In an earlier post I promised to explain why I didn't remove a block for one of the devs. Well here goes...

The block in question was a customer who needed support for a new version of our product they were evaluating. This type of job should really be handled by either the support guys or our professional services people. However, the version of the product being evaluated has only just rolled off the build machine and they haven't yet had the chance to get up to speed with it.

Obviously, customers are the life-blood of any company and therefore their needs must be met by any method available. We are a small company (approximately 30 employees) so roles are not so well defined as "developer" or "support" - we have to muck in and help out with whatever may be required. If that means investing time in a customer with the potential to produce revenue then so be it.

Given these circumstances, I think its justified to divert development resource in pursuit of customer needs. One thing to strive for next time though is better training and preparation for the people supporting the product.

I have a number of days holiday I must take before the end of September or I'll lose them, so when the Yukon Beta arrives I plan to use some of them investigating the various parts of the new version along with its companion - Visual Studio 2005`. I had planned to try porting our reporting product but there would be issues with blogging and the company IPR, so I'm looking to find a smallish project I can complete in a month and write about. Ideas on a postcard please - just use the comments at the end of this article to add your suggestions.

Today was the company family day. This year it was held at Highclere Castle. Rather than talk about it, I took some snaps...

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[Edit: I've moved the photos to the album at
http://www.jamessnape.me.uk/gallery/albums/1.aspx]

Remember to backup your Analysis Server repository. Especially if you are on site and the customer is looking over your shoulder...

Fortunately, we run our systems in parallel so I was able to to resurrect it from the other side but not without forgetting to change the data source otherwise I would have processed the cubes against the wrong database.

"Show and Tell" was a success. There was plenty of cool things to see - especially as one of the developers managed to sneak in some functionality I was unaware of. There was a particularly good demo and talk about an MDX report designer using the Office Pivot table component.

One thing to change for next time will be a stricter time-box on each presentation. The whole thing was three hours, a little to long to concentrate for. So I plan to limit each one to 5 minutes and ensure everyone focuses on the key stuff.

I'm on site with a customer tomorrow so Monday will be sprint planning day.

Microsoft have announced the ISV Buddy Program - a chance to sign up and get direct contact with a Microsoft employee. This is a cool idea - and could provide benefits to both the subscriber and Microsoft. We have a similar (but much smaller) implementation in our office as each customer gets assigned a developer through their trial and presales period to help them get the most out of a potential purchase. Maybe we should extend this to a full blown buddy program? In the meantime, I'm signing up - hope I get Euan Garden, Tom Rizzo or Kent Tegels...

[Edit: Kent isn't a Microsoft employee so is unlikely to be part of the IVR program.]

Tomorrow is "Show and Tell" day. This is our take on the Scrum Sprint Review where the idea is to demonstrate the team's progress and direction to the Chickens. The review is open to anyone who would like to come and see what the engineers have been up to for the last month. The format is fairly loose - as all the developers have laptops they can take turns to plug into a projector and show what they've been up to. Individual presentations are limited to 15 minutes + question time.

The benefits are obvious: engineers get a chance to show off their work and direct feedback from the people who are dependent on their creations; Sales, marketing and management get to review progress and provide input.

There is always a little nervousness on my part because I don't do much speaking - it's up to the individual developers. Their view of the world revolves around code, architecture and designs whereas the chickens think about schedules, customers and revenue. With the two positions, there is some room for difference of opinion but regular reviews keep everyone on the same page.

So roll on the demos...

"If you find yourself in a meeting with a mix of managers and programmers, here's one way to tell the difference between them: Look at what they brough to the meeting.

Did they bring a laptop computer? Score bonus points if the laptop computer is actually turned on during the meeting or if the laptop is special in some way (e.g., it has a wireless card or it's a Tablet PC). If so, then that person is probably a manager.

Did they come to the meeting empty-handed or with a spiral-bound notebook? If so, then that person is probably a programmer.

It's not an infallible test, but it works with surprisingly high accuracy." -- Raymond Chen

 

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't be taking my new Tablet PC to meetings...

One of the main talking points at Tech Ed was whether to use remoting or enterprise services to talk between service tiers. For the benefit of the guys at work I thought I'd try and collate some of the information thats available and draw some guidelines. I won't cover ASMX/WSE as I believe there is no argument there - for talking between services use ASMX.

Firstly, for an overview of the options for hosting objects and communicating with them, you can't beat Don Box's bullets:

• Services and Communications
• Services and Processes

Don however doesn't mention remoting as he is really against it. Rock Lhotka provides a view that includes remoting:

• Middle-tier Hosting: Remoting vs. Enterprise Services

These two articles from Richard Turner (a program manager working on "Indigo") give you the inside view.

• On the road to Indigo - Is .NET Remoting Dead?
• On the road to Indigo: Prescriptive Guidance for Today's Technologies

Finally, another good roundup is by Aaron Skonnard reviewing Richard Turner's Tech-Ed session:

• TechEd: SO Prescriptive Guidance (Richard Turner)

I think the general guidance from all these articles is that remoting is OK given the following rules:

1. Only use it between tiers on the same machine (Otherwise use DCOM/ES instead)
2. Don't use any of the custom stuff like formatters and sinks
3. Don't use it at the service boundary (Use ASMX instead)
4. You MUST use remoting to communicate between app domains in the same process
5. You may have to do some rework when Indigo arrives

Good as Tech-Ed was, this is one thing that I was a little disappointed by and thats the "Ask the Experts" stand. At first sight it looks promising - lots of Microsoft staff, mini white-boards and plenty of discussion. Unfortunately the reality isn't quite the same - most of the Microsoft staff are deep in conversation with each other and when you do manage to ask a question the answer is less than satisfactory.

Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions but I get the impression that the people staffing the stand are marketing personnel because their knowledge doesn't seem to run very deep. I was ready for a good conversation about threading models and scalability of Reporting Services but the person I spoke to fell at the first hurdle. He didn't think anyone else at the stand would be able to help either and gave me an e-mail address with a promise to find the answer I was looking for.

The same thing happened in Barcelona last year so my advice to Microsoft for next year is to ship some developers out from Redmond and not use marketing and support staff from the UK.

One of the sessions I went to last week was a talk by Don Box entitled "Service Orientation and the Windows/.NET Developer". I loved this session, especially as he got all the attendees to ask questions at the start, rearranged them and then spoke for 75 minutes to try and answer them in turn.

He is a fascinating speaker who uses a lot of colourful phrases to ensure you remember what he was saying. One I can't get of of my head is:

"Service Orientation is like teenage sex - Everyone is talking about it, but not many are doing it" - Don Box

Don actually ran out of time before answering all the questions, but he did promise to write it up on his blog. Here are the two he has done so far:

• Services and Processes
• Services and Communications

p.s. Don also pointed the way for next year.... Look out for "Business Agents"....

I have a couple of photos of the keynote, but I'm pretty awful with the camera so have a look at someone who is a lot better.

The Keynote.

What is the sound of 6000 people drumming?

The SmartPhone demo.