UK MSDN Flash Podcast for Windows Development

David Gristwood and I discuss the work of Microsoft UK around Azure before a 15 minute interview with Azure early adopter Active Web Solutions who make great use of Windows Azure and AppFabric. Full show notes and an article on the same topic can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast020 Related: In the UK we have a new Azure online Community - check it out at http://bit.ly/ukazure, join and be amongst friends! We have also created eBooks containing articles from the folks we interview for the podcast. The latest was published end of December 2009. Enjoy. MSDN eBook "The Best Technical Articles of 2009" (pdf or online) MSDN eBook "The Best Technical Articles of 2008" (pdf or online)

Paul Foster and I discuss his new role as technical editor of the MSDN Flash newsletter before talking about Windows Mobile Widget development (at 5min 30seconds in). Full show notes and an article on the same topic can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast019  We have also created eBooks containing articles from the folks we interview for the podcast. The latest was published end of December 2009. Enjoy. MSDN eBook "The Best Technical Articles of 2009" (pdf or online) MSDN eBook "The Best Technical Articles of 2008" (pdf or online) Thanks for listening.

A great chat with Michael Foord, author of IronPython in Action, on why a C# or Visual Basic .NET developer should look at also investing time in learning and using IronPython. Full show notes, an article on the same topic and details of how you can subscribe to the podcast can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast018 Oh - and a very Merry Christmas from Microsoft UK! [Just claiming podcast. Ignore this line. My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-6b1d9df815cd9734f58ff44d2d7e8790} ]

I talk to Hadi Hariri about the differences between Behavior Driven Development and Test Driven Development - and why Hadi chooses BDD every time. Full show notes and an article on the same topic can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast017

Phil Leggetter and I discuss the real time web and consuming real time data from a Silverlight client using HTTP server push. Full show notes and an article on the same topic can be found at http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast016  Thanks for listening.

While at TechEd Europe in November 2009 I had a chance to catch up with David Robinson, Program Manager in the SQL Azure team and discuss... SQL Azure We cover the "reboot", large databases, the new support for SQL Azure in SQL Server Management Studio, customer feedback and futures. V2 hints include:  - bigger database  - automatic partitioning  - spatial data types You might also want to check out the slides of a SQL Azure session I recently delivered based on the session David gave at TechEd and take a look at these SQL Azure session recordings from PDC including those of David presenting.

This podcast was recorded at TechEd Europe in November 2009. I get a chance to sit down with Mike Flasko, Program Manager in the Data Services team. We had both presented on Entity Framework during the conference which is where we started the discussion before we moved on to talk about Data Servies and some of the announcements around Data Services, RIA and WCF which would be happening the following week at PDC. Definitely worth a listen (IMHO).

While at TechEd Europe in November 2009 I had a chance to catch up with the two lead developers of the Pex team Peli de Halleux and Nikolai Tillmann to talk about Code Contracts. Code Contracts contains a common library (System.Diagnostics.Contracts) for expressing pre-conditions, post-conditions and invariants which any tool writer can take advantage of. A number of tools are available on devlabs including a documentation extracter and a static analysis tool. Code Contracts works with .Net 4 and .Net 2. Hear why Code Contracts is a better way of implementing assertions including enabling the conditons to be specified against interfaces - sweet!

While at TechEd Europe in November 2009 I had a chance to catch up with the two lead developers of the Pex team Peli de Halleux and Nikolai Tillmann. Pex enables white box testing. It looks at your code, finds all the branches and determines which inputs will result in those branches being executed. Pex attempts to exercise every reachable statement in your code. It works with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and is restricted to .NET programs. It is available on devlabs. One of the features we discuss is Moles. Moles allows you to isolate tests from the environment - to replace any .NET method with your own delegate. This makes it easy to test code which has hard dependencies on databases, web services etc. I also did a short blog post outlining the stubs and moles capabilitie of Pex. Pex is an incubation project - hence feedback from developers is hugely important. Enjoy.

