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Archives
Posts from Doug Holland (Intel) 
 |
A "blue-badge" .net architect and developer at Intel Corporation since March 2007, Doug Holland is part of the Visual Computing Group and is presently working within an advanced tools and development team with an emphasis on chipset and driver testing. Doug Holland holds a Master's Degree in Software Engineering from Oxford University and has been awarded both the Microsoft MVP and Intel Black Belt Developer awards. Outside of work, Doug enjoys spending time with his wife and four children; and is also an officer in the Civil Air Patrol / U.S. Air Force Auxiliary. Beyond architecting and developing software you can often find Doug at the local airport flying Cessna's over the California landscape. |
Microsoft PDC 2009 - Patterns of Parallel Programming Workshop
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 16, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Comments (0)
I'm presently attending the Microsoft PDC 2009 conference and I am today in the Patterns of Parallel Programming workshop. It appeared that the workshop was being recorded and so I sent an e-mail to some of the PDC 2009 organizers and can confirm that the Patterns of Parallel Programming workshop recording will be available to all attendees. Richard [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Sacramento .NET Users Group - Microsoft PDC 2009
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 12, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Comments (0)
On November 24th I'll be coming back to the Sacramento .NET Users Group, this time be presenting all the technologies showcased and announced at the PDC the week before. What exactly will you see that night? Well, that remains to be seen as the teams in Redmond are not saying much until next week although you'll be sure to find out [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 + Silverlight 3.0 SDK
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 21, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Comments (0)
Silverlight 3.0 development is supported within Visual Studio 2010 and it includes the Silverlight 3 developer runtime and Silverlight 3 SDK build 3.0.40818. Silverlight 3 tools for Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 3 included SDK build 3.0.40624 and if these are installed when you run the Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 installer an error will be [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 + Intel Core i7 Mobile Processor + 16Gb Memory
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 21, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Comments (0)
We have only 24 hours left until the General Availability (GA) of Windows 7 and so tomorrow Windows 7 will be in the hands of consumers for the first time. With the release of Windows 7, along with the release of some awesome new processors from Intel, it was time for a new personal notebook and also for a companion netbook [...]
Category: Intel® Atom™ Developer Program, Parallel Programming, Software Engineering, Virtualization
Microsoft PDC 2009 = Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 + RIA Services
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 20, 2009 at 8:22 am
Comments (0)
Yesterday beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 was released and Microsoft confirmed that the official launch date for Visual Studio 2010 will be March 22, 2010. After downloading the build one notable absentee was RIA Services although according to Brad Abrams the support for RIA services will be available at the PDC next month.
Category: Software Engineering
Download Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 - Official Launch March 22, 2010
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 19, 2009 at 8:56 am
Comments (8)
Microsoft today released beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 and confirmed that the official launch date for Visual Studio 2010 will be March 22, 2010. Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 was uploaded to MSDN subscriber downloads shortly after 9am PST this morning and this build includes a "go-live" license. You can read more about the release [...]
Category: Software Engineering
SQL Server 2008 - SQLCLR .NET Framework Version
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 16, 2009 at 11:28 am
Comments (0)
Since SQL Server 2005 we have had the ability to write User Defined Types (UDT's) and User Defined Aggregates (UDA's) etc. with the C# programming language that are executed by the .net framework CLR that is loaded within the SQL Server process. In SQL Server 2008 the latest service release of the .net framework CLR version 2.0 is [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2008 "DataDude" Duplicate Menu Items
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 16, 2009 at 9:01 am
Comments (0)
I discovered yesterday that within Visual Studio 2008 there were now duplicate menu items on the Data menu and also on the context menu when editing TSQL. It appears that the duplication of the menu items is caused by somehow having both the base release of the "datadude" components along with the more recent GDR release installed [...]
Category: Software Engineering
#pragma warning disable / restore
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 2, 2009 at 9:44 am
Comments (0)
It is sometimes necessary to disable and restore a compiler warning and this can be done in the C# programming language using the #pragma preprocessing directive. #pragma is used to optionally provide additional contextual information to the compiler. Compiler warnings can be disabled and restored using the following syntax. #pragma warning disable [warning list] #pragma warning restore [warning list] Using the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 - Code Coverage Settings Window Closes Unexpectedly
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 22, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Comments (0)
I discovered an issue with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 today that it appears to be related to the fact that the solution contains a Silverlight 3.0 project. When you add unit test projects to Visual Studio 2008 SP1 a default test run configuration file is added to the solution within the Solution Items solution folder. I have highlighted [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
PDC 2009 - Patterns of Parallel Programming
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 10, 2009 at 11:49 am
Comments (0)
I'll be attending the PDC in Los Angeles this November and would highly recommend you do the same if you are developing software upon the Windows platform in either managed or unmanaged code. While the main theme of this year's conference has not yet been announced, the PDC is definitely the place to be to discover where the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 .NET Framework Source Debugging
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 7, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Comments (8)
One feature of the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 debugger that many .net developers are unaware of is that it can be used to debug the .net framework source itself. Within the Visual Studio 2008 Options dialog are settings that allow you to use a reference source server provided by Microsoft that provides access to the source code [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Visual Studio Code Analysis Performance
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 4, 2009 at 11:00 am
Comments (0)
In defining the CODE_ANALYSIS constant for projects within Visual Studio, the selected code analysis rules are executed upon each build. While this provides us with excellent suggestions on how to improve the code that we write, there is an obvious performance impact to the analysis of the source code upon each build. So how can we improve the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Expression Blend 3.0 TFS Source Control
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 2, 2009 at 8:47 am
Comments (0)
Expression Blend 3.0 allows developers and designers to have an excellent design experience while editing Xaml for WPF and Silverlight applications. Expression Blend even uses the same solution and project files that the development team is using within Visual Studio so it makes sense that you'll be able to use TFS source control within Expression Blend also. If you [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2008 - Where is the Xaml Designer?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 2, 2009 at 12:37 am
Comments (9)
Within Visual Studio 2008 developers may have noticed that the Xaml designer has disappeared although it is actually merely hidden from view and so I thought it might be useful to write a blog post describing how to get the designer back. In the .NET Framework version 3.0, the Xaml language made its debut with the [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Oxford University's Radcliffe Camera on Bing.com
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 27, 2009 at 11:54 am
Comments (0)
As an Oxford University alumni it was very cool this morning to see the Radcliffe Camera featured on Bing, you can learn more about this interesting library here. I have a master's degree in software engineering from Oxford University and although I have walked past this building on numerous occasions they don't have too many software engineering text books. [...]
Category: Uncategorized
SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP "Kilimanjaro"
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 11, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Comments (1)
Microsoft has released a community technology preview of SQL Server 2008 R2, formerly known by the codename "Kilimanjaro" which can be downloaded from MSDN or TechNet and also directly from the SQL Server 2008 R2 homepage. Build 10.50.1092.20 can be seen here running on the Windows 7 RTM and details about what exactly is included within "Kilimanjaro" can be found on the SQL Server [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 RTM on MSDN and TechNet
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 6, 2009 at 9:16 am
Comments (8)
Windows 7 is available for download on MSDN and TechNet this morning. After activating the final Windows 7 build I thought I'd provide a few screen captures, as you can see here the final build is 7600. Within the Control Panel the System details can be seen here. Performance details can also be browsed and the system is scored between [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Intel Developer Forum 2009
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 4, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Comments (3)
Join us in San Francisco from September 22 through September 24th as we reset the boundaries of the technologies that are shaping the world within which we live. Come meet, collaborate, and learn from Intel employees and your peers at IDF 2009 where you'll have access to numerous technical sessions across 27 technical tracks.
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V - Importing Virtual Machines
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 28, 2009 at 10:13 am
Comments (0)
With the release to manufacturing of Windows Server 2008 R2 you may find yourself wanting to move virtual machines from Hyper-V within Windows Server 2008 to the Hyper-V within Windows Server 2008 R2. You'll begin by exporting the virtual machines as described within my previous blog post, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Import and Export. With Windows Server [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering, Virtualization
Windows 7 Brings Consolas Font to Command Prompt
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 27, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Comments (6)
I noticed this evening that the Consolas font that has become popular among developers using Visual Studio is now an option within the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 command prompts. Setting the Consolas font as the default command prompt font is done within the Font tab of the command prompt properties Window, shown here. Once [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Windows 7 RTM Build 6.1.7600.16385
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 22, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Comments (4)
According to Larry Osterman's blog on MSDN the final build of Windows 7 signed off today is build 6.1.7600.16385.
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Windows 7 Team Approves RTM Build
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 22, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Comments (4)
I just discovered that the Windows 7 team has approved a build as the final release to manufacturing, or RTM, build. Windows Server 2008 R2 has also been released to manufacturing and details regarding on when you'll be able to download the official RTM builds from MSDN and TechNet are available on the Windows Team [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 - Zune Software
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 15, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Comments (4)
I have owned a 30Gb Microsoft Zune player for sometime now and I also use the 64-bit build of Windows Server 2008 SP2 on several machines upon which I had some music I wanted to move to the Zune player. It appears however that the 64-bit build of Windows Server 2008 SP2 operating system isn't supported by the Zune software. Although I [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Ready.Set.7.- Intel and Windows 7
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 13, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Comments (4)
After receiving an e-mail from Rafael Rivera today, I discovered that one of my previous blog posts, entitled Windows 7 'Incredibly Stable,' Intel Expert Says, was featured in a video on the Microsoft Showcase site. Within the video, Renee James, CVP & GM, Software and Services Group, Intel shares her thoughts on Windows 7 and how [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering, Virtualization
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Import and Export
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 13, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Comments (2)
In the coming few days I'm going to be looking at some of the continuous integration capabilities in the current version of Team Foundation Server. I have been using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtualization for some time to explorer capabilities in existing software along with beta software and so I began by creating a new virtual [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering, Virtualization
Windows 7 Pre-Sale Upgrades
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 6, 2009 at 11:00 am
Comments (5)
Microsoft is currently selling the upgrades for Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional for only $49.00 and $99.00 respectfully although these offers are limited and have already sold out in Japan!!! Unfortunately there are only discounts available for the Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional versions, so if you're interested in the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade then you'll [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Parallel Execution of Visual Studio Team System Unit Tests
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 2, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Comments (6)
While running some unit tests within Visual Studio 2008 it seemed that it would often be possible to execute the unit tests in parallel on multi-processor or multi-core machines. Obviously thread safety would be the responsibility of the test authors and the parallel execution of the unit tests could be an optional capability with the default being [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Microsoft Office 2010 Real Life Stories - Want Office 2010 For Free?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 30, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Comments (2)
Deadline June 30th 2009 Are you a student, small business owner, or home user? Would you be interested in getting Office 2010 for free? If you are interested then you should apply for the Office 2010 Real Life Stories program where you'll receive a free copy of Office 2010 if you agree to give the Office team [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft TechEd 2009 Australia - Free HP Netbook 2140
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 29, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Comments (0)
When attending Microsoft PDC last year in Los Angeles, CA there were many attendees who thought it was cool to get a free Western Digital USB hard drive. It seems though that that was nothing compared to what attendees at the Australian TechEd 2009 conference will walk away with. If you're in Australia, or you feel [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Tribal Knowledge in Software Engineering
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 26, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Comments (3)
In software engineering we often talk of various ilities such as maintainability, securability, or scalability. All of these ilities are much easier to obtain, and to retain, if the software is effectively designed and implemented. The design and implementation of the software must then be effectively documented such that it can also be effectively communicated. Why then do we continuously encounter [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Want the Windows 7 RTM Build? Order Windows 7 Today...
