Now that I’m back from vacation, I got my VS2005 Beta 1 VPC’s up and running. I have two – one for Express (VC#/VB/VWD) and one for the Enterprise Architect. I installed Express because I wanted to see how realistic they are as day-to-day dev tools. So far, I’m pretty impressed. I’m going to use VC# & VWD to build a distributed genealogy data management system with my cousin Dave and my dad. Genealogy is pretty interesting problem domain that can touch on many SOA data management issues such as ownership, publication of reference data and federated identity so I think it will be pretty cool.

Of course, I also installed the full-blown VS2005, primarily to get access to the new modeling tools (i.e. Whitehorse). BTW, there’s a relatively new whitepaper on the System Definition Model (i.e. the meta-model that the Whitehorse app designer, data center designer and deployment designer modellers are based on) available. It was published in late April when I was to busy w/ TechEd prep to notice. The whitepaper describes the SDM meta-model, the SDM core models and partnership opportunities.

In addition to being a history buff and architecture expert, Pat likes to sing – typically parody songs of his own creation. He’s written many, but we actually broke down and got a license for Don McLean’s classic “American Pie“. Pat performed his version – a speculative retrospective titled “Mr. CIO Guy” – at the end of his TechEd Europe architecture track general session. You can watch a streaming version on Channel 9. Lyrics are posted on my MSDN Blog. Major thanks to Breakfast of Champions for getting it encoded so fast and to Jeff for getting it posted so fast.

On a more serious note, we are recording all of Pat’s TechEd sessions for the Architecture Strategy Series. Watch this space for details.

Julie, Patrick and I had dinner with my cousin David Schaffer tonight. David is a research fellow for Phillips and is an expert on genetic algorithms. He was one of the founding members of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation and an editor for Evolutionary Computation Journal. He was in town for the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation COnference 2004 (i.e. GECCO – cute). It was funny that we are both software experts (though he is much more expert than I), but had to explain to the other what we did. I explained SOA to him and he explained genetic algorithms to me. We didn’t into too much depth over dinner – it was much more fun to watch Patrick try and feed himself noodles and talk about family stuff. However, I think I want to learn more about this – I’m thinking there will be applicability of genetic and evolutionary computation to SOA. Maybe I can get David to write for my JOURNAL.

David is also into genealogy, and he gave me a copy of the family tree he’s been building up over the years. It’s all 20 year old console apps and text files, but he wants to bring it to the web in order to better enable collaboration among family members. Of course, David’s never built a web app before. Sounds like a job for Visual Web Developer 2005 Express! (BTW, what’s the abbreviation for that? VWD?)

By now, everyone has seen the big news – VS2005 Beta 1, Express versions and the new VS2005 Dev Center. I’m provisioning a new VPC to install it on. I’d love to move to VS2005 for all my dev work, but I’m writing a few apps that need to be working in a production environment long before we get to Beta 2, so I’m going to leave those on VS.NET 2003…at least for now. However, there are a few longer-term things that I’m working on that I’ve been wait to start coding on for VS2005 that can now get started.

On the architecture side, we launched a new SOA resource page. As part of the launch, we are featuring an updated version of Pat’s Metropolis presentation and a new SOA whitepaper. The version of Metropolis that has been a part of the Architecture Strategy Series was one of the first times Pat had presented it. Like many presentations, Pat refined his delivery with each new time he delivered the talk. The new version provides a new section that describes SOA as well as a section drilling down on the guidance that the Metropolis model provides. Even if you’ve seen the previous version, you should check out the new version.

We also published a new whitepaper on Service Orientation and Its Role in Your Connected Systems Strategy. It takes a Crawl/Walk/Run approach to describing the approach and technology for service orientation today, next year with SQL 2005 & VS 2005, and further out with Longhorn and Indigo. It also covers such areas as Service-Oriented Analysis, Designing for Change and Extensibility, Service Management and Pattern of Service-Oriented Solutions.

You can discuss the new whitepaper, the new version of the Metropolis presentation or any other aspect of our SOA content on TheServerSide.NET.

I just picked up a 40GB Nomad Zen Xtra. I know everyone is all ga-ga for the iPod, but I have all my media in WMA I found the Nomad for almost half the price of a 40GB iPod. I also picked up Notmad Explorer which is much cooler than the built in software. I especially like the Xtreamer capability which allows you to play music stored on the Nomad thru your computer speakers. So far, I’ve only filled up 1/3 of the storage – I guess I need to rip more of my CD collection!