Silverlight, WPF at forefront of DevExpress plans

.NET component and application framework maker Developer Express will place a greater emphasis on Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) this year, according to its 2010 road map, announced on Tuesday.

DevExpress' Silverlight components will deliver full design-time support for Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 3. Upcoming Silverlight 3 controls will include charting, data editing and a scheduler. A Silverlight 4 printing control will also be introduced.

"We feel we are late to the party, but then again, Silverlight is changing a lot," said DevExpress CTO Julian Bucknall. Aside from controls, the company is integrating Silverlight into its eXpressApp Framework, he added.

Some of its upcoming WPF controls will include final versions of DevExpress' pivot grid and layout manager, data editor, ribbon, report view, and scheduler.

DevExpress' embrace of Silverlight and WPF comes at the expense of Windows Forms development. Bucknall said that WinForms controls are being deemphasized, but development will continue with more chart types, VS 2010 and Client Profile support for controls, as well as new user interface styles to match the appearance of Windows 7 and Office 2010.

VCL (Visual Component Library) controls will be likewise updated with additional views and similar user interface options for the Microsoft stack.

DevExpress will continue to forge ahead to update its existing ASP.NET controls, and it will begin to deliver new controls that exploit the new capabilities that will be introduced by .NET 4.0 , Bucknall said. He is being more circumspect about developing components for ASP.NET's Model-View-Controller pattern, but the company will introduce a navigation bar and tab control nonetheless.

Lastly, new editions of the company's next IDE productivity tools, including CodeRush and Refactor Pro, will be released later this year around the time that VS 2010 ships, Bucknall said. "There were big changes in Visual Studio 2010," he added.

By David Worthington on SDTimes.

.NET Framework Developer Center

.NET Framework Developer Center

Windows Communication Foundation is a part of the .NET Framework that provides a unified programming model for rapidly building service-oriented applications that communicate across the web and the enterprise. 

WCF and WF in .NET 4

In the .NET Framework 4, there have been significant enhancements in the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) namespaces. .NET developers can use these technologies, either independently or together, to eliminate the tradeoff between ease of service authoring and performant, scalable services. Read more about WCF and WF in .NET 4.

Windows Presentation Foundation

Next-Generation User Experiences. The Windows Presentation Foundation, WPF, provides a unified framework for building applications and high-fidelity experiences in Windows Vista that blend application UI, documents, and media content. WPF offers developers 2D and 3D graphics support, hardware-accelerated effects, scalability to different form factors, interactive data visualization, and superior content readability.

Windows Workflow Foundation Provides a programming model, in-process workflow engine and rehostable designer to implement long-running processes as workflows within .NET applications

WF and WCF in .NET 4

In the .NET Framework 4, there have been significant enhancements in the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) frameworks. .NET developers can use these technologies, either independantly or together, to eliminate the tradeoff between ease of service authoring and performant, scalable services. Read more about .NET 4.

Base Class Library Highlights

Code Contracts at PDC 2009
If you’re at PDC this year and interested in Code Contracts, go watch Mike Barnett and Nikolai Tillmann talk about Code Contracts and Pex (another MSR tool).  Their session is called Code Contrac... more

What's New in the BCL in .NET 4 Beta 2 [Justin Van Patten]
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 are now available to download.  .NET 4 Beta 2 contains several new BCL features and enhancements in addition to what was included in .NET 4 Beta 1. &... more

Code Contracts CLR Inside Out Article [Melitta Andersen]
In the August 2009 issue of MSDN Magazine, we have a CLR Inside Out article on the BCL’s experience with adding code contracts to the BCL.  It includes both an overview of the feature, as well as... more

AppFabric Highlights

Meet the Windows Azure platform AppFabric Team at PDC 2009!

Coming to PDC 2009? Don't miss out the opportunity to meet with the Windows Azure platform AppFabric team!

• Lap Around the Windows Azure Platform by Manuvir Das
• REST Services Security Using the Microsoft .NET Access Control Service by Justin Smith
• Building Hybrid Cloud Applications with the Microsoft .NET Service Bus by Clemens Vasters
• Software in the Energy Economy by Juval Lowy
• Lesson Learned: Building On-Premises and Cloud Applications with the Service Bus and Windows Azure by Todd Holmquist-Sutherland

Windows Azure platform AppFabric

AppFabric Access Control
AppFabric Access Control Service takes the pain of authentication and authorization out of your web applications and services. A simple and familiar programming model keeps your code clean and allows you to transition to the declarative model of rules and claims. These rules can be easily configured to meet your applications’current and future access control needs. AppFabric Access Control is based on a claims-based authorization model, which alleviates the need to develop and support a variety of identity providers and architectures.

