Microsoft Live Labs Volta

Microsoft Live Labs has released a CTP version of new web development tool named "Volta" which uses existing tools available in .NET framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.

Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. Also, thanks to a shared programming model across multiple-tiers, Volta enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. Using the declarative tier-splitting, developers can refine architectural decisions based on this profiling data. This saves time and costs associated with manual refactoring. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.

To Know more about Volta please visit the following URL.

http://labs.live.com/volta/

Are you Excited ? I am . Visual Studio 2008 RTM Released !

On November 19th Microsoft has released VS 2008 RTM which is available for download by MSDN subscribers.

To know more about the release visit Soma's Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-2008-and-net-framework-3-5-shipped.aspx

You can download a free copy of Visual Web Developer 2008 from following site and try it out yourself.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/

To know more about what are the features VWD 2008 does not supports you can visit Mikhail's Blog.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikhailarkhipov/archive/2006/06/26/647516.aspx

Also available is the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training kit. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7602397 (120MB). This includes presentations, hands-on labs and demos -- and is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2008 features and a variety of framework technologies including LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight, Mobile and Application Lifecycle Management.

There are lots of training materials on all the new features like Multi-targeting Support, LINQ, JavaScript Debugging and Intellisense, new CSS editor, WCF Support for RSS, JSON, POX and Partial Trust etc. are available in following path.

http://www.asp.net/downloads/vs2008/


Happy Learning.

F# : New generation Functional Programming Language from Microsoft

Functional programming is the best approach to solving many thorny computing problems,but pure FP isn’t suitable for general-purpose programming. So, FP languages have gradually embraced aspects of the imperative and OO paradigms, remaining true to the FP paradigm but incorporating features needed to easily write any kind of program. Some of the most popular functional languages, including OCaml, Haskell, Lisp, and Scheme, have traditionally been implemented using custom runtimes, which leads to problems such as lack of interoperability.

F# is a general-purpose programming language for .NET, a general-purpose runtime. F# smoothly integrates all three major programming paradigms.With F#, you can choose which ever paradigm works best to solve problems in the most effective way. You can do pure FP, if you’re a purist, but you can easily combine functional, imperative, and object-oriented styles in the same program and exploit the strengths of each paradigm. Like other typed functional languages, F# is strongly typed but also uses inferred typing, so programmers don’t need to spend time explicitly specifying types unless an ambiguity exists. Further, F# seamlessly integrates with the .NET Framework base class library (BCL).Using the BCL in F# is as simple as using it in C# or Visual Basic (and maybe even simpler).F# was modeled on Objective Caml (OCaml), a successful object-oriented FP language, and then tweaked and extended to mesh well technically and philosophically with .NET. It fully embraces .NET and enables users to do everything that .NET allows. The F# compiler can compile for all implementations of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), it supports .NET generics without changing any code, and it even provides for inline Intermediate Language(IL) code. The F# compiler not only produces executables for any CLI but can also runon any environment that has a CLI, which means F# is not limited to Windows but can run on Linux, Apple Mac OS X, and OpenBSD. The F# compiler can be integrated into Visual Studio, supporting IntelliSense expression completion and automatic expression checking. It also gives tooltips to show what types have been inferred for expressions. Programmers often comment that this really helps bring the language to life.

F# was invented by Dr. Don Syme and is now the product of a small but highly dedicatedteam he heads at Microsoft Research (MSR) in Cambridge, England. However, F# is not just aresearch or academic language. It is used for a wide variety of real-world applications, whosenumber is growing rapidly.Although other FP languages run on .NET, F# has established itself as the de facto .NET functional programming language because of the quality of its implementation and its superb integration with .NET and Visual Studio.

To know more details on F# and to download visit the following site.

http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/fsharp.aspx

Microsoft Releasing .NET as Shared Source

Microsoft has decided to open up the code for its .NET Framework, though not as an open source project. Microsoft is releasing it under a Shared Source license, specifically the Microsoft Reference License, that allows developers access to all the source code, but only to look, not to change it. Microsoft wants to be more open, but it wants control of its own specs, so this license allows it to be a little more open with the community, while retaining control.

This will definitely help developers in debugging their application.

ScotGu announced this in his blog

Read some thoughts on the change at Mary Jo Foley’s blog.

Software As Services Vs Software Plus Services

For decades companies develop there own software or purchase form vendors and run the applications in their own infrastructure. But things are changed now. Availability of high bandwidth network, powerful processors and inexpensive storage and increase in cost of maintenance changed the complete delivery model. Software as a Service is a new delivery model where companies pay not for owning the software itself but for using it. In the SaaS scenario, a software provider is responsible for its availability (maintenance, scalability, disaster recovery, etc.). That’s what the companies pay for.

Last few months Microsoft has being talking a lot about a new buzz "Software Plus services" in all of the major conferences like Microsoft partner's conference , MIX, TechEd .Actually it is not a new methodology. It has been used by many companies like Apple and Google for years. Microsoft is going to use the same strategy for the new lines of products like Microsoft Live, Microsoft Live CRM etc.So what software plus services is the delivery model where enterprises will have choice of including on-premises solutions and hosted solutions.

Jon DeVadoss, Director of Architecture Strategy Microsoft Corporation mentioned in one of the his keynote address that the notion of Software Plus Services is a convergence of software as a service (SaaS), service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 technologies.

But if we change the software plus services to services plus software it changes the complete delivery model. Services plus software approach would put the software on the server, rather than the desktop, and much of the complexity with it.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Vs ASP.NET Web services

When we discuss about WCF several question always comes to our mind that what is the difference betweens WCF and web services? What is the advantage of using WCF? Should I use WCF or web services?

It is not possible to compare WCF and web services as both are different ways of communication between client and server. Here are few major features provided by WCF.

• WCF is a new generation distributed technology which integrates all the other middle tier technologies like web services, COM +, Remoting, MSMQ and provides a unique development environment. It supports all the features supported by these technologies.
  
• WCF is a services which can be hosted in IIS Servers, Windows services, as well as stand alone applications like windows form application, console application and WPF application
  
• Using Datacontractserializer provided by WCF complex data types and private attributes can be serialized and pass across the boundary.
  
• Using WCF messages can be transmitted using various channels like HTTP, TCP, MSMQ, Named pipe etc.
  
• WCF application are easily configurable using configuration files and utilities
  
• WCF can be integrated with other technologies and has great interoperability.
  
  Here are few links to learn WCF.
  
  https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/courseDetail.aspx?courseId=68396
  http://wcf.netfx3.com/content/resources.aspx
  

ASP.NET Community Recognition Program

Microsoft has started ASP.NET Community Recognition Program to recognize people who are helping the asp.net community by answering questions,posting blog,writing articles etc.It is a pont based system.Each activity have a specific point.Based on point earned you will be part of Microsoft Hall of Fame.