Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Visual Studio

Silverlight 4 Beta Hits the Street

Peter Galli — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:59:00 GMT

The beta for Silverlight 4 was released today, Scott Guthrie, a Corporate Vice President in Microsoft's Developer Division, told attendees at the annual Professional Developers Conference here in Los Angeles.

The final verison of the product will be shipped in the first half of 2010, he said, noting that the release of the beta means that developers can begin testing the capabilities of Silverlight 4 to plan for the great applications and rich, compelling user experiences to come, both on and off the Web.

Some 90% of the most commonly requested features were incorporated into Silverlight 4, which is currently installed on 40% of all internet devices and more than 50% of US broadband PCs, Guthrie said.

A number of customers, including Snapflow, Seesmic and H&R Block, as well as numerous Microsoft properties such as Xbox, Bing and MSN, are all already using Silverlight to create compelling user experiences.

The Silverlight 4 beta extends beyond the browser, and brings new out-of-browser capabilities, enabling new experiences that reach deeper into the desktop without additional code or runtimes required.

Webcam and microphone with local recording capability opens new possibilities for innovative interactive media experiences, while native multicast support enables efficient enterprise-wide training and internal communications behind the firewall.

Full support for Silverlight in Visual Studio 2010 gives enterprise developers a tried and trusted development environment and languages that scales for mission-critical enterprise scenarios, while integration with Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint bring the benefits of Silverlight interactivity to a broad enterprise install base, Guthrie said.

Enhanced printing, networking, databinding, reporting and charting capabilities satisfy common business needs, while Silverlight has a growing library of over 60 customizable controls to create rich, interactive applications to rapidly build attractive, functional business applications.

Microsoft also has extended support for Google's Chrome browser with Silverlight 4.

Microsoft is also working with the open source community to ensure that Silverlight content is available to them. Earlier this year, Moonlight 1.0 was released. Moonlight is an open source project that gives Linux users access to Microsoft Silverlight content, and is available for all major Linux distributions, including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu.

PDC 2009: Availability of the Windows Azure Platform

Peter Galli — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:14:00 GMT

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, used the company's annual Professional Developers Conference here in Los Angeles to announce the availability of the Windows Azure platform.

That platform consists of Windows Azure, the operating system as-a-service, and SQL Azure, a fully relational database in the cloud. The Service Bus and Access Control services, formerly known as the .NET Services, now run directly within Windows Azure and are known as Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service.

Microsoft will continue to offer Windows Azure as a Community Technology Preview until the end of this year, after which it will switch to a production service under which Azure's cloud services will be made available to enterprises. But users will get a fee pass in January, since charges will only start accruing in February.

In his opening keynote, Ozzie also announced that a small number of customers will go into production today, including Automattic, Inc., the maker of WordPress, which is now live on Azure. Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, Inc., took the stage to demonstrate MySQL, PHP, and Apache support on Windows Azure, as well as to announce that his company is launching a new site that runs on SQL Azure.

Ozzie also used his keynote to made clear that reaching all developers was top of mind for Microsoft.

"To most developers, to developers like you, Windows Azure appears as a model based extension to Visual Studio, enabling you to build apps that leverage your skills in SQL, IIS, ASP.NET, and .NET Framework. Alternatively, and of course it's your choice, you might leverage your skills by using MySQL and PHP within Azure, or you might instead take advantage of our new Azure tools for Java and Eclipse. Reaching all developers is incredibly important to us," he said.

Windows Azure now supported any kind of Windows code and programming model, and any kind of multi-role, multi-tier service design pattern, supporting extremely flexible binding and arbitrary relationships between roles, Ozzie said.

"Because you wanted it, we've broadened far beyond just the .NET programming model, and the Web role, worker role service design pattern. We added support for FastCGI, enabling high scale Web apps to be written in any of a variety of programming languages. And, in sessions this week, you're going to see the Windows Azure team quickly building and deploying Java apps, running under Tomcat. You'll see PHP apps under MySQL," he said.