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 26, 2009 at 8:42 am
Comments (2)
Are you one of the millions of people around the world who have downloaded the Windows 7 beta and release candidate builds? Would you like a copy of the final RTM code? Here is your chance now that Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 can be ordered beginning today and you can order your copy right now!!! At [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Connecting Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer to Team Foundation Server 2010
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 10, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Comments (8)
A few days ago I decided to install Windows Server 2008 SP2 along with the beta of Team Foundation Server 2010 so that I could kick the tires and see what Brian Harry and his team have done with the forthcoming release. One major improvement with Team Foundation Server 2010 is that it supports 64-bit operating systems within [...]
Category: Software Engineering
ASP.NET MVC 1.0 - MSDN Events Mountain View, CA
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 10, 2009 at 11:18 am
Comments (2)
I'll be speaking at the MSDN Event in Mountain View, CA on June 16, 2009 where I'll be presenting a session discussing the ASP.NET MVC framework and how it differs from ASP.NET WebForms. Have heard about the new ASP.NET MVC framework from Microsoft and wondered what it was all about or maybe you are curious whether this framework replaces ASP.NET WebForms? In this session [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 RTM July 2009, General Availability October 22, 2009
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 2, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Comments (0)
Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will RTM next month and the final build should be with select partners towards the end of July. MSDN and TechNet subscribers should be among the first to be able to download the final bits although no date has been specified for when subscribers will have access. General availability will [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Training Kit
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 22, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Comments (0)
If you've downloaded the Visual Studio 2010beta you'll definitely want to download the associated training kit. Visual Studio 2010 includes so many great new features and I'll be exploring many of them in the coming few weeks and months as we progress towards beta two and then on to RC and RTM builds.
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Download Visual Studio 2010 Beta One Today!!!
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 18, 2009 at 11:46 am
Comments (3)
Microsoft released the Visual Studio 2010 Beta today for MSDN subscribers to download and over the next few days and weeks I'll be blogging about the new features inside this release. If you're an MSDN subscriber you'll be able to download the build today while, if you're not an MSDN subscriber then fear not as the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Wall-Mountable Samsung Blu-Ray Player
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 13, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Comments (2)
If you're like me, the first time you thought of placing your television on the wall above the fire place, you might have thought that was strange. What about wall mounting your DVD or Blu-Ray player? Samsung electronics just e-mailed me about the BD-P4600 which is now available in the US and all I have to [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Microsoft TechEd 2009 Keynote
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 13, 2009 at 9:48 am
Comments (0)
If you've never attended TechEd or PDC, the week usually begins with a keynote address designed to get the attendees excited about forthcoming technologies coming from the teams in Redmond and beyond. As a software developer, this years TechEd left me wondering where was the announcements to get excited about. Sure we have the RC builds of [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM Details
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 12, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Comments (1)
Steven Sinofsky blogged yesterday that we "will enter the final phases of the RTM process in about 3 months". I have been using various builds of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 almost exclusively now since the operating systems were presented to developers during last years Professional Developers Conference (PDC). After months of using both the client and [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Microsoft TechEd 2009 Kicks Off Tomorrow
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 10, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Comments (8)
Microsoft TechEd 2009 will kick off tomorrow morning at the Los Angeles Convention Center and if you're unable to attend you can follow the announcements online at Microsoft TechEd Online. You'll be able to watch the keynote address beginning at 10:00am PST on Microsoft TechEd Online and I'll also be blogging my way through the week.
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
MSDN Subscriber Downloads - Windows 7 RC
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 30, 2009 at 9:42 am
Comments (3)
The Windows 7 Release Candidate, build 7100, is now available to download from MSDN and TechNet, along with the associated SDK and debug symbols. If you're not an MSDN or TechNetsubscriber then you'll be able to download the build on May 5th. Also available to download is the Windows Server 2008 R2 RC, also build 7100. An interesting feature of Windows 7 was revealed [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Windows 7 Release Candidate Update
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 24, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Comments (14)
According to the Windows Team Blog the Windows 7 Release Candidate, build 7100, will be available to download from MSDN and TechNet on April 30th. If you're not an MSDN or TechNet subscriber then you'll be able to download the build on May 5th. It is also likely that Windows Server 2008 R2 RC, also build 7100, [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
2009 Lang.NET Symposium
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 23, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Comments (0)
On April 14th the 2009 Lang.NET Symposium took place on the Microsoft Corporate campus in Redmond, WA and the session videos from the symposium are now online here. In this years languages symposium you'll find some interesting discussions on the C# programming language version 4.0, safe concurrency using the Axum language, and concurrency using F#.
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Windows 7 Release Candidate Available to Select Partners
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 18, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Comments (6)
Microsoft's Partner Program Website today announced the availability of the Windows 7 Release Candidate. According to the announcement the public availability of the Windows 7 Release Candidate will be May 5th 2009 although MSDN and TechNet Subscribers are able to download the build now. After checking both the MSDN and TechNet subscriber downloads areas it appears that the builds are yet to [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
MVP's Attend TechEd 2009 - Keynote Wish List...
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 15, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Comments (8)
It is now less than a month now until I'll be attending the Microsoft TechEd 2009 conference in Los Angeles, CA and so I began to think about what I'd like to see announced during the keynote speeches. I'd like to first add that I have absolutely no insight into what Microsoft will announce during the [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Office "14" 64-bit Evidence
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 14, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Comments (2)
It seems that although very few people outside Redmond have seen the next version of Microsoft Office, codenamed Office "14", there are extensions for Office "14" publicly available. As Rafael Rivera revealed in his Within Windows blog, the Microsoft Office ScreenTip Language, appears to have provide evidence of a natively compiled 64-bit version of Office "14". It would certainly be [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Detecting IE 8.0 with Client-Side JavaScript
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 14, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Comments (0)
Giorgio Sardo has an excellent post on his blog where he discusses how to detect IE8.0 using client-side JavaScript. With IE8.0 having three rendering engines it is no longer a simple case of comparing the version token and so I'd recommend you take a look at his post here.
Category: Software Engineering
Northern Nevada Software Developers Group - Model-Driven Software Engineering
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 8, 2009 at 11:19 am
Comments (0)
I'll be in Reno, NV next month at the Northern Nevada Software Developers Group on May 27th presenting a session on Model-Driven Software Engineering and why we must continue to climb the abstraction ladder to be successful as software engineers. We'll look at the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the experience that I and others have had applying [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Sacramento .NET Users Group - Tips & Tricks for the Visual Studio 2008 Debugger
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 8, 2009 at 11:00 am
Comments (0)
On April 28th I'll be back at the Sacramento .NET Users Group presenting Tips & Tricks for the Visual Studio 2008 Debugger. The Visual Studio debugger is a highly underutilized tool for many developers. In this session, you’ll learn how to use it like a pro, while picking up new techniques to fast-forward your problem solving [...]
Category: Software Engineering
SQL Server 2008 SP1 Released to Manufacturing
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 8, 2009 at 10:00 am
Comments (1)
Microsoft has released to manufacturing SQL Server 2008 SP1 which can be downloaded from here. The initial RTM version of SQL Server 2008 was build 10.0.1600.22 and with SQL Server 2008 SP1 applied the build is now 10.0.2531.0 and so what has changed between the RTM and SP1 builds? SQL Server 2008 SP1 is primarily a roll-up of cumulative updates and minor fixes [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Symantec EndPoint Protection on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 6, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Comments (6)
I have been using Symantec EndPoint Protection, formerly known as Symantec Corporate AntiVirus, for over a year now on our home PC's because it also supports server versions of the Windows operating system. Yesterday I found the following Web page on from Symantec Support which indicates that Symantec EndPoint Protection version 11.0.4 can be used unsupported on the Windows 7 beta. After downloading [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Team Foundation Server Express Edition
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 6, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Comments (5)
One of the great aspects of SourceSafe was that it could be installed upon a Windows client operating system such as Windows Vista or Windows 7. With Team Foundation Server we have an excellent environment for team based development of larger projects. What should we do though with source code that is not related to larger projects? What we really need is Team Foundation [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Dell's Windows 7 Beta Experience
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 5, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Comments (13)
I just stumbled upon an interesting blog post from Daniel Judd describing the Dell's experience with beta testing Windows 7.
Category: Software Engineering
SQL Server 2008 Settings / Fault Retry Provider
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 2, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Comments (0)
While looking recently online for a design pattern for implementing a generic retry of operations that could possibly fail I found a really interesting project over on CodePlex. The SQL Fault Retry Provider project demonstrates best practices for implementing highly available database applications using SQL Server mirroring technology in the database tier. I wrote an e-mail to Bonnie [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Uncategorized
Save IE6.0 - Internet Explorer 6.0 Needs You!!!
