Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Morning Coffee 88

I've got over 500 unread news posts and 200 emails in my inbox to process. So this is nowhere near comprehensive.

• Clarius released the June 07 CTP of their Software Factory Toolkit. Big new feature in this drop is T4 Text Template editor that has syntax highlighting and eventually intellisense. They also released the May 07 CTP of VSSDK Assist, previously known as VSIP Factory. Haven't played with either yet, but it seems like a good time to be a tool builder.
• PowerShell hits a million downloads in six months. No surprise there, IT'S FRAKING AWESOME. Jeff Snover details seven MSFT products using PS, promising many more that he can't talk about. See earlier comment about being fraking awesome.
• Speaking of PS, I don't "get" Server Core because it doesn't support managed code. So no PS for Server Core. They announced @ TechEd that Server Core will support IIS 7, but since there's no CLR you can't run ASP.NET. As far as I'm concerned, no PS and no ASP.NET is below the minimum threshold of usefulness. I realize it's technical limitation related to the current factoring of the .NET Framework and I assume some team somewhere in Redmond is working on fixing it. But what's the point of releasing Server Core in the meantime?
• QUT releases version 0.8 of their Ruby.NET compiler. Given that the IronRuby guys bootstrapped by licensing the Ruby.NET compiler, I wonder how these two projects will evolve side by side.
• Speaking of Ruby, JRuby has gone 1.0. Congrats!
• At TechEd, I saw my friend Steve Jones from Capgemini, and it's not this Steve Jones. Woops. But CRUD is still CRAP.
• Pat Helland breaks Scott Hanselman's Rule #2 and details how he "lost a Megan".
• My ex-teammate David Hill has been busy with Acropolis. If you are even the slightest bit interested in this technology, you should be reading his blog.
• Microsoft acquired a company called Stratature last week. I don't typically track MSFT acquisition news + it was lost in the noise of TechEd. But Roger Wolter thinks it's a great move and that Stratature's Master Data Management hub product is one of the best. Given the importance of MDM in SOA, I think I need to go learn more about this product.