Go Live with .NET 3.0

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(No Transcript)
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Go Live with .NET 3.0

• Ivan Towlson, ECN Group

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Agenda

• What is .NET 3.0?
• Should I be considering/recommending it for
  current projects?

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What is .NET 3.0?

• .NET Framework 2.0 CLR, BCL and compilers plus
• Windows Presentation Foundation
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Windows Workflow Foundation
• Windows CardSpace

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Where do customers get it?

• Out of the box with Windows Vista
• 50 Mb redistributable or download for XP SP2 and
  2003
• Not available on earlier versions

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What do I need to develop on it?

• Runtime
• Vista SDK
• Optionally, VS2005 integration

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What is its status?

• Runtime released and fully supported
• SDK released and fully supported
• Visual Studio
• 2005 integration CTP, not being progressed
• Orcas no release date, current CTP does not
  include all designers

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Windows Presentation Foundation

• Common user input and output API
• Mouse, keyboard, ink, speech
• Controls, graphics, text, audio/speech, video
• DirectX based
• Declarative programming model
• XAML HTML-like description of UI
• Data binding

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Consider WPF If You Need...

• Custom graphics
• Even something as simple as a Gantt chart
• Animation
• Document-type layouts (rich text, adaptive
  layouts, mixed text and media)
• Navigation

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Windows Communication Foundation

• Common framework for message-oriented
  communication
• SOAP-based
• Transport agnostic (HTTP, TCP, MSMQ...)
• Interface oriented
• Configurable composition of policies (security,
  reliability, transactionality, etc.)
• Address, binding, contract in configuration

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Consider WCF If You Need...

• Messaging
• Policy-driven capabilities (security,
  reliability, etc.)
• Communication between your own processes (rather
  than running in IIS)

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Windows Workflow Foundation

• Workflow
• Sequential workflow e.g. expense application
• State machine e.g. bug tracking
• Host-based, configurable policies e.g.
  persistence, tracking
• Rules engine

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Consider WF If You Need...

• Long-running processes
• State tracking / progress tracking
• Externalised (configurable) rules
• This can be used for a lot more than business
  rules e.g. configuration-driven validation,
  enabling/disabling, navigation control
• BAM (Business Activity Monitoring)

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Development Tradeoffs WPF

• Incumbent technology Windows Forms
• Tooling (Cider VS designer, Blend)
• XAML Intellisense not so bad
• Controls
• Third-party support

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Development Tradeoffs WCF

• Incumbent technologies WSE, ASMX, Remoting,
  MSMQ, Enterprise Services (COM)
• Protocols have two ends

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Development Tradeoffs WF

• Incumbent technologies only at enterprise server
  level, e.g. BizTalk, BPM tools
• Tooling
• VS05 integration stable in practice but not
  supported (underlying designer is supported)
• Extra work to match enterprise tools
• Robustness, scaling, load balancing, etc.
• Adapters, transforms, resources/roles

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Development Tradeoffs General

• Documentation and samples
• Community support / knowledge
• Best practices
• Diagnostic and debugging tools not as mature as
  core CLR/procedural tools

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Development Tradeoffs General

• Investment in existing codebases migration or
  interoperation
• Availability of skilled developers (able to work
  without tooling, able to mentor)

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Deployment Considerations Consumer / Personal
Apps

• Thats a big download
• Users may not be allowed to install the framework
  on their work machines
• Rules out Win2000 and Win9x customers
• Win2000 still the standard desktop at many big
  companies

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Deployment Considerations Corporate Apps

• Another piece of plumbing to roll out
• Education
• The 3.0 moniker may make IT groups resistant
  even though its really 2.0 libraries
• Compatibility fears
• Corporate PCs often have low-end graphics
  capabilities (WPF)

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Deployment Considerations General

• Do operations staff know how to configure it,
  secure it, back it up, diagnose faults, plan
  capacity, perform failover etc.?
• This is often more of an application issue, but
  consider WCF/WF configuration files, WF
  dehydration/rehydration (e.g. SQL Server
  considerations, versioning)

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Management Fears

• Development and deployment considerations
  discussed earlier
• Microsofts commitment anyone remember Web
  classes?
• Support status hotfixes etc.

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Management Fears

• Lets wait until other people are using it
  technology seen as unproven case studies
• Wait for migration path instead of starting over
• Technology roadmap

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Summary

• Should I be considering .NET 3.0 for my next
  project?
• Yes!
• But, as with any new technology, be realistic
  about the implications would you have moved from
  VB6 to .NET in 2002?

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Questions?

• Ivan Towlson, ECN Group
• ivan_at_hestia.cc
• http//hestia.typepad.com/flatlander