Blogging Panel
Tom Mertens
During Thursday lunch time it was a Q&A session with some bloggers.
It was discussed that blogs started as an digital diary and nowadays it has any kind of information.
RSS format and readers were pointed as one of the big causes of bog popularity. It’s is easy to follow a lot of blogs with RSS and there are even tools to filter information from these blogs.
Someone in the audience asked in which language did the panel members write in. They write in English because it reaches an larger audience, but if they are talking about some specific content to their country, they also post in their native languages.
Another topic was how to find time to blog. One person said that he thought that if son many important and busy people in the world find the time to blog, he could also find his own time to blog. By the other hand blogging can be important as a profile builder. Blogging makes us known in communities and inside our companies. It’s a way for people get to know us and our area of expertise.
I had to left before the end of the session to have lunch. So this is all I heard about.
Loose Coupling in Practice: Composite UI Application Block (CAB) in the Real World
David Platt
Nowadays many information is placed in remote data stores. This information can be accessed by browser clients (webpages) or rich client applications (windows forms). Generally rich clients beats browser clients because of the overhead on interface loading. When an application is used every days, several times a day the interface performance is essential.
There is a big problem: date is stored over different locations and in different systems.
Mainly systems are application-centric. A user has to access different applications and mentally integrate information. As an example, a patient in the medical context may have access to medical record, personal data and laboratory results in different applications when the best choice would be to have an integrated solution. application-centric systems have a overhead, make people loose time and can lead to catastrophic errors.
On the other hand we have user-centric systems where information is integrated into one application that suites all the user needs (in some specific context). This system can be built as a monolithic application which doesn’t work technically or financially because it is unmanageable and you cannot make everyone change their implementation entirely to integrate.
A better idea seems to be Loose Coupling. Create almost independent blocks which are integrated in an common shell. This way we can have distinct data sources and little uniformity issues. An important question when building these systems is what does the user need? Will there be many kinds of users? Which specific functionality does each one need?
With those questions answered we can start to design an common user interface with shared elements (called shell) and think which interface (methods, events, properties) has each module that will be loaded into the aggregating shell.
In this area Microsoft started with Composite UI Application Block which had a publish/subscribe event system to allow inter-module interaction. It had a good architecture but it wasn’t easy to work with.
After the there was a new evolved system easier than this one and also with a good architecture. It is called Smart Client Software Factory.
This last one allows you to define an interface to a service like authentication, define several implementations and change the implementation that is being used by changing an XML file. You must define the interface, develop your implementation, or collect implementation made by third party companies, register these in your application and configure the application which to use.
You can also make some nice integration stuff with UI. There are two key concepts.
Workspace - A module placement zone
View - just a bunch of controls which display data (can be placed on workspaces)
The modules (different functionalities potentially from different software companies) can be integrated in the application by adding themselves into a workspace in the shell application. This creates a slight dependency: the modules must know the shell UI and their workspaces names.
The workspaces and places to which you can load the modules UIs. But this isn’t enough. There are some functionalities to which people are used to and which need a more integrated UI. For example the main menu in the top of the main window or the status bar. This is possible with UI Extension Sites! You just have to register shared zones to which each module can add items. For example each item can add some items to the main menu.
David Platt has written book published by Microsoft Press focusing this subject.
Check this out!
André Sousa (Portuguese Microsoft Student Partner) won a Embedded Fusion board by making the best question in a session presented by Rob Miles.
This prize was referred int Rob Miles’ website.
http://www.robmiles.com/journal/2007/11/7/final-talk.html
Securing ASP.NET and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Applications with Windows Cardspace
Vittorio Bertocci
I attended to a second session about Windows Cardspace, and I’m afraid that by mistake have written some topics about this session in my other post about Windows Cardspace…
So, I’ll just leave some brief notes that can became handy.
He gave us an preview of a library of WC components called ADFS “2″. These components make very easy to integrate Windows Cardspace in a .NET application. Today, to develop a WC web application you must do it “hardcoded” with HTML to specify the WC object and code login/registering logic.
With these components it’s just drag and drop.
Something I learned in this session that wasn’t clear in the first one, is that you can define your own cards with custom information!
A developer diary on implementing Windows Cardspace
Dominick Baier
Do you know Windows Cardspace? A new feature of .NET framework that allows authentication over the internet.
It is designed to be convenient and secure (avoiding phishing).
Nowadays authentication is application-centric. This means that which website has it’s own authentication system, stores information and the credentials of the users.
This design has some problems. People are registered in many sites. And they don’t want to memorize many passwords, so they tend to use the same password in almost all of them. If a hacker discovers one of them it can be a big big problem. By the other hand, many websites stores personal information, almost like a business card. But a year or so after the registration many informations can change (such as address, phone number and so on).
Windows Cardspace has a user-centric design. The information is stored in user’s computer. There is no need for a password. Windows Cardspace can also store information about the user (like a business card). When a user uses a card in a website, this website can refresh information about the user in their database.
This system can be used side-by-side with a old fashion way.
This system has a problem with mobility… To access websites from different computers you must backup a card into a disk or pen (protected by a password) an temporarily import it into the computer you want to use.
Alcides has told me about OpenID. I will have a look at it soon.
If you have Windows Vista try Windows Cardspace in SignOn.com
Women in Technology
Ani Babaian, Irene Pathy
During lunch time there was an great session with a panel of 4 women and an insider man 
This session was about the role of women in the technological world. They talked about topics like how to grow passion in technology among women, and how children should be taught that way.
Because women are so different from men, they must be reached in different ways. In USA, for example, there are some programs for young woman.
Another topic was the importance of women in developing teams. They’re important in these teams. Why? Because diversity is good to create new things. By the other hand, women generally have great communication and people management skills.
I know that they also talked about motherhood, but I had already left to the next session. There were too many overlaps in this day… But check out at Susana Vilaça. He was there during all session. She hasn’t posted about it yet, but I’m sure that she will soon.
