The Mehn Point -aka- Paul Mehner's Blog
Sunday, June 05, 2005
INETA User Group Leaders Summit (Tech Ed 6/5/2005): Ari Bixhorn the Microsoft Directory of Webservices Strategy gave us a presentation this morning on Indigo. Indigo is the communications backbone of Windows Longhorn. It is Ari's vision that webservices will be as exciting as TCP a few years from now, meaning that we use TCP for everything, but we don't have to give much thought to sockets and network stacks when we write software. Webservices (and more specifically, Indigo) will make writing SOA and peer-to-peer systems much easier and promisses to make the adotpion of webservices that we have seen so far look like but a drop of water in the ocean. Indeed, I believe that he is correct in his assertion.
Indigo promisses to bring web services, queueing and transactional support together into one unified programming model. While we wait for Indigo to ship (with Windows Longhorn in 2006), we will have to settle for Web Services Enhancements WSE 3.0 which will ship shortly. Yes, yes... I know... you and I just finished installing WSE 2.0! All the same, WSE still remains the best way to secure your webservices today and to keep our software up to date with WS-* standards.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
May 12, 7:00-9:00 PM / Jason Mauer / Language Enhancements in .NET 2.0 / Olympia Center In this presentation we’ll be walking through new features of C# and VB in the .NET Framework 2.0. This is specifically about syntax; whiz-bang IDE features will be kept to a minimum. Come learn about the new abilities you’ll be able to take advantage of in the next release of .NET.
A free copy of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 DVD Kit will be given away to all in attendance (includes VS2005 Team Suite Beta 2, Team Foundation Server Beta 2, and the April CTP of SQL Server 2005) plus some additional goodies.
May 24, 1-3:15 PM / Jeffrey Richter At IPMA Forum / St. Martin’s College, LaceyDon't miss Jeffrey Richter's presentation at IPMA Forum on May 24 from 1:00 to 3:15! Jeffrey Richter is the author of Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming (ISBN: 0-7356-1422-9). His knowledge of the Microsoft .NET Framework is unparalleled in the world. We are extremely fortunate to have him visit our community. Please show your support for the South Sound .NET User Group by attending his presentation!
Win a Pass To Devscovery in Redmond
Wintellect (one of the South Sound .NET User Group Sponsors) will be giving a way one free three-day pass to the Redmond Devscovery event (valued at $900). Hear with the hugest names in software development: Software Legend Jeffrey Richter, Bug Slayer John Robbins, ASP.NET Guru Jeff Prosise, SQL Expert Peter DeBetta. Details on how to win the contest will be available at the Wintellect booth.
Are You A Blogger? Will You Be At IPMA Forum?
Send me an email (paul.mehner@ssdotnet.org) to be included in the “IPMA bloggers” website that I have set up at http://ipmabloggers.blogspot.com/. Visit the site frequently during the forum as many of us will be blogging away to keep you up to date on what’s happening.
South Sound .NET User Group Sponsors @ IPMA Forum
Milestone Technology, Wintellect, and Soundex co-sponsor the South Sound .NET User Group. Be sure to visit the Milestone and Wintellect booths and thank them for the support that they give to developers in our community!
Friday, April 15, 2005
I had the pleasure of having a bite with my friend Jeffrey Richter today who posed for this cell phone picture with his tasty treat in the LNI Cafe. Jeffrey seemed genuinely skeptical of my view that there were many people out there interested in reading about his daily adventures. I assured him that we are all quite interested in such excitement as he had with Jeff Prosise in London and that we would all read his blog religiously if he should ever be convinced to take it up!
Sunday, March 20, 2005
What a fun thing this was to uncover: if the name of your project name exceeds 62 characters in length ASP.NET will give you a Configuration Error when you attempt to run the project from Visual Studio or navigate directly via a web browser. ASP.NET takes you on a not-so-friendly snipe hunt with information about the "given assembly name or codebase was invalid" and will highlight a line in in the compilation section of machine config <add assembly="*"/> After chasing this configuration error for awhile, I began to notice an apparent pattern. I zeroed in on the length theory and was able to reliably replicate the behavior for both web services and web sites running on Windows XP Professional. I also investigated the pathname to the project to be certain that it was not a pathname limit. Irrespective of the pathname length to the project a 62 character project name succeeds and a 63 character project name fails at runtime (Visual Studio will create and load the project at 63 characters and greater, but asp.net won't run them).
Friday, March 04, 2005
I'll be teaching the CIS 216 ASP.NET Class at Pierce College (in Fort Steilacoom) . Classes start March 28 and are held in the evening from 5:30 to 7:40. I'll be teaching from Wintellect legend Jeff Prosise's Programming Microsoft .NET Book.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Some very interesting anomalies can occur when you copy a project file on the filesystem to make another project that you intend to use in the same solution. Visual Studio creates a Project Guid which can be seen in the .vbproj or .csproj file that uniquely identifies a project. When you make references to other projects in the same solution, Visual Studio stores this unique project guid as the location to find the assembly. This can leave the developer scratching his or her head when the assembly that is being referenced is from a different project that the developer selected. To avoid this difficult to locate problem when copying project folders on the filesystem, it is important to generate a new guid and modify the project's .xxproj file accordingly before referencing the project in a solution.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
An absolutely chilling present-day motorcycle ride through the Chernobyl area: http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html It's a bit off topic for a .net blog, but worthy of a visit. Be sure to look at the chapters beyond chapter 1.