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 1, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Comments (4)
Before IE7.0 and IE8.0 push IE6.0 to extinction help save IE6.0, visit http://www.saveie6.com.
Category: Software Engineering
IE 8.0 Script Debugging and Visual Studio 2005
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 1, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Comments (2)
If you're a Web developer and you're currently using Visual Studio 2005 you should be aware of a potential issue with script debugging after Internet Explorer 8.0 is installed. In this MSDN blog postyou'll find a discussion of the issue and the associated workarounds until it is fixed. Users with of Internet Explorer 8.0 and Visual Studio 2008 are not affected by [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft MVP Award
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 1, 2009 at 10:23 am
Comments (18)
I just learned today that I have been awarded a Microsoft MVP award for 2009 which, like the Intel Black Belt Developer award, recognizes those who contribute to the developer communities both online and offline. I am honored to be recognized as a Microsoft MVP and an Intel Black Belt Developer and look forward to continuing to write and [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio Team Test 2008 Quick Reference
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 31, 2009 at 8:16 am
Comments (0)
An 88 page quick reference guide for Visual Studio Team Test 2008 can now be found on CodePlex here.
Category: Software Engineering
The C# Programming Language Version 4.0
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 30, 2009 at 10:02 am
Comments (145)
Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 will soon be in beta and there are some excellent new features that we can all get excited about with this new release. Along with Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 we will see version 4.0 of the C# programming language. In this blog post I thought I'd look [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Task Parallel Library Beta 1
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 27, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Comments (4)
It has been six months since the last CTP build of the Task Parallel Library (TPL) was released within the .NET Framework 4.0 build distributed at Microsoft PDC in October last year. On the team blog today a post detailing some of the changes that have been made to the library since the Visual Studio 2010 [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Release Candidate
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 26, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Comments (0)
According to the website Ars Technica the Windows 7 Release Candidate will be available sometime in May and it appears they have some evidence to back up that claim. As you can see here someone at Microsoft mistakenly enabled the download page for the Windows 7 RC on the TechNet website. If you have been following my recent [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft MIX 2009 - Sessions Online
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 19, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Comments (0)
Nigel Parker's blog over on MSDN just announced that the sessions from the first day of the Microsoft MIX 2009 conference are now available for streaming and download. You can find the sessions here: http://sessions.visitmix.com/MIX09
Category: Software Engineering
ASP.NET 4.0 Whitepaper
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 19, 2009 at 9:57 am
Comments (0)
Although Visual Studio 2010 was not released in beta at the MIX 2009 conference, the ASP.NET team has made available a whitepaper on the new features that will be available in the forthcoming beta. You can read the whitepaper online here or download it here. An interesting discussion with Stephen Walther on ASP.NET 4.0 features can also be [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft MIX 2009 - Day Two Keynote
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 18, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Comments (0)
Beginning at 09:00 tomorrow I'll be blogging again through the second keynote address at Microsoft MIX 2009in Las Vegas, NV. Microsoft will be making available the Day 2 keynote address live at the MIX 2009 site and you can already watch the opening keynote and a question and answer session with Scott Guthrie called Ask the Gu. During the opening keynote [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft MIX 2009 - Opening Keynote
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 18, 2009 at 7:13 am
Comments (6)
Microsoft's Web technologies conference is kicking off in under an hour in Las Vegas, NV and if you're unable to attend then at 09:00 open up your browser to MIX Online. What will Microsoft be discussing during the keynote? Expect to hear more about the forthcoming upgrade to Internet Explorer, IE 8.0, and maybe even an [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio - Is Your Project Location Trusted?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 17, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Comments (5)
Sometimes when opening a Visual Studio solution or project you may see the following error which informs you that the project location is not trusted. As the dialog box informs us, this can cause security exceptions when attempting to perform tasks requiring full trust. One such task is the execution of unit tests within the team [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Team System "Big Event"
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 12, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Comments (0)
In this invitation only event, don't worry I have the ultra-secret invitation codes here, you'll be able to see the best of VSTS 2008 while also getting an early view at what is coming in VSTS 2010. You'll find the one day Team System "Big Event" in Denver CO, Mountain View CA, Irvine CA, Portland OR, and [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Team Foundation Server + Windows Azure
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 11, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Comments (2)
In my previous blog post entitled Got Cloud Computing? I suggested that the economy could fuel the adoption of Cloud Computing technologies such as Windows Azure. It occurred to me today that Visual Studio Team Foundation Server might benefit considerably from entering the Cloud and being hosted on Microsoft Data Centers. With Microsoft Online Services customers are able to elect to [...]
Category: Software Engineering
SQL Data Services - Got Cloud Databases?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 10, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Comments (1)
According to a blog post today from the SQL Data Services team, SQL Data Services will soon have support for many relational database concepts. What is SQL Data Services? SQL Data Services is based upon SQL Server technology and is designed to deliver highly-scalable distributed database services for the cloud. SQL Data Services blog. SQL Data Services development center. SQL Data Services will now [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Inside the Microsoft Build Engine
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 10, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Comments (11)
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi and William Bartholomew have written an excellent book entitled Inside the Microsoft Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build. MSBuld is without a doubt the best build engine I have ever used and with this book I have discovered it is actually even better than I'd previously imagined. Included within the book is an [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Intel "2019"
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 5, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Comments (5)
Microsoft "2019" was originally an internal video for employees within Microsoft showing some possible directions computing could go by the year 2019. I wonder where Intel and our technologies will be in 2019? Watch the Microsoft "2019" video and then maybe comment on where you see Intel and our technologies being in 2019.
Category: Software Engineering
Unit Testing Internal Code
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 5, 2009 at 12:08 am
Comments (2)
While presenting yesterday at the MSDN Event in Mountain View I was asked by someone how you go about unit testing internal code. We'll use the open source CodePlex.Diagnostics framework that I wrote to illustrate how this can be achieved. Within a C# project you have types that are marked as internal and then within a separate C# [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio Object Test Bench
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 4, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Comments (7)
Yesterday I was in Mountain View at the Microsoft Campus presenting a session on debugging for MSDN Events and I asked the hundred or so developers there if they had heard of the Visual Studio Object Test Bench. I was surprised when not a single person raised their hand and so I thought I would [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Got Cloud Computing?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 4, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Comments (1)
During the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) last October Microsoft announced Windows Azure, letting the world know that Microsoft was serious about our futures being within the Cloud. At the time I would have to say that I thought the question of when Cloud Computing technologies, such as Windows Azure, would be adopted or not was based more in psychology than technology. Microsoft, Google, and [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2008
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 28, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Comments (1)
While attending the MSDN Conference on Monday last week I decided to switch tracks for the last session and listened into the SQL Data Services presentation by Lynn Langit (socaldevgal). Beyond being an excellent session on SQL Data Services, Lynn gave away three copies of her recently published book, Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008. I [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Beta Fish on Windows Server 2008 R2
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 28, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Comments (2)
After testing both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 for sometime I have grown somewhat fond of the betta fish background on Windows 7. Windows Server 2008 R2 however doesn't have this theme although you can install the backgrounds from Windows 7 into Windows Server 2008 R2 with ease. On a machine running Windows 7 [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2010 Zoom Slider Control
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 26, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Comments (11)
Wouldn't it be awesome if the next version of Visual Studio had a zoom slider control much like the one found in Microsoft Office applications? If you ever have Visual Studio on a projector you'll often have people ask you to increase the font size or if you're looking at a diagram they'll ask for you [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Release Candidate Changes Since Beta
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 26, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Comments (5)
Today the Windows 7 team discussed changes that we'll see in the forthcoming release candidate build that the team has been working on since they released the beta. You can read about what you can expect from the release candidate here.
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio Profiler Patch for Intel Core i7 Processors
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 25, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Comments (0)
Microsoft yesterday published a patch for the Visual Studio Profiler that fixes issues related to sample profiling on the Intel Core i7 Processor. More information can be found on the Visual Studio Profiler Team blog.
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
How the Red Dog Dream Team Built a Cloud OS From Scratch
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 25, 2009 at 12:50 am
Comments (0)
Mary Jo Foley has an excellent blog post describing the "Red Dog" team that build the cloud computing operating system behind Windows Azure. You can read her post here.
Category: Software Engineering
VSLive - Visual Studio 2010 New Look
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 25, 2009 at 12:32 am
Comments (4)
Jason Zander, General Manager of Visual Studio, today unveiled the new look of Visual Studio to attendees of the VSLive Conference in San Francisco, CA. Since the Professional Developers Conference (PDC), few details about the forthcoming release have emerged from Redmond and the Community Technology Preview (CTP) build made available at that time is still the [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft DreamSpark for High School Students
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 24, 2009 at 10:17 am
Comments (0)
Microsoft DreamSpark is now also open to High School students allowing them free copies of the following Microsoft products: Microsoft Visual Studio Professional. Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Microsoft Expression Studio 2.0. Microsoft Windows Server 2008. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008. Concurrency Coordination Runtime (CCR) and Decentralized Software Services (DSS) Toolkit. Xna Game Studio 3.0. Details of the program can be found here.
Category: Academic, Software Engineering
Windows 7 Release Candidate...
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 19, 2009 at 10:57 am
Comments (6)
Word on the blogosphere is that we might see the RC build of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 this month. Both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have proven themselves to be very stable during the 7000 series beta builds and there are many of us who are now using those builds as [...]
Category: Software Engineering
MSDN Events Mountain View, CA
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 13, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Comments (2)
I'll be speaking at the MSDN Event in Mountain View, CA on March 3rd 2009 where I'll be presenting on the Visual Studio debugger. In this session you'll learn how to use the Visual Studio debugger like a pro. We’ll show you how to use advanced breakpoints, advanced watch window / expression evaluator tricks, modifiers, [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Northern Nevada Software Developers Group
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 13, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Comments (2)
I'll be speaking on February 25th at the Northern Nevada Software Developers Group in Reno where I'll be presenting some of the new technologies announced at PDC. If you were unable to attend Microsoft PDC or one of the MSDN Conferences and you're interested in learning more about Windows 7, Visual Studio 2010, the .NET Framework 4.0, and Windows Azure [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Adoption
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 13, 2009 at 11:36 am
Comments (8)
Tom Pattson wrote a comment on one of my earlier posts that got me thinking about when it will be appropriate to adopt Visual Studio 2010 and the .net framework 4.0. Tom indicated that he, like many others, would wait until the first service release and that he would let others debug Visual Studio 2010 and the .net [...]