Earlier this year, Microsoft enabled .NET full trust and native code applications. This functionality allowed developers to spawn xcopy deployable processes. As a result, Java applications can now be packaged and run.

Today, we announced that we are delivering a solution accelerator for Tomcat, an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies, as well as launching a Java SDK for Windows Azure Storage (tables, blogs, and queues). External endpoints (inbound traffic) to worker roles have also been enabled, which enables applications that receive internet traffic that aren't running under IIS.

During his keynote Ozzie also introduced Vivek Kundra, the Federal Chief Information Officer at the White House, who spoke via live feed from Washington D.C., and who encouraged developers to take advantage of the vast amount of public data to create applications using this new Microsoft technology.

"I'm really excited about what NASA is doing in cooperation with Microsoft with the launch of the Pathfinder Innovation Challenge ... anybody can participate and look at the data that has been democratized through NASA on the Azure platform, that allows people to look around the red planet, slice and dice, and cube, and create information, and advance our understanding of the universe," Kundra said.

This commitment to all developers is not new. When Ozzie first announced the Windows Azure platform at PDC last year, Sam Ramji blogged that developers will also be able to choose from a range of open source development tools and technologies, and be able to access Azure services using a variety of common internet standards, including HTTP, REST, WS* and Atom.

"The Azure platform's goal is to support all developers and their choice of IDE, language and technology. We are also providing programmable components that can be consumed by other applications, and Microsoft is funding and sponsoring open source software development kits to enable Java and Ruby developers to take advantage of Azure. This is significant as this is the first time we are delivering cross-platform software development kits at the same time as Microsoft Developer Network software development kits," he said.

And, earlier this year, Microsoft introduced the PHP SDK for Windows Azure, an open source effort for which Microsoft has provided funding, with development by RealDolmen, whose goal is to provide high-level abstractions that enable PHP developers to interoperate readily with Windows Azure.

The PHP SDK for Windows Azure focuses on REST and provides PHP classes for Windows Azure blobs, tables and queue, helper classes for HTTP transport, AuthN/AuthZ, REST and error management, as well as manageability, instrumentation and logging support.

Next up at PDC 2009 was Bob Muglia, President of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, who noted that Microsoft is converging on a common developer platform for both servers and services, that will enable developers to continue using familiar .NET Framework and Visual Studio tools and technologies, as well as third party tools such as Eclipse, to create and monetize applications that run on the server and as services in the cloud.

Muglia also announced the company's plan to offer Windows Server Virtual Machine support on Windows Azure, enabling customers to more easily support virtualized infrastructure across the continuum of on premises and cloud computing.

In addition, Muglia announced the new release of ASP.NET MVC beta 2, a free, fully-supported framework that enables developers to rapidly build standards-based Web applications through rich AJAX integration and enhanced extensibility.

In other related news, SugarCRM, a provider of commercial open source customer relationship management software, today also announced that it will offer its CRM applications on Windows Azure to enable its customers and value-added resellers to benefit from the real-time scalability, high availability and on-demand infrastructure of Azure.

"With Windows Azure, Microsoft has built a true cloud computing platform going well beyond the simple hosted infrastructure that most service providers offer today. Windows Azure enables SugarCRM value-added resellers to create and deploy unique solutions for customers around the globe. This new service is another key component of the Sugar Open Cloud, the SugarCRM cloud strategy for delivering simple, affordable CRM anywhere based on customer need," said Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM, in a press statement.

Better Windows Development Environments - One project at a Time

Mark Stone — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:45:00 GMT

Discussions of the PC market usually break down into "desktop" vs. "server", as if these are the only platform categories. However, the developer's dev box -- call it a "workstation" to distinguish it from desktop -- is really a separate platform. Remember, when Linus Torvalds created Linux it wasn't because he needed a better
desktop operating system, or a better server operating system. What he wanted was something that could run the gcc compiler. He wanted a developer workstation he could use at home.

