Software Process Methodology

Back in 1998, my company made this short movie documenting the cycle of software development.This movie was presented on our yearly customer's meeting, and needless to say, it was a success.

DeepFish - the solution for web browsing on mobile?

Checkout this promising browser for mobile.

[update] the mobile browser wars

Microsoft airs Orcas, Rosario dev tools visions

in: infoworld

Microsoft not only plans to release Orcas, a major upgrade to its Visual Studio software development platform, by the end of the year but also plans to follow up Orcas with the Rosario release of the platform a year later, a Microsoft official said on Monday.

...

"We're building a bunch of tools to help you make sense out of everybody's work," Sridharan said. Testing tools and quality assurance capabilities will be focuses of Rosario, as will advanced code analysis, he said.

Rosario is being developed in parallel with Orcas, Sridharan said. Of particular importance to Rosario will be its inclusion of such groups as a user's IT personnel and business analysts in the application development mix.

"Rosario will help integrate the larger business," said Michael Leworthy, Microsoft Visual Studio product manager.

A community technology preview of Rosario is due around the same time as the general-release version of Orcas. A beta release of Orcas is planned for the May timeframe; a community technology preview shipped this month. Orcas features innovations like the additions of Language Integrated Query technology and the ability to use refactoring with Visual Basic for improved developer productivity.

...

LINQ brings data programming and data access closer to the programming, Sridharan said. "It makes it a lot easier to programmatically access data."

With the Orcas release of Team Foundation Server, developers can annotate code and share comments inside code with other developers, who can see who edited which code.

Microsoft Acquires TeamPlain!

Microsoft is announcing the acquisition of DevBiz Business Solutions, the makers of the popular TeamPlain Web Access for Team System. What does this mean? TeamPlain application for free!

Today we are announcing that Microsoft has acquired DevBiz Business Solutions, the makers of the popular TeamPlain Web Access for Team System. TeamPlain is a web front end for VSTS that enables users to access the majority of TFS functionality from within a Web browser. The focus of TeamPlain is on work item tracking but it also includes some valuable version control capabilities (like viewing history/change sets, diffing files, browsing the source base, etc.), some SharePoint integration, Reporting services integration, and some upcoming build support. TeamPlain gives VSTS a new avenue to reach a broader array of people within the development team who don’t use Visual Studio today and don’t want to install Visual Studio clients on their machines. It also improves reach by enabling some access from non-Windows clients.

TeamPlain has been in the market for about a year now and has been very successful. Many of our VSTS customers use TeamPlain today and are very satisfied with it. Our advisory council and other customers have been telling us for the past year that we need a web UI for VSTS and that TeamPlain would be a great solution for us. We’ve listened, looked very closely at the product and concluded that they are right. Today is the culmination of a long process and the beginning of another.

TeamPlain will become Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access. Effective today, TeamPlain is available, at no additional charge, to users who own a Team Foundation Server and can be downloaded from here. It will be accessible by any user properly licensed with a TFS CAL. Support will continue to be provided by the current staff via the DevBiz online forums.

Over the next few months, we will be rebranding TeamPlain as a Microsoft product and running it through our release process. When that is complete, we will be releasing it as a VSTS Power Tool, transitioning support to the Microsoft forums and beginning CSS (phone) support. In the Orcas timeframe, we will be releasing Team System Web Access as an official, documented, localized, and officially supported component of Team Foundation Server.

Will databases be commodities?

There was a time when business payed for a file server. Not anymore. The same can be said about directory services, most of networking services or even web servers. Most of nowadays OSs just give them for free - you just pay for the OS, and use the services you need. The question is: will databases follow the same trend and get commodityzed?

I believe they will. Why:

1. For ages Microsoft and Oracle have given us versions for free of database products with some limitations.
   
2. Database systems seems to have stopped evolving.
3. Business and database vendors seem to recognize more value on applicational platforms.
4. The next generation of developing paradigm will take away visibility from the database. More, it will hide it them so well we can probably swap them whenever we want.
   

Give this, I think that the database systems like SQL Server and Oracle will be given away with the OSs in no more then 5 to 7 years. Ok, maybe some very very high-availability and scalable versions will still be sold, but that's it. Let's read this again in 7 years :)

Microsoft Listed as Most Secure OS

No surprise but here.

Microsoft is frequently dinged for having insecure products, with security holes and vulnerabilities. But Symantec (Quote), no friend of Microsoft, said in its latest research report that when it comes to widely-used operating systems, Microsoft is doing better overall than its leading commercial competitors.

...

"I think in a way that a culture of having been under attack for a decade or more has led to the company taking a very proactive approach to fixing those problems," he told internetnews.com.

"In the last 24 months, they've taken a very aggressive stance toward the security of their system. In review after review of Vista, despite its faults, the security of the system has been considerably better than XP."

By contrast, King said there have been complaints in the past about Apple's lack of response to security issues. But as the Mac and Linux gain marketshare, they will have to respond much quicker.

