum for discussion on programming languages, managed execution environments, compilers, multi-language libraries, and integrated development environments"
The best thing is Microsoft has made available all the talks available for the public. Here is the list of videos of talks.

Links from Mix 08

2008-03-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has made lot of new announcements especially focused at web during the Mix 08 event. The following are the links to check out the cool stuff.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 - http://www.microsoft.com/ie/
What's New in Internet Explorer 8 for developers - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288472(VS.85).aspx
Silverlight 2 Beta 1 : http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/installationFiles.aspx?v=2.0
To know what’s new and for some samples: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/22/first-look-at-silverlight-2.aspx
Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E0BAE58E-9C0B-4090-A1DB-F134D9F095FD&displaylang=en
Expression Studio 2 Beta : http://www.microsoft.com/expression
To now what’s new and for introductory samples: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/28/first-look-at-using-expression-blend-with-silverlight-2.aspx
Watch the Hard Rock Cafe demo with Deep Zoom technology : http://www.visitmix.com/blogs/Joshua/Hard-Rock-Cafe/
Silverlight Mobile section : http://silverlight.net/learn/mobile.aspx

History of Sharepoint

2008-03-14T01:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a nice article & flowchart on SharePoint history.

http://www.joiningdots.net/blog/2006/08/sharepoint-history.html
http://www.joiningdots.net/downloads/SharePoint_History.jpg

Sharepoint Installation Error

2008-03-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

I have uninstalled an reinstalled MOSS - 2007 on box. After installation ran the configuration wizard. Configuration wizard failed after step 5 with System.Argument Exception and the following error message in log file:

Exception: System.ArgumentException: The object with id 788887eb-f691-4f5c-a1e3-1d48a2818a43 does not exist in the configuration store. The object may have been deleted by another operation. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPConfigurationDatabase.DeleteObject(Guid id) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPConfigurationDatabase.DeleteObject(SPPersistedObject obj) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Delete() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Administration.SPSearchServiceInstance.ProvisionDatabase() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Administration.SPSearchServiceInstance.Provision() at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServicesTask.InstallServiceInstanceInConfigDB(Boolean provisionTheServiceInstanceToo, String serviceInstanceRegistryKeyName, Object sharepointServiceObject) at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServicesTask.InstallServiceInstances(Boolean provisionTheServiceInstancesToo, String serviceRegistryKeyName, Object sharepointServiceObject) at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServicesTask.InstallServices(Boolean provisionTheServicesToo) at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServicesTask.Run() at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()

I ran the installation once again with repair option but didn't help, the error still persisted.
I have googled trying to know more about the error and has found this KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934525, which talks about a similar error possible after a KB update
Though the error scenario is different from the article its known that the error is due to Search Database. But search database doesn't exist in my sql-instance of sharepoint.
While I was thinking of trying to uninstall once again and try, it just stuck me there could be data files sitting sql-server data folders, which turned out right. I have deleted wss_search...... mdf and ldf files, and ran configuration wizard again. This time its successful

What worked for me: Check if there any wss_search... mdf, ldf files in your sqlserver instance's Data folder. If exists delete the files and run the configuration wizard again. It should be successful.

.NET Debugging Demos

2008-02-21T02:52:00.000-08:00

Tess has been posting few great posts about .NET Debugging under Debugging Labs series. "This is a series of debugging demos aimed to help you get some hands on experience in debugging the most common types of Hang/performance, memory and crash scenarios in .net applications." All the labs are written in ASP.NET. The following are the list of labs already published. Click here to check updated list of labs.

Expression, Blend Videos

2008-02-04T21:38:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has published a bunch of videos covering different products in Expression suite like Blend, Web, Media, Encoder. This small How do I style videos ranging between 10-30 mins are a good place to start for who want to play with the Expression Suite. The list of videos can be found at

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/kc/resources.aspx?type=video

WPF Boot Camp Videos

2008-01-31T03:02:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has published videos of WPF boot camp. 3 full days of training content available for download. The following are the list of videos published for download. You can browse the list at http://visitmix.com/University/wpf/wpfbootcamp.htm

Keynote: Windows Presentation FoundationIan Ellison-Taylor Play Download WMV
A Lap Around Windows Presentation FoundationRob Relyea Play Download WMV
A Lap Around Microsoft Expression BlendPete Faraday Play Download WMV
Building WPF Applications Part IIan Griffiths Play Download WMV
Building WPF Applications Part IIIan Griffiths Play Download WMV
LAB - Download
LAB: Building WPF Applications Download
LAB: Building WPF XAML Browser Applications Download
LAB: Interactive Fabrikam Catalog in Blend Download
Controls, Styles and TemplatesKevin Moore Play Download WMV
LAB: Creating a Button with Expression Blend and Design Download
LAB: Creating a Glass Button in Blend Download
Data Binding with WPFBeatriz de Oliveira Costa Play Download WMV
WPF Partner ShowcaseTim Sneath Play Download WMV
Documents, Text and the Reading Experience Kevin Gjerstad Play Download WMV
LAB: Using Data Binding in WPF Download
LAB: Reading Experience Download
Windows Forms InteroperabilityScott Morrison Play Download WMV
Visual Studio Orcas Enhancements for WPF Mark Wilson-Thomas, Mark Boulter Play Download WMV
WPF Performance Adam Smith Play Download WMV
Animation and Media Peter Blois Play Download WMV
3D GraphicsDavid Teitlebaum, Kurt Berglund Play Download WMV
LAB: Creating Rich 2D and 3D Content with Windows Presentation Foundation Download
LAB: 3D Graphics Download
Real World Experiences - Yahoo MessengerEric Burke Play Download WMV
Real World Experiences - Scripps Healthcare Adam Calderon Play Download WMV
Real World Experiences - Vertigo Family Tree ExplorerScott StanfieldPlay Download WMV
Real World Experiences - Dynamics ModelerJonathan RussPlay Download WMV
Real World Experiences - North Face In-Store ExplorerDarren DavidPlay Download WMV

Code on MSDN

2008-01-28T02:52:00.000-08:00

Check out the code gallery on MSDN at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/. You can view, download code samples on different Microsoft technologies.

