• I’m in Chicago today and tomorrow for a reunion of sorts. In my last job, I managed a group of external architects called the Microsoft Architecture Advisory Board (aka the MAAB). We discontinued the program a while back, but the core of the group found the program valuable enough they have continued to meet anyway. I found the MAAB meetings incredibly valuable and insightful, so I’m really excited to be invited to continue my involvement with the group.
• I picked up Bioshock Tuesday (Circuit City had it on sale) on my way to my bi-weekly campus excursion. My meetings were over around 2pm so I headed home early, expecting to surprise the kids. But Jules had decided to skip naps and go shopping with them. Her cell phone was dead, so I ended up at home with a couple of hours to myself and a brand new copy of Bioshock. Wow, is that a good game. Certainly deserving of the amazingly good reviews it’s garnered.
• Speaking of reviews, this transparently biased review of Bioshock over at Sony Defense Farce Force is frakking hilarious. Somehow, I doubt their dubious review will stem the tidal wave of Bioshock’s well-deserved hype. Can’t wait to read their Halo 3 review.
• Pat Helland writes at length on master-master replication. I reformated it into PDF so I could read it – the large images were messing up the text flow on my system. As usual for Pat, there’s gold in that thar post. His thoughts on DAGs of versions and vector clocks as identifiers are very exciting. However, I think he glosses over the importance of declarative merging. I would think programmatic merge would likely be non-deterministic across nodes. If so, wouldn’t you end up with two documents with the same vector-clock identifier by different data?
• Joe McKendrick points to a few people who predict the term “service-oriented” will eventually be subsumed under the general heading of “architecture”. Not to brag, but I made that exact same prediction almost three years ago.
• Erik Johnson thinks that SOA 2.0 centers on transformational patterns. The idea (I think) is that if systems “understand each other more deeply”, then we can build a “smarter stack” and design apps via new constructs to promote agility and simplicity. Personally, I’m skeptical that we can define unambiguously system semantics except in the simplest scenarios, but Erik talks about using “graph transformation mathematics” to encode semantics. I don’t know anything about graph transformation mathematics, but at least Erik has progressed beyond hand waving to describing the “what”. Here’s looking forward to the “how”.
• New dad Clemens Vasters somehow finds time to implement an XML-RPC binding for WCF 3.5. I was encouraged that it didn’t require any custom attributes or extensions at the programmer level. Of course, XML-RPC fits semantically into WCF’s interface based service model, so it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that it didn’t require any custom extensions. But did it need WCF 3.5? Would this work if recompiled against the 3.0 assemblies?
• Phil Haack writes a long post on Duck Typing. VB9 originally supported duck typing – the feature was called Dynamic Interfaces – when it was first announced, but it was subsequently cut. I was really looking forward to that feature. Between it and XML Literals, VB9 was really stepping out of C#’s shadow. I guess it still is, even without dynamic interfaces.
• Since I’ve been doing some LINQ to XML work lately, I decided to go back and re-write my code in VB9 using XML literals. While XML literals are nice, I don’t think they’re a must have. First, LINQ to XML has a nice fluent interface, so the literals don’t give you that much cleaner code (though you do avoid writing XElement and XAttribute over and over.) Second, I find VB9′s template syntax (like ASP <%= expression %>) clunky to work with, especially in nested templates. Finally, I like the namespace support of XNames better. As far as I can tell, VB9 defines namespaces with xmlns attributes just like XML does. So I’m not dying for literal XML support in a future version of C#. How about you?

I’m doing a bunch of database / XML stuff @ work, so I decided to use to VS08 beta 2 so I can use LINQ. For reasons I don’t want to get into, I needed a way to convert arbitrary database rows, read using a SqlDataReader, into XML. LINQ to SQL was out, since the code has to work against arbitrary tables (i.e. I have no compile time schema knowledge). But XLinq LINQ to XML helped me out a ton. Check out this example:

const string ns = "{http://some.sample.namespace.schema}";

while (dr.Read())
{
    XElement rowXml = new XElement(ns + tableName,
        from i in GetRange(0, dr.FieldCount)
        select new XElement(ns + dr.GetName(i), dr.GetValue(i)));
}

That’s pretty cool. The only strange thing in there is the GetRange method. I needed an easy way to build a range of integers from zero to the number of fields in the data reader. I wasn’t sure of any standard way, so I wrote this little two line function:

IEnumerable<int> GetRange(int min, int max)
{
    for (int i = min; i < max; i++)
        yield return i;
}

It’s simple enough, but I found it strange that I couldn’t find a standard way to generate a range with a more elegant syntax. Ruby has standard range syntax that looks like (1..10), but I couldn’t find the equivalent C#. Did I miss something, or am I really on my own to write a GetRange function?

Update: As expected, I missed something. John Lewicki pointed me to the static Enumerable.Range method that does exactly what I needed.