Developer E-Learnings available for a short time: For Free

For a short time only (April 15^th to be exact) you have the opportunity to register to receive up to 4 of our best developer focused training modules found at http://www.microsoftlearning.com.
Here are the steps to take advantage of this great opportunity…
1.) Go http://www.microsoft.com/learning/access
2.) Input your access code: (The code is case sensitive) ACCESS CODE: 6841-USDPEMW-5316
3.) You will be prompted to sign-in using a valid Microsoft Passport ID. If you already have a profile on microsoft.com, use that Passport ID. If you do not have a Passport ID click “Register” to create one.
4.) From the “Thank You” page, click on My Learning to see the list of available courses.
5.) For E-Learning, click on a course title to launch the offering.
a. You will then be presented with a description tab and a content tab. Read all the course requirements and description.
b. Please note: Review the “system requirements” tab to be sure your computer is properly configured to access virtual labs.
c. From the “Content Tab”, click on a lesson to begin training.
7.) When you return to the site, please click on the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mylearning and sign in using your Microsoft Passport ID. Then click on “My Learning” to access content and continue your learning path.

The courses available include the following…
Upgrading from Visual Basic 6.0
Collection 2562: Getting Started with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 for Visual Basic® 6.0 Developers
Data and XML
Collection 2541: Core Data Access Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
Collection 2542: Advanced Data Access Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
Windows
Collection 2546: Core Windows® Client Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
Collection 2547: Advanced Windows® Client Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
Web
Collection 2543: Core Web Client Programming with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
Collection 2544: Advanced Web Client Programming with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
Distributed Applications
Collection 2548: Core Distributed Application Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
Collection 2549: Advanced Distributed Application Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
.NET Framework 2.0
Collection 2364: What's New in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 for Existing Visual Studio .NET Developers
ASP.NET 2.0
Collection 3201: Developing Microsoft® ASP.NET 2.0 Web Applications

Jack Greenfield talks about software factories

Jack Greenfield talks about software factories, or software that builds software. The conceptual and practical aspects of the future of software development, and implications for developers are discussed.

Unmissable! Except for the final part, when Greenfield defends the industrialization of software won't generate unemployment, I'm totally signing bellow.

Microsoft joins OpenAjax

Ok, now I my fears of Ajax lack of (unified) support are (apparently) over - read all about it!

What a list:

The Alliance is also announcing that the following members have all been awarded OpenAjax Interoperability certificates: Apache XAP, Dojo Foundation, ICEsoft, ILOG, Isomorphic, IT Mill, Lightstreamer, Open Link, Open Spot, Nexaweb, Software AG and TIBCO. The interoperability certificates represent progress by both OpenAjax Alliance and its members towards defining and achieving industry support for OpenAjax Conformance.

[update] according to this, IBM, Sun, Bea Borland, Novell, Google are already there...

Microsoft Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance

in: http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2007/03/20/team-foundation-server-branching-guidance-now-available.aspx

The Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance whitepaper is now available! It's a comprehensive whitepaper that covers strategies, patterns and anti-patterns for branching and merging with TFS. You can view the branching guidance online or you can download the PDF version.

Branching Guidance Index
Introduction
Parallel Development
Branching Defined
Creating Isolation in Team Foundation Server
Isolation at Individual Level
Isolation for Collaboration
Branching Scenarios
General Branching Structure Guidance
Branching Checklist
Branching Strategies
Broad Areas of Branching Isolation
Creating Your Branching Strategy
Single Release Scenario
Multiple Release Scenario
Multiple Feature/Team Scenarios
Defining Your Code Promotion Model
Code Promotion Best Practices
Baseless Merges
Feature Crews: How Microsoft Does It
End-to-End Implementation Scenario
Step1 – Deciding on a Team Project structure
Step2 – Deciding on a branch structure
Step3- Following a release on paper
Step 4- Creating the physical structure
Appendix
Software Configuration Management
Branching and Merging Anti-Patterns
Branching in Team Foundation Server vs. Sharing in Visual SourceSafe
Labeling vs. Branching
Branching and Compliance
Identifying Environments
Virtual Build Labs


[update] And while you're there, VSTS Pattern & Practices section.

Who will Develop Software in 10 Years?

in: http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/03/software-development-years

Watch: Who will Develop Software in 10 Years? (39:59 min).

Some interesting perspectives from the panelists initial responses:

Frank Buschmann - more business people coding alongside developers thanks to new higher level tools such as DSLs - more autonomic computing - greater need for skilled professional developers; sees more software being developed locally (not outsourced)

Steve Cook - more software about software. Platform will be more introspective and richer - more modelling, and modeling as part of the OS - 20% of GDP of the US today has to do with software; 30-40% of world GDP will be related to software - massive increase in software development will mean more jobs for software developers, no thread of outsourcing taking jobs - software development done as a supply chain

Jimmy Nilsson - more business experts involved in SW development - more software development will be done locally

Dave Thomas - todays platforms are very buggy, he is optimistic about future platforms getting better, infact it must get better because "technology is growing at a quadratic, but the value in business software is growing exponentially in terms of domain content", and unless it happens we will "die in the testing hell we have been in for a long time. 50% of any real successful product is testing, so I think shifting that is going to be very important.." - sees some radically different programming technologies (beyond "current kind of object stuff")and platforms being used, cites current specialized work in bioinformatics, finance

Following their initial responses, questions raised also discussed if Google will be the next MS?, multi-core & parallism, grid computing, software stacks of the future, and more.What do you think about how software will be developed in 10 years?

