This week I did a real power tour delivering the .NET Deep Dive workshop in 4 cities across Romania (Bucharest, Sibiu, Brasov, and Cluj-Napoca). It looks like it was quite well received since most of the feedbacks we got from attendees were more than positive. The participants appreciated the idea of having a full overview of the Microsoft .NET Platform in a one-day event. I’d like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all the participants. Your feedback will most certainly help us improve the quality of this workshop.

There is more to follow for me in the upcoming months:

• BI Deep Dive workshops in Bucharest (3rd of March) and Cluj-Napoca (4th of March)
• SQL Experience (the launch of SQL Server 2008 R2) in Bucharest (10th of March)
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Course in Bucharest (11th and 12th of March)
• SharePoint 2010 Course in Bucharest (1st and 2nd of April)

To find out more about the official calendar of events organized by Microsoft Romania you can also follow Zoli’s blog (see my blogroll) as well as http://www.microsoft.com/romania/evenimente.

Although it might sound like one of Master Yoda’s wise sayings, it is in fact one of the realities of modern IT. In fact, it’s more than a reality, it’s a significant challenge for most CIOs today. Years and years of disconnected technology investments are driving many organizations to a state where data duplication becomes a harsh fact of life. Simple questions like “where is you customer data located?” have in many cases multiple answers. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as there is a clear methodology to manage data. Unfortunately, most of the time there is no such thing in the organization. The fact that “where is your customer data located?” has multiple answers is worsened by the fact that “which application manages your customer data?” has multiple answers. To make matters even more complicated, most of the applications referred in the response will claim they own the “customer”.

MDM (Master Data Management) is emerging as a potential way to address the challenges mentioned above. Unfortunately, many organizations believe that by simply implementing a MDM solution all of these challenges will be addressed. That’s a big (and potentially costly) mistake. In most cases, along with the MDM solution itself, you also need a serious shift in the organization’s data management mindset. Failure to drive the mindset change will inevitably lead to the failure of the MDM solution implementation. Such a mindset change should result in at least the following:

• A data governance program that spans (preferably) the entire organization
• A master data model
• Changes in applications that interact with master data
• Coherent maintenance processes

Obviously, these are major changes for any organization, and they should be supported by the appropriate toolset. SQL Server 2008 R2 brings for the first time to the Microsoft Application Platform such a toolset, in the form of SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Services (MDS). Basically, MDS provides you the infrastructure to implement a master data hub for the central management of master data entities and hierarchies. This infrastructure provides services like management portal, versioning, data-centric workflows, extensible business rules, and role-based security.

For the first time on the Microsoft Application Platform we have the necessary tools to morph the vision of unified, enterprise-wide master data management into tangible reality. All we need is the ability to drive the change in mindset.

To find out more about this promising technology I encourage you to go to the SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Servicessite.

I have to admit I was a little bit worried about the overall performance of the new Visual Studio 2010 shell based on the Windows Presentation Foundation technology. I had some mixed feelings while using the preliminary releases like Beta 1 and Beta 2. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of the new VS simply because WPF opens a whole new range of possibilities for it. My concerns were focused around its performance on mid-sized machines. I am perfectly aware of the fact that not all developers are going to code using VS 2010 on quad/octo-core hardware with 16/32 gigs of RAM. This is why I am using my Acer Aspire 1420P notebook as a benchmark to measure the quality of the development experience with VS 2010 (to make things clear, the machine has 4 gigs of RAM and a dual-core Intel Celeron CPU running at 1.2 GHz).

After one and a half day of use in heavy coding I have to say I am impressed and many of my original performance concerns are now things of the past. True, I haven’t had yet the chance to try all the different designers and project templates, but I can say there is a significant improvement in performance when compared to Beta 2. Jason Zander does an excellent reviewon Channel 9 related to the significant changes made in VS 2010 RC.

It certainly looks like VS 2010 together with .NET Framework 4 are on the right track to rock the world of developers once they hit RTM.

Most complex applications will rely on certain types of functionalities that are not tied to a certain layer or tier. Since they affect entire applications it is highly desirable to place these functionalities in a centralized location in code in order to avoid unnecessary duplication. The certain advantage you gain with this approach has its own Achilles' heel: you’ve just created the perfect location for high-impact design mistakes. Because of these interesting characteristics these functionalities are commonly referred among software architects as crosscutting concerns. Some of the most common crosscutting concerns are:

• Authentication and authorization
• Caching
• Communication
• Configuration management
• Exception Management
• Logging and instrumentation
• State management
• Validation

The 2nd edition of the Microsoft Application Architecture Guide has an excellent discussion about crosscutting concerns.

Since they are so common among software applications, it’s no surprise that every single application deals with (hopefully all of) them in its own way. Fortunately, most application platforms offer support to architects and developers in order to address the crosscutting concerns. The .NET Framework 4 in particular and the Microsoft Application Platform in general are no exception. But there’s a catch here: at the core level there is no integrated approach. Take .NET configuration files for services for instance. There are tons of things that you can do with configuration files in the development environment but there’s not much out-of-the-box functionality to handle them once they are deployed.

From the point of view of software architecture, one of the very interesting developments in Windows Server is the Application Server role. Indeed, Windows Server has come a very long way from being a platform providing fundamental APIs to being a true application server. At the heart of this journey there are two fundamental parts: the Microsoft .NET Framework and the Internet Information Services. Today, .NET Framework 4 provides all the necessary building blocks for the development of robust and scalable distributed solutions. IIS on the other hand evolved from a HTTP-based web server to a multi-purpose, multi-protocol, secure and robust hosting environment for application services. Add WAS (Windows Process Activation Service) to the mix and what you get is a pretty strong and scalable application server.

Building on  top of the existing functions in .NET Framework 4 and the WAS/IIS environment, Windows Server AppFabric brings the Application Server to the next level. And by next level I mean that in addition to existing fundamental APIs and hosting environment the AppFabric brings out-of-the-box, robust, and scalable solutions for the following crosscutting concerns:

• Caching
• Communication
• Configuration management
• Logging and instrumentation
• State management

These concerns are addressed via the following categories of functionalities:

• Better deployment, management, and configuration for WCF and WF services hosted in WAS
• Persistence management for workflows
• Tracking profiles (together with dedicated, queryable storage)
• Monitoring of hosted services
• PowerShell integration (custom management scripts)
• Caching of any serializable CLR object and caching APIs at enterprise scale
• Caching available as a service
• High availability and automatic load balancing

It is very important to understand that Windows Server AppFabric will not provide comprehensive solutions to the concerns mentioned above. Nevertheless, it is an excellent and powerful piece of the puzzle that software architects can take into consideration when designing software solutions.

For more details about Windows Server AppFabric you can check the dedicated section from the Windows Server Developer Center.