Of course the developer workstation market influences other markets. Developers who develop on a platform are more likely to develop for a platform. So winning developer mind share is often about giving them what they want in the way of development environment. And in this regard, open source developers are something of a
different breed.

Microsoft has a great set of developer tools; I've certainly known developers who swear by Visual Studio. But there's something of a disconnect between graphical tools favored by Windows developers and then command line tools favored by traditional open source developers; I've also known developers whose first order of business
with a new Windows workstation is to GNU-ify it.

Ironically, the Internet has a convergence effect, drawing these two camps together. Put developers online, and they can collaborate. Put developers online, and they can not only develop, but they can build, deploy, and test. The workstation has become not so much a computer as an environment. The developer's toolkit includes version control, build management, automated testing, and the need to do all these things as a team rather than an individual. Developer environments have evolved rapidly to adapt to these changes.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) seems to understand this evolution as well as anyone, and a number of ASF projects focus specifically on tools for the developer environment (Ant, Buildr, Continuum, Gump, and Maven come to mind as a few examples).

What's interesting is to see the .NET developers following suit, and wanting these same sorts of tools for their development environment. What's surprising is that this .NET effort is very grass roots driven.

"Panday" is a Filipino word meaning "blacksmith", and can also be a reference to the graphic novel super hero of the same name (the graphic novel is also originates from the Philippines). This provides an appropriate metaphor for the name of the NPanday project on Codeplex.

The NPanday project is one of several affiliated with Microsoft's Open Source Lab in the Philippines, and is part of the effort to bring to .NET some of the capabilities found in other open source development environments. The aim of NPanday is integrate Apache Maven into the .NET development environment.This would enable .NET
developers to take advantage of Maven-compatible development infrastructure.

Projects like NPanday are important because they offer developers more choice of tools in a Windows development environment. The more familiar those tools are to open source developers, the more open source development will be done on and for Windows. NPanday is also an important project for interoperability, making it easier to integrate .NET development with other development done using Maven.

Developers, developers, developers...

Peter Galli — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:50:00 GMT

It's all about developers, all the time - well, at least for the next week here in Los Angeles at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference.

The first day of the show started off with an opening keynote by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who welcomed the more than six thousand attendees, thanking them for their commitment to the company and for all their hard work, saying that "without you, there would be no Microsoft."

He also pointed out that, although there had never been more platform choices for developers than are available today, Microsoft's platforms remained the most compelling for a number of reasons.

These included the fact that the company always builds its own key applications to ensure that its platform works well, end-to-end, for its customers; that, because of the scope of Microsoft's reach, its key platforms have a good chance of reaching critical mass, providing a stable foundation for developers; and that the company never loses sight of the fact that its partners have to be successful in order for it to thrive and flourish.

There is also new value to be had for users, developers and businesses, through the combination of the best of software with the best services, Ozzie said, before announcing the Azure Services Platform, which he described as a new service in the cloud and a new Windows offering at the Web-tier level. "Think about this as Windows in the cloud."

In a white paper, which can be downloaded here, titled "Introducing the Azure Services Platform," author Dave Chappell notes that in the Community Technology Preview version of Windows Azure, which was made available to PDC attendees today, developers can create .NET-based software such as ASP.NET applications and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services.

To do this, they can use C# and other .NET languages, along with traditional development tools such as Visual Studio 2008. And while many developers are likely to use this initial version of Windows Azure to create Web applications, the platform also supports background processes that run independently - it's not solely a Web platform, Chappell says in the paper.

Both Windows Azure applications and on-premises applications can access the Windows Azure storage service, and both do it in the same way: using a RESTful approach. The underlying data store is not Microsoft SQL Server, however. In fact, Windows Azure storage isn't a relational system, and its query language isn't SQL. Because it's primarily designed to support applications built on Windows Azure, it provides simpler, more scalable kinds of storage. Accordingly, it allows storing binary large objects (blobs), provides queues for communication between components of Windows Azure applications, and even offers a form of tables with a straightforward query language, Chappell says.