Update: Soma has a post announcing the launch of Code Gallery

Visual Studio 2008 How Do I Videos

2008-01-27T22:19:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has released a new set of How do I videos for Visual Studio. There are currently 24 videos (and growing). The videos range from 5-30 mins and covers wide range of topics like Introduction to IDE, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, LINQ to XML, LINQ to SQL, Visual Studio Tools for Office, Winforms applications.

All the videos and code are available for download.
Check them at http://visualstudio2008.defyallchallenges.com/videos.htm
Also check out more resources like Free Visual Studio 2008 training from InnerWorkings at the above location

Silverlight Firestarter

2008-01-27T22:03:00.000-08:00

Silverlight Firestarter event was conducted by Microsoft at Redmond. All the videos of presentations from the event are published by Microsoft for viewing. You can also download these videos. The videos are available at the following location

http://visitmix.com/University/silverlight/firestarter/

An Introduction to Silverlight by Mithun Dhar
Getting Started Programming Silverlight by Jesse Liberty
Workflow of Silverlight with Expression and Visual Studio by Arturo Toledo
Silverlight XAML by Laurence Moroney
A Development Story by Adam Kinney
Media, Makers and More by Ernie Booth
Popfly and Silverlight by Adam Nathan
Silverlight in the future by Ernie Booth

Free E-books from Microsoft

2008-01-27T21:44:00.000-08:00

Microsoft is offering a free download of E-book "Introducing Microsoft Linq" and sample chapters from the books Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax, Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0. The books are available for download here http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urvs5cn3s8

Introducing Microsoft LINQ by Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russo

Chapter 1: LINQ Introduction
Chapter 2: C# Language Features
Chapter 3: Visual Basic 9.0 Language Features
Chapter 4: LINQ Syntax Fundamentals
Chapter 5: LINQ to ADO.NET
Chapter 6: LINQ to XML

Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX by Dino Esposito

Chapter 1: The AJAX Revolution
Chapter 5: The AJAX Control Toolkit

Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 by Laurence Moroney

Chapter 1: Silverlight and User Experience
Chapter 5: Programming Silverlight with JavaScript

MOSS Search Deep Dive Videos

2007-12-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to Search deep dive videos on MSDN. The following is a brief description of each of the videos.

Enterprise Search Strategy and Opportunities: This session starts with an overview of Microsoft's enterprise search strategy, reviews the various products that it affects, and outlines what is new in SharePoint Search for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Lastly, it discusses opportunities for partners building on the platform.

SharePoint Search Extensibility: This session addresses the core extensibility scenarios in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search, such as customizing the user interface, custom search using client applications, and crawling new repositories, including line-of-business data. It also covers the administration object model.

Protocol Handlers and IFilters: Learn about the overall architecture of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search. Protocol Handlers and iFilter interfaces are described in detail with code examples.

Customizing and Extending Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007: Learn how to customize Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search user interface and build search based applications in this session. Branding, Web parts and extending search using the object model and Web services are discussed.

Business Data Search: The Business Data Catalog (BDC) enables search to reach into line-of-business repositories and provide integrated search results. Learn about the Business Data Catalog including the design motivations, scenarios, and the apis.

SharePoint Search Deployment Scenarios: This session reviews both Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 search topologies, and various deployment scenarios such as a collaboration environment, enterprise portals, and internet facing portals.

SharePoint Shared Service Error

2007-12-12T01:42:00.000-08:00

Today when I tried to access my Shared Service to configure search settings its giving the following error.
"Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 8007042d"
I have changed my domain account password couple of days back. I thought the problem was with due to that and has updated the password for the Shared Service. That didn't resolve the error.
The Shared Service is opening fine but when I try to access search settings its giving the above error. After spending little time with the error, one my colleague suggested to check the Office Search Service in the services folder.
That was the problem. Office Server Search Service is running under my domain account and was unable to start due the change in password. I have updated the password for the domain account in Search Service and its working fine.

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP

2007-12-11T10:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Microsoft has released the CTP of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions. Extensions are add on features like that supplement the major releases of visual studio (like AJAX for 2005). This CTP contains ASP.NET Ajax Improvements, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support, ASP.NET Silverlight Support and ADO.NET data services (Previously called Astoria).

Windows Live Developer Webcasts

2007-12-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

From MSDN Webcasts blog

Windows Live Platform Webcasts for Developers
Here are two webcasts on developing on Windows Live coming up in December:

MSDN Webcast: Windows Live Platform Technical Drilldown (3 of 4) (Level 300)
In this session, we cover the communications and connectivity services that Windows Live offers for developers to enhance the experience for their Web site's users. We explore integration with Windows Live Messenger and presence APIs, and Windows Alerts. http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032358585&culture=en-US
12/11/2007 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 12/11/2007 12:00 PM Duration:60 Minutes
MSDN Webcast: Windows Live Platform Technical Drilldown (4 of 4) (Level 300)
In this session, we cover the find and locate services that Windows Live offers for developers to enhance the experience for their Web site's users. We explore integration with Windows Live Search and Microsoft Virtual Earth. http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032358603&culture=en-US
12/18/2007 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 12/18/2007 12:00 PM Duration:60 Minute

Previous on-demand Webcasts:

MSDN Webcast: Windows Live Platform Technical Drilldown (1 of 4) (Level 300)
In this session, we cover the authentication and rich media services that Windows Live offers for developers. Join us as we explore Windows Live ID, Microsoft Silverlight Streaming, and Microsoft Expression Encoder http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032358435&culture=en-US
MSDN Webcast: Windows Live Platform Technical Drilldown (2 of 4) (Level 300)
In this session, we cover the storage and sharing services that Windows Live offers for developers to enhance the experience for their Web site's users. We explore integration with Windows Live Contacts API, Windows Live Spaces APIs, and the controls for user sharing.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032358565&culture=en-US
MSDN Webcast: Windows Live Platform Technical Overview (Level 200)
In this session, we take a broad look at the Windows Live development platform. We dive into the various ways developers can integrate Windows Live APIs and controls into their applications.
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032358433&culture=en-US

Windows Live Developer Center on MSDN:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/live/default.aspx

MOSS 2007 Training Kit

2007-12-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has released two training kits for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Developers. The training involves videos, interactive tutorials, and articles.

