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My book ".NET 2.0 Crashkurs" [German] is out now!

My new German Microsoft Press book ".NET 2.0 Crashkurs" is available since May, 19. !
It is the first German book on .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.

The book was delayed according to the delays of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 - because the book ships with a DVD with a 1-year-licence of the Beta 2!

More about the book: .NET 2.0 Crashkurs-Website [German]

Order it now at amazon.de [German]

I am looking forward to receive your feedback about this book.

Many thanks to Klaus Löffelmann and the .NET Twins (Ralf Westphal and Christian Weyer), who reviewed the book and helped me a lot to improve it.

Official Release Date for .NET 2.0, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005

At TechEd US, Microsoft announced the Nov, 7. 2005 to be the official release date for

1. .NET Framework 2.0
2. Visual Studio 2005
3. SQL Server 2005
4. BizTalk Server 2006

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 available

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/downloads/servicepacks/sp1/default.mspx

IIS 7.0 and .NET 2.0 will become Open Source

Don't be shocked...

This is not the truth, but just a bad April Fool's joke by the German .NET journal dotnetpro.

http://www.dotnetpro.de/news625.aspx

Avalon and Indigo Community Technology Preview - March 2005 - is available

Yesterday, Microsoft made the

Avalon and Indigo Community Technology Preview - March 2005

available to everybody

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=85ab132b-f1aa-4422-b053-272d79863013&displaylang=en

Beforehand, only MSDN Subscriber could access this release.

Indigo News

At VSLive 2005 in San Francisco Microsoft published more information about their new communication plattform Indigo.

Here are just a few links you should read:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/introindigov1-0.asp

http://www.theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=VSLiveDay02

http://www.ftponline.com/reports/vslivesf/2005/rudder/

"Microsoft will make a WinFX Community Tech Preview (CTP) available in March, which will include an Indigo CTP, a second Avalon CTP (following up on the first release in November), and a build of Visual Studio 2005." (Source: http://www.ftponline.com/reports/vslivesf/2005/rudder/)

XQuery will not ship with .NET 2.0

As the W2C standard for XQuery will not be finalized before 2006, Microsoft will not ship the XQuery implementation (System.Xml.XQuery) with .NET 2.0. However, there will remain a subset of XQuery with SQL Server 2005. More @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/xquerystatus/default.aspx

Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS 7.0)

I saw the new IIS 7.0 that will ship with Windows Longhorn ("2006") the first time in April 2004 - under NDA. Now the first public information are available.

Top news: IIS 7 and the next version of ASP.NET (Version "3.0" / Visual Studio codename "Orcas") will marry!

IIS 7.0 features include:

• Unified, extensible HTTP pipeline for ASP.NET and other content
• Modularized Webserver (you only need to install the features you really need)
• Unified XML-based configuration for everything (web.config)
• Improved diagnostics and troubleshooting
• A task-oriented admin user interface with extensibility

Sources:
http://www.ftponline.com/reports/vslivesf/2005/ruest/Default.aspx
http://www.pluralsight.com/blogs/fritz/archive/2004/09/14/2262.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/vga/archive/2004/12/13/IISMarriesAspNet.aspx

These features will be presented at VSLive! 8 Feb 2005
http://www.ftponline.com/conferences/vslive/2005/sf/asp-sessions.aspx

I will post more as soon as the information are made public.

Visual Studio 2005 CTP December older then CTP November

I just realized than some people might not know yet, that the CTP December 2005 ships with an older .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2005 build than the CTP November. So, the CTP November is the latest available build. The CTP Dezember 2005 has Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) and some additional development tools. There are no VSTS bits in CTP November 2005.

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/get/

If you want to know, why this happened, read
http://blogs.msdn.com/vsdteam/archive/2004/12/28/339116.aspx

WMI Scriptomatic 2.0

A new version of WMI Scriptomatic, the WMI script code generator from Microsoft, is available

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=09dfc342-648b-4119-b7eb-783b0f7d1178&displaylang=en

"A completely new version of the famous Scriptomatic, the utility that writes WMI scripts for you. (And, in the process, teaches you the fundamental concepts behind writing WMI scripts for yourself.) Unlike its predecessor, Scriptomatic 2.0 isn’t limited to writing just VBScript scripts; instead, Scriptomatic 2.0 can write scripts in Perl, Python, or JScript as well. In addition, Scriptomatic 2.0 gives you a host of new output formats to use when running scripts, including saving data as plain-text, as a stand-alone Web page, or even as XML. Scriptomatic 2.0 handles arrays, it converts dates to a more readable format, and it works with all the WMI classes on your computer; on top of all that, it also writes scripts that can be run against multiple machines."

Upcomming Conference Talks

Here are my conference talks for the upcomming weeks

Java-.NET Component Bridges (OOP 2005, 26 Jan 2005, Munich)

System Management with WMI (VBMoves 2005, 2 Feb 2005, Munich)

Microsoft Shell - MSH (VS 2005, 2 Feb 2005, Munich)

.NET 2.0 Readiness Day -- .NET Framework 2.0 und Visual Studio 2005 (BASTA 2005, 14 Feb 2005, Frankfurt)

Data in ASP.NET 2.0 (BASTA 2005, 15 Feb 2005, Frankfurt)

ASP.NET Webforms (.NET Academy, 24 Feb 2004, Herzogenaurach)

All these talks will be held in German.

My personal statistics for 2004

A happy and successful new year to everybody!

