Beyond SOA : Software Architecture of the future....

Check out at MSDN

Today, new social movements, advances in technology, and forces within business are colliding to create a landscape overflowing with challenges and opportunities. In many cases, these forces have driven the deployment of new technologies and the adoption of new behaviors, adding multiple layers to an already complex set of issues that must be navigated. Architects are searching for a solution to manage this complexity. SOA, ESB, Software as a Service, Web 2.0, and Edge are all elements of the solution, but are they the complete picture? Are they a sufficient answer to the issues? Can they be used together in a productive and efficient fashion?
We have the opportunity now to think about what the software architecture of the future looks like; for software architects to take a step back and to forecast what lies over the horizon. To move beyond SOA we must find a way to connect the user edge of software development to the existing services infrastructure of the enterprise; to reconnect the people to the platform. This keynote examines these issues and discusses Microsoft’s vision for the future.

First book of the MS Architecture Strategy Team

Check out Architect Resource Library's

First book of the MS Architecture Strategy Team

This volume looks at how you can use different architectures, from Open Business Standards to IT industry architectures, in a connected fashion to support a dynamic enterprise. This Series is about aligning business architecture and IT architecture through dynamic modeling. Making sure business operations are working well across organizational boundaries is a hard challenge. But it is an increasingly important one to address in today's connected world. A key to success in meeting this challenge is making sure the business and IT operations teams within an organization are well connected. A thorough discussion of a real-world business problem – shipping products from a warehouse to a customer - helps highlight the issues involved in making these connections and meeting this challenge. Particularly, the discussion shows how supporting business operations requirements in the IT organization can play an important role in the solution.

MSDN Financial Services Center

Microsoft just released MSDN Financial services center.Its an important development. Earlier this year I missed out attending Microsoft's Financial Developers Conference in US and I have been following Microsoft focus on Financial Services Sector for a while. And now this dedicated MSDN center is a testament to Microsoft's commitment to financials sector. There has been a news about Microsoft Trading platform as well. I am really excited to see all these things shaping up nicely.

Office Busines Applications

I just came across this another good read at MSDN Architecture center on power of using Office for Business Applications.

BizTalk Road Map [Interesting Read]

Check out this interesting read at TheServerSide.net
titled: A look at the BizTalk roadmap

SOA and Connection Systems Event Conducted!

So finally we had our first off line event. Although the turn out wasnt as good as expected but it was great to be there and have finally conducted the event. Vimal did the key note and Pooya presented his technical talk on Service Oriented Architecture and Connected Systems. Microsoft gave away goodie bag containing Vista and Office 2007. The bag also contained vista/office t-shirt and a coffe mug. Event concluded at snacks (pizza and soda) again sponsored by Microsoft. I will post more details soon. Thanks for who ever made it to the event. And last but not the least hats off to Vimal/Pooya/Amr and their team at Microsoft for sponsoring our event and helping us out.

Lets keep .net rocking!

Upcoming event for .NETPalm

I am really excited about this up coming event of .NET Palm. Venue is Microsoft office in DIC (Dubai Internet City), all the arrangements are done. We will have a technical session on SOA and Connected Systems by Pooya an Architect Evangelist at Microsoft.We will be offering goodies and snacks to the audience. I am sure this event is gonna Rock!

Hope to see you all there.

ps: There is not participation or registration fee. THIS EVENT IS 100% FREE!!!!

Office as UI for Business Applications

I presented a session at Pakistan Developer's Conference (PDC 2006) last month. One of my session was on Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). Presentation that I did is available in files section of our dotnetwizards yahoo group. My talk revolved around showing the power and usability of Office applications and how they can be programmed using VSTO ver 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. I had a discussion with one of the particpants who failed to understand the concept smart client apps using vsto. He insisted that since we can do all the similar stuff using windows or web apps there isnt any thing fancy in using VSTO. I am sure most of the audience agreed to the idea that how easily adaptle Office Apps and how much potential they have for Line Of Business Applications where you have information workers using your applications. I also emphasised the point information worker effeciancy and adaptibility should be central to the concept and design of business applications. I can see a lot of good stuff coming with VSTO v3. I just came across this useful article available on MSDN Mag web site here.

Let me know what your thoughts are? Also share if you have developed any application using VSTO.

.NET Palm User Group Event!

I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!
—Unknown



I love this quote. It always reminds me that there are things that we can not change and for every thing else we have .NET technologies.



Talking of technology how can we forget to mention our lovely IDE Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0? I know it’s very hot in Dubai and UAE these days but for us Geeks these cool technologies are what get us going. If you still want to check out how cool VS 2005 is, then we have 400+ differences out-lined for you here. Check out these cool short videos and have fun!



Well fun doesn’t end here we also have for you new Atlas release that actually is quite cool. Microsoft has released a new CTP of Atlas framework it adds a long awaited feature supporting dynamic application-controls rendering as well as several bug fixes have been made. For more details visit Atlas community web site here.



Now, if you geeks remember that we talked about having an offline event. So, finally we have a really great and exciting event planned for you. This event will be our first of many to come offline events. It is scheduled to be held on 15th July 2006 at Microsoft office in DIC. Following are the details along with the agenda.



Event Details:



Day: 15th July 2006

Time: 4 PM – 6 PM

Venue: Microsoft Office (Dubai Internet City, Dubai)


Agenda:



Key note: “Developer Communities” [Duration: 15 min ]
Introduction to “Developer Community : .NET Palm” [Duration: 15 min ]
Tech. Talk : SOA and Connected Systems [Duration: 45 +10 Q/A min]
Presented by Pooya Darugar, Architect Evangelist at Microsoft.
Closing Note [Duration 15 min]
Snacks and Goodbye!


* We will also be distributing some goodies :)
** Snacks are for free :):)



Unfortunately we can accommodate limited number of participant so if you want to be part of the action then you have to confirm us about your participation by emailing us at zubairdotnet@hotmail.com and confirming about your availability.



I believe that’s it for this edition of newsletter. I will look forward to seeing you all at Microsoft on 15th of July at 4 PM.



Happy .Netting!



Hammad Rajjoub
“Learning, sharing, participation, fellowship and growth”
http://dotnetwizards.blogspot.com

Best Practice Analyzer for ASP.NET

Source MSDN Download Newsletter:

Download details: Best Practice Analyzer for ASP.NET:

"The Best Practice Analyzer ASP.NET (alpha release) is a tool that scans the configuration of an ASP.NET 2.0 application. The tool can scan against three mainline scenarios (hosted environment, production environment, or development environment) and identify problematic configuration settings in the machine.config or web.config files associated with your ASP.NET application. This is an alpha release intended to gain feedback on the tool and the configuration rules included with it."