Earlier this year I was pretty negative about the Azure story from Microsoft. My main gripe was that (from my perspective at the time) it was not a write-once, run-anywhere story, so you couldn't run your current apps in Azure without modification. I'm very pleased about what I've seen now from PDC. Microsoft has opened up Azure in many ways, giving you much more control over what's happening. In fact, you can get your own virtual machines and have complete remote admin access. Also, they've been really thinking about how to tie your existing hosting environment to Azure and vice versa. It will be possible to connect a web app inside Azure securely to a database server in your own data center.

I must say I'm impressed at how well Microsoft has listened to all the feedback about Azure. With all the changes they've implemented I feel that it has now become interesting for some of the services my company is implementing, whereas previously we weren't even considering Azure.

I'm delighted to be speaking again at VSLive in June. This time at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. I'll being doing two sessions on Monday, June 8:

• Understanding Transactions in WCF, which deals with why, how, and when to use transactions in WCF.
• Advanced Access Control with WCF, which deals with claims based authorization and the Geneva Framework.

Over lunch I will be available for 1-on-1 Q&A, but if you run into me at other times outside my sessions I'm open for questions too.

Checkout the full conference agenda for all the great sessions and speakers at VSLive, Las Vegas. I can really recommend going there, because the sessions are great and the speakers very accessible. I also think the Venetian will be a great venue (I have never stayed at the Venetian, but I have been inside and it is definitly something to see).

Thank you for all who attended my sessions in San Francisco. Below are the slides and samples for my sessions.

VTH4 - Understanding Transactions in WCF Slides (561.73 KB) | Samples (540.1 KB)

VTH16 - Supporting POX/REST with WCF Slides (369.58 KB) | Samples (302.82 KB)

VTH25 - Simplify WebPart (and Control) Development with WebPart Skinning Slides (359.85 KB) | Samples (447.66 KB)

The VTH25 samples include the full installer. However, be sure to change the uploadskinfeature.bat to point to the correct server. You can read more about the VirtualPathProvider I mentioned in VTH25 session here.

The wonderful folks at VSLive! have invited me again to do three sessions at their San Francisco event from February 23 to February 27, 2009. These are the sessions I'll do (all on Thursday 26):

• Understanding Transactions in WCF
• Supporting POX/REST with WCF
• Simplify WebPart (and Control) Development with WepPart Skinning

The first two are obviously about WCF. The last talk is primarily about SharePoint, but the discussed techniques will work with ASP.NET WebParts and WebControls as well.

I really like VSLive! because they have some great content and top tier speakers. The speakers (myself included of course) are also very accessible, because the event is not as huge as some of the other conferences these days. So if you intend to go to a conference this year, VSLive! is going to be worth your money.

For those of you that attended my sessions in Dallas, here are the demo's for

• POX/REST Strategies with WCF (194.22 KB)
• Understanding Transactions in WCF (396.18 KB)

If you attended the latter, you'll remember that I wrecked my prepared demo (note to self: never change configs just before a session). I finally figured out what was wrong. I changed some configuration on the server side and I thought I did the same on the client. Apparently I did not, because when I updated the service reference on the client it worked.

I will be speaking at VSLive! again, this time in Dallas from 8 until 11 December. I'll be doing the following sessions:

• Introduction to ASP.NET Dynamic Data (Tuesday 9 December, 11:15 AM)
• POX/REST Strategies with WCF (Thursday 11 December, 1:45 PM)
• Understanding Transactions in WCF (Thursday 11 December, 4:45 PM)

VSLive! is a very nice and relaxed event with great content. So it's a great opportunity to learn new stuff and new people. If you want to attend the Dallas show and see me speak, you can get a $300 discount by entering the discount code SPVAN. I hope to see you there.

Op zaterdag 6 september organiseren dotNED, SDN en VBCentral samen Code Camp 2008. Vorig jaar kon ik er helaas niet bij zijn, maar dit jaar zal ik er niet alleen bij zijn, maar ook een sessie doen. Omdat ik heel erg hou van interactie doe ik een zogenaamde Chalk & Talk. Dat is een sessie waarbij interactie met de groep voorop staat en er niet een vooraf vastgestelde agenda is. Het onderwerp van de sessie in Omgaan met data in een Service Oriented Architecture. In een SOA is een service namelijk verantwoordelijk voor een bepaald domein en de data die daarbij hoort. Een join doen met in de database met data van een andere service bijvoorbeeld is uit den boze... of toch niet? Dat zijn het soort vragen die aan bod komen in deze sessie. Hopelijk tot ziens op Code Camp 2008!