• Number of published articles: 88
  • Articles written all by myself: 59
  • Articles written with coauthors: 27
• Number of new books: 1
  • Books written all by myself: 0
  • Books written with coauthors: 1
• Number of updated books: 2
  • Books written all by myself: 1
  • Books written with coauthors: 1
• Number of new or updated books by topic:
  • Windows XP/2003: 1
  • Windows Scripting: 2
  • .NET Framework: 0   L
• Number of planed new or updated books for 2005 by topic:
  • Windows XP/2003: 1
  • Windows Scripting: 0
  • .NET Framework: 3  J
  • Longhorn: 2
• Number of conference sessions: 25
  • At conference in Germany : 20
  • At international conferences: 5
• Number of conference sessions by topic
  • Windows XP/2003: 0
  • Windows Scripting: 5
  • .NET Framework: 18
    • .NET Framework 1.x: 6
    • .NET Framework 2.0: 12
  • Longhorn: 2
• Number of university lessons held: 190
• Number of Software development projects I was involved: 5 >>

Professional Developer Conference (PDC): September 13 – 16, 2005: LA

Microsoft announced a few days ago, that the next PDC will take place

September 13 – 16, 2005
Pre-conferences September 11 and 12
Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA

http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/

Visual Studio 2005 Community Preview November 2005

The "Visual Studio 2005 Community Preview November 2005" is now available for MSDN Subscribers at the Subscriber Download Site.

It includes:

• Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition
• Visual SourceSafe 2005

It does not include:

• Visual Studio 2005 Team System (this will arrive later)

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 - Release Candidate

A Release Candidate for

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1

is now available.

Microsoft SQL Server Express Manager available

The first Community Preview of the admin tools for SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, the

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Manager (XM)

is now available.

• built on top of the Microsoft Windows .NET Framework 2.0
• free download
• can be used to manage SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000), and SQL Server 2005 Developer and Express Edition databases on local and remote computers

WinFX/Avalon CTP November 2004 available

The first release of WinFX with Avalon (no WinFS or Indigo!) for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is available

at MSDN Subscriber Downloads in the Section /Tools/Platform Tools/WinFX SDK

more about the WinFX/Avalon Community Preview November 2004

Peter Koen took the blue pill

My Austrian MVP colleague Peter told me at BASTA! in September, but I decided not to blog it before it is official.

But now, I just read in his OpenBC profile:

Status	Employee
Company	Microsoft Österreich GmbH [ Web site ]
Title	Consultant

I am still wondering if I should congratulate or feel sorry for him :-)

iX international - pilot issue

The well known German Computer Magazine "iX", that I am regularly writting for, has published a pilot issue of an international edition in English.

Everyone can download this issue for free (PDF) and vote for it.

What do these MVPs have in common???

 

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner Windows Server - Directory Services	Nils Kaczenski Windows Server - Directory Services	Holger Schwichtenberg Visual Developer - ASP/ASP.NET	Olaf Engelke Windows Server - Admin Frameworks	Sandro Villinger Windows - Shell/User

 

Question:  What do these MVPs have in common?

1)   They all have bad eyes (three are wearing contact lenses)?

2)   They all have #1 hits on the German MTV pop music charts?

3)   They collaborated on the first ever MVP book published by Microsoft Press, Germany?

 

 Think…think…think…think…think…think…think……

 

 

Surprisingly enough, the answer is… #3!!!  The first ever Microsoft Most Valuable Professional book published by Microsoft Press, Germany, is now in print!!!

 

 

Cover: Microsoft Windows XP- Tips from the Experts Insider Know-how by the Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals   Aside from the technical content the book has an appendix containing ·        Short biographies of the MVP authors ·        MVP website links including o       http://www.microsoft.com/communities/MVP/MVP.mspx o       http://mvp.support.microsoft.com o       http://www.mvps.org ·        Other technical Windows sites run by MVPs ·        Microsoft community and technical website links, e.g. o       http://communities2.mirosoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx o       http://www.microsoft.com/communities o       http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security o       http://support.microsoft.com

 

http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/386063075X/itvisions-21

 

Special thanks go to Thomas Pohlmann (thomaspo), MS Learning Product Manager, who made this possible!!!

 

 

Past and upcomming conference talks

I am just back from BASTA! where I did three sessions (ASP.NET 2.0, ADO.NET 2.0, .NET Tools) and a one day tutorial (.NET and C# for beginners).

Here are the next chances to listen to me:

Net.Object Days 2004 Erfurt (27.-30.09.2004)

• Microsoft Shell - MSH (28.9.2004) [German]
• On the Road to no-code Ware: XML in .NET 2.0 and Windows Longhorn (28.9.2004) [German]

Microsoft IT Forum 2004 Copenhagen (15.-19.11.2004)

• TBC300: Scripting the Active Directory with ADSI und GPO [English]
• CHT028: Active Directory Scripting for Administrators [English]

iX Conference 2/2004 Munich (30.11.2004 - 01.12.2004)

• Windows Script Host (WSH) Tutorial (29.11.2004) [German]
• State of the Art of Windows-Administration (30.11.2004) [German]

OOP 2005 Munich (25.-28.01.2005)

• Java-.NET-Component Bridges (26.01.2005) [German]

My blog was down - dasBlog damaged its entrycache

My blog (based on dasBlog 1.4) run into the same problem that Scott Hanselman and Clemens Vasters had one day with dasBlog 1.6. I suppose, I will have to upgrade to 1.6, because this issue has been fixed in the newer version.