Azure will compete with Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) as a scalable hosting environment on which developers can build and host their applications. The systems currently being built for cloud-based computing are also setting the stage for the next 50 years, and developers should expect to see more Microsoft applications coming to Windows Azure as the system scales out.

So, for now, the new platform has Windows Azure at the center, with Live Services, .Net Services, SQL Services, SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM Services above it.

And, as Sam Ramji said in his blog post, the Azure platform's goal is to support all developers and their choice of IDE, language and technology. Microsoft is providing programmable components that can be consumed by other applications, and Microsoft is funding and sponsoring open source software development kits to enable Java and Ruby developers to take advantage of Azure. This is significant as this is the first time the company is delivering cross-platform software development kits at the same time as Microsoft Developer Network software development kits.

Microsoft is also funding these open source projects, under the BSD licensing model, in collaboration with Thoughtworks Inc. and Schakra Inc., and they will be run on open source portals RubyForge and SourceForge.

Amitabh Srivastaba, the Corporate Vice President of Cloud Infrastructure Services, told attendees that Windows Azure was a scalable hosting environment for developers to deploy their applications to the cloud, and would use multiple layers of security, including an optimized hypervisor and hypervisor enforced isolation.

Windows Azure also separates the applications from the underlying operating system so that both are managed separately. In fact, at the heart of Windows Azure, is a fabric controller, which manages the lifecycle of a service, from deployment to upgrade and configuration changes. The fabric controller views the entire datacenter as fabric or shared hardware resources that can be managed and shared with all the services that run there.

So, in short, the fabric controller maintains the health of the service. "When you want to change your service, you specify the desired M state, and the fabric controller very carefully makes the necessary changes. The fabric controller manages services, not just servers.This is a crucial point because this allows us to automate the lifecycles of a service," Srivastaba said.

Also, Windows Azure, leveraging the vast computing power available in Microsoft's datacenters across the world, will help reduce upfront capital costs, as well as management and operational costs, Bob Muglia, the senior Vice President for Server and Tools, told attendees, before likening the significance of the launch of Azure to that of Windows NT in 1992.

The Azure software is also at an early stage and will probably change as a result of direct feedback from developers, and Microsoft will be unlocking more and more of the platform's underlying services to developers over time.

When it is released commercially, the Windows Azure business model will treat costs primarily as a function of two key factors: application resource consumption and the specific service level provided.

Ozzie will be back on the keynote stage Tuesday to talk about Windows 7, developing for Windows and the Web, and the services built to bridge the Web, the PC, and the phone, and a world of devices. He will be joined by Steven Sinofsky, the Senior Vice President for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group; Scott Guthrie, the Corporate Vice President of the .NET Developer Division; and David Treadwell, the Corporate Vice President for Live Platform Services.

Pilot

jcannon — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:49:00 GMT

I spend a significant amount of my time crisscrossing Microsoft, looking for (and advocating) interesting ways that our research and development teams are adopting open approaches in their work. It’s not terribly difficult - and, in fact, increasingly easy to find areas where sharing code, participating in community and collaborating with the commercial open source industry are part of what we do every day. As part of my role as an open source community & platforms lead, growing this list is core to my job. And in blogging more actively on Port 25, I'm excited about discussing and expanding this list out in the open.

That said, once in awhile something different comes along...and in my crisscrossing this weekend, something different popped for me. As a former web developer, I have a special place in my heart for the developer tools we offer to build web experiences. I can recall using FrontPage '97 to develop simple WYSIWYG websites (*WYSIWYG, admittedly, was on a journey then...still is) and patching together Imagemaps with hand-calc'd coordinates; the joy of Photoshop and installing Kai's Power Tools for the visual fun of it, or the pain of Paint Shop Pro and transparent GIFs circa 1996. Dreamweaver was doing some interesting things and Visual Studio was starting to get more and more web-centric. Ahhh, the days of Web 1.0.