Category: Software Engineering
No More Microsoft Flight Simulator Releases
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 31, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Comments (13)
I was just reading some posts over at the AOPA forums and discovered a post indicating that the Microsoft team that was responsible for writing Microsoft Flight Simulator would be closed. As a pilot I use Microsoft Flight Simulator for training scenarios and often fly to a new airport virtually before flying there for real. If Microsoft Flight [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Programming Microsoft LINQ
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 29, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Comments (14)
One of the most advanced features to be added to the Microsoft .NET Framework and associated programming languages has been Language Integrated Query (LINQ). Integrating query capabilities directly into the programming language and making the syntax for those queries agnostic to the data source is truly awesome. LINQ can be used to query anything from an [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows Server 2008 R2 - Workstation License?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 20, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Comments (2)
Given the considerable interest in using Windows Server 2008 as a workstation operating system would it make sense for Microsoft to license the software for workstation use? With Windows Server 2008 R2 sharing the same kernel as the Windows 7 client operating system what are the benefits of using Windows Server 2008 R2 as a workstation operating system? The major reason I use [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 'Incredibly Stable,' Intel Expert Says
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 20, 2009 at 11:25 am
Comments (11)
A few days ago I was surprised when I received an e-mail from Josh Bancroft indicating that I had been quoted by Paul McDougall over at InformationWeek regarding the stability of the new Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. While I do believe that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are very stable operating systems [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Using Windows 7 with Projectors
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 19, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Comments (3)
If you work within a corporate environment you have undoubtedly had to deal with connecting your notebook to a projector with varied results. With Windows 7 simply select the Windows key and 'P' at the same time and you'll be presented with the display switch utility. Using the display switch utility, which is also available by [...]
Category: Software Engineering
System.Telepathy Namespace
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 15, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Comments (2)
I have thought for a while that it would be great if the .net framework team could add the System.Telepathy namespace to a future version of the framework. Sometimes a computer should just know what you want it to do and the types in this namespace could really help. Such as when I reboot a machine [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Beta - Multi-Display Remote Desktop
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 13, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Comments (9)
Another feature supported by the Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 beta builds that is really cool is support for multi-display remote desktop sessions. Simply open the remote desktop session and then go to the display options and you will see that there is now a checkbox entitled "Use all my monitors for the remote session". Unfortunately [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Beta - DVD Writer
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 13, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Comments (14)
I have now been using the Windows Server 2008 R2 beta and Windows 7 beta builds for some time and have found them to be incredibly stable. I am now using the Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta "Aero Enabled" Workstation as the primary OS on both my personal notebook and desktop and would do so also on my corporate notebook [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Why I now use Windows Live Search
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 13, 2009 at 11:53 am
Comments (4)
Some time ago I changed my home page to the Windows Live Search page and the reason for doing so had nothing to do with search at all. Beyond the fact that the Windows Live Search page brings an interesting image from around the world each day, it actually presents me with an opportunity to [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Uninstalling Microsoft Update
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 9, 2009 at 11:49 am
Comments (0)
On one computer using Windows Server 2008 R2 it appears that Microsoft Update was not working and so I'll have to revert to using the standard Windows Update. Just how to uninstall Microsoft Update is not that obvious so I thought I'd quickly write a blog post to tell you how it can be done. Open the Windows Update control panel and select [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta "Aero Enabled" Workstation
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 9, 2009 at 11:39 am
Comments (24)
In February last year I wrote a blog post entitled Windows Server 2008 "Aero Enabled" Workstation Edition where I showed you how you could use Windows Server 2008 as a Workstation operating system. Since Microsoft has now released the beta for the next release of the server version of Windows, Windows Server 2008 R2 which [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Releases Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 8, 2009 at 7:22 am
Comments (2)
MSDN subscribers as of last night are able to download ISO images for both the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 beta. I'll have now installed Windows 7 build 7000 on two machines and have Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on a single machine. In the coming few days I'll blog about both operating systems [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Maestro: Domain Specific Language for Concurrent Programming
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 7, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Comments (0)
MSDN Channel 9 has an interesting video on a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for concurrent programming known as Maestro. You can find the video here.
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 7, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Comments (1)
According to several sources on the blogosphere the beta releases of the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems could be available this week. With Steve Ballmer introducing Windows 7 to the world during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) it is not surprising that Microsoft would delay the public release of the beta until sometime after his CES keynote. If [...]
Category: Software Engineering
What Does 256 Cores Look Like?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 5, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Comments (33)
It is most likely true that there aren't many of us who have access to a machine with 256 cores at the moment and unfortunately neither do I. I received the following screen shot of the Windows task manager showing 256 cores running on Windows Server 2008 R2 which uses the same kernel as Windows [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Brian the Build Bunny
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 30, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Comments (0)
Martin Woodward has an interesting post including a YouTube video where he introduces Brian the Build Bunny. Using standard protocols Martin was able to integrate Brian into the build process and Brian reacts positively when builds succeed and less positively when builds fail.
Category: Software Engineering
Complexity within Software Engineering
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 29, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Comments (12)
Since the most fundamental program ever written it seems some architects and software developers feel the need to demonstrate, what they believe, is their superior software engineering skills by designing to an additional unspecified requirement. The unspecified requirement in question is complexity and complexity is not a business requirement in any software engineering projects I have come across. Complexity is not a design [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Beta for Christmas?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 23, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Comments (1)
Steve Clayton's blog featured the following cartoon by Scott Johnson that I thought I would share with you. If you really cannot wait until 2009 before seeing the beta then WinFuture.de claims to have screen shots of build 7000 which many claim will be the official beta build.
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio Integration with Red Gate Reflector
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 22, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Comments (0)
If you're a .net developer you're most likely familiar with the .NET Reflector utility originally written by Lutz Roeder and now maintained by Red Gate Software. If you're a .net developer and you're not using the .NET Reflector today then go ahead and get yourself a free Christmas present from Red Gate Software. While attending PDC in October I [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 "Pre-Beta" Build 7004
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 19, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Comments (30)
Scott Wylie, Microsoft's New Zealand Director of Development and Platform Strategy, wrote today on his blog about his experience installing a pre-beta build of Windows 7 on his home laptop. It is interesting to note that the pre-beta build of Windows 7 installed on his home laptop seems to be build 7004, which if the term [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Beta Download Imminent?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 19, 2008 at 9:59 am
Comments (6)
Microsoft seems to be nearing the release of the Windows 7 beta after a link to download the beta appeared on the Windows 7 homepage today. Could it be that we'll be able to download build 7000.0.081212-1400 sometime later today? At the time of writing there is no download link on the Windows Server 2008 R2 [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Task Manager Opacity Settings
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 18, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Comments (1)
While on the beta team for Windows Vista I was happy to see in build 5472 that you could set the opacity options for the Windows task manager. Unfortunately this was removed somewhere between that build and build 5536 and I opened a bug on Microsoft Connect asking for this feature to be returned. Often while [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Jarhead Red
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 17, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Comments (0)
If you're looking for a nice red wine to go with your Christmas dinner this year and you'd like to support the brave men and women of the U.S. Marine Corps then look no further than Jarhead Red. As their website indicates this wine is made by Marines, for Marines, with net proceeds benefiting the Marine [...]
Category: Uncategorized
SQL Server 2005 SP3 Released
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 16, 2008 at 11:19 am
Comments (1)
Microsoft today announced the availability of SQL Server 2005 SP3, you can read more about this service release here.
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Research - Spec# for Visual Studio 2008
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 14, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Comments (3)
Microsoft Research has an interesting project designed to extend the C# programming language with several design by contract features. Included within Spec# are a non-null type system, method pre- and post-conditions, loop invariants, and object invariants. Spec# version 1.0 is available today and works with Visual Studio 2008.
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Eric Traut Discusses Virtualization
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 14, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Comments (0)
On October 13, Microsoft's distinguished engineer Eric Traut gave a presentation at the University of Illinois about Microsoft's virtualization technologies. The presentation (WMV) is approximately one hour long and includes a discussion of Windows 7, MinWin, and a deep dive into hypervisors. Mary Joe Foley blogged about the use of MinWin within Windows 7 and also discusses the presentation [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Virtualization
Windows XP SP3 vs Windows 7 Build 6956 Benchmarks
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 12, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Comments (6)
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes on ZDNet yesterday posted some interesting performance benchmarks comparing Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 Build 6956. You can read his post here. Based upon his analysis Windows 7 performs better than Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista RTM, and Windows Vista SP1.
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Beta One - Guess the Build Number
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 11, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Comments (10)
Given that the official release of Windows 7 beta one is supposedly occurring next month on January 13th to coincide with the MSDN conferences in Chicago, IL and Minneapolis, MN; I thought it might be fun to see if we can guess the build number. Although higher build numbers certainly exist today within Redmond the latest [...]
Category: Software Engineering
6.1 == 7
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 11, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Comments (2)
Microsoft Windows 7 is definitely not merely a service pack to its predecessor given some of the great support for parallelism, not to mention other enhancements to the operating system. It seems strange however that current builds of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 report the operating system version as 6.1 and not 7.0 as you might [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Intel Releases Preproduction Windows 7 Graphics Driver
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 11, 2008 at 11:47 am
Comments (184)
Intel yesterday made available a preproduction Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 Graphics Driver, more information can be found here.
Category: Software Engineering
Extreme Parallelism with Windows 7
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 11, 2008 at 12:53 am
Comments (4)
Windows 7 and the server version which will be released as Windows Server 2008 R2 will scale to 256 processor cores providing the potential for some extreme parallelism scenarios. Microsoft Channel 9 features Mark Russinovich "Inside Windows 7" where he details the changes to the scheduler within the operating system that had previously been limited to only 32 [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2010 CTP Expiration
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 5, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Comments (2)
While using the Visual Studio 2010 CTP today I received the following warning message informing me that the evaluation period for the Visual Studio trial will expire in 27 days. You'll notice that the warning message is informing me that the Visual Studio 2008 trial is about to expire even though I'm actually running the Visual [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Beta 1 Availability
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 4, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Comments (13)
As you may have noticed there is some excitement on the blogosphere regarding Microsoft's next desktop operating system, Windows 7. Chad Brooks (Microsoft) estimates we will see Windows 7 beta 1 on or around January 13th 2009, based upon his blog post.
