September 2005 Entries
I've posted about this namespace in the past, and its no secret I think this is a great feature in .NET 2.0; one of my concerns though was the behaviour which SQL Server 2000 had with the new stuff. Currently, when you use ADO.NET transactions in 1.x, the transaction is 'local'; so it remains in-process and as such is comparatively fast...if you use SQL Server 2000 with System.Transactions however, the transaction is farmed out the the MSDTC...which actually reduces performance over ADO.NET Transactions. With this in mind, a great example has popped up on Jim Johnsons blog with a 'shim' which aims to overcome this problem...not an 'official' solution...but pretty interesting noentheless!
Should also mention...Jim's blog is just the best resource for any System.Transactions stuff around; the Transactional NTFS bit he posted just looks amazingly cool!
Oh, this is VERY cool! One of my colleagues is about to head off and work on this team...check out a new tool...
Sparkle (or Microsoft Expression)...come on did you really think we hadn't got a tool for designing Avalon UIs ;-)
Just don't call it WWF ;-) anyway I can finally talk about this really cool new technology and the new site dedicated to it; essentially this replaces all the little workflow bits you've written oven the years. A colleague of mine Morgan Skinner has also written a great little introduction article on writing custom activities on Windows Workflow Foundation (will someone PLEASE figure out an official abbreviation!). It's also really worth taking a look at the fantastic article by Dino Esposito on how this stuff works...
Have you any idea of the time this would've saved me in my previous life...damn it!
UPDATE: Umm...this is Morgan...nuff said!
This is the first app I've seen from us using Windows Presentation Foundation (aka Avalon) - it's a nice Flickr type app for sharing pictures called
'Microsoft Max'. Looks really nice and is a great example of what you can do using these new technologies. Even better, the development team behind this have a
blog; I love this approach and it looks like they're actively taking and using feedback to improve the product!
I wrote about this a little while ago, but I see that the new Office 12 UI has been
unveiled to the pulic at the PDC - it really is a very nice, intuitive UI!
No, not me
, the winner of the
Mercury Music prize tonight was a group called
Antony and the Johnsons – only thing I’ll say is nip over to
and buy the album I am a bird now (ooh…just discovered the iTunes link thingy…go on, click it I don’t get a penny
). Anyway, it’s is a pretty unique sound kind of a blues / jazz / alternative mix thing…listen to thwe album a couple of times, first time you’ll think I was having a joke.
Well, I made a decision, I have to get back to cranking out some serious code again...the old brain is way rusty (asked a question on threading yesterday and I hesitated damnit!). So here we go, this week (as in the following 7 days...not calendar week,it's Friday and that'd be crappy) I plan on coding for at least 8 hours a day and using stuff I haven't used in anger before (never really tried to write production quality code in Whidbey / Yukon before...). Have to say, I'm looking forward to it; not least because I only really feel 'right' when I'm coding...basically it's like meditation for me only I don't get so bored. Oh, should mention, I also have to drive back to Scotland from Reading at some point...made the odd / foolish decision to drive down last week (remember, I passed my test on June 22nd this year!). I have to say, it wasn't as bad as everyone had me convinced it would be; exciting well, no not in any way but it was kind of nice to spend some quality time with my car (which hopefully I'll still be able to drive after I get home...I have speed camera paranoia).
Ah well, off to try and grab a decent SQL Server 2005 book (mine being 400 miles away) and get to coding.
Well, it's official,
start.com the umm...aggregator that's not really an aggregator has launched (which really just seems to mean that you don't have to type /3 anymore). Now, this is a very cool technology demo and has some interesting features but personally I really don't see myself using it nor do I really see what it's purpose is.
In case you're wondering, yup I've seen the
Channel 9 video, played with the site for a while (it was even my start page for about a week...before I reverted to Google) but I just don't get it. So, if you DO get it, please tell me- why would I want to use start.com (apart from being an MS employee and maybe getting fired for posting this ;-)), what are the cool things about it?
Ok, this is one of these things where if you dodn't know about it you can get into a world of pain (I speak from bitter personal experience). There have been quite a few functional changes between the last Beta and the RTM (I've seen many of these in the August CTP as well). Take a look
here for more information...