My latest screencast in the Windows WF developer screencast series has been loaded up.  In this session, I discuss the basics for setting up the SQL Tracking Service in Windows WF and how to begin tracking basic information.   In a subsequent screencast I will cover how to create tracking profiles which can be used with this or any custom tracking service. 

Pluralsight Screencast - Using SQL Tracking Services in WF

Previous screencasts in this series can be found on the screencast section of the Pluralsight website. You will also find short screen casts on other technologies both current (e.g. WCF) and future ("Oslo") on this page.

Every now and then a simple thing comes along that really makes me stand up and say, that was a good idea.  Microsoft Research has taken the fact that almost everyone has a phone with a camera on it these days and turned that into something MUCH more useful than taking pictures of your friends and family doing stupid things. 

Check this out: 

And one more for fun:

I think this will really take off.  What do you think? 

I'm excited to announce that we have now listed our new "Dublin" course on the website.  This will be a three day course where we dive in to taking advantage of the hosting features found in the new application server being developed at Microsoft.  If you are interested in finding out how you can use "Dublin" to host your WCF/WF services, manage and monitor them, and take advantage of advanced features for routing, versioning your services, etc. then this is the course for you.  I'm looking forward to the first public offering which should be posted up on the schedule soon. 

THe business rule engine in Windows Workflow Foundation is an often overlooked feature that provides powerful business logic processing and rich business rule engine execution semantics.  Some mistakenly believe this functionality can only be used from within a workflow.  I worked with Microsoft recently on a couple of articles to provide developers  hands-on examplesof using rules in .NET applications and in WCF services.   These articles are part of a new series intended to provide small concrete examples of how to use the technology.  You'll find links in the sidebar to other articles on using sequential and state machine workflows.  If you are learning WF , don't forget about our screencast series as well where we have information on WF, WCF and more. 

I was busy last week with two local presentations.  The first was on the BizTalk Adapter Pack and the WCF LOB Adapter SDK at the Real World SOA Road Show.  This was a fun show and it was nice to see Jon Flanders and Michael Woods who did a talk on "Oslo" and "M".  I've posted my slides for those who were interested in downloading them. 

Then on Thursday night I got the chance to talk about Microsoft .NET Services to the Twin Cities .NET User group. This is always a fun group and folks had a lot of good questions about Azure and the "cloud".  I have slides and sample code posted up now for this talk. 

My latest screencast in the Windows WF developer screencast series has been loaded up as of last week.  In this session, I discuss the basics of creating custom leaf activities including how to use Dependency Properties to make your properties bindable.    

Endpoint Screencasts - Creating custom activities in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

Previous screencasts in this series can be found on the screencast section of the Pluralsight website. You will also find short screen casts on other technologies both current (e.g. WCF) and future ("Oslo") on this page.

My latest screencast in the Windows WF developer screencast series has been loaded up as of last week.  In this session, I discuss the basics of using the Send activity to consume a service from a workflow using WCF.    I extend the workflow created in the previous screencast to consume a service that authorizes credit cards. 

Endpoint Screencasts - Using the WCF Send Activity in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

Previous screencasts in this series can be found on the screencast section of the Pluralsight website. You will also find short screen casts on other technologies both current (e.g. WCF) and future ("Oslo") on this page. 

I'm happy to be giving a talk at the upcoming Twin Cities .NET User Group on December 4 at the Microsoft office.  I'll be talking about the Microsoft .NET Services component within the newly announced Azure Services Platform.  I'm going to cover the Service Bus, Workflow Service and Access Control Service.  We'll have several demos and I'll be providing all the code.  Stop by if you want an early look at this emerging technology. 

For those of you in the Twin Cities area that missed the PDC, don't fret, we've got the highlights for you.  The MSDN Developer Conference is coming to Minneapolis on Jan 13 with a full day of Azure, WPF/Silverlight, and coverage of "Oslo" and VS 2010.  I'll be talking on one of my favorite new technologies, ADO.NET Data Services and SQL Data Services (SDS) at the end of the day.  Lots of great content; sign up and come join us!

If you are not in the Twin Cities area, check the web site for other locations around the US. 

My latest screencast in the Windows WF developer screencast series has been loaded up as of this morning.  In this session, I discuss the basics of using WF to implement an operation in a WCF service, or using WF as the implementation of a WCF service by using the Receive activity.  I show you how to use this activity to implement an operation processing the input parameters and returning the result.  In addition, I do a quick walk through of using the WorkflowServiceHost class to host the workflow service and expose an endpoint for client applications to call. 

Endpoint Screencasts - Using the WCF Receive Activity in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

Previous screencasts in this series can be found on the screencast section of the Pluralsight website. You will also find short screen casts on other technologies both current (e.g. WCF) and future ("Oslo") on this page.