The Windows Development Community

Intel Unveils Multicore Programming Tools

jeffjames — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:39:00 GMT

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this morning, Intel announced a new family of software development tools for Microsoft Visual Studio to help programmers get the most out of multicore processors. Dubbed Intel Parallel Studio, this new product family includes four new applications, each designed for a specific part of the development process:

Intel Parallel Advisor (design)
Intel Parallel Composer (code)
Intel Parallel Inspector (debug)
Intel Parallel Amplifier (tune)

According to James Reinders, director of software development products at Intel, most of these applications will be available in beta form by the end of 2008 or early 2009, with a final release scheduled for mid-2009. Final pricing will also be announced in early 2009. Developers can sign up for the beta program by visiting www.intel.com/go/parallel. According to the program website, beta program applicants must currently be using Windows XP or Vista, use the C/C++ programming languages, and be running Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/2008 (excluding Express).

According to Reinders, current trends in microprocessor design involve moving beyond 2- and 4-core processors to what Intel calls "manycore" processors, future chip designs that could have 8, 16, and even more processor cores.

In an online FAQ [PDF] that answers questions about the new product family, Intel suggests that developers who will benefit most from these applications are those "seeking to take advantage of multicore, but concerned about supporting software on multiple generations of microprocessors and several recent releases of Microsoft Windows." Intel and AMD are both heading down the manycore processor path, and products like these will help developers learn to get the most out of the immense processing power that future processors--like Intel's new Larrabee processor--can provide.

For more information on Intel Parallel Studio products, visit www.intel.com/go/parallel.

Programmers on the Catwalk

SheilaM — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:57:00 GMT

You all know you're smart--and you're respected for your beautiful minds. But are you fashion-forward? In "The Programmer Dress Code," Codethinked.com has assembled a show of some of the stylin' greats in computing. Check out how you stack up against these hairy visionaries. http://www.codethinked.com/post/2007/12/The-Programmer-Dress-Code.aspx

Say Goodbye to Netscape Navigator

SheilaM — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:38:00 GMT

We'd like to hear your thoughts on Netscape Navigator and AOL's decision to stop supporting it.

Share your memories of the browser wars.

Some background http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/01/02/3191040.htm

Are you planning to run Exchange on Windows 2008?

SheilaM — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:25:00 GMT

The Exchange development team has some tips for you at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/12/ExLonghorn/default.aspx

Windows Networking Awards for Administration Tools Chosen by Readers

SheilaM — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:13:00 GMT

To see the vendors the readers of windowsnetworking.com have chosen in the Administration Tools voting check http://www.windowsnetworking.com/news/WindowsNetworking-Readers-Choice-Award-Administration-Tools-Active-Directory-Janitor-Nov07.html

Check out Microsoft's recently released Solutions Accelerators

SheilaM — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:57:00 GMT

Microsoft has recently released solutions accelerators for deployment and virtualization.

"Microsoft Deployment is the next version of Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007. It is the recommended process and toolset to automate desktop and server deployment. Microsoft Deployment provides detailed guidance and job aids for every organizational role involved with large-scale deployment projects."

Download details http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3bd8561f-77ac-4400-a0c1-fe871c461a89&displaylang=en&tm

Virtualization: "The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario."

Download details http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AD3921FB-8224-4681-9064-075FDF042B0C&displaylang=en

For information on more solutions accelerators, including those in beta see Nick Mayhew's blog at MSDN http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmayhew/archive/2008/01/02/new-solution-accelerators-released-deployment-virtualisation-office-security-and-sharepoint.aspx

Stimulsoft releases Stimulsoft Reports.Net 2007.3

SheilaM — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 00:05:00 GMT

Business intellegence software provider, Stimulsoft has released Stimulsoft Reports.Net 2007.3, a major new release of the all-in-one solution for generating reports for .NET. This toolkit provides .NET professionals report designer capabilities, plus technical support. The toolset supports Word 2007. PDF documents can be signed digitally. Query Builder is in this release; localization is integrated into the product. Reports can be generated from various data sources and can be used in Windows Forms and in ASP.NET. They can be exported to the most popular formats, including .pdf, .xml, .html, Excel, .rtf, .txt, .csv, .emf, .bmp, etc.