Category: Software Engineering
Concurrent Programming on Windows
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 4, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Comments (12)
While attending Microsoft's PDC in October I began reading a new book from Addison Wesley entitled Concurrent Programming on Windows by Joe Duffy. Although the book does not cover many of the new improvements within the .net framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 designed to support parallel programming, it is definately worth reading. On one hand [...]
Category: Software Engineering
MSDN Developer Conference (MDC)
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 3, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Comments (0)
In case you were unable to attend Microsoft PDC this year then you might want to consider attending the MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) which is coming to a city near you. MDC will bring you the most popular content from the PDC for only $99.00 including a chance to see Windows 7 and hear Microsoft's [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Engineering Windows 7
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on December 2, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Comments (16)
In some respects the blogosphere is repeating the same mistakes made during the Windows Vista road to RTM (release to manufacturing). Windows 7 has yet to achieve the beta one milestone and yet many in the blogosphere are writing off this operating system as they did with Vista before it has had a chance to [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2010 Virtual Machine
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 26, 2008 at 11:09 am
Comments (10)
After attending the Microsoft PDC conference last month each attendee was given a USB hard drive that contained several builds of various technologies demonstrated during the conference. One such technology that I have been exploring and will blog about over the next few days and weeks is Visual Studio 2010. Unfortunately the Visual Studio 2010 pre-beta [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Sacramento .NET Users Group Tonight
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 25, 2008 at 10:07 am
Comments (4)
Microsoft held the Professional Developers Conference 2008 the week of October 26th through October 30th and in case you are unable to attend PDC I'm speaking tonight at the Sacramento .NET Users Group about all the announcements from the conference and demonstrating Visual Studio Team System 2010, C# 4.0, the .NET Framework 4.0, and Windows “7”. Beyond these new releases [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Wordle
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 15, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Comments (2)
Wordle is an interesting application on the Web that when given some text, or an RSS feed such as my blog, it will generate some really interesting images with the words shown in various directions and sizes. I think I'll have to get this printed onto a black t-shirt somewhere...
Category: Software Engineering
The Devil's Field Guide to the PDC
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 15, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Comments (0)
If you're going to be attending Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference check out The Devil's Field Guide to the PDC for the insiders scoop on the conference.
Category: Software Engineering
More Effective C#
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 14, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Comments (2)
In 2004 I worked with Bill Wagner on Effective C# as a technical editor, the first book in the series for the C# developers provides 50 tips to improving your use of the C# programming language. When I arrived home today I had recieved a copy of the book More Effective C# within which Bill has provided an additional 50 [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Released
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 13, 2008 at 10:04 am
Comments (6)
Microsoft today released Silverlight 2.0 to manufacturing and you can read about the release on S. “Soma” Somsegar's blog and then download the release from the Silverlight homepage later today.
Category: Software Engineering
Jeffrey Snover, Martin Fowler and Neil Ford: Domain Specific Languages
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 10, 2008 at 11:34 am
Comments (2)
Over on MSDN's Channel 9 is an interesting conversation between Jeffrey Snover, Martin Fowler, and Neil Ford on Domain Specific Languages. For most of you reading this blog Martin Fowler (Thoughtworks) needs no introductions and if you don't know who he is he is the one responsible for the Refactor menu within an IDE such as Visual Studio [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Anders Hejlsberg and Guy Steele: Concurrency and Language Design
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 10, 2008 at 8:36 am
Comments (0)
Anders Hejlsberg and Guy Steele: Concurrency and Language Design Given the multi-core revolution, which Intel is without a doubt the driving force behind, I am very interested to learn more about how Microsoft and others intend to enable architects and developers to more efficiently write multithreaded code. MSDN's Channel 9 has an interesting conversation with Anders Hejlsberg [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Sacramento .NET Users Group November 2008
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 8, 2008 at 11:52 am
Comments (0)
Microsoft will be holding the Professional Developers Conference 2008 the week of October 26th through October 30th and in case you are unable to attend PDC I'll be speaking at the Sacramento .NET Users Group about all the announcements from the conference and demonstrating Visual Studio Team System 2010, C# 4.0, the .NET Framework 4.0, and Windows [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Model-Driven Architecture and Development
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 7, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Comments (8)
It is arguable that attempts to raise the level of abstraction within software engineering towards a model-driven approach have been less than successful; with only a handful of projects taking a fully model-driven approach to architecture and development. As you read this I am curious what your thoughts are on the viability of model-driven architecture and model-driven development [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Got a Question for Microsoft PDC 2008?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 7, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Comments (8)
With less than a month to go before the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles it seemed appropriate to write a post asking if those of you who are unable to attend have questions that I can try and get you answers to while I'm there. Microsoft will be discussing a variety of interesting topics [...]
Category: Software Engineering
16Gb RAM - Dell Mobile Precision Workstation M6400
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 6, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Comments (24)
I have been running a notebook with 4Gb of memory for some time now and was aware of Dell enabling one of their workstation laptops to expand the memory to 8Gb which is the amount of memory I have in my desktop workstation today. 8Gb of memory is certainly an excellent amount of memory to [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Virtualization
Intel Announces Collaborative Effort with Oracle for Cloud Computing
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 24, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Comments (4)
Intel CEO Paul Otellini took the stage in front of 10,000 yesterday during the Oracle Open World conference, announcing a new collaborative effort between Intel and Oracle to better enable enterprise-ready Cloud Computing. Read the Intel and Oracle joint press release here.
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Discloses TFS "Rosario" Details
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 23, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Comments (2)
Brian Harry, Technical Fellow Developer Division, today disclosed details about the forthcoming release of Microsoft's Team Foundation Server, codename "Rosario", within his blog. If you're not familiar with Team Foundation Server it is, in essence, an enterprise level collaboration platform that encompasses source control, work item tracking, project management, collaborative project portal, build, testing, and many other [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Cloud Computing
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 23, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Comments (2)
Every few years there seems to be a new buzz word within our industry, or more accurately, a myriad of new buzz words. As a software architect the buzz over the last few years has been around Service Orientated Architecture although the buzz more recently seems to involve Clouds, which as a VFR pilot I [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft PDC 2008 - "The Goods" - 160Gb USB Hard Drive
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 23, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Comments (2)
At the last Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in 2005 attendees received six DVD's in a really cool case that Microsoft called "The Goods". These six DVD's contained 35Gb of "Geek Candy" as Mike Swanson calls it. At this years Microsoft PDC attendees will also be receiving "The Goods" although this time Microsoft will be giving each [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2008 Syntax Color Settings
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 12, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Comments (7)
It amazes me sometimes that C# and other developers using Visual Studio are still using the standard color settings when Visual Studio allows you to color your environemnt just how you like it. Personally I began programming using Borland Pascal and then Borland C before moving briefly to the UNIX environment before coming back to [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Speed and Angels
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 11, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Comments (1)
SOME DREAMS ARE WORTH FIGHTING FOR... As a pilot and an officer in the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary / Civil Air Patrol who works with cadets, many of whom will join the Air Force and other branches of the U.S. armed forces, I'm always looking for cool DVD's of civilian and military aviation to show the [...]
Category: Uncategorized
CodePlex.Diagnostics 2.0.0.4 Released
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 11, 2008 at 10:40 am
Comments (0)
CodePlex.Diagnostics is an exception publication and logging framework based upon the .net framework 2.0 Provide Design pattern. By default exceptions and log entries are published to a SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 database although other providers can easily be written to target other databases, the Windows event log, etc. CodePlex.Diagnostics version 2.0.0.4 was released [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows Server 2008 - DVD and Blu-Ray Playback with Roxio Creator 2009
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 10, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Comments (5)
A few months ago I wrote a blog post about DVD and Blu-Ray playback within Windows Server 2008 and the fact that even with the Desktop Experience installed external DVD playback software is required. Roxio recently released Roxio Creator 2009 and DVD and Blu-Ray playback within Windows Server 2008 32-bit and 64-bit editions is possible given [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Joins OMG and Outlines Modeling Approach
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 10, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Comments (0)
In August 2003 Darryl K. Taft of eWeek wrote an article entitled Microsoft Embraces Modeling where he described Microsoft's intent to add model-driven development capabilities into their products leading up to the "Longhorn" release of the operating system. At the time Visual Studio codename "Whidbey" was in beta along with the designers intended to deliver on the promise of [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 10, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Comments (0)
In Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises Roger Sessions discusses enterprise architecture today and how we architects and developers can effectively deal with increasing complexity within the enterprise. Unlike many books on software architecture this book is only 176 pages long making it an excellent alternative to the in flight movie on your next business trip. [...]
Category: Software Engineering
CodePlex.Snippets Released
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 10, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Comments (0)
If you are a Visual C# developer you might want to take a look at the first release of the CodePlex.Snippets project that brings several new code snippets for the C# developer along with revisions to those snippets provided by the Visual C# team within Visual Studio 2008. You can find the library on the CodePlex [...]
Category: Software Engineering
CodePlex.DesignPatterns
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on September 10, 2008 at 9:44 am
Comments (1)
With the demands upon enterprise IT increasing, demands upon enterprise architects and developers also increasing along with tighter and tighter deadlines, design patterns have never been more important than today. Last night I created another open source project, CodePlex.DesignPatterns, within which I will present each of the core design patterns from Design Patterns Elements of Reusable [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Claims-Based Identity - Microsoft Code Name "Zermatt"
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 22, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Comments (1)
An interesting new addition to the .net framework has recently been released as a beta on Microsoft Connect. Microsoft Code Name "Zermatt" provides a set of .net framework classes designed to enable software architects and developers to bring claims-based identity to their applications. Along with the beta bits, that can be downloaded from the Connect website, [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Intel® Black Belt Software Developer Program Launch
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 22, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Comments (6)
On Tuesday night the Intel® Black Belt Developer Program was launched and the first Black Belt Software Developer Awards were presented, the first of which was given to Igor M. Levicki. Igor, unlike many of the recipients, is not an Intel Corporation employee but rather a member of the wider community who is known for [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Software Engineering
Windows via C/C++
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 19, 2008 at 9:10 am
Comments (0)
Jeffrey Richter is a name known to many Windows and .net developers and over the past few days I have been reading one of his latest books, Windows via C/C++. Another book written by Jeffrey Richter, CLR via C#, is without a doubt the best book on the .net platform and it is apparent to me today that Windows [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Engineering Windows "7"
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 14, 2008 at 10:31 am
Comments (1)
Just found an interesting new blog on MSDN entitled Engineering Windows "7" which is especially interesting given how quiet Microsoft has been externally and internally about the next version of the Windows client operating system.
