Thomas F. Abraham – On Technology

As most of you probably know, MSBuild is the new XML-driven build tool provided with .NET Framework 2.0.  You do not need to install Visual Studio 2005 to get and use MSBuild.  I’ll never understand why Microsoft went away from nmake and make files when they moved to Visual Studio .NET from the old C/C++ compilers.  It was a big design mistake and one that has made it difficult to create automated builds or build scripts of any significant complexity.  Thankfully they finally decided to clone nAnt and give us a real build tool again.

In any case, the real point of this post is that .NET 1.1 projects have just as much, if not more, to gain from MSBuild as .NET 2.0 projects do, and that has just become much easier.  The “MSBuild Extras – Toolkit for .NET 1.1″ is now available.  If you’ve been using nAnt, this is a great way to prepare for .NET 2.0 and take advantage of MSBuild’s power today.

Also of interest, you’ll find that the download for this toolkit is on a Microsoft site called CodePlex, stated to be “Microsoft’s community development” site.  I’m not quite what this means to GotDotNet, which has filled exactly that role for many years now.  Perhaps Microsoft is hoping to create their own SourceForge in CodePlex.  It will be interesting to see how it is ultimately used, but it seems to be picking up a bunch of interesting projects.

If you’re ready to install SQL Server 2005 SP1, you should also be aware of the recently-released cumulative hotfix package (build 2153).  Unfortunately, Microsoft has created an unusual situation that is bound to lead to confusion.

SQL Server 2005 SP1 was released less than a month ago, yet we already have a post-SP1 hotfix package that includes a significant number of additional fixes (33+).  There are two things that stand out with this release.

First, the update files are available for public download, whereas in normal practice the article describes the fixes and says “contact PSS to obtain this update.”  Second, the article does not contain the usual disclaimer of “install this update only if you are experiencing the problem described.”  However, it also notably lacks a statement recommending its installation.  As a result, there is neither a negative nor a positive statement about whether it should be widely installed.

So what do you do?  My recommendation is to always install SP1 and this cumulative update package together (and in that order).

As I had suspected, this odd timing was just a result of Microsoft’s release schedule, and the updates in this rollup didn’t quite make the SP1 cutoff.  You don’t need to take my word for it — Euan Garden of the SQL Server product team anticipated the confusion.

How to install?  This should go without saying, but it’s worth the time to back up your databases first, including the master and msdb databases, and to install these updates on a test server before updating your production server.  Install SP1 first, reboot if required, then install the cumulative update and read the directions first.  This update comes in six separate files that must be installed in a specific order, namely, the top-to-bottom order in which they are listed in the KB article.

Microsoft continues to be the software industry’s leading producer of inept marketing strategies.  Where do their marketing “experts” come from, and how do they keep their jobs?  Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are brilliant, yet they appear just as clueless about marketing by allowing these ridiculous plans to see the light of day.

With Windows XP we have Home Edition, Professional, Media Center and Tablet PC Edition.  Media Center never should have existed, because it is simply XP Professional with another application (called Media Center) installed, and a few extra device drivers for the infrared receiver and TV tuner cards.  Media Center is only available with a new PC.  Is there any logic behind this whatsoever?

In Windows Vista, Media Center functionality is integrated into most of the product line, and can be purchased after the fact.  I guess someone at Microsoft couldn’t figure this one out sooner.  (And by the way, if you’re buying a new PC and have a choice between Professional and Media Center, always choose Media Center because it literally is Professional — without the higher price tag.)

Now, to just make things even more convoluted, Windows Vista is arriving with SIX versions!  Yes, SIX!  They are: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and of course Ultimate, because the goal is to confuse your customers as much as humanly possible!  Oh, and there are two more versions just for European customers that don’t include Media Player, but you can thank the EU antitrust courts for those.  For at least some of these versions, when Joe Consumer gets it home and installs it, then realizes that he doesn’t have the feature that he wanted in the first place, he can hop online and buy it as a download direct from Microsoft.  Gee, thanks!

Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server (altogether known as Team System, not to be confused with Team Suite. Sigh…) packaging and licensing is a complete and utter disaster.  Did you know that there is a 50+ page whitepaper for partners that attempts to describe how the licensing works?  It is THAT complicated and THAT convoluted.  The products are overpriced and on a path to failure unless Microsoft gets its act together.  Your average development shop is not going to be able to afford TFS, leaving Fortune 1000 sized corporations as the main customers.  Microsoft’s own (highly valued?) partners, even at the Gold level, do not get licenses for TFS.  Instead, we get a 180 day trial version and a full version of Visual SourceSafe 2005.  Terrific.

There are four different “Editions” of Visual Studio 2005 – “for Software Architects,” “for Software Developers,” “for Software Testers” and “Team Suite” which puts the three former editions together in one box – and is the only one worth buying.  I’m an architect and a developer, and the only way I can use the new architect tools while taking advantage of developer tools like unit testing is with Team Suite, which naturally costs a lot more.  Since my client doesn’t have Team Suite, I had to go with the “for Software Developers” edition and forgo all of the new architecture tools.  I could have used them to design the system we just finished building.  Thanks Microsoft.