For more on this product see www.stimulsoft.com/

Dynamsoft Finds SaaS Success with SourceAnywhere Hosted

jeffjames — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:11:00 GMT

SourceSafe Anywhere developer Dynamsoft has announced that systems development company Adea., Inc., has implemented SourceAnywhere Hosted as their version control platform. According to a Dynamsoft news release, SourceSafe Anywhere Hosted is "...delivered over the Internet as a Software as a Service (SaaS) application [that] offers SourceSafe style version control capabilities for development teams."

SourceAnywhere Hosted requires various Microsoft technologies (namely Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005) to operate, and has an interface that resembles Microsoft Visual Source Safe (VSS) -- a move obviously intended to ease the migration of VSS users to SourceAnywhere.

In other Dynamsoft news, the company has joined Microsoft's Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) Program to bring Visual Studio support to their SourceAnywhere product line.

There's a Microsoft Hyper-V Beta for Server 2008 RC 1

SheilaM — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 18:57:00 GMT

Today the virtualization team announced via its blog that there is a beta for Windows Server 2008 RC1Hyper-V. The team says it's a major step forward from the preview release version. See the team blog here http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2007/12/13/happy-holidays-windows-server-2008-hyper-v-beta-now-available.aspx

For the download go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8F22F69E-D1AF-49F0-8236-2B742B354919&displaylang=en

Office 2007 Service Pack 1 ships early

SheilaM — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:38:00 GMT

See Paul Thurrott's coverage of Microsoft's early release of Office 2007 Service Pack 1 today. http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/97801/97801.html?Ad=1

To get the service pack go to Microsoft's download site http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/default.aspx

FAQ for Vista SP1

SheilaM — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:46:00 GMT

Those of you who are previewing Windows Vista SP1 by going through the recent RC release, may find this FAQ of interest. The actual SP1 is scheduled for release in Q1 of calendar 2008.

Here's a link to the FAQ http://www.marclironblog.com/windows-vista/windows-vista-service-pack-1-faq/

Here's a link to the public Vista SP1 RC http://tips.instantvista.com/windows-vista-sp1-rc.htm

25 issues: Deploying ASP.NET apps on IIS 7 on Vista/Windows 2008

SheilaM — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:56:00 GMT

See the blog of a Microsoft IIS Program Manager on advanced IIS server deployment and development. Mike Volodarsky discusses breaking changes for ASP.NET 2.0 applications running in integrated mode on IIS 7.0.

http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/12/08/IIS-7.0-Breaking-Changes-ASP.NET-2.0-applications-Integrated-mode.aspx

"Oslo" Represents a "Tectonic Shift" in Business/IT Interactions

SheilaM — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:07:00 GMT

Microsoft "Oslo," announced last month, is a grouping of products which will include BizTalk Server 6, BizTalk Services 1 (Internet Service Bus), .NET Framework 4, Visual Studio 10, and System Center 5. The focus of this service-oriented architecture (SOA) grouping will be on metadata, modeling, repositories, composite application development, and hosted services.

Commentary from Forrester on Oslo stresses that this is a major shift in interactions between IT services (development and administrative) and business. Microsoft technology will be able to capture an executable model of a business. This architecture, based on business design and business metadata, will make enterprises more agile.

Here's what Forrester analyst Randy Heffner said, "If you view Oslo’s impact as simply improvements in application development productivity, tooling, and maintenance, you will miss the big picture. To be a strategic architecture leader, you must be prepared to help your enterprise think differently about the relationship between business and technology. . . An increasing range of business metadata is at the center of a tectonic shift in the focus of solution building and programming. Rather than applications being IT’s translations of selected business requirements, business technology solutions become direct reflections of the business design itself.”

For more on this see http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=1016

The Forrester executive summary http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,44336,00.html

Electric Rain Releases ZAM

SheilaM — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:50:00 GMT

Today Electric Rain announced the release of ZAM 3D, a 3D modeling and animation product for developers and designers working with Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to build Vista applications, as well as applications for Windows XP with .NET 3.0 Framework installed.

For more see the Electric Rain site http://www.erain.com/products/zam3d/DefaultPDC.asp

NBA Sees the Silverlight

SheilaM — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:40:00 GMT

Microsoft has a new Silverlight customer, the National Basketball Association (NBA).

The NBA will use Silverlight on NBA.com to provide fans with a full-screen NBA photo gallery, video highlights, and additional interactive applications. Silverlight will also be utilized on www.WNBA.com and www.NBADevelopmentLeague.com.