Category: Software Engineering, Uncategorized
Visual Studio "10" Supports Multiple Displays
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 14, 2008 at 8:47 am
Comments (0)
It has become a common practice for software developers to use more than one display and unfortunately the code and diagram Windows within Visual Studio 2008 SP1 are locked within the Visual Studio frame. In June I opened a feedback item on Connect asking the Visual Studio team to consider support for multiple displays within the next version [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Using Visual Studio Tab Groups
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 14, 2008 at 8:16 am
Comments (0)
One feature of Visual Studio that I use often is vertical or horizontal tab groups which allow you to see two or more Windows within Visual Studio at the same time. This can be very useful when using the Visual Studio class designer, for example, allowing you to see the code and the diagram simultaneously. Within [...]
Category: Software Engineering
WPF Team Releases DataGrid CTP
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 13, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Comments (0)
One of the requests the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) team has been hearing most often, including from myself, has been that WPF needs of a DataGrid control. I discovered today that although the .net framework 3.5 SP1 doesn't remedy this situation, one has been released as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) release on CodePlex. Go check it [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 RTM
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 11, 2008 at 8:52 am
Comments (0)
Microsoft today released Visual Studio 2008 SP1 to manufacturing along with the official release of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 which was released upon the SQL Server 2008 DVD last week. Guy Burstein has an excellent blog post about the release and some of the major technologies that shipped today within the release. Congratulations to the Entity [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Released to Manufacturing
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 7, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Comments (1)
If you search on the Internet for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 all you would find (at the time of writing) is the beta release although it appears the framework service pack has in fact been released to manufacturing. Micrososoft, having released SQL Server 2008 to manufacturing, have also in effect released the service [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Released to Manufacturing
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on August 7, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Comments (0)
Microsoft has released to manufacturing SQL Server 2008 and the DVD images are now available on MSDN subscriber downloads. Interestingly, the Microsoft .NET Framework SP1 doesn't appear to be available although when the SQL Server 2008 setup program is ran it installs the RTM build of the .NET Framework SP1. Unfortunately, the DVD does not include [...]
Category: Software Engineering
C# 3.0 Automatically Implemented Properties
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 23, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Comments (0)
The C# 3.0 language specification contains several new enhancements to the language that I'll detail here over the next few weeks. Personally the one enhancement to the language that I find myself using almost every day is the new support for automatically implemented properties. Using automatically implemented properties the following example: /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the [...]
Category: Software Engineering
August RTM for Microsoft SQL Server 2008
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 22, 2008 at 10:19 am
Comments (9)
Darryl K. Taft has an interesting article on eWeek detailing Microsoft's plans to ship SQL Server 2008 next month. You can read the article here. Without a doubt one of the single most interesting changes in SQL Server 2008 is the addition of IntelliSense to SQL Server Management Studio, especially given the fact that SQL Server [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 18, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Comments (0)
I recently found an excellent five part series of articles on MSDN examining data structures and algorithm analysis using C# 2.0 and you can read the five part series here. Mark Allen Weiss has written several excellent books on data structures and algorithm analysis including Data Structures and Problem Solving Using Java and Data Structures and [...]
Category: Academic, Software Engineering
C# 4.0: Meet the Design Team
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 11, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Comments (1)
Charlie Calvert today blogged about a video available from MSDN channel 9 where Anders Hejlsberg introduces the members of the C# 4.0 design team and provides us with a glimpse into some of the changes to the programming language in version 4.0. When the C# programming language made its debut in 2002 it was already a very [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Flying Full Circle - U.S. Navy Blue Angels
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 8, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Comments (0)
Some time ago I blogged about the aviation DVD One Six Right produced by Brian J. Terwilliger. Tonight I discovered that Brian has also made a 10 minute short movie detailing his experience taking an orientation flight with the U.S. Navy Blue Angels in an F-18 Hornet. If you have seen One Six Right then [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Sony Launches BD-Live Ready BDP-S350 Blu-Ray Player
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 8, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Comments (0)
If like me you've been waiting for a new BD-Live enabled blu-ray disc player then Sony has the answer with the new BDP-S350. The BDP-S350 supports true 1080p output and is compatible with Dolby TrueHD. Unlike the majority of the previous generation of blu-ray players, the BDP-S350 features an Ethernet connection to enable BD-Live features as [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Thoughts After Installing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RTM
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 3, 2008 at 8:16 am
Comments (0)
Once Microsoft released to manufacturing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V on June 26, 2008 it wasn't long before I upgraded the beta installation that I have been using for a month or two. Setup of Hyper-V is as simple as adding an additional role to Windows Server 2008 and the following screen shots describe the process in [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Virtualization
Windows Server 2008 Desktop Experience - DVD and Blu-Ray Playback?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 1, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Comments (9)
As some of you might have noticed from some of the previous blog posts I have written on the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the configuration of Windows Server 2008 as an aero-enabled workstation, or dual booting Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, I have now been using Windows Server 2008 as the primary OS on [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Virtualization
Virtualization for the Software Engineer - One Year Later
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 1, 2008 at 10:23 am
Comments (2)
A year ago I blogged about how virtualization was becoming an increasingly pervasive technology within the software engineering community. At that time I had began using a workstation based upon the Intel D975XBX2 motherboard and the Intel® Core™2 Extreme Edition QX6700 processor. With the 64-bit version of Window Server 2008 and the newly released Hyper-V [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Virtualization
Determining if an assembly was built using Release or Debug mode?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 28, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Comments (0)
Sometimes you find yourself wondering if an assembly was compiled with or without the /debug compiler option, in the case of the C# compiler. In essence this can be determined through the IsJITTrackingEnabled property of the DebuggableAttribute class as the following code demonstrates: private static bool DebugBuild(Assembly assembly) { foreach (object attribute in assembly.GetCustomAttributes(false)) { if (attribute [...]
Category: Software Engineering
ADO.NET Entity Framework - Disturbance in the Force?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 26, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Comments (0)
Do I detect a disturbance in the force? After reading a blog post by Murray Gordon, an ISV architecture evangelist for Microsoft, it appears that several people are expressing concerns with the ADO.NET Entity Framework. According to the blog post by Murray there are currently 156 people who have signed the vote of no confidence and [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows Communication Foundation Diagnostics
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 26, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Comments (0)
On occasion even the best developers must diagnose issues within their code and with distributed applications this can be a challenging prospect. The Windows Communication Foundation provides extensive tracing that can be enabled within the application domain configuration file (e.g. the App.config or Web.config of your application). WCF builds upon the tracing capabilities found within the [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Hyper-V Released to Manufacturing
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 26, 2008 at 11:20 am
Comments (0)
Microsoft today released to manufacturing the Hyper-V virtualization solution for Windows Server 2008. You can read more about the release on the virtualization blog. Updates will be available through Windows Update beginning on July 8th. Links to the download sites can be found on John Howard's blog. Incidentally, Microsoft's MSDN and TechNet websites have been virtualized [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Virtualization
Secondary Drowning & Infant Swimming Resource
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 18, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Comments (3)
It still amazes me that prior to heaing about the following incident of secondary drowning, I personally had never heard of the phenomenon. If you are a parent of a child who swims in a pool at home, or maybe swims at a friend's house, I would encourage you to be aware of the phenomenon [...]
Category: Uncategorized
SQL Server: To convert to Numeric, or not to convert to Numeric, that is the question...
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 10, 2008 at 8:32 am
Comments (4)
Yesterday myself and two other members of my team thought that we had found a bug in the SQL Server engine which is not something you typically do on any given day. What had happened was that the varchar value of '.' was tested using the IsNumeric function which indicated that the varchar value of [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Introducing SQL Server 2008 (Free eBook)
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 10, 2008 at 6:42 am
Comments (10)
Microsoft Press is offering a free eBook of the forthcoming Introducing SQL Server 2008 by Peter DeBetta and the first chapter today on Policy-based Management.
Category: Software Engineering
SQL Server 2008 Reaches RC0 Milestone
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 5, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Comments (0)
During this week's Microsoft TechEd 2008 Developers conference in Orlando, FL the Microsoft SQL Server team quietly reached the release candidate zero milestone with an initial upload of the binaries to MVP's and TAP program participants on Microsoft Connect on June 4th. Once the build had been declared as release candidate zero then the binaries [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft "Velocity" Distributed Cache
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 5, 2008 at 5:43 am
Comments (5)
Microsoft has announced the availability of a CTP of a forthcoming distributed cache technology that is currently known as Velocity. Using Velocity clients can be different machines or processes and access the cache as though it were a local cache when in fact the cache is distributed across one or more cache hosts. The Velocity [...]
Category: Software Engineering
DVP201 Best Practices for Managing Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 4, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Comments (0)
If you are here at the Microsoft TechEd 2008 Developers Conference I would highly recommend attending tomorrow's session by Joel Semeniuk. The session is entitled DVP201 Best Practices for Managing Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and the session will be happening in S320E from 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM. I personally attended this session [...]
Category: Software Engineering
TLA203 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: Today and Tomorrow
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 4, 2008 at 10:15 am
Comments (2)
Brian Harry, Technical Fellow Developer Division, followed up his keynote presentation with a discussion on Team System as it stands today and what we can expect tomorrow. In the team that I work with at Intel we write applications that exercise the graphics chipset and the associated driver. Building the driver isn't a trivial task and [...]