Also known as “that’s where I left my shoe” (you will need to listen to understand that) This is a bonus edition of the podcast recorded on the 6th of October in London with Steve Marx, Technical Strategist working on Windows Azure. It starts slow and a little quiet, it needed a few edits (deletes!) as we battled with “what is still not public” but picks up to be a pretty useful look at the improvements we have made to Windows Azure over the last few months with a specific focus on storage. Topics covered include: Entity Group Transactions StorageClient library Queues Blobs and Shared Access Signatures/Blob Container Access Policies Communication between nodes without queues Logging Show Links: Container Access Policies Shared Access Signatures Copy Blob and get committed block list methods Entity Group Transactions Azure Logging http://www.cerebrata.com/  Follow me or my team on twitter.

This podcast accompanies the October 8th edition of the MSDN Flash newsletter. It is an interview with Paul Jackson which is meant to be about the article he wrote on Memory Mapped Files in .NET Framework 4.0 but tends to go off in different directions – but we both certainly enjoyed doing it I was interested to hear how he was getting on with Oslo and why he was revisiting ASP.NET after many years of focus on XAML. Show Notes: WebsiteSpark Program Microsoft Ajax CDN Web Platform Installer Version 2 Web Toolkits series of screencasts Casestudy on F# Poll How many lines of code did you write yesterday? Memory Mapped File .NET 4.0 preliminary MSDN documentation Microsoft Oslo Book Pro ASP.NET MVC by Steven Sanderson Book Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 (with nerddinner sample) and the free chapter (pdf) from Scott Guthrie Follow me or my team on twitter.

This podcast is an interview with Tom Quinn in which we start off discussing his article on Test Doubles before moving on to Coding Dojos and finishing with a spot of “has software development really improved in the last 20 years”. The interview starts 7 minutes in after I complete a brief summary of the newsletter. Show Notes: “Boot to VHD” – very cool stuff. New Doloto tool for AJAX optimisation 32 Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 Videos Last newsletter Poll on “How did your software team score in the Joel Test?”.  45% of you scored 6 or below ... hmmm, disappointing This editions Poll looks at how we approach unit testing code UK South Scrum User Group Rhino Mocks, Typemock, NMock and Moq Tom summarises the first Coding Dojo he run http://southamptoncodingdojo.ning.com/ sign up details. Next is on Sep 24th in Southampton. Summary of Test Doubles, Fakes, Stubs, Dummies and Mocks from the work of the folks at ThoughtWorks Follow me or my team on twitter.

This podcast is an interview with Gary Short in which we discuss the DevExpress eXpressApp Framework™ (XAF) for quickly building WebForm and WinForm applications. Along the way we manage to mention testing frameworks, home-grown source control, rabbits feet, British Rail and Microsoft Access (Apologies in advance to the Access User Group) but most of it is about understanding what XAF is and when you would use it. Show Notes: XAF Posts on the Project Management application being built in XAF eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO) – the ORM beneath XAF UK Access User Group Follow me or my team on twitter.

This podcasts accompanies the UK MSDN Flash newsletter. The normal format of the podcast is a few minutes summarising the contents of the newsletter and then a 20 to 30 minute interview with the author of the technical article which appears in the newsletter. The podcasts were originally published on the blog of the editor of the Flash, Eric Nelson but Channel 9 could potentially make a much better home. This podcast accompanies the August 12th, 2009 edition of the MSDN Flash newsletter. It includes an interview with Mike Ormond discussing the new stuff in ASP.NET 4.0 plus an opportunity to ask Mike “Which are you? MVC or WebForms?”. Other areas discussed in the intro section include the RTM of Windows 7, the UK launch event of Expression 3 and Silverlight 3 plus the results of the poll of how developers scored in the Joel test. Show Notes: Silverlight 3 LOB applications in the UK Silverlight 3 training videos from Mike Taulty and others Sketchflow and Blend 3 session from MIX earlier in the year Tool Shed: Episode #4 Building Testable ASP.NET MVC Applications New development platform Kodu ... for your children on their Xbox 360! UK SOA/BPM User Group ASP.NET 4.0 Whitepaper + lots more links in the original newsletter Follow me or my team on twitter.