Standalone Edition Download

Standalone Edition is designed to help you learn how to use the features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. The Training topics lead you step-by-step through beginning to advanced features, including Collaboration, Business Processes and Forms, Portals and Personalization, Search, Business Intelligence and Enterprise Content Management.

Portal Edition Download

Portal Edition is designed for server administrators who want to help their end-users learn how to use the features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Strategic Architect Forum 2007 - Videos, Presentations

2007-12-11T09:55:00.000-08:00

I have seen this link in David Solivan blog. SAF conference was hosted at the MS Conference Center (Redmond, USA) over three days during November, 2007. All the keynotes and sessions are recorded and published on MSDN. Go through the sessions and get exposed to latest stuff for architects in Microsoft world.

Strategic Architect Forum 2007 - Recorded Sessions

Day 1

Changing the World with Software and Services
Dr. Donald Ferguson (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Project Astoria: Data Services for the Web
Pablo Castro (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Anatomy of An S+S Application
Eugenio Pace (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Unified Communications: Breaking VoIP Barriers
Gurdeep Pall (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Composite Application Architectures Using the 2007 Office System
Scott Jamison (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
A Data-driven Approach To Distributed, Concurrent Software
George Chrysanthakopoulos (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]

Day 2

A Look Into Microsoft Research
Behrooz Chitsaz (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Claims-Based Identity Layer For The "New Internet"
Slava Kavsan (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
The Reality Of The Cloud And The Future Of The Datacenter
Debra Chrapaty (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Mining Lightning For The Cloud
John Dwyer (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
User Experience for Architects
Simon Guest (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Windows Live Platform: Making Better End User Experiences
David Dumler (Microsoft) Angus Logan (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Duet: An Enterprise S+S Offering From Microsoft And SAP
Chris Keyser (Microsoft) Burra Gopal (Microsoft) Adi Kavaler (SAP)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Dynamic IT
Neil Leslie (Microsoft) Barry Briggs (Microsoft)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service, Elastic Compute Cloud, and Simple Queue Service
Charlie Bell (Amazon)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]

Day 3

Lessons Learned from the Web's Edge: MySpace
Aber Whitcomb (MySpace) Jim Benedetto (MySpace)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]
Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead People Who Deliver Technology
Paul Glen (C2 Consulting)
[Video] . [Slides] . [Transcript]

Parallel Extensions for .NET

2007-12-11T09:11:00.000-08:00

It has been one of the most happening times for developers in Microsoft world. Over the next few posts I will update the latest releases and resources for the developers.

The latest edition to the .NET is Framework extensions for Parallel Programming. With processors growing in terms of CPUs but not in terms of transistors per CPU, the free meal for the developers is over. The programs running faster with newer CPUs doesn't happen anymore. Microsoft is trying to address this issue and make it easier for developers to take advantage of multiple CPUs using parallel extensions for .NET framework. There has been a demo on channel9, where in Anders Hejlsberg and Joe Duffy explain about PLinq or Parallel extensions to .NET Framework. In PLinq parallel extensions will identify the no.of CPUs on the processors and effectively split the query across the CPUs. Last week Microsoft has released the preview of the Parallel Extensions for .NET for developers to download and play with them.

Here is Soma's post announcing the release and pointing to resources
Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework CTP download
New Parallel Developer Computing Developer Center on MSDN
Hansel minutes Podcast on Concurrency Programming with .NET Parallel Framework
MSDN Article - Optimize Managed Code For Multi-Core Machines

Learn Silverlight

2007-11-23T07:23:00.000-08:00

lynda.com is offering a free training in Silverlight titled Silverlight Essentials. The training videos are done by Mike Harsh, Program Manager on Silverlight team. Most of the videos are around 5mins and in how-to style, which gives a kick start for you to get going on Silverlight. Description on the site about the program is as follows.

"Mike Harsh is the program manager on the Silverlight team at Microsoft. In Silverlight Essential Training, he gives viewers an insider's look into this powerful application. Mike teaches each step in the process of building interactive web applications using Silverlight, including how to add video, animations, and interactive features such as drag-and-drop functionality."

Microsoft is also running a series of webcasts on Silverlight starting from November 30. Checkout the following link to explore the webcasts.

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/silverlight.aspx

Architecture Patterns

2007-11-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

Derek Greer has published a beautiful blog post explaining different architectural patterns. The article titled Interactive Application Architecture Patterns discusses different architectural patterns like Model-View-Controller, Model-View-Presenter, and Presentation-Abstraction-Control . The author has put together good deal of information about these three patterns under categories of Overview, Origins & Motivation, Structure, Components, Collaborations. Read this article to gain good insights in to the architectural patterns.

Interactive Architecture Patterns

ASP.NET Security, VSTS Videos

2007-11-23T01:15:00.000-08:00

From J.D.Meier's blog, There are new videos posted on MSDN on ASP.NET Security, Visual Studio Team System and Performance testing. ASP.NET videos are done by Keith Brown, each of the videos are 5-10 mins in length. They are a nice place to start if you are someone who is trying to get started on security in web applications. The below is the complete list.

Also check out

.NET Posters

2007-11-21T22:04:00.000-08:00

Check out whats new in .NET Framework 3.5 class library by looking at the poster. The poster can be dowonloaded at following location.

.NET Framework 3.5 Poster

Also Check out the poster giving all the shortcut keys at the following location

Keybinding Reference Poster

.NET Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008 Released

2007-11-21T21:50:00.001-08:00

Microsoft has announced the RTM of .NET Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008. This is going to be an exciting release with all the language enhancements and IDE improvements. Soma & Scott Guthrie has blogged about the release. Check out scott guthrie's blog post for links to his previous posts explaining different new features in visual studio 2008. Soma was on channel9 announcing the release.