AppFabric Service Bus
AppFabric Service Bus alleviates the pain to expose application's or service’s functionality across a variety of network-related constraints. Once AppFabric Service Bus has established connectivity among applications, it provides flexibility on how applications can communicate with each other. Developers are enabled to build solutions with various communication patterns such as relayed, buffered, bidirectional, publish-subscribe, multicast, streaming and direct-connect. AppFabric Service Bus provides each service a stable Internet-accessible Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that can be accessed by any authorized client application. Powered by AppFabric Access Control, AppFabric Service Bus is able to control services accessibility with heterogeneous identity systems.

AppFabric CodePlex Sample

Azure Issue Tracker
This sample demonstrates a real-world SaaS architecture and scenario using the Azure Services Platform to perform federation and multi-tenancy. Technologies used include the Access Control service (part of Windows Azure platform AppFabric) and SQL Data Services (part of SQL Services).

.NET Services November 2009 CTP Now Available
The .NET Services team is excited to announce the .NET Services November 2009 CTP release. Please see this blog post for release details.

TechEd 2009 Sessions Recap
if you attended TechEd 2009 but missed the .NET Services sessions, you can see them online.

Get Started with ASP.NET

Microsoft ASP.NET is a free technology that allows programmers to create dynamic web applications. ASP.NET can be used to create anything from small, personal websites through to large, enterprise-class web applications. All you need to get started with ASP.NET is the free .NET Framework and the free Visual Web Developer. Get the Essential Downloads, and start today.

ADO.NET

ADO.NET is a set of classes that expose data access services to the .NET programmer. ADO.NET provides a rich set of components for creating distributed, data-sharing applications. It is an integral part of the .NET Framework, providing access to relational, XML, and application data. ADO.NET supports a variety of development needs, including the creation of front-end database clients and middle-tier business objects used by applications, tools, languages, or Internet browsers.

Common Language Runtime Highlights

CLR-Related PDC 2009 Sessions
If you’re at PDC this year and are reading the CLR Team’s blog, there are a few sessions that might be of interest to you. Future of Garbage... more

How to Make the Most of Your .NET Server Code
one of our team’s field engineers recently sent a link to a Channel 9 video: Steve Michelotti of e.magination on High Performance Web Solutions. This company built a 64-bit web server that handles ove... more

CLR Inside Out - Exploring the .NET Framework 4 Security Model

The new installment of the “CLR Inside Out” column in MSDN Magazine is now available on line.  This month we have an article from Andrew Dai on exploring the .NET Frame... more

ASP .NET Training Services

Microsoft ASP.NET is a free technology that allows programmers to create dynamic web applications. ASP.NET can be used to create anything from small, personal websites through to large, enterprise-class web applications.

'Midori' concepts materialize in .NET

'Midori' concepts materialize in .NET,

Some of Microsoft’s latest technologies could be green shoots on a migration toward its "Midori" operating system, according to analysts who are familiar with the project.

Recent additions to the .NET Framework adhere to the concurrent programming principles outlined in the Midori documents that SD Times viewed in 2008. Silverlight and the Windows Azure platform could also be complementary to a potential release of Midori, the analysts said.

Midori is a technology incubation project that was born out of Microsoft Research’s (MSR) Singularity operating system, the tools and libraries of which are completely managed code.

Microsoft has designed Midori to be Internet-centric with an emphasis on distributed concurrent systems. It also introduces a new security model that sandboxes applications.

"Midori is an attempt to create a new foundation for the operating system that runs ‘inside the box,’ on the desktop and in the rack. As such, it's willing to break with compatibility (or at least wall off compatibility to a virtual machine)," explained Larry O’Brien, a private consultant and author of the "Windows & .NET Watch" column for SD Times.

Microsoft may be laying a foundation for Midori in its existing development stack through languages and Silverlight as a runtime, O’Brien said. Microsoft Research is also increasingly focused on reasoning about concurrent programs, he added.

These major architectural transitions require developers to make a “conceptual leap” to a new model of programming, and to relearn how to program in an efficient manner, said Forrester Research principal analyst Jeffrey Hammond.