Additionally, as a former IS major, I also have a special place in my heart for development on a budget. Those dispositions keep me acutely aware of what goes on with our Express products - and it caught my eye when I started skimming across the refreshed Express site.

A lot of folks aren't aware that Microsoft offers a free-as-in-beer line of development tools for application, game & web development. We call these 'Express' - and there are four editions: Visual Web Developer 2008, Visual C++ 2008 Express, Visual Basic 2008 Express and Visual C# 2008 Express. There is even a free version of SQL Server 2005 in Express which provides complimentary database services during development. They've been available for a few years, but they were recently rev'd with enhancements from Visual Studio 2008.
With my job at Microsoft focused on open source so acutely, I figured I would take them for a test drive & see how easy it would be to get started. The real test, though? How easy would it be to start using this app if I was a Ruby, or PHP developer (Truth be told - I am not, nor was I during my development days) – but these are different times and those are popular choices. It’s a quick litmus test I’m thinking of using more often…because I do get asked frequently about Microsoft’s support of programming languages and frameworks beyond .NET.

Setup is straightforward - download, run the wizard & choose additional (free) documentation and development options like SQL Express. Click Next & you're set on your way. Note: you do need Windows XP or later to run an Express tool.

After VS Express is installed, the welcome center offers multiple ways to get started via community sample code, beginning programming resources, guided videos and relevant articles from a variety of online communities.

So I tried a quick test. In two-clicks, I went to "Help" and "Search" - and typed in 'PHP'. Here are the automatic & dynamically returned search results:

I immediately get source code samples to begin programming (from MSDN); SQL Server samples for data access and more from the Codezone Community and direct links into community forum posts. Right away, these are pretty useful tools to get started with.

Ruby is a very popular language - so let's try this one more time with 'Ruby':

Again, that’s not bad for a quick and dirty search. I get relevant programming articles, opinion pieces, sample code and more. It’s all hyperlinked out into the web, so I can easily jump-off and explore at my own discretion, or as I’m inclined to do…lose myself in a trail of links, only to recall my original point hours later. (Case in point )

The point I walked away with, in all seriousness, is that the spirit of Port25 is spreading at Microsoft & the proof is in the programming. It's exciting to see these offerings baked in from day one & I encourage you to take one of the Express offerings for a spin & post your feedback - what are your impressions?

On Port 25, I'll continue to highlight examples like this, and expand on my role at Microsoft and how we're working on growing the role of open source within Microsoft's DNA. For now, though, I have to dust off my copy of Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability and wax nostalgic with some old friends.

[PostIcon:3352]

Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries

jcannon — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:47:00 GMT

Some news from Scott Guthrie's blog this morning - we'll get more from the .NET and Shared Source team over the next few months:

"One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them.

Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year.

We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

You'll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally). We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008.

Integrated Visual Studio 2008 Debugging Support

The final release of VS 2008 will support the ability to configure the debugger to dynamically download the .NET Framework debugger symbols (and corresponding source code) from a web server hosted by Microsoft. You'll be able to configure the .NET Framework symbols to be downloaded all in one shot, or manually retrieved on demand:

Read the rest of the post at Scott Guthrie's Blog....

Podcast: Accessing VS Team Foundation Server from Mac, UNIX or Linux through Eclipse

jcannon — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 17:51:00 GMT

Sam interviews Martin from Teamprise, a company which has developed a pretty interesting suite of client applications that can access Visual Studio Team Foundation Server from Macintosh, UNIX or Linux clients using Eclipse. The Teamprise implementation allows development teams to use the source control features as well as work item tracking from within the Eclipse IDE.