Here are some useful links

Once you download the Visual Studio 2008, Here is the link to Visual Studio Training kit to get started.

VisualStudio 2008 Training Kit : The technologies covered in the kit include: LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight, Mobile and Application Lifecycle Management.
Visual Studio Training Kit Videos :Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit was originally developed as a 5 day training program for the ISVs. The training kit has demos, presentations & Hand-on-labs. The videos of these sessions are being published on Channel9. The videos from the first day available now. Click on the link for videos.

SharePoint Posters

2007-11-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to some nice SharePoint posters published on MSDN. Posters are available for Office Developer Map, Infopath object model & WSS Platform

JAOO Videos on Channel9

2007-11-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

There is an excellent series of videos being published on channel9 by charles from the JAOO conference in Denmark. There are interviews with Dave Thomas (well known for his work in object oriented programming language design, dynamic language development (SmallTalk), virtual machines and in the development of the Eclipse IDE.), Joe Armstrong(Inventor of Erlang language), BobMartin (CEO & Founder of ObjectMentor) & Erick Meijer from Microsoft.

The videos are a great and everyone interested in programming languages and future of programming languages must watch these videos. Its always fascinating to watch great minds speak their thoughts. If you are serious C# or Java developer and someone who is not worried about alternatives, Watch the videos to holistic idea of programming languages and how changes in hardware world (Multi Cores) is challenging the current popular object oriented languages.

Debugging in SharePoint

2007-10-12T06:28:00.000-07:00

The following are the couple of things I found helpful while trying to fix an error in SharePoint.

To view the actual errors from the Sharepoint web Application with call stack rather than the custom error message do the following steps.

Open the web.config of the webapplication in Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\virtualdirectories\webapplicationfolder.
Set the CallStack attribute of the SafeMode element to “true”
Set customErrors mode = “Off”

If we are deploying a custom feature or a WebPart and its not giving the expected behavior, It’s not very easy to trace it SharePoint. I have found the following approach helpful.

In the code use Debug.Write() of System.Diagnostics Namespace to display status messages or values of variables
When the code is run in the web application, the values displayed using Debug.Write() can be viewed with a tool like Debug View
Set the debug Attribute of compilation element in web.config of the web application to “true” for the messages to be displayed in the debug view.

Activating Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure gives Access Denied Error

2007-10-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

I was trying to activate Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure option on the MOSS Installation on my machine; it’s giving an Access Denied Error. As I was sure of the permissions, I have googled for solution. There are multiple posts over the web offering a solution for the problem. The solution was to go to IIS and make your web application run under the same Application Pool under which the SharePoint Central Administration is running and then activate the publishing infrastructure and change the Application pool back to the previous pool the web application was running. Though this solution works fine, I was not really sure of what was the problem. Further probing has led to the following findings.

Security Account for Application pool under which the web application is running is a domain account.
Security Account for Application pool of SharePoint Central Administration is Network Service Account.
Changing the security account for the Application Pool (under Properties choose Identity tab select predefined option) will also give the same result as elevating the web application to run under central administration application pool.

VHDs from Microsoft

2007-10-09T02:33:00.000-07:00

Virtual hard disks (VHD) provide a great way to get started. VHD's are available for many products. You can find all of them at Run IT on a Virtual Hard Disk. Some of the links to products interesting products..

Thanks to US ISV Developer Evangelism Team blog for providing above links.

Coding Standards & Rules

2007-10-08T01:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to C# coding standards from IDesign. Its well written concise document with clear examples. There is also a coding standards document for WCF.

One more site I would often refer for rules & tips is Rules to Better.. It has lots of cool stuff like Rules for better Project management, .NET/SQL/TFS Code & Application Design, Websites, even things like better Email, Naming convention etc.,

.NET Framework Source Code

2007-10-04T03:06:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is showing .NET Framework source code to the developers. Though the code is read only, it helps developers in understanding the inner workings of the Framework in better way. Scott Guthrie has posted in his blog announcing it and explaining how the source server can be used from Visual Studio 2008. Scott hanselman has done a podcast on the same and posted a blog entry.

Inspiration - Really Achieving your childhood dreams

2007-10-04T02:43:00.000-07:00

Randy Pausch, Professor at Carnegie Mellon, Director of alice an educational software that teaches computer programming in 3D environment, and a famous name in virtual reality has given his last lecture at the Carnegie Mellon. For starters he is suffering from pancreatic cancer and has 3-6 months left. His last lecture Really Achieving your childhood dreams, is something everyone must watch. He discusses how he achieved his child hood dreams and what he has learnt in the way. The lecture is really inspirational with lots of good sayings but the my best would be "Brick walls are there to stop others and to test how badly we want something". You can watch the video at

http://wms.andrew.cmu.edu/001/pausch.wmv

Randy Pausch has answered audience questions on abcnews.

Microsft Team blogs

2007-09-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

Check out the list of Microsoft Team blogs at the following location.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsexperience/pages/microsoft-blogs.aspx

Team blogs related to different technologies are listed at the location some of the interesting blogs are

Live.com Team Blog
Live Search Team Blog
Live Search Maps Team Blog (and Virtual Earth)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Products and Services Team Blog
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer Team Blog

Microsoft Application Threat Modeling Blog
The Security Development Cycle Blog
Security, Performance, and Privacy Blog (ACE Team)

Data Programmability Blog
ADO.NET Team Blog
XML Team Blog
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog

Microsoft Expression Team Blog
Microsoft Silverlight Community Blogs

Check out the link for many more Team blogs

Interesting Videos

2007-09-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

I have come across two really Interesting videos this week. One of them is about a 14 year old teenager Daniel Brusilovsky, who works for an IT Company full time and has his own podcast about apple. This video is published by Robert Scoble on Scoble Show. Its really inspiring to see a teenager talk about technology & market dynamics better than most of the people in IT Industry.
Click Here to watch this video

The second one is one of the best talk I have ever heard about education and what should be taught to children. This video from you tube is posted by katie ledger in her blog. Really good video which talks about the educational system all over the world & how to let children be creative. Check out the video here

.NET Framework articles

2007-09-16T23:39:00.000-07:00

Silverlight Poster

2007-09-16T04:55:00.000-07:00

Here is a nice Silverlight1.1 Developer Reference poster on MSDN

.NET Survival Guide

2007-09-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Here is an Interesting article .NET Survival Guide – Eight Essential Skills & Technologies for .NET Developers. In this article in Redmond Developer News, Different authors discuss about the following topics and their importance for developers targeting windows platform.

