Lots of people (including me) have pointed out that the WinXP Advanced Networking Pack and P2P SDK have been released. But I haven’t seen any code besides the samples. And if you look through the samples, I think you’ll see why. I’ve picked thru the “GraphChat” sample, which is written in raw pre-MFC Petzold-style C. It took a while to isolate the relevant parts of the code from all the windows goo that I thought I had finally seen the end of. I have to go through the code since the docs aren’t all that fleshed out yet.

One of the trickier parts is integrating with the new Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP). PNRP is a serverless DNS-esque system (though there is a “global” PNRP server hosted by Microsoft). It’s supposed to be independent of the Graphing and Grouping API’s, but the GraphChat sample gets the IPv6 address from the created graph in order to register the address with PNRP. Now that I’ve installed the Adv Net Pack, I have three virtual tunneling psudeo-interfaces. Other than hardcoding, I’m not sure how to get the address of the right tunneling psudeo-interface to register w/o creating a graph.

I’m getting the feeling that I should have started with the Grouping API, rather than the Graphing API. It runs at a higher level of abstraction, so I figured I should learn the underpinnings first. But I bet the Grouping API would have been much easier to understand.

Microsoft recently shipped beta 3 of the Speech Application SDK which allows developer to build voice response telephone apps as well as multi-modal web apps for desktop and pocket IE (with Microsoft Speech Server which just went beta 1) . But you could only get the SDK by ordering a CD. Not being the patient sort, I downloaded it internally (one of the many benefits of being b0rg). Now, all the impatient people can write speech enabled web apps, since the SDK showed up on MS Downloads today. Enjoy.

I haven’t seen an “official” announcement, but Microsoft released betas of the XML for Analysis SDK and ADOMD.NET. XML for Analysis (XMLA) is “an open industry-standard web service interface designed specifically for online analytical processing (OLAP) and data-mining functions”. The XMLA SDK provides an XMLA compliant web service for SQL 2000 Analysis Services. ADOMD.NET provides a .NET library for accessing XMLA compliant web services.

I never have really gotten into Analysis Services, but I’ve wanted to. It’s always been a time issue – I just can’t focus on everything!

I didn’t notice, but the Advanced Networking Pack for WinXP was released last week. It’s available on Windows Update, or you can download it as well as the SDK from MSDN. The API is C based. That’s right. Not COM, not managed, not even C++ objects. Like I said about the RTC Client v1.2 API, this API is ripe for wrapping in managed code.

“Register to become a Visual Studio Industry partner and get FREE access to the VSIP SDK. As a VSIP you will have access to the technology, private newsgroups and secured technical content to assist you in seamlessly integrating your tools, components, and languages into the Visual Studio .NET IDE.”

Everything you always wanted to do to integrate seamlessly into VS.NET used to cost money. As of today, it’s free! Wahoo!
[Marquee de Sells]

Wahoo +1. Now all the tool developers in the community can integrate their tools directly into the VS.NET Shell just like the “official” or “licensed” tools are. Ultra-cool. There’s also some good technical info on how to do this.