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2005-01-25
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Forecasting the future has never been a precise science. In the computer industry, it's even more of a challenge to predict which technologies will be around at the end of the year, much less five years from now. Building enterprise applications that will last for more than a year requires a combination of insight and vision.
Understanding what the next generation of offerings from Microsoft will provide is key to planning for the applications you're designing today. It also helps to know how the current offerings fit into the bigger picture and what will still work tomorrow. Enterprise architects and developers have many alternatives available to gain that insight and understanding, including Microsoft conferences, industry conferences, and specialized training.
Pluralsight is a training and consulting company that "focuses on three main areas: building community, providing professional training, and developing technical content." Their .Net campsight server edition event has a stated purpose of "bringing the enterprise developer up to speed on how to successfully build, deploy, and administer distributed applications today."
Making an investment in training worth the time and money really depends on what you take away. I have left many conferences wishing I had a recording of the comments and question-and-answer times to recapture some of the interaction that frequently takes place. Pluralsight uses a number of approaches to help facilitate this "knowledge capture" process during the campsight server edition event.
I attended the training on the Microsoft campus in November, 2004. What follows are my notes on the different sessions and the main points I took away from the training. One thing to emphasize is that while the majority of the training focused on the next version of Visual Studio (Whidbey), and all class projects were done using beta 1 software, each instructor was careful to contrast what you can do with the tools available today as well.
The Wiki Way
To annotate slides, an instructor sits at the back of the room taking notes in real-time using a class Wiki. A Wiki is basically a Web site that allows users to edit or add content to it. The concept of a Wiki has been around for quite some time and is used for things like the Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia. Microsoft has also jumped on the wiki bandwagon with its Channel9 site, and by hiring the original inventor of the WikiWiki concept, Ward Cunningham.
For this class, Pluralsight uses FlexWiki, a freely available implementation of the Wiki concept for the Microsoft platform. All code samples developed by the instructors on the fly are saved and made available through the Wiki. Other Wiki pages include a question-and-answer page for documenting questions asked during class, and another page for providing feedback on the class content and conduct.
The part I liked most about the use of the Wiki was it made it possible for me to only take notes on things I found really important. That allowed me to concentrate more on what the instructor said and demonstrated. I could read over the Wiki notes later, and then ask any questions on the question and answer page that I wanted answered.
All Things Whidbey
One of the hardest things for a developer to do with beta software is to wait for the final product to be released — especially when you have immediate problems that the newer release will fix. Most vendors discourage the use of beta software in a production environment and often include broad disclaimers warning against such use. Yet, Whidbey includes many new features and capabilities that will make most developers' jobs easier.
Microsoft hopes to take some of that pain away with the announcement that they will provide a "go live" license with the beta 2 release of Whidbey, meaning you can deploy applications created with that version before the final product is released. This has huge implications for both Microsoft and potential early adopters in terms of feature implementation and utilization.
Web Services are Big
It's no secret that Web services play a big part in Microsoft's distributed processing story for the future. Creating applications using a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach will be the only way big projects get done. Taking advantage of the tools that exist today, like ASMX and WSE, helps get you ready for tomorrow.
The key to success will be application integration. Reducing the pain of actually making it happen depends in large part on the tools available. One potential candidate for the job is Microsoft's project, Whitehorse, which is a set of tools for designing, modeling, and implementing SOA-based applications.
ASP.Net 2.0 will deliver many new features and capabilities, including some that break from the traditional way of doing things. Things like partial classes look intimidating at first, but really do make sense when you dig in deeper.
Security must be designed in from the beginning, or you'll never get it right. During his presentation, Keith Brown, Pluralsight's security instructor, did a great job of demonstrating how inattention to security details can cause lots of headaches. His primary recommendations include:
- Take advantage of all the built-in security features you can.
- For integration use WS-Security, -Trust, and -SecureConversation.
- Impersonation and Delegation is the best method for multi-tier applications.
- Use least privilege whenever possible.
Things to Watch For
While the Whidbey release brings with it a mountain of new capabilities, it's important to know what won't work. For example:
- You need to know that Web parts developed with Whidbey will not run on the current Sharepoint platform, since it's based on version 1.1 of the .Net runtime. The next release of Sharepoint is being rewritten against ASP.Net 2.0, but don't expect to see it for a while.
- You need to understand the differences in viewstate and how it affects database round-tripping.
- Don't use ASMX when you're not using HTTP. ASMX does not work well with other protocols, so don't try to make it do something it wasn't designed to do.
Bottom Line
Training is an absolute necessity for enterprise developers if they are to keep up with the latest technology trends. Options abound and vary wildly in both cost and content. I found the Pluralsight training to be thorough and innovative. I am confident that I took away information I would not have been able to dig up on my own. The next .Net Campsight edition will be held at the Redmond Marriott Town Center Feb 28 through March 4.
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