The Article provides a nice overview of the topics discusses the industry direction and what we should get ready for.

Framework Master Class Webcast Series

2007-09-11T00:06:00.000-07:00

The first 8 webcasts in the Framework MasterClass series are announced, and here's a quick rundown on the topics that will be covered in September & October. This series will take a deeper dive into technologies like LINQ, WCF, Workflow, etc. and help provide insight into how get the most from them.

9/4 – LINQ Overview – Data access has evolved over time to make working with databases easier and more productive. In the Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5, access to data is integrated natively into the languages. In this webcast, we look at what Microsoft .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is, and we provide an overview of how it can help developers increase productivity.

9/10 – LINQ to SQL – Microsoft .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) provides a common way to work with data in your applications. In this session, we dive into how LINQ provides methods to work with Structured Query Language (SQL) databases, including how to query, insert, and manage data using the LINQ framework.

9/17 – LINQ to XML – In other sessions, we have already seen how Microsoft .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) works with relational databases. In this webcast, we explore how LINQ can help you develop XML applications. We cover the basics of the XML helper functions, and we also dive into deeper topics.

9/24 – LINQ to Entities – We've explored how Microsoft .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is used for Structured Query Language (SQL) databases and working with XML. In this webcast, we connect to the data access layer, the business objects that provide the functionality of working with enterprise data. Join us to learn how you can make your LINQ applications really sing when working with entities.

10/1 – Working with WCF – Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) brings tremendous power to developers and architects who are charged with creating distributed systems, but the many coding and configuration choices within WCF can be daunting. When faced with an almost infinitely configurable system, how can you be sure you are utilizing WCF effectively? Join this webcast to learn how you can solve the real-world technical problems that led you to WCF in the first place. In this session, we educate and inform both developers and architects about how to build and configure services in WCF using a variety of real-world scenarios as examples. After a brief review of the WCF code concepts, we explore techniques for building an effective messaging infrastructure, taking advantage of the many built-in WCF services, including security, transactions, reliability, and durability.

10/15 – WCF Management & Diagnostics – Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) includes a strong management foundation for providing insight into the health and operational status of applications. In this session, we illustrate how you can incorporate WCF rich tracing and logging, a broad set of performance counters and tracking information, into existing management environments to build better applications. We also discuss how to use Windows PowerShell on top of the management extensions in WCF.

10/22 – WCF Custom Channels – Channel model is the layer of our architecture that is responsible for performing all of the point-to-point messaging in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Almost every interoperability problem and missing feature can be worked around by extending the messaging platform with a sufficiently powerful custom channel. In this session, we discuss the basics you need to get started with the channel model, and we show you how to write simple custom channels that solve problems.

10/29 – WCF Performance & Deployment – In this session, we dive into some best practices that can help you ensure the highest level of performance and availability with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). We examine guidelines for load balancing your services across a Web farm, and we take a look at various properties that are designed to help prevent undue resource consumption. Finally, we share some examples of the various hosting options for WCF services, including Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) and Windows Process Activation Service (WAS).

Sharepoint Presentations by Microsoft IT

2007-09-08T00:07:00.000-07:00

The official Sharepoint team blog has published links to some cool sharepoint presentations on MSDN created by Microsoft IT. These presentations are "created by Microsoft's internal IT group to help employees get started with learning more about using a technology or product effectively, selecting the right product or service, or reviewing best practices." Here are the links.

Silverlight 1.0 & Expression Encoder 1.0 Release

2007-09-07T23:51:00.000-07:00

Silverlight 1.0 is released, as usual Scott Gutherie has posted on his blog about the details. There are also videos on channel9 on the event of this release. Check them at

Scott Guthrie: Enter Silverlight 1.0
Conversation with Dr. Sneath: Silverlight
Jim Thill and James Clarke: Understanding Expression Encoder

For more visit Silverlight Community site at www.silverlight.net

Interesting ways of looking at Data

2007-08-31T03:16:00.000-07:00

There is an article Data Visualization : Modern Approaches, published in smashing magazine. The article discusses about the modern approaches towards presenting the data under following categories of MindMaps, Displaying News, Displaying Data, Displaying Connections, Displaying Websites, Articles & Resources, Tools & Services. The article has some great links to the resources. I have run in to this article in GuyKawasaki's blog where he pointed to this article.

MOSS Resources

2007-08-30T03:27:00.000-07:00

Links to different Sharepoint resources.

SharePoint Server 2007 Developer Portal - Home page on MSDN

SharePoint Server 2007 SDK - Download Complete SDK of MOSS

SharePoint Server 2007 Information Center - Links to whats new, Code Samples, References, Visual How To's, Technical Articles, Training, Videos, webcasts, Forums & Blogs

SharePoint Server 2007 Videos and Webcasts - Links to screencasts, videos, webcasts on MOSS, WSS, Sharepoint Designer

Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog

Microsoft SharePoint Designer Team Blog

Downloadable books for Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Books on Getting started, Planning, Deployment, Security, Solutions

7 Development Projects with the 2007 Microsoft Office System and Windows SharePoint Services 2007 - Microsoft Press book available as free download

SharePoint - Videos - SharePoint How-To Video Tutorials for Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced.