Category: Software Engineering
DVP203 Applying Feature-Driven Development Techniques to Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 3, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Comments (0)
Joel Semeniuk did it again, knocking the ball out of the park with an excellent discussion on feature-driven development using the Visual Studio Team System. Joel began by mentioning some good resources on feature-driven development and he highly recommended A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development by Stephen R. Palmer and John M. Felsing. Joel described a [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft TechEd 2008 Developers Conference - Doug Holland meets Robo-Steve
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 3, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Comments (0)
After this morning's keynote speeches where Bill Gates was presented with a life time subscription of XBox Live by Robo-Steve (see previous blog post), I decided to ask Robo-Steve how I myself might one day achieve such an accolade. Unfortunately Robo-Steve indicated that no XBox live lifetime subscription would be coming my way just yet, guess [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft TechEd 2008 Developers Conference Keynote
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 3, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Comments (2)
During the keynote speech this morning of the TechEd 2008 Developers conference, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates reflected on the company's 33 years as the world's premier software developer, with over 5000 software developers in attendance to learn about how they can best leverage today's technologies while gaining insight into future technologies. During the speech Bill [...]
Category: Software Engineering
sp_change_users_login
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 30, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Comments (0)
Often it is necessary to backup SQL Server databases and restore them on another server, before the release of SQL Server 2005 this could be complicated by the fact that the SID's for the associated user accounts were not synchronized through the backup and restore process. I Today using SQL Server 2005 after you backup a [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows 7 Multi-Touch
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 30, 2008 at 11:38 am
Comments (0)
Windows 7 appears to have support for new user interface capabilities found in today's Apple iPhone. Check out a video of an early Windows 7 build demonstrating these capabilities on the Windows Vista blog or directly here: Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7
Category: Software Engineering
PDC2008 Professional Developers Conference
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 29, 2008 at 7:41 am
Comments (2)
Microsoft has recently announced that the Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008) will be held in Los Angeles, CA from October 27 through October 30 2008. Registration for the conference is now live and you can save $200 with the early bird discount. Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, will be delivering one of the keynote speeches at [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft TechEd 2008
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 28, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Comments (2)
Okay its not the count down to the launch of the space shuttle although at last years Microsoft TechEd we rushed from the conference on Friday afternoon to see Atlantis launch into space and what an experiance that was. Even if we don't get to experiance a NASA launch day this year, Microsoft TechEd promises [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Managing Software Projects - Sacramento .NET Users Group
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 28, 2008 at 10:14 am
Comments (2)
We had a great turn out last night at the Sacramento .NET Users Group where I dicussed Visual Studio 2008 and the Windows Communication Foundation. After I presented the main discussion we also spent some time discussing several issues facing developers industry wide and an interesting debate ensued about managing distributed software projects. While attending the Microsoft [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Sacramento .NET Users Group
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 27, 2008 at 9:44 am
Comments (0)
I'll be presenting tonight at the Sacramento .NET Users Group and it would be great to see you there if you're able to come along. We'll be discussing the release of Visual Studio 2008 along with the main discussion which will introduce the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to those .NET developers who are not presently [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Source Analysis for C#
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 23, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Comments (2)
Microsoft today released the Microsoft Source Analysis for C# plugin for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. Originally known internally within Microsoft by the name StyleCop, Source Analysis for C# is designed to enforce more than 200 style best practices for the C# developer. Once installed the source analysis capabilities are available from either the [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Undergraduate / Graduate Debugging Courses
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 22, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Comments (4)
I'm presently reading Debugging Microsoft .NET 2.0 Applications by John Robbins and it occurred to me that almost all of us who write software for a living have never had any college courses on the art of debugging. As John Robbins discusses in the opening sections of the book, this might be in part because [...]
Category: Academic, Software Engineering
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 - ADO.NET Entity Framework
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 21, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Comments (2)
Microsoft this month released the SP1 beta for Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 although after installing this beta some days ago I have to agree with others in the blogosphere that this service pack in many ways represents a new version of Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework. While attending the [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Hyper-V RC1 Available
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 21, 2008 at 9:47 am
Comments (0)
Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 operating system shipped with the RC0 build of the forthcoming virtualization hypervisor known as Hyper-V. Today, Microsoft has made available the RC1 milestone which can be downloaded from the Virtualization Team Blog. It seems its time to put those quad-core processors to work!!! I'll blog again with my experiance upgrading the Windows [...]
Category: Manageability, Parallel Programming, Software Engineering, Virtualization
Microsoft World Wide Telescope
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 20, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Comments (3)
Once in a while the Internet yields software that demonstrates the true potential of the interconnected world within which we live, work, and play. Microsoft Research recently released the World Wide Telescope which has the potential to enable "citizen scientists to participate in research" according to Doug Roberts, director of the Adler Space Visualization Laboratory. With [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Visual Computing
Windows XP SP3 Available
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 14, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Comments (1)
Microsoft has recently made available Windows XP Service Pack 3 for download. The latest service pack can also be installed through Windows Update as well as through an available .iso image which can then be burned to CD or DVD. An overview of the service pack can be downloaded from here.
Category: Uncategorized
C# 2.0 Data Structures
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 11, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Comments (1)
Anyone who has taken a formal college education in computer science or software engineering will have most likely taken a class entitled "Data Structures". When I took this class in 1994 these concepts were presented using the Modula-2 programming language and then we moved on to using the C programming language. Soon after that I took an advanced [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft Architect Insight Conference 2008
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 7, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Comments (0)
I just found a website for the Microsoft Architect Insight Conference 2008 that just concluded in the UK on April 29th and the slides for the architecture conference are now available here. I guess Microsoft didn't evangelize this conference much outside of the UK. It would be interesting for Microsoft to hold such a conference here [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Download .NET Framework Source Code
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 5, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Comments (4)
On January 16th 2008 Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2008 can be configured to download the source code for the .NET Framework to enable an improved debugging experiance. Shawn Burk has a great post about configuring Visual Studio 2008 to download .NET source code here. Unfortunately, the only way to get the source code for the [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows Vista Component Services
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 30, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Comments (2)
Today, while debugging C# code that uses System.Transactions for scope management, I recieved the following exception message. Network access for Distributed Transaction Manager (MSDTC) has been disabled. Please enable DTC for network access in the security configuration for MSDTC using the Component Services Administrative tool. So, as the message indicated, I went looking for the Component Services [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Debugging .NET Framework Source Code
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 29, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Comments (0)
I'm currently debugging some issues with an application written against the .NET Framework version 3.0 and today I found an interesting blog post by Shawn Burke where he describes how to configure Visual Studio 2008 to allow the debugger to step into the source for the .NET Framework itself!!! If, like me, you find yourself debugging [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Electronic Paperbacks and Newspapers?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 28, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Comments (13)
I'm wondering how many of you would be willing to put aside the paperback book that you are reading in the evening and instead pickup an electronic book such as the Amazon Kindle? In some respects we've had electronic books for a while now and these new dedicated electronic reading devices are merely taking us to the next level. In the past few [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Windows Account Management using the .NET Framework 3.5
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 28, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Comments (4)
While looking into some security coding that I knew I'd be working on in the coming few days I found an interesting new assembly which shipped with the .NET Framework 3.5: System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement Within this assembly are some types that simplify many tasks that have taken considerably more code to achieve in previous versions of the .NET Framework, [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Intel® Desktop Board D5400XS @ Amazon.Com
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 21, 2008 at 10:24 am
Comments (4)
In my previous blog post, where I introduced you to the amazing new Intel D5400XS desktop board which features a dual-socket capability allowing you to use two quad core processors within your system, several of you commented about the boards intial availability. Well I'm happy to now tell you that this morning when looked for the board [...]
Category: Gaming, Parallel Programming, Software Engineering, Virtualization
One Six Right - Wanna go fly?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 16, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Comments (1)
Okay now that I've got your attention with those words "wanna go fly?", this blog post is a little different than any of the other posts I've written here, in that it is the first of many where I'll introduce you to a passion of mine, flying. Today I'll be taking a Cessna 172 from Sacramento Executive airport, [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Microsoft TechEd 2008
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 15, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Comments (0)
I just completed my registration for Microsoft's TechEd 2008 developers conference which will be held again in Orlando, FL. One major difference this year is that the conference has now been extended from one week to two weeks with the first week dedicated to developers and the second week to IT professionals. Apparently, Microsoft TechEd [...]
Category: Events, Software Engineering
Microsoft Visual C# Keybindings Poster
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on April 3, 2008 at 9:39 am
Comments (0)
While attending the last few Microsoft TechEd and Microsoft PDC conferences, Karen Liu has presented an excellent session on the Visual C# environment and the many keybindings that can accelerate common tasks within the IDE. If you're attending TechEd this year then keep an eye out for Karen's session as I'm sure she'll be doing [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft MIX 2008, IE 8.0 and Silverlight 2.0
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on March 5, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Comments (1)
Today at MIX 2008, Microsoft's Web designer and developer conference, Microsoft announced several new technologies that promise to bring about richer, more interactive content on the Web. Announced at the conference were Internet Explorer 8.0 which is available today in its first public beta release, Silverlight 2.0, Expression Studio 2.0. Microsoft also a preview of SQL [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Visual Computing
Got DirectX 10.1?
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 28, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Comments (9)
With most Windows Vista users still using the original RTM version of the operating system there is much speculation within the blogosphere regarding Windows Vista SP1, not to mention the revision to the DirectX API's in version 10.1. DirectX 10.0 shipped with Windows Vista and required DirectX 10 compatible graphics cards along with DirectX 10.0 drivers [...]
Category: Software Engineering, Visual Computing
Dual Boot Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 26, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Comments (28)
After researching how to enable Aero on the Windows Server 2008 desktop (see previous blog post) I proceeded to install Windows Server 2008 onto the third hard drive within a desktop computer that currently has Windows Vista running on the first two disks within a RAID configuration. Windows Server 2008 installed without an issue however upon [...]
Category: Manageability, Software Engineering, Virtualization
Intel® Desktop Board D5400XS
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 21, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Comments (10)
Working at Intel it takes a little more before I say "WOW" about a technology, however today we announced that Intel codename SkullTrail is now simply known as the Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform. Central to this platform is the Intel® Desktop Board D5400XS which supports two processors providing upto eight processing cores along [...]