• The Lee Holmes over at the Powershell Team Blog writes about alternatives to the “decades-old” Windows console host. Powershell Plus looks awesome. PoshConsole also looks pretty cool (though far from finished yet) and is free.
• WL IDWeb Authentication SDK has been released. Details on the WL ID team blog. It looks like what Passport SDK provided for quite some time, but now it’s free. There’s also a client auth SDK in development. (via Dare Obasanjo)
• Libor Soucek leaps to the wrong conclusion about not differentiating enterprise & support systems. Of course, different systems will have different availability requirements. But what happens when we connect them together? We can’t let the support system effect the availability of the enterprise system, right? To me, that implies either a) the support system now needs to conform to enterprise system availability requirements or b) we need some other mechanism (like async durable messaging) to act as a buffer between them. Personally, I like “b”.
• Nick Carr points to an article The Trouble with Enterprise Software by Cynthia Rettig. Cynthia writes that while the massive complexity of enterprise software, especially large-scale ERP systems like SAP, significantly hinder it’s value. It’s a must read. Choice quotes:
  • “It is estimated that for every 25% increase in complexity in the tasks to be automated, the complexity of the software solution itself rises by 100%.”
  • “The notion of reusable software works on a small scale. Programmers have successfully built and reused subroutines of standard functions. But as software grows more complex, reusability becomes a difficult or impossible task.”
  • “Hope, unfortunately, has never been a very effective strategy.”
  • “Is enterprise software just too complex to deliver on its promises? After all, enterprise systems were supposed to streamline and simplify business processes. Instead, they have brought high risks, uncertainty and a deeply worrying level of complexity. Rather than agility they have produced rigidity and unexpected barriers to change, a veritable glut of information containing myriad hidden errors, and a cloud of questions regarding their overall benefits.”

• I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry at Nick Malik’s definition of politecture. I mean, it’s funny so I’m laughing, but it’s so true that it makes me want to cry.
• Don Box comments on retiring the tenets. It’s good to see him say “please God tell me we can do better” than CLR interfaces or WSDL.
• Looks like the P2P APIs are finally getting the managed treatment in .NET FX 3.5. A long time ago, John deVadoss asked me what an enterprise system like CRM might look like if it used a peer-to-peer approach instead of client-server. If I had any free time, I’d prototype one out on this API. (via Mike Taulty)
• Scott Guthrie goes back to his LINQ to SQL series to tackle Stored Procs and UDFs. Being able to use UDFs inline with LINQ queries is very cool. However, it seems to me that LINQ discourages the use of stored procs. As a developer, I’d rather write LINQ queries than stored procs, if I can. The probably puts me at odds with DBAs who’d rather all DB access be via stored procs they control.
• Soma writes about new MSBuild enhancements in VS08: multi-targeting and parallel build.
• I just discovered Vista Battery Saver. Basically, it turns off Aero and Sidebar when you’re on battery. I’m traveling to Chicago next week, so we’ll see if it has much impact on my battery life. (via Plenty of Code and Larkware)

I’ve been running Office Communicator 2007 (aka OC07) and the Polycom CX200 phone for a couple of weeks now. Here are a few thoughts on the experience.

• Multiple Points of Presence. I’ve got OC07 installed on both my desktop and laptop. Unlike WL Messenger with it’s “you’ve signed in on another machine” messages, OC07 happily lets me log in both places. If I get an IM, it pops up on both screens. If my phone rings, I can answer it on either machine.
• Simultaneous Ring: When I get a call, both my machines and my mobile phone ring. I can answer in whatever place I want. For the most part, people know my mobile phone number, so I’ll need to get out the word to call my work number instead. (First step: re-program my work number in my wife’s phone.) I can also choose to forward my work calls directly to my mobile phone, though I tend to be better about checking work voice mail so I doubt I’ll use that feature.
• Outlook Integration: The previous version of OC had PBX system integration and Outlook. So you could call someone simply by right clicking on their name in Outlook, OC would talk to your PBX system to place the call. Unfortunately, when we moved offices we also got new IP phones that didn’t integrate with OC05. Now that I’m on OC07, my computer is my phone and all the Outlook integration works again.
• Status Indicator on the Phone: It’s minor, but the USB handset has the OC logo that lights up the same as your status. If you’re available, the logo is green. Busy? The logo is red. Do Not Disturb? Logo flashes red. Nice touch.
• Missed Conversations: The other day when I was in training, a colleague IMed me but I was away from my desk and my laptop was turned off. The IM conversation ended up in my inbox like an email. Doesn’t help for “You there?” IMs, but when he realized I wasn’t there, he just wrote the information he wanted me to know and I got it the next time I logged in.
• No Clock: A very minor sticking point, but the old phone system had a clock on the phone so you could easily see what time it is, even if your machine is locked. The USB handset doesn’t have a clock and I miss it. Not nearly enough to go back to my old phone, but enough that I’m going to go buy a little desk clock.
• No Keypad: I didn’t miss it right off the bat, but the lack of a keypad is a hassle. If I have to look a phone number up, having the ability to place the call inside of Outlook is slick. If I know the number off the top of my head (home, wife’s cell phone, helpdesk) then having to type it into Communicator is a pain. Also, if you’re calling one of those automated systems, keying the numbers on the software keypad is a real hassle.
• IM to Phone: Since I have to look my wife up in Communicator to call her anyway, I can shoot her an IM before  call her. The kids nap in the afternoon, so if I catch her online, it avoids a potentially waking ring.
• Extra Speaker: When you set up the USB phone, it sets itself up as the default speaker. That’s typically not what you want, but it’s easy enough to change in the sound control panel. However, when my earphones broke and I found myself sans audio, I changed it back until I could get new earphones. The only problem with this approach is that in a cube environment (like I work in), the noise from the phone speaker is a bit loud. You can pick up the receiver and listen that way without bugging your neighbors, but after about 20 seconds, it reverts back to speaker phone for no apparent reason.