DNR TV Shows by Carl Franklin with Sahil Malik:

Sahil Malik on Sharepoint 2007 Part 1 - Sahil Malik introduces us to Sharepoint 2007 in the first of several shows getting into the heart of the product. The focus in this episode is on configuration.
Sahil Malik on Sharepoint 2007 Part 2 - Sahil takes us further into Sharepoint 2007 showing us how to create and manage content types.
Sahil Malik on Sharepoint 2007 Part 3 - This time he's getting deep down into .NET code in sharepoint for things like profile management and making custom ASP.NET webpart editors.
Sahil Malik on Sharepoint 2007 Part 4 - Sahil returns this time with a great introduction to the Business Data Catalog. The BDC lets you integrate data from multiple sources into your Sharepoint website using ADO.NET or web services. There is even a full-featured search engine.

Different SharePoint Resources on CodePlex

SharePoint Resource Guide published on Microsoft Higher Education - Mid-Atlantic blog - Great compilation covers most of the resources

Visual How Tos

White papers and book excerpts for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Channel9 Interview with Bill Hill

2007-08-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

End of the day, tired and looking for something to make you feel good and if you are a geek, here is an excellent video for you. I haven't watched this video but heard the mp3 version over my player today evening. One of the best interviews on channel9, where bill hill talks about, Internet, digitization of content, digital democracy, conviction in what you do. Check out the great interview

C# Language Specification

2007-08-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

Unified language specification for C#3.0 is published in Charlie Calvert's Community blog. The document is a combination of 1.1 version of the spec, the 2.0 version, and various other bits and pieces. The whole document is 500+ pages in length and contains definitive technical description of the C# language in the words of the engineers who created it.

You can download it directly, or visit the C# language page where you can find a link to it and various related documents

Excellent talk on concurrency

2007-08-22T03:11:00.000-07:00

Here is a talk by Edward A. Lee on making concurrency mainstream at Microsoft Research. In this talk he questions the basic principles underlying the threads and proposes some fundamental changes, in the way we approach threads. He also says "people were writing concurrent programs in the UNIX world in seventies but it was at process level. Threads are considered as domain of operating system experts, Threads were what the device driver guys have to worry about. It was not until early nineties threads are exposed to programmers as a programming model. Threads will end soon and we will start to view Threads as a big historical mistake and they should never have been exposed to programmers as programming model and will be replaced with the next thing"

Its good to see Microsoft making such good videos accessible to everyone.

User Experience comes to Search

2007-08-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Introduced a new Silverlight based search tool Tafiti. Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili, enhances searching on the web by allowing users to store and share search results across multiple queries and sessions.
This is accomplished by using "shelfs" to store one or more search results simply by dragging the search result onto one of five shelf spaces. Shelfs can then be stored for future use, or can be emailed or blogged about with ease.

Using Tafiti in simple steps

Enter a search query
Drag interesting results to the shelf on the right. Each box on the shelf can be used to save a related set of results. Shelf contents can be saved and shared.
Use the carousel at the bottom left to do different types of searches (image, blog, etc.)
Visualize your results using the Tafiti Tree View (Too good...).

check out the podcast about Tafiti on Channel 9 and a video on on10.net

Dynamic Controls in ASP.NET

2007-08-14T05:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a detailed article explaining about dynamic controls and how they work.

Part 1: Dynamic vs. Static : In this part of the article there is a detailed description of what happens internally when you create a static control, how ASP.NET parses the static controls and how they are added to the control tree of the page.
Part 2: Creating Dynamic Controls : In this part of the article, different types of creating dynamic controls and how they differ from one another is discussed.
Part 3: Adding Dynamic Controls to the Control Tree: In this part of the article we deal with when is the control actually added to control tree and where is it added.

Workflow Communications

2007-08-14T04:59:00.000-07:00

Here is a nice article published in the latest edition of MSDN magazine about workflow communications. Here is a brief from the article

Workflows are meant to coordinate systems and people, and that means communicating beyond the boundaries of the workflow instance itself. Whether sending e-mail or instant messages (IM) or interacting directly with the user interface in a host process such as ASP.NET or with Web services, communication is a key component of most workflows.

Workflows model business logic or a business process and may therefore exist logically over the course of several days, being persisted and restored several times. Moreover, workflows are often executed on different threads from the host processing code, meaning that communication with the workflow must take threading into account. Because of these and other considerations, communications in workflows rely on a certain level of indirection that, in the end, provides a much richer framework for interaction.

Communications in Windows WF are often categorized as local (communication between the workflow and objects residing in the same host app) or remote (communication involving an application or service outside of the host process). The same architecture underpins both types of communication, and this article will focus on the core technologies

Check out the complete article here

WPF Soaps to Nuts Series

2007-08-14T02:32:00.000-07:00

This webcast series is devoted to those who want to learn to really use WPF and what it can do. Learn from Bill Steele, a renowned expert in software development and featured speaker for Microsoft and NASA

8/6/2007 - Introduction

In part one of this series Bill Steele introduces you to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), a pillar of the Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.0. In this webcast, Bill begins the series with a discussion about the origin of WPF, why we have it, and some of the things you can do with it.

8/13/2007 - What is XAML?

In part two of this series Bill Steele discusses the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), the new markup language from Microsoft. This technology is widely used in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to describe user interfaces in a declarative programming paradigm.

8/20/2007 - Conceptualizing WPF

In part three of this series Bill Steele discusses several important new concepts used in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). In this session, Bill covers the basics of the WPF tree structure. We also learn how properties, events, and commands are handled.

8/27/2007 - Hello World

In part four of this series as Bill Steele takes you through the basics of building your very first Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application, Hello World. In this webcast, we learn about the basic structure of a WPF-based application, including controls, layout, and positioning. The information in this session prepares us to dig deeper in the upcoming webcasts in this series.

9/4/2007 - WPF Controls

Join Bill Steele, in this webcast, where he will introduce you to the various types of controls that Windows Presentation Foundation utilizes. He will discuss the various types as well as talk about their uses.

9/10/2007 - Panels

Join Bill Steele has he discusses the various ways to utilize the panel style controls within Windows Presentation Foundation. In this session, Bill will cover various items as the StackPanel, WrapPanel and the DockPanel. He will also discuss how you can assemble multiple panels to produce controls with enhanced effects like collapsing and docking.

