Who taught me to think like a Software Architect?
I went to school for Electronic Engineering and while I was there I worked a job in logistics. When I worked there I learned that warehouse hubs looked a lot like electronic components when viewed on a schematic. They all had properties that effected the flow and the storage of goods, much like electric current and its relationship to the components of electronic circuits.
But that is not how I learned to think like an architect.
After college I worked in the electronic engineering field for several years. I learned quickly that engineering is 80% planning and doing paperwork, 15% testing, and only 5% fun (building stuff). This is where I learned to accept engineering could be gruelingly boring.
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Fixing the Windows SDK is not installed correctly WCF Service Configuration Editor Error
I have seen a lot of posts about the error “Windows SDK is not installed correctly” when trying to open the WCF Service Configuration Editor in Visual Studio 2008.
To fix it… open the Windows SDK Configuration Tool from the start menu.
Enterprise Library 4.0 for Visual Studio 2008 released!
Microsoft’s patterns and practices team has released Enterprise Library 4.0 for Visual Studio 2008.
Enterprise Library 4.0 – May 2008 contains the following application blocks:
Caching Application Block. Developers can use this application block to incorporate a cache in their applications. Pluggable cache providers are supported.
Cryptography Application Block. Developers can use this application block to incorporate hashing and symmetric encryption in their applications.
Data Access Application Block. Developers can use this application block to incorporate standard database functionality in their applications.
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Living for Hope in Fear of the F Bomb
I remember years ago at one of the local consulting gigs I was on they held a weekly developer meeting. At the time, I was there temporarily in transition to another gig. The senior developers that worked for the company conducted random code reviews of the consultant's work. At the time there were about 5 company developers and probably about 7 or 8 consultants. We were working on multiple projects.
The first meeting I attended they started to list off the things they found wrong in the code. On about the 5th item, I asked if they were going to tell where that code was located so we could figure out who had been making the mistakes.
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Service-Oriented Architectures and Software Product Lines
SEI has published a new report titled “Proceedings of the First Workshop on Service-Oriented Architectures and Product Lines”. It discusses the commonalities and the differences with service-oriented architecture (SOA) and software product line (SPL) approaches.
Overview from SEI site:
This report contains the proceedings of the First Workshop on Service-Oriented Architectures and Product Lines (SOAPL) 2007 that was held on September 10th, 2007 in Kyoto, Japan as part of the 2007 Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2007). This report includes an overview of the workshop, four invited presentations, details of the workshop’s outcomes, and the workshop position papers.
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ASP.NET Session Quick Recap
Few days ago, a colleague of mine asked me what kind of session that is being used in my team’s application. Apparently his team has some sort of problem in handling the session. He asked whether my team use InProc, or OutProc. His question sent me scrambling for answer
After googling for a while, here’s what I found:
InProc SessionState: The session will be stored in the memory of ASP.NET server. OutProc SessionState: The session will be serialized and stored in other machine (StateServer machine or SQLServer machine).
Smart Client Software Factory ( SCSF ) for Visual Studio 2008 Available
The Smart Client Software Factory ( SCSF ) for Visual Studio 2008 is now available on the Microsoft downloads site.
Overview from Download Site:
The Smart Client Software Factory provides an integrated set of guidance that assists architects and developers in creating composite smart client applications. The software factory includes: QuickStarts, reference implementations, how-to topics, patterns, and Visual Studio .NET extensions. This release is for Visual Studio 2008.
Get the Smart Client Software Factory – April 2008 for Visual Studio 2008 here.
Get the Smart Client Software Factory – April 2008 Documentation for Visual Studio 2008 here.
Silverlight 2 End-to-End Data Centric Application
Brad Abrams has put together a really nice post on Silverlight 2. He calls it, End-to-End Data Centric Application with Silverlight 2.His goals, list at the beginning of his blog, are to show-Explain the Silverlight Project Format How to do rich layout and animation Uses line of business controls for Silverlight such as DataGrid Has a Linq based data layer on the server on the server Exposes business logic over that data via a WCF web service Consume the service on the client in Silverlight and databind to the DataGrid Store result locally to minimize round trips to the server across instantiations with IsolatedStorage Re-theme the UI to make it look more cool. Do it all in code that you could easily write on stage in about 30-45 mins Have Fun!