For those interested in the demo of Using Windows Workflow Foundation in ASP.NET, you can download it here (269 kb). Note: this is the demo with the "double bookkeeping". The request/response inside a workflow isn't stable enough yet for release.

For those people interested in the demo's I did in the session Create Scalable Apps with Async Processing at VSLive! this week, you can download here (600 KB). To "install" the demo's, create a Visual Studio solution with two websites (one for each folder in the zip file). Run the web service to get a port number, then update web.config in the AsyncPages folder so that web services reference that port number (or take the port number currently in web.config and set the web service to run on the specified port). Enjoy!

I'll be at VSLive! in Las Vegas next month. On Tuesday, October 16th, I'll be speaking about two topics:

• Using Windows Workflow Foundation in ASP.NET
• Create Scalable Apps with Asynchronous Processing

The first is an introductory session about Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and adresses how to deal with WF in ASP.NET. Because WF is not request-response by nature, this is more challenging than you would think. The second session discusses ASP.NET 2.0 Async Pages and Handlers and shows you how to use this with web services and databases.

Hope to see you there!

Op 17 en 18 september is in ons land weer de Software Developer Conference (SDC) georganiseerd door het Software Developer Network. Hier zijn een aantal toonaangevende internationale sprekers te zien waarvoor je normaal gezien naar het buitenland moet. Zeker de moeite waard dus. Zie http://www.sdc.nl voor meer info. Ik weet zelf helaas nog niet of ik erbij kan zijn, hoewel Ordina wel een stand heeft.

Thanks to all that came to my sessions at VSLive in Orlando on Tuesday, and thanks for the great feedback. Below are the demo's for the two sessions. Updated slides decks will be made available on the attendee website.

• Creating Scalable Apps With Asynchronous Processing (66,94 KB)
• Using Windows Workflow Foundation in ASP.NET (268,41 KB)

Some of you asked which tool I used to demo the perf difference between sync and async (demo 1). Although you could use perf tools that come with VS2005 I used Application Center Test (ACT) that comes with Visual Studio 2003, because it is very easy to setup and shows nice graphics (which was most important for this demo). You can also use the free Web Application Stress Tool. The ACT script I used was (substitute "slow.aspx" with "slowasync.aspx" for the async test), with 50 browser connections:

Randomize()
If Rnd(10) < 5 Then
    Test.SendRequest("http://testserver/Demo01/Fast.aspx")
End If
Test.SendRequest("http://testserver/Demo01/Slow.aspx")
Test.SendRequest("http://testserver/Demo01/Fast.aspx")

Note: I've run this test in several setups with different hardware. In my Orlando session I showed numbers from ACT on the host to the web in a VPC. In my San Francisco session ACT was on a Dell D600 with the web running in a VPC on my Dell D800, which is a better way to test (in the Orlando setup ACT is drawing perf from the same CPU). The async perf is much better (even in percentages) with the SF setup. Be aware that there are a lot of variables: CPU capacity, memory, and last but not least... network interface. In another test setup I hardly saw any difference between sync and async. Why? Because the network was the bottleneck :(.

Download the demo's here (34.39 KB)

During the session I promised to give put a sample here about using delegates for asynchronous processing, but what's the use if you can just read it on MSDN: Calling Synchronous Methods Asynchronously. Again, be aware that you shouldn't use this in ASP.NET!!! This is for console, desktop, and Windows Services only! In ASP.NET this would exhaust the thread pool pretty fast.

Download the demo's here (85.85 KB). If you want the slides, send me an email.

If you want to do the AspCompat demo, don't forget to register the VB6 component from the command line with regsvr32.

I've been invited to speak at VSLive in San Fransisco ASPLive from March 25 to March 29. I will be doing two sessions on ASP.NET:

• Understanding Multi-Threading (in ASP.NET)
• Creating Scalable Apps with Asynchronous Processing

The first session takes a closer look at the fact that ASP.NET is a multi-threaded environment and what that means for us (web )developers. The second session looks at asynchronous pages, handlers and modules, to increase the scalability of our apps without adding new hardware. For more information checkout the session abstracts on the VSLive site.

I hope to see you there.

You can watch the top sessions (including Gates') on It's Showtime, as is the case with sessions from TechEd and other events.