9/17/2007 - Deploying XAML based Applications

Join Bill Steele in this webcast as he discusses the various ways to deploy a Windows Presenation Foundation based application. He will instroduce you to the XAML Binary Application file format for distributing applications via the browser. He will also cove other style applications, like Gadgets and standard desktop deployment models.

9/24/2007 - WPF Resource Files

Join Bill Steele in this webcast as he discusses the various types of resources that can be utilized within a Windows Presentation Foundation application. He will cover the basics of Binary Resources vs. Logical Resources. He will also how you how you can define resources and then access them either statically or dynamically. You will also learn how to interact with the system resources.

10/1/2007 - Data Binding with WPF

Join Bill Steele in this webcast as he discusses the magic known as Data Binding. Data Binding is a powerful way to tie the presentation of an object to the object itself. In this session, Bill will show you how you can control the rendering using Data Templates and Value Converters. He will also show you how you can utilize the powerful collection object to sort, filter and navigate through the data. Finally, he will talk about the various data providers that WPF applications can utilize.

10/8/2007 - Adding Pizzaz with Style

Join Bill Steele in this webcast as he talks about adding style and flair to your Windows Presentation Foundation based application. Bill will discuss the concepts of Styles, Templates and Themes and show you how you can utilize them to add individual uniqueness to each component to make them stand out. He will also show you how you can package up those styles for reuse in other applications.

10/15/2007 - 2D Graphics

Join Bill Steele in this webcast as he talks about graphics. Windows Presentation Foundation is all about the look and feel of your application, and graphics are the key. In this webcasts, Bill will introduce you to the concepts of Shapes, Brushes and Effects. You will learn how you can utilize the basics of the 2D graphics system to build very distinctive applications.

10/22/2007 - 3D Graphics

Join Bill Steele in this webcast as he talks about graphics. Windows Presentation Foundation is all about the look and feel of your application, and graphics are the key. In this webcasts, Bill will introduce you to the concepts of 3D graphics utilizing objects such as Cameras, Transforms and Models. Building on the basics of the 2D session, Bill will expand our knowledge by showing us how the simple 2D objects and be transformed into 3D objects that can be manipulated via code.

10/29/2007 - Animation

Join Bill Steele in this webcast as he talks about animation in Windows Presentation Foundation. Animation takes your applications to a whole new level when it comes to user understanding and experience. In this webcast, Bill will show you how you can utilize procedural code and XAML to produce graphics that appear to be alive. You will learn about the animation classes as well as some of the standard XAML objects, like Storyboards and the various types of Keyframes.

11/5/2007 - Multimedia

Join Bill Steele in this webcast as he talks about multimedia in Windows Presentation Foundation. Adding multimedia elements to your application can increase the understanding of your application by orders of magnitude. In this webcast, Bill will show you how easily it is to incorporate Audio, Video as well as Speech into your applications utilizing the various components like the MediaElement and the MediaTimeline.

11/12/2007 - Compatibility with Win32

Join Bill Steele in this webcast where he will talk about how to utilize XAML based WPF applications with "classic" Win32 based applications. He will show you how you can utilize controls created in WPF within Win32 based applications as well as utilizing classic Win32 based controls in the WPF world.

11/19/2007 - Creating Controls

Join Bill Steele in this webcast where he will talk about how to create custom controls with Windows Presentation Foundation. In this session, Bill will discuss the difference betweeen User Controls and Custom Controls. He will also cover the basic concepts, like creating the user interface and behaviors for each control. Lastly, he will discuss how to add dependency properties and routed events to your controls.

11/26/2007 - Layout with Custom Panels

Join Bill Steele in this webcast where he will talk about how to master the layout of panels by utilizing the communication between parent and child controls. In this webcast, Bill will build an example panel control that behaves like the Ribbon control in Microsoft Office 2007.

12/3/2007 - Helpful Tools

Join Bill Steele in this final webcast of the Windows Presentation Foundation Soup To Nuts Webcast series where he will talk about some of the other professional tools that are available for WPF developers. He will also demonstarate Silverlight. Silverlight utilizes XAML to produce rich media based applications for distribution in web pages.

100 Essential Resources for Web Developers

2007-08-14T02:16:00.000-07:00

Here is a great compilation of different resources for web developers. The list has links to Learning Websites, Web-Development Magazines, Interesting blogs, Coding Resources, Usability & Accessibility, Forums and Social Media sites, on the topics of Ajax, ASP.NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, CSS, HTML, JavaScript

Visual Studio 2008 Videos

2007-08-14T01:30:00.000-07:00

Check out the new set of videos released for learning Visual Studio 2008. There are a set of video clips where Scott gu demonstrates new features in visual studio 2008 and how they improves the productivity.

Then there are set of videos from tech ed under following categories. The page will be updated with more videos so keep an eye on it regularly

Sky Drive Beta

2007-08-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

This is an offering from windows live to store and share your files, pictures, videos. Sky Drive offers you 500MB of free online space. We can set the permissions at folder level as to who can view the files and who can't. If you have a windows live id, you can sign in and start uploading. Check this out at

http://skydrive.live.com/

Hello World Application in Silverlight

2007-08-12T21:30:00.001-07:00

Here is a nice blog post by laurence moroney (Good blog on Silverlight) on getting started with silverlight. In a step-by-step approach he demonstrates creating an Hello world application using silverlight.

ASP.NET Data Access Tutorials

2007-08-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

I have previously published a post linking to different articles about 3-tier Architecture with ASP.NET 2.0. The list contains links to articles on MSDN. The complete list of Data Access Tutorials by scott mitchell are published in ASP.NET website. There are a total of 75 articles that covers almost everything you need to know about Data Access in ASP.NET. The following is the complete list of articles. They are available for download in pdf format too.