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Questions To Be Pondered on Your Software Development
I was reading Alik Levin’s Blog which linked to an interesting article about increasing the performance of .NET application. The interesting questions are:
How to cache data? How to handle communications? How to handle concurrency? How to handle components’ coupling/cohesion? How to perform data access? What algorithms to use? How to handle exceptions? How to handle resource management? How to handle state management?
*read the article HERE
I strongly agree that every developer in any development Team should remember these questions (and know how to answer it, of course :D) by heart. And able take them as a consideration. My favorite donkey-bridge to these question is A-4C-D-E-R-S (Algorithm, Cache, Communication, Concurrency, Coupling, Data Access, Exceptions, Resource and State Management)
Models for Evaluating and Improving Architecture Competence
SEI has released a new paper titled Models for Evaluating and Improving Architecture Competence.Overview from the SEI Download PageSoftware architecture competence is the ability of an individual or organization to acquire, use, and sustain the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out software architecture-centric practices. Previous work in architecture has concentrated on its technical aspects: methods and tools for creating, analyzing, and using architecture. However, a different perspective recognizes that these activities are carried out by people working in organizations, and those people and organizations can use assistance towards consistently producing high-quality architectures.This report lays out the basic concepts of software architecture competence and describes four models for explaining, measuring, and improving the architecture competence of an individual or a software-producing organization.The models are based on(1) the duties, skills, and knowledge required of a software architect or architecture organization(2) human performance technology, an engineering approach applied to improving the competence of individuals(3) organizational coordination, the study of how people and units in an organization share information(4) organizational learning, an approach to how organizations acquire, internalize, and utilize knowledge to improve their performance.The report also shows how the four models can be synergistically applied to produce an evaluation instrument to measure an organization’s architecture competence.Below is the Table of Contents:1 Introduction 11.1 Terminology and Definitions 21.2 Models of Competence 71.3 Organization of This Report 92 The Duties, Skills, and Knowledge (DSK) Model 112.1 What Are an Architect’s Duties, Skills, and Knowledge? 122.2 Advantages and Challenges of the Approach 132.3 Processing the Raw Data 152.4 Duties 162.5 Skills 172.6 Knowledge 182.7 Using the DSK Model to Assess and Improve the Architecture Competence of Individuals 212.8 Duties, Skills, and Knowledge for a Software Architecture Organization 223 The Human Performance Technology Model 253.1 Using the Human Performance Technology Model to Measure and Improve Architecture Competence 274 The Organizational Coordination Model 294.1 Dependency 294.2 The Coordination Capability of an Organization 304.3 Measuring the Coordination Activities 314.4 Relating Organizational Capability to Dependencies 325 The Organizational Learning Model 335.1 The Components of the Organizational Learning Framework 345.2 Using the Organizational Learning Framework to Measure and Improve Architecture Competence 356 Considering the Models Together 376.1 How the Models Together Support Evaluation 376.2 Principles Embodied by the Models 386.3 Coverage Provided by the Models 397 Building an Assessment Instrument 437.1 Assessment Outcomes 437.2 The Foundations and Structure of the Instrument 447.3 Sample Questions 457.4 Reflections on the Instrument Questions 478 Summary 498.1 Next Steps 498.2 Conclusion 51Appendix A: Survey of Practicing Architects 53Appendix B: Complete List of Duties, Skills, and Knowledge 61Bibliography 69
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Fixing the Windows SDK is not installed correctly WCF Service Configuration Editor Error
I have seen a lot of posts about the error “Windows SDK is not installed correctly” when trying to open the WCF Service Configuration Editor in Visual Studio 2008.
To fix it… open the Windows SDK Configuration Tool from the start menu.