Here's the press release http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/dec07/12-10NBASilverlightPR.mspx

Today: Windows Server 2008 RC1

SheilaM — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:00:00 GMT

The second release candidate for Windows Server 2008 is available for download today. (The first RC was RC 0, back in September.) Big news is the inclusion of the Group Policy Preferences tool. Click here to download release candidate evaluation software: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/audsel.mspx

A Nifty Table: Virtualization Infrastructure Product Comparisons

SheilaM — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:23:00 GMT

If you're looking to compare features of products offering virtual infrastructure solutions available today, check out this table.

http://www.it20.info/misc/virtualizationscomparison.htm

Preview of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions

SheilaM — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:37:00 GMT

Microsoft revealed the contents of its upcoming developer preview of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions:

--ADO.NET Entity Framework

--ASP.NET MVC

--ADO.NET Data Services

--ASP.NET Dynamic Data

--ASP.NET AJAX (new additions)

--Silverlight controls for ASP.NET

For more, see the press release at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/dec07/12-06EntityBeta3PR.mspx

ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 3 released

SheilaM — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:21:00 GMT

If you develop data-centric applications in a heterogenious environment you may want to check out the beta three release of the ADO.NET Entity Framework from Microsoft. Here's a link to the download site http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=15DB9989-1621-444D-9B18-D1A04A21B519&displaylang=en

For more details see the ADO.NET team's blog http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/default.aspx

DASH Standard version 1.1 released

SheilaM — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:55:00 GMT

If you follow the workings of the DTMF--The Distributed Management Task Force, which is responsible for developing management standards and promoting interoperability for enterprise and Internet environments, you'll want to know about the debut of the latest version of the DASH (Desktop and Mobile Architecture for System Hardware) standard. DASH 1.1 tightens security and protocol requirements for IT deployments.

Among the companies supporting this standard are Broadcom, Dell, HP, IBM, and Microsoft. DASH 1.1 adds functionality including features allowing for provisioning, remediation, and additional inventory and component management. It addresses requirements for remote manageability.

For more on DASH 1.1 see http://www.dmtf.org/standards/mgmt/dash/

Volta: New experimental toolset for .Net developers

SheilaM — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:14:00 GMT

Microsoft Live Labs announces a technology preview of Volta--a new experimental toolset for .Net developers. Volta is designed to allow developers to build multi-tier apps for the Web using familiar techniques and patterns from developing .Net applications. Here's somebackground from Microsoft on the Volta innovations:

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

To learn more about Volta and to preview and test it go to http://labs.live.com/volta/

Visual Studio/.Net Framework 3.5 RTM Case Studies

SheilaM — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:43:00 GMT

Microsoft Developer Division VP Somasegar's blog contains a number of case studies of companies that have deployed the RTM of VS/.Net Framework 3.5. http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/12/03/helping-customers-be-successful.aspx

Have you been using these products? At Windevpro we'd like to hear your unvarnished reaction.

Virtualization For Dummies

SheilaM — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:32:00 GMT

It was just a matter of time. http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0470148314.html?cid=RSS_DUMMIES_COMPUTING

PowerShell Cmdlets from IBM

SheilaM — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:07:00 GMT

IBM has issued some PowerShell cmdlets to manage its WebSphere MQ. Could this be the start of a unifed approach to automating the Windows environment. See the PowerShell team's blog http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/12/05/ibm-releases-powershell-cmdlets-to-manage-websphere-mq.aspx

Business Process Management Alliance Adds New Members

SheilaM — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:24:00 GMT

At the recent Gartner AADI Microsoft announced that its Business Process Management Alliance (BPA) added two new members--ILOG and SOA Software. The BPA was formed to break down business process managment deployment barriers, such as high cost, complexity and application connectivity challenges by offering pre-integrated technology solutions. BPA delivers end-to-end solutions running on Microsoft Platform that enable simpler, more cost-effective options. Other members of the alliance include IDS Scheer, Fair Isaac, Global 360, Metastorm, Ascentn, SourceCode Technology Holding Inc., AmberPoint, InRule, PNMsoft, and RuleBurst.

For additional information on BPM strategy and technologies, visit http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/feb07/02-26MSBPAPR.mspx, http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/solutions/bpm/default.mspx, or http://www.microsoft.com/soa/.