Category: Gaming, Software Engineering, Virtualization, Visual Computing
Toshiba May Pull Plug On HD DVD Video Format
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 18, 2008 at 11:59 am
Comments (3)
[http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330938,00.html] FoxNews.com is reporting the Toshiba may pull the plug on their HD-DVD video format which has been competing against the Sony Blu-Ray format for some time now. According to the [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330938,00.html] FoxNews.com article, "On Friday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. retailer, said it will sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware and no longer carry [...]
Category: Gaming, Software Engineering, Visual Computing
Microsoft's 'D' Textual Modeling Language
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 15, 2008 at 10:10 am
Comments (1)
It appears that our friends in Redmond are cooking up a new programming language that is currently codenamed 'D'. It has been referred to as a textual modeling language and Becky Nagel and Mary Jo Foley have details on the project.
Category: Software Engineering
Windows Server 2008 "Aero Enabled" Workstation Edition
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 12, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Comments (29)
Last week Dell shipped me a new Vostro 1700 notebook which I promptly upgraded from Windows Vista Business edition to Windows Server 2008. In this blog post I'll show you how to setup Windows Server 2008 in a Workstation configuration. Windows Server 2008 installed without an issue although I could not find out how to install [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Software Engineering
Microsoft Ships Windows Server 2008 / Vista SP1
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 4, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Comments (0)
Today Microsoft released to manufacturing both the Windows Server 2008 operating system and the SP1 update to the Windows Vista client. Microsoft will however delay the release of the service pack to mid-March to allow some third-parties and Microsoft time to resolve driver issues that beta testers have reported since installing pre-release builds of the [...]
Category: Manageability, Software Engineering, Virtualization
Windows Server 2008 will RTM Next Week...
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on February 1, 2008 at 1:21 pm
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According to a Microsoft insider, Windows Server 2008 will RTM next week on February 6th, 2008. Margie Semilof, Senior News Director of http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/, reports that all Windows Server 2008 SKU's will RTM next week aside from those that include Microsoft's new Hyper-V hypervisor virtualization technology. Although it will likely be sometime before Windows Server 2008 becomes [...]
Category: Manageability, Software Engineering, Virtualization
CodePlex.Diagnostics
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 30, 2008 at 9:53 am
Comments (0)
Someone once asked the question, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, that got me thinking a couple of years ago about exceptions within software that we design, develop, or even merely rely upon ourselves. The leason learned though has little to [...]
Category: Manageability, Open Source, Software Engineering
Microsoft Delays SQL Server 2008 Release
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 29, 2008 at 9:50 am
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Microsoft had been planning on formally releasing Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008 on February 27 in Los Angeles however it seems now that SQL Server 2008 will not RTM until Q3 2008. The Data Platform Insider has more details.
Category: Software Engineering
CLR via C#
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 28, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Comments (0)
If there is one .NET book that I find myself coming back to on a regular basis, even after reading it from cover to cover twice, it is Jeff Richter's CLR via C#. If you want to truly understand what goes on within the Common Language Runtime when, for example, you create a new thread, [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Windows Forms MessageBoxOptions Enumeration
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on January 16, 2008 at 10:59 am
Comments (0)
In a Windows Forms based application I'm developing here at Intel I was observing some strange behavior that at first really perplexed me as to the cause. Within the applicaton the user is often prompted to confirm a WCF service operation before the service operation is performed such as the deletion of some database entries. If [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Free ISO Burning Software for Windows Vista
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 20, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Comments (10)
Today I came across a small utility that successfully burns .iso images to CD or DVD on Windows Vista x86 and x64. Given that even commercially available software is still slow to provide x64 versions it was a really pleasant surprise that Alex Feinman has provided downloads of ISO Recorder v3 for both versions of [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Debugging Unexpected Exceptions
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 19, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Comments (2)
Occassionally while writing debugging code within Visual Studio we run into unexpected exception such as the System.NullReferenceException shown in the following screen shot. The question then becomes how do we debug the exception within the Visual Studio Immediate window because we did not assign the exception object to a variable within a try catch block. Actually [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Visual Studio 2008 / .NET Framework 3.5 RTM
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 19, 2007 at 11:08 am
Comments (0)
It only seems like yesterday that Visual Studio 2005 went RTM along with the .NET Framework 2.0, since then we have also seen the release of the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 which added WCF, WF, and Windows Cardspace. Today however, Microsoft released to manufacturing Visual Studio 2008 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. Soma of course [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Visual Studio 2008 RTM Next Week
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 16, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Comments (1)
According to the MSDN Subscriptions WebLog the Visual Studio 2008 RTM build will be available on MSDN subscriber downloads sometime next week, and considering next week is Thanksgiving that must mean that it will RTM sometime before the end of day Wednesday. Microsoft's Corporate Vice President - Developer Division, S. "Soma" Somasegar, announced the availability of [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Microsoft Outlook 2009 - Meeting Defragmentation
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 13, 2007 at 9:06 am
Comments (0)
With peer-to-peer networking technologies what I think would be an awesome capability in the next version of Microsoft Outlook, say version 2009 hypothetically, would be the ability to automate what I'll call meeting defragmentation. If Outlook knew what the calendars of my family, friends, and co-workers were then maybe it could defragment our calendars such that meetings [...]
Category: Uncategorized
C# Partial Types and Partial Methods
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 12, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Comments (0)
With the release of Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 came the introduction of the partial keyword to the C# programming language. With Visual Studio 2005 it became possible to distribute the declaration of a type across multiple source files. Code generation techniques provided the inspiration behind this technique given the fragility of [...]
Category: Software Engineering
WCF Services - Impersonation
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on November 2, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Comments (0)
Yesterday I was discussing some aspects of .NET security and how it relates to WCF services, someone asked an interesting question regarding the impersonation of the user calling a WCF service. Let's assume that you've created a Windows Service that is installed upon a middle-tier application server, and that Windows Service is running as Local [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Validation of Windows Forms
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on October 12, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Comments (5)
It never ceases to amaze me how many wonderful classes are right there for us to use within the .NET Framework, and I'm still discovering types that have been there since version 1.x let alone types added to the framework with version 2.0 or 3.0. In recent years I've spent considerably more time working on middle-tier [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Greg the Architect
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on July 27, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Comments (0)
I just stumbled upon the Greg the Architect website which if you're at all involved with software development then I'm sure you'll find fairly amusing.
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Software Engineering
Virtualization for the Software Engineer
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 16, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Comments (2)
Virtualization is well on its way to becoming a pervasive technology and initially I was somewhat skeptical with respect to the effect this would have on software engineers within their development environments. I could certainly see the effect this would have with respect to our production environments. The number of physical server machines placed into the [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Microsoft Silverlight at the British Library
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 12, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Comments (2)
You have probably heard of the Microsoft Silverlight project which aims to provide a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in enabling the next generation of media experiences on the Web. An interesting example of the capabilities of Silverlight is the Turning the Pages 2.0 application at the British Library. I'll hopefully be blogging more about the impact Silverlight will have on Web-based [...]
Category: Software Engineering
TechEd 2007 - LNC09 The Microsoft Certified Architect Program
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 12, 2007 at 11:34 am
Comments (2)
On Wednesday last week, Sondra Webber of Microsoft introduced several existing MCA's in an open discussion on the Microsoft Certified Architect program. According to Sondra, Microsoft was asked by many of the fortune 100 companies to produce a certification process for software architects, such that these companies can truly evaluate the quality of the people [...]
Category: Academic, Software Engineering
TechEd 2007 - DEV309 Team Development Best Practices
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 11, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Comments (0)
When attending conferences such as Microsoft's TechEd 2007, I usually return with a single statement that I heard during the conference ringing in my ears. At Microsoft TechEd 2007 that statement was uttered by Joel Semeniuk who co-authored Managing Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. Just as the statements that echoed in my ears [...]
Category: Academic, Software Engineering
Microsoft TechEd 2007 - Attendee Party
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 7, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Comments (1)
This year's attendee party was held at Universal's Islands of Adventure and wow what a lot of fun that was and I'm really going to have to bring my family back here sometime soon. I know one of my daughter's would have really loved the Spiderman ride which combines a cool ride with lots of [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - codename "Katmai"
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 7, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Comments (0)
During the Microsoft TechEd conference, Microsoft has been demonstrating some of the features of the SQL Server codename "Katmai". You can download a CTP build of "Katmai" and there is also a whitepaper from Microsoft explaining the many additions to the platform that you can expect within SQL Server 2008 when it releases next year. [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Microsoft TechEd 2007 - Blast from the Past...
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on June 4, 2007 at 7:15 pm
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This morning's keynote for the Microsoft TechEd 2007 conference opened in Orlando FL with Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President of the Microsoft Server and Tools business. Bob was accompanied by Christopher Lloyd, from the Back to the Future fame, along with the obligatory 1980's Delorian fully equipped with the Flux Capacitor. After a brief, but very [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Trustworthy Computing - Microsoft TechEd 2007 Bloggers Breakfast
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 29, 2007 at 7:57 am
Comments (0)
It only seems like yesterday that I was attending the Microsoft TechEd 2006 conference in Boston MA and now I'm just under T minus one week before I fly to Orlando FL for Microsoft's TechEd 2007. At the 2006 conference I was fortunate enough to be invited to the first TechEd Bloggers Breakfast in which Microsoft's CIO [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Say Goodbye to Courier New within Visual Studio 2005
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 25, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Comments (0)
Tired of using the age old Courier New font for coding? Well, Microsoft now provides a new Consolas font which installs itself as the default font within Visual Studio 2005 and will also be the default font within Visual Studio codename "Orcas" which is currently in beta. Sean Lareree within the Visual Studio Editor's blog cautions that [...]
Category: Software Engineering
new BlueBadge("Doug Holland").CreateBlog();
By Doug Holland (Intel) (235 posts) on May 25, 2007 at 11:26 am
Comments (1)
Welcome to my new blog at softwareblogs.intel.com where I'll be posting about all things related to software engineering, with a particular emphasis on the C# programming language and the Microsoft .NET platform in general. You're probably wondering who I am? I'm a "blue-badge" software engineer at Intel Corporation since March 2007, and today I'm part of the Intel [...]