Database Unit Testing with Team Edition for Database Professionals

Summary: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals is the first toolset to deliver a comprehensive framework for performing database unit tests. This product brings to the data community the same first-class capabilities for performing unit tests that many application developers enjoy today. This paper explains exactly what database unit testing is, shows you how to develop database unit tests by using the framework, and walks you through how to leverage its rich capabilities to develop an effective strategy for performing database unit tests inside your organization. (21 printed pages)

What the heck is Dependency Replication?

Dependency Replication is a process that most development teams have to do
as the scope of what they are trying to achieve grows. The idea is that within
your organisation you might have a set of common frameworks that you use and
maintain. Rather than linking in the source code into each new project that you
undertake you treat the framework like an internal product which you build
seperately.

BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March Community Technology Preview is released

BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is an add on for Windows Workflow Foundation in the .NET Framework 3.0. BPEL is the Business Process Execution Language and this download is an unsupported Community Technology Preview (CTP) for using this technology with WF. The download, which is aimed at software developers, provides import and export tools for BPEL and includes WF activities representing BPEL for the WF designer in Visual Studio 2005.

This release reinforces how WF is extensible and not dependant on any specific modeling language for its declarative modeling approach. Others in the community are encouraged to build activity sets that represent other process modeling languages that suit their needs. By supporting declarative modelling with WF in an extensible way Microsoft is providing .NET Framework developers with a familiar code oriented approach that can also be higher level and more productive.

New "Orcas" Language Feature: Extension Methods

Here's another Guthrie's great post about C#3, with a simple "down to earth" explanation about extension methods.

Continuous integration made easy

It'a about time! Here is CI made easy:

CI Factory is a canned Continuous Integration(CI) server and installation script. Adherence to a standard development workspace allows for this product to build most any project out of the box. It uses a plugin architecture. For more information on what it is and how it works see the introduction.
If you are ready to get start using it download it and read the install document. You should be able to get a build server up and running in no time. Packages currently bundled with the CI Factory installer:

Visual Source Safe
Subversion
Assembly and product versioning
PVCS Tracker
.NET Visual Studio 2003/2005 solution compilation
Unit
Test execution with MbUnit
Code Coverage with CoverageEye
nDepend
Deployment artifact publication
Install Shield or VS deployment packages

Independent Packages :

Ant
VB6Compile
LinesOfCode
MSTest
NCover
BackUp
Simian
Analytics

Structuring Projects for Team Foundation Server

J.D. Meier's has just posted his opinion about project structuration on TFS. Here it is.

Shifts in .NET Object-Relational maps (ORMs): Seismic and subtle

Here's George Lawton and Jack Vaughan opinion about OR/M momentum. In this post, they reference Tech Talks’s Hassa as saying:

LINQ is a fact for the future – the question is only when, whether it will be launched proper at the end of 2007 or if we need to wait until 2008. ORMs should provide a good migration story to LINQ and protect your project investments for the time when LINQ has been released.

I couldn't agree more.

The gods must be crazy

No comments: http://www.defyallchallenges.com/

What next? I'm afraid to ask... Ok, msdn.microsoft.com is not too appealing for people who doesn't have to use it, but COME ON!...

[update] shouldn't this at least be written in WPF/E? Why Flash?

The death of computing

In this interesting post, Neil McBride says:

Computer science was populated by mathematicians and physicists but now virtual robots can be created by eight-year olds without needing programming, logic or discrete mathematics skills. Does that mean we have a dying discipline?

...

Dropping numbers of A Level students, a view that IT is a job for geeks and social misfits and a perception that there’s nothing interesting in computer science doesn’t help. Even the value of the research base is being questioned.

...

Computer science has lost its mystique. There is no longer a need for a vast army of computer scientists. The applications, games and databases that students once built laboriously in final year projects are bought at bookshops and newsagents.

And the problem's global. In the US, the number of students choosing computer science dropped by 39 per cent between 2000 and 2005. In Australia, cuts in IT academic staff are the order of the day.

Where are Vista's security problems?

Strangely enough, the next Microsoft Bulletins won't contain any security reference. Is Vista the first Microsoft OS that proves itself from day 0, or is Vista just not being used at all?

[Update] After writing this post, I've checked my Vista's updates: Microsoft is yet to post a critical update...

Hiring and Interviewing Engineers

Need some help hiring people? Here's Hanselman's aproach.

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista

Yeap, here it is, the final one.