Related Links:
- Check out the Teamprise site
- Download the MP3 File Directly

Podcast Related Links:
- Subscribe in the Port 25 Podcast Feed
- Subscribe to Port 25 Podcasts in iTunes

Shared Source, CodePlex and Powertoys

admin — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 17:10:00 GMT

Sam Interviews Sara Ford, former Computer Science and Mathematics double major and Shotokan Black Belt, to discuss Power Toys, Shared Source and CodePlex.

Sara will be at OSCON with the Port 25 crew. If you are attending and interested in meeting Sara, look for us. We'll be the ones with the video camera, more on that later.

Video: Shared Source, CodePlex and Powertoys

Alternate Video Format
Download MPEG4 Video

Related Links:
Sara Ford’s Power Toys as Shared Source @ Microsoft RSS Feed – join the conversation with a team learning how to do open / shared source at Microsoft.

Currently-released Power Toys for Visual Studio

MSBee
TFS Administration tool
Managed Stack Explorer
Best Practive Analyzer for ASP.NET (Alpha Release)
Power Toy Homepage – coming very soon!

Link to VRML Laser demo that Sara mentioned during the interview, but she is most proud of the Reflection and Refraction module.

Note from Michael (Port 25 Admin): Sam's shirt in this video is in no way an endorsement of post Sammy Hagar Van Halen. For the record we would sign the "Bring Back David Lee Roth Petition", if such a thing existed...

Video: Shared Source Development Contest

Here come the Ad Wizards: Subservient Programmer

admin — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:00:00 GMT

Sam interviews Dan Fernandez, who claims he has the best job at Microsoft, Lead Product Manager for Visual Studio Express. Dan talks about Subservient Programmer and meeting the needs of non-hardcore developers with Visual Studio Express...

Video: Sam interviews Dan Fernandez

Check out Subservient Programmer....

Alternate Video Format
-Download MPEG4 Format

Related Links:
Express Editions : http://msdn.microsoft.com/express
Coding4Fun: www.coding4fun.net (our hobbyist community)
Gaming: www.upgradeyourgame.com, includes Pong clone, Space Invaders clone, etc.
Fun community projects:
Project #1: Disco bar video - http://youtube.com/watch?v=jkqoPkuJaMI
Project #2: Disco Dance Floor - http://www.betterthaneveryone.com/gallery/v/parties/20060429/

Following-up...

admin — Mon, 22 May 2006 19:08:00 GMT

Hey guys,

Hope you're all doing well - I'd like to try and get some traction on the resource kit that we talked about earlier.

As a start, I pulled together a list of everything I could find from MS that might be open source related. I thought this could be a start of our 'manifest'. Once we figure what should be included, we can think about how to distribute it. A web page off of MSDN is the easiest thing; maybe that's enough, maybe there is more. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Also, I haven't had any luck contacting the Igloo author - I wanted to let them know about our recent change in licensing that would allow him to remove the clauses in his licensing. I've emailed him, but haven't gotten a response or seen a change in his web site. If any of you guys have his ear, please let him know that I come in peace :)

Anyways, here is the list (title followed by URL).

EMCA CLI 1.0
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3A1C93FA-7462-47D0-8E56-8DD34C6292F0&displaylang=en

ASP.NET Samples
http://www.asp.net/default.aspx?tabindex=5&tabid=41

FlexWiki
http://sourceforge.net/projects/flexwiki

IronPython
http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=ad7acff7-ab1e-4bcb-99c0-57ac5a3a9742

Rotor
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8C09FD61-3F26-4555-AE17-3121B4F51D4D&displaylang=en

Smart Devices Developer Samples
http://msdn.microsoft.com/mobility/samples/default.aspx

Source Tools for Bluetooth
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/usewinemb/ce/sharedsrccode/west/default.aspx

USB Webcam Driver
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/usewinemb/ce/sharedsrccode/USBDriver/default.aspx

Visual Studio 2005 Starter Kits
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/starterkits/

Visual Studio .NET Academic Tools
http://msdn.microsoft.com/academic/techdown/sharedsource/default.aspx

Wix
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/