You must be thinking that it couldn’t get any worse.  Rest assured that it does: BizTalk 2006 and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF).  Microsoft just got done putting a huge marketing push behind BizTalk, even including it in the massive VS 2005/SQL 2005 product launch.  At about the same time, they started making a big deal about WWF.  Brilliant timing.

Everyone knows that WWF is going to handle some of the same things that BizTalk does, primarily “orchestrations,” and be easily extensible.  The perception is that WWF is new and cool and the future direction for workflow apps, so why use BizTalk?  BizTalk already had a bad reputation for ease of use in the development tools.  To compound the problem, all of the BizTalk bloggers/authors/speakers dropped BizTalk in a flash, and most are now writing and speaking about WWF.  There are already multiple WWF books coming out.  In contrast, only one BizTalk 2004 book has ever been published, and the main author was Microsoft’s (at the time) product manager for BizTalk.

I believe that BizTalk Server 2006 is going to go nowhere except to those companies already using BTS 2004 or older.  Microsoft’s skilled marketers killed any potential growth for BizTalk 2006 with WWF.  The only hope is that in BizTalk v.Next, when WWF replaces the orchestration engine, it will still be alive as a viable product.

You can look beyond all of these examples to Office, .NET (remember when every new product was announced as XYZ.NET Server?), ActiveX and any number of other cases in Microsoft’s history to see the continued incompetence of their marketing departments.  It’s frustrating to watch, and it never ceases to amaze me that even Gates and Ballmer don’t get it.

It’s been quite some time (C++/MFC/COM era) since I’ve updated my Microsoft certifications, so with the brand-new .NET 2.0 exams trickling out, now seemed like a good time to renew.  The goal this time around: MCPD Enterprise Applications, or Microsoft Certified Professional Developer: Enterprise Applications Developer.  (If you hadn’t heard, Microsoft revamped the certification program yet again.)

I started off by taking 70–529 – .NET 2.0 Distributed Application Development about a week ago.  This is a 40 question, 2 hour (maximum) test that covers Web services, WSE 3.0, Remoting, MSMQ, “serviced components” (i.e. COM+) and asynchronous calling patterns and Remoting events.  The interesting things about this test are that 1) Remoting is an almost-dead technology and 2) WSE 3.0 is not even part of the .NET Framework.

Remoting still exists in .NET 2.0, but no one at Microsoft will recommend writing any new code with it.  It’s really only there for backward compatibility.  You should have heard of Windows Communication Framework (formerly Indigo) by now, and Remoting will truly be dead when it arrives.  Remoting should have had little or no presence in this brand-new test, but it’s there, so you need to know it.

Aside from that, the rest of the topics are quite relevant to any .NET developer writing distributed applications today.  The questions are multiple-choice style, with choose-one, choose-two, and choose-all variants.

Final result: Pass, score 953 (passing is 700).

Every now and then Microsoft releases an update for Visual Studio that arrives with little or no fanfare, and the latest example is the Consolas font package.  According to Microsoft, “Consolas is intended for use in programming environments and other circumstances where a monospaced font is specified.”

Consolas is specifically designed for ClearType, Microsoft’s advanced font-smoothing/anti-aliasing technology found in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.  According to the licensing terms, Consolas is only available to licensed users of Visual Studio 2005.  Of course, the font would be useful in many other environments.  When you install the package, it changes the default text editor font in Visual Studio 2005 to Consolas.

I’ve only spent a day with Consolas, but so far I like it.  You will probably need to adjust your ClearType settings with the ClearType Tuner to avoid having the font appear either too light or too dark.  ClearType is mainly intended for LCD screens, but I’m using it on a CRT with good results too.

After many (many) technical and licensing discussions, my current client is moving forward to BizTalk 2006 from BizTalk 2004.  We’re excited to finally be able to dump the last SQL Server 2000 and VS.NET 2003 installs and go pure-2.0.

That said, I’ve been busy with BTS 2004 to 2006 upgrades and new installs lately.  I found that BizTalk 2006 requires MMC (Microsoft Management Console) 3.0 — but the new and improved BTS installer doesn’t appear to check for it, nor does it install it if you don’t have it!  After installing 2006, I tried to open some of the BizTalk MMC snap-ins and was informed that I didn’t have MMC 3.0.  Hmm… so much for the dependency checker and automatic download and install of “all” of the software prerequisites.  It’s still better than 2004, but how could they miss this??

Save yourself a few minutes and just install MMC 3.0 beforehand.  There are different installers for each OS variant, so you can search Microsoft Downloads for “MMC 3.0″ to find what you need.  This search link might get you there quicker.

[5/18/06 Update] – Evidentally the Enterprise SSO Admin snap-in is the only one that requires MMC 3.0, so you can get away with 2.0 for most of your tasks.  However, I’d still advise upgrading to 3.0 to avoid the day when you need that snap-in, the server is in production, you can’t open it, you can’t restart the server, and you throw the keyboard across the room in frustration!