[Updated 10 Nov 2010: Also see [More] Fun with WCF, SharePoint and Kerberos] I have been battling some WCF authentication problems for a while now; I have been migrating our internal support desk call tracking system so that it runs as webpart hosted inside Sharepoint 2010 and uses WCF to access the backend services all using AD authentication. This means both our staff and customers can use a single sign on for all SharePoint and support desk operations. This replaced our older architecture using forms authentication and an complex mix of WCF and ASMX webservices that have grown up over time; this call tracking system started as an Access DB with a VB6 front end well over 10 years ago! ...

I sat in the office yesterday with a beer in my hand watching the PDC2010 keynote. I have to say I preferred this to the option of a flight, jet lag and a less than comfortable seat in a usually overly cooled conference hall. With the Silverlight streaming the experience was excellent, especially as we connected an Acer 1420P to our projector/audio via a single HDMI cable and it just worked. So what do you lose by not flying out? Well the obvious is the ‘free’ Windows Phone 7 the attendees got; too many people IMHO get hooked up on the swag at conferences, you go for knowledge not toys. They also forget they (or their company) paid for item anyway in their conference fee. More seriously you miss out on the chats between the sessions, and as the conference is on campus the easier access to the Microsoft staff. Also the act of travelling to a conference isolates you from the day to day interruptions of the office, the online experience does not and you will have to stay up late to view sessions live due to timezones. The whole travelling experience still cannot be replaced by the online experience, not matter how good the streaming. ...

With any new product there can be some confusion over the exact range and scope of features, this is just as true for VS2010 Lab Management as any other. In fact given the number of moving parts (infrastructure you need in place to get it running) it can be more confusing than average. In this post I will cover the questions I have seen most often. What does ‘Network Isolation’ really mean? ...

At the Software Craftsmanship 2010 conference I met Gael Fraiteur of Sharpcrafters, he had given a talk on Aspect Oriented Programming AOP.Since the conference I have had a chance to look at his Postsharp AOP product for .NET. I decided to do a quick spike project for a tender I have been working on, the requirement is to add a security model to an existing .NET assembly. Usually this would have entailed adding some security logic at the start of each public method to implement the security model. Using AOP I hoped I would be able to get the same effect by adding an attribute to the classes/methods, hopefully making the changes easier to read and quicker to develop. ...

At the Software Craftsmanship 2010 conference I met Gael Fraiteur of Sharpcrafters, he had given a talk on Aspect Oriented Programming AOP.Since the conference I have had a chance to look at his Postsharp AOP product for .NET. I decided to do a quick spike project for a tender I have been working on, the requirement is to add a security model to an existing .NET assembly. Usually this would have entailed adding some security logic at the start of each public method to implement the security model. Using AOP I hoped I would be able to get the same effect by adding an attribute to the classes/methods, hopefully making the changes easier to read and quicker to develop. ...

I mentioned at the Developer Group meeting I was speaking at last week at the Typemock had a new C++ version of their product. They have now published the video of their webinar on this product.

Gael Fraiteur of Sharpcrafters recorded some interviews at the Software Craftsmen conference a couple of weeks ago. The interviewees include Ben Hall, Jason Gorman, Sandro Mancuso, Zi Makki and myself. They are all up on Youtube

On the 17th of November I will be speaking in Newcastle at the NEBytes user group on the subject ‘Using Typemock Isolator to enable testing of both well designed code and nasty legacy systems’. NEBytes meetings have an interesting format of a developer and an IT Pro talk at each meeting. The IT Pro session in November is to be given by another member of Black Marble staff, Rik Hepworth, and is on Sharepoint I think. ...

On the 17th of November I will be speaking in Newcastle at the NEBytes user group on the subject ‘Using Typemock Isolator to enable testing of both well designed code and nasty legacy systems’. NEBytes meetings have an interesting format of a developer and an IT Pro talk at each meeting. The IT Pro session in November is to be given by another member of Black Marble staff, Rik Hepworth, and is on Sharepoint I think. ...

I have always read a lot of novels, and I like to have a book with me for those unexpected moments when I get a chance to read. Of late this has meant I use the Microsoft Reader on my phone. It is not too bad an experience, using Project Gutenberg I can get a book (fiddle a bit in Word) and export to the Reader format. However I would like a slicker experience and be able to read new releases, so the Kindle seems just the job. ...