Introduction

Basic Reporting

Master/Detail

Custom Formatting

Editing, Inserting, and Deleting Data

Paging and Sorting

Custom Button Actions

Adding and Responding to Buttons to a GridView

Displaying Data with the DataList and Repeater

Filtering Scenarios with the DataList and Repeater

Editing and Deleting Data Through the DataList

Paging and Sorting with the DataList and Repeater

Custom Button Actions with the DataList and Repeater

Custom Buttons in the DataList and Repeater

Accessing the Database Directly from an ASP.NET Page

Enhancing the GridView

Working with Binary Files

Caching Data

Database-Driven Site Maps

Building a Custom Database-Driven Site Map Provider

Working with Batched Data

Advanced Data Access Scenarios

Data Visualization

2007-08-10T04:37:00.002-07:00

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror has published a nice post about different data visualization techniques. The periodic table of different visualization methods is especially interesting. Different data visualization methods are categorized under the following sections and shown with an example.

Data Visualization
Information Visualization
Concept Visualization
Strategy Visualization
Metaphor Visualization
Compound Visualization

Microsoft SOA Strategy

2007-08-10T04:37:00.001-07:00

"SOA is not something you buy. SOA is an architectural approach, not a product. Anyone saying anything differently either hasn't thought the whole thing through or has something to sell you."
Here is a nice blog post about SOA and Microsoft's approach towards SOA. It has links to some interesting articles too.

Deploying and Supporting Enterprise Search - White Paper on MOSS

2007-08-07T02:27:00.000-07:00

Here is a white paper on how Microsoft internally implemented Enterprise Search feature provided in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for searching through different types of content (Microsoft Office documents, pictures, videos, Web pages, and other formats) generated by more than 120,000 employees, contractors, and vendors at Microsoft and stored in Microsoft servers

The white paper is available at Deploying and Supporting Enterprise Search

This white paper covers:

Teams at Microsoft that were involved in the development, deployment, and ongoing management of the solution.
Background on Enterprise Search at Microsoft.
Business values achieved in deploying the Enterprise Search solution.
Architectural design of the solution.
Products and technologies used in creating the solution.
Administration of the shared search services for the solution.
Administration of indexed sites and content for the solution.
User experience when using the Enterprise Search solution.
Migration of Enterprise Search from Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The best practices that Microsoft used in developing and deploying the solution.

Rules for improving site performance

2007-08-07T02:01:00.000-07:00

Here is a nice article on improving the website performance. This article lists out 13 rules for improving your site performance. Nothing specific to ASP.NET but a good read for anyone interested in the performance of the website. The article is an excerpt from the book "High Performance Websites" by Steve Souders, It lists out 13 rules for speeding up the website. Checkout the complete article at

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#num_http

Visual Studio 2008 Overview White Paper

2007-08-02T23:21:00.000-07:00

This white paper provides an overview of Visual Studio 2008 and how it delivers key advances in the areas of Improving Developer Productivity, Managing the Application Life Cycle and Employing the Latest Technologies. The document is available in pdf,doc and xps formats.

Visual Studio 2008 Overview White Paper

If you looking for feature-by-feature overview of Visual Studio 2008, a link to the specifications for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 is available here.

WPF Browser applications HandsOnLabs

2007-08-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a blog post from charles sterling with updated WPF Hands on labs. The links for downloads are as follows.

Part 1: Creating XAML Browser Applications with Microsoft® Visual Studio 2008™
Part 2: Creating XAML Browser Applications with Microsoft® Expression Blend™
Part 3: Animations and Media with Microsoft® Expression Blend™

Also check out the MSDN article What's new in WPF 3.5

Interesting Video links from PostMix Australia

2007-08-01T04:26:00.000-07:00

The following are the links to interesting videos from the Postmix Australia. You can view the stream of videos in Silverlight or can download the wmv/mp3.

Podcasts on MSDN

2007-08-01T02:38:00.000-07:00

Listen to Microsoft webcast and media content whenever and wherever you want. You can stream or download these audio podcasts on your favorite podcast software or mobile device, and quickly and easily access content with RSS feeds. Microsoft podcasts are free and do not require registration—just click and listen.

Check them out at http://www.microsoft.com/events/podcasts/default.mspx

The following is the list of different categories of podcasts available.

Podcasts for IT Professionals

Podcasts for IT Managers

Podcasts for Developers

Microsoft Office System

Podcasts for Business Professionals

Microsoft Office System

MS Research Cambridge Videos on Channel9

2007-07-31T22:43:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Research labs in cambridge has recently celebrated its 10th aniversary. Channel9 has posted some really interesting videos interviewing scientists in the labs on this ocassion. Check them out here.

Here are a few videos I liked

Here is a link to other videos on channel9 from Microsoft Research

Sharepoint Governance & Manageability

2007-07-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent resource on Sharepoint Governance & Manageability, on codeplex. The page contains a list of links to Resources and tools about Sharepoint Governance & Manageability. Thanks to Suman Chakrabarti for posting this resource

Visual Studio 2008 .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2

2007-07-27T00:33:00.000-07:00

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 is released. This means its feature complete and it comes with a Go-Live license. I have just started downloading and can't wait to install it. You can download the software/VPC for Visual Studio 2008 here. Soma has posted a blog entry announcing the release of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET FX 3.5 Beta 2, and Silverlight 1.0 RC so does Scott Guthrie with the list of new features and links to his previous posts where he discussed those new features. There is also a great video on channel9, where SomaSegar and Scott Guthrie explains whats new in Visual Studio 2008 and how different the developing Visual Studio 2008 has been when compared with Visual Studio 2005.

Architect Fun Videos

2007-07-24T23:47:00.000-07:00

Meet the Architects - fun video from Microsoft's skyscrapr giving a brief about different architects comparing software development to building construction.

SOA this SOA that - fun architect videos from Greg the architect check out for more videos like ROI of the Beholder, Focus Pocus

Good Software Developer

2007-07-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

Interesting post on What makes a good Software Developer

We are engineers, not hackers.
A strong dev should be able to fill any engineering role in the company.
Senior devs improve their teams by action and by example.