February 2005 - Posts
Since the release of World Of Warcraft on 11 februari, it is hard NOT to play this amazing game. I think it has been more than 7 years since I played a game, but surely this is not something you want to mis out.
Here are some WoW facts of the dotnet6 team; Wesley is a Human Paladin, Ken is Gnome Mage and I'm a Night Elf Hunter. Most of us past level 10 after a few weeks playing a bit at off hours. Because of the different races, we all started on different places, my guess is that we'll meet somewhere when we're level 20 or so. Then we'll team up and take it up on the 'bad' Horde guys.
- Erik
Whenever you're about to develop a serious application in .NET you should consider using the Enterprise Library. Basically it is a collection of a number of mini frameworks called Application Blocks. Each of them serve a different purpose (copied from the documentation):
- Caching Application Block. This application block allows developers to incorporate a local cache in their applications.
- Configuration Application Block. This application block allows applications to read and write configuration information.
- Data Access Application Block. This application block allows developers to incorporate standard database functionality in their applications.
- Cryptography Application Block. This application block allows developers to include encryption and hashing functionality in their applications.
- Exception Handling Application Block. This application block allows developers and policy makers to create a consistent strategy for processing exceptions that occur throughout the architectural layers of enterprise applications.
- Logging and Instrumentation Application Block. This application block allows developers to incorporate standard logging and instrumentation functionality in their applications.
- Security Application Block. This application block allows developers to incorporate security functionality in their applications. Applications can use the application block in a variety of situations, such as authenticating and authorizing users against a database, retrieving role and profile information, and caching user profile information.
To good part of it is that Enterprise Library is free to use and you're even allowed to change or extend them if necessary.
Now if you would combine Enterprise Library with other good practises and procedures like
- TDD (Test Driven Development) using a Unit Testing Framework like NUnit
- Automated Builds with Nant
- Code Quality Analyzer like FxCop
Then you are settled to take a ride in the rough environment of todays software development.
Read more on Enterprise Library:
- Erik
It is a long time, since I played any game, but this is about to change. Recently I stumbled into some articles on World of Warcraft, probably the biggest MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Game) success story of the moment.
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The game is not out yet here in Europe, but it will be on 11 February 2005. So, I started to read about it and I'm really anxious to be part of the best game ever. Six weeks after its release in the US, the number of players was already twice as much than any other MMORPG ever with 600.000 players.
My fellow colleagues here at dotnet6.com are also committed to join the virtual world of WoW, for sure a recipe for lots of fun (I just hope we can convince the spouses for our game time). |
- Erik
So, all of us at dotnet6.com went to DevDays in Brussels this week and had great time. Ok, perhaps in terms of organization, it wasn't the best DevDays, but anyway, we came to see what lies ahead of us in the world of Microsoft's realm. I know a lot of the information given on a DevDays can easily be found in today’s literature or on the web, however, getting all this information in 10 sessions spread over 2 days gives you a new energy boost and its damn pity that we have to wait for another half year to get all these goodies.
To be honest from me personally, the sessions on Visual Studio Team System really blew me out of my shoes. Think VS 2003 as a great IDE for the developers and VS 2005 as a platform for a complete development team, including the testers, project leader and the architects. Just to name a few of the features:
- The ability to model to Application, the logical infrastructure and the deployment model
- Built in Unit Test framework and automated built features
- Software project management, to assist in the planning, communication and follow up of work items (being tasks, bugs, etc)
Besides that, the new Visual Studio host a huge number of new controls so you will be able to build professional looking apps like Office 2003. Also the new ClickOnce facilities are really improving the smart client application concept. And then there’s the new SQL Server 2005…
I think you get the picture, that a lot of new stuff is coming our way, I just wonder if it is even possible for one person to even know all about Visual Studio alone. I mean, on all areas, the features and functionalities grows with each new release in such proportions that it will be very hard to keep up.
- Erik