"We're seeing a gulf opening up right now between serial and parallel programming; only a small minority of rocket-scientist types can actually write code that works effectively in a parallel, multicore world,” Hammond added. “I think it's pretty clear that Midori is on the other side of that scale-out gulf. From a development point of view, those that can make the leap solidify their skills and employment opportunities for the next decade and beyond."

When asked whether there were any new developments in the Midori project, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "Microsoft is always thinking about and exploring innovative ways for people to use technology. Midori is one of many incubation projects under way at Microsoft."

Green shoots

Microsoft's F# programming language, which will ship this month with Visual Studio 2010, "hugely fits" the Midori programming model that was outlined in Microsoft’s documents, O’Brien said. F# is designed with restrictions that are intended to make it easier for developers to automatically parallelize applications, he explained.

For instance, F# is highly immutable—meaning that object states cannot be modified once created—and has an implicit type system. Midori requires developers to follow a similarly constrained model.

"Immutable variables are pretty much the opposite of how most programmers think about variables ('A variable that doesn't vary?'). So just a few years ago, the idea that functional programming was going to catch on seemed very dubious, and it was very surprising that F# became a first-class language so quickly," O'Brien wrote in an e-mail.

"Similarly, immutability and strong typing make it easier to reason about security," he added.

O'Brien questioned whether F# would become a more prominent language, or if Microsoft would evolve C# to have more of the same constructs that support automatic parallelization.

Automatic parallelization was a "big question mark" in Microsoft's Midori documents, he said. "One thing I've been noticing is that MSR is producing tons of stuff on reasoning about concurrent programs, exploiting latent parallelism ‘automatically.’ "

Microsoft must evolve the .NET Framework Common Language Runtime further to fully exploit the advantages of functional programming, O'Brien said.

Microsoft also has rapidly developed its Silverlight runtime. The Midori programming model includes Bartok, an MSR project that endeavored to create a lightweight compiled and managed runtime system that was more efficient than the  .NET Framework.

"There's no question that Microsoft is seeing Silverlight as the lightweight platform for delivering applications (Web-based and mobile). As far as Midori and [Windows] Azure go, what I can see is that a Silverlight front end is a good front end for an Azure-powered back-end system," O'Brien said.

An Azure tie-in?

It would make sense for Microsoft to use the Azure platform as a vehicle for introducing Midori, Forrester's Hammond said. "It's essentially a  .NET-centric (and Internet-centric) scale-out runtime.

"A distributed network-aware OS is the perfect thing to host in the cloud, and what better place to knock out the kinks than your own data center, where you have 100% control over the hardware and infrastructure you're testing on? This also allows them to test it underneath parts of the overall infrastructure: for example, hosting an individual service," Hammond explained.

Further, Microsoft is battling for new territory—distributed applications—with the Windows Azure platform, O'Brien said. As such, the platform has little legacy codebase, as well as ample funding in money and talent, along with new challenges, he added.

"While I don't think that we know if Midori would work as something fed ‘down the pipe’ to the consumer, the idea that Azure might ultimately benefit from its own operating system is definitely worthy of debate," O'Brien said.

O'Brien said that Microsoft might launch Midori as a new operating system for cloud data centers to up the ante against Google, which has developed new programming languages for writing distributed applications.

Midori's strong emphasis on concurrency issues, a willingness to break compatibility, and the idea of using a hypervisor "as a kind of Meta-OS" would fit that strategy, O'Brien observed. However, he noted that there is no concrete knowledge about the state of Midori or even that its design is necessarily attractive for a data center OS.

Microsoft does not have the lead in cloud computing, and it is rolling out new features for the Windows Azure platform to stay competitive with Amazon and Google, O'Brien noted. "At this stage, Microsoft cannot build Azure bottom-up. But the risks of retrofitting Azure to a new OS are vastly less than the unknowns of putting a new OS onto all the world's hardware."

The status of Midori

While the company has remained tightlipped, some information relating to the status of the project has become available. Midori team member Jonathan Shapiro departed Microsoft in March, citing personal reasons.

Microsoft recruited Shapiro from the BitC language and Coyotos operating system projects to work on Midori. He served on a team of high-profile programmers reportedly led by Microsoft senior vice president of technical strategy Eric Rudder.

Whether Rudder's focus has shifted away from Midori onto other projects in unknown. He recently presented at TechEd Dubai in early March on the topic of Microsoft's "three-screens-and-a-cloud" software-plus-services strategy for .NET.

By David Worthington