Brian H. Prince

A lot of developers and architects ask me how they can start learning about architecture. The are usually looking for the “Golden Path” to the one, true architecture for their application. Of course this doesn’t exist. Each system must have it’s own architecture, to support it’s own needs. But, as architects, we do need a mechanism to share what we know, the experience that we build up over our careers. We should be able to say “This is what I built, and this is why it worked in this scenario.” We also need to consider the frames of concern for a model, and discuss those as well. We need to make sure that this knowledge is approachable. There are other industries where they build these giant repositories, and then are ignored. I like to call these ‘ShelfWare’. Others call them ‘Bodies of Knowledge.” More like Dead Bodies of Knowledge. :) No one really uses it, but references it as a bible to defend a bad move or decision. How can we make it approachable? Well, first you can’t req...

I spend a lot of time explaining to customers and audiences what we mean when we say “Software plus Services”. In short, we believe that you need a mix of on site software, and services from the cloud. The exact mix of what is onsite vs. in the cloud is up to you, and what software piece is in which position is also up to you. We are putting a lot of effort behind the concept, because we want the platforms and architecture to be flexible enough for you to find the right balance for you, but to also give you the ability to change that balance. I should be able to start something in the cloud, move it on premises as I need, and then maybe later back into the cloud. The video is part of a meme on YouTube on explaining concepts ‘in plain English.’ It’s only about 4 minutes long, so take a look. And it uses paper dolls. How cool is that?

The Patterns & Practices team has been pumping out a lot of great content lately. So much, that I haven’t been able to keep up with it all. What I like about their new model, is that they publish their works in draft or beta form to CodePlex.com, so that they can gather community feedback. The latest guide from them is titled “Acceptance Test Engineering”, and can be downloaded from here . Please read it, and provide some feedback, any feedback back to the team. P&P is a great example of how some groups in Microsoft are embracing the community, and leveraging their input to make their products better. I think this guide will be of interest to lead developers, consulting managers, project managers, test leads, and architects. This guide focuses on the skills around Acceptance Test, and how to implement them. The first section focuses on thoughts behind AT’s, and why we need help defining ‘done’ on our projects. The second section reads like a patterns book. It is chock ...

Many of you know I have spent a good portion of my past five years working on a lot of BizTalk related projects. What does BizTalk do? Everything of course! :) If you are doing SOA, or an ESB, integration, edi, or RFID, this is the tool for you. I missed this news last month because I was so heads down on CodeMash. We just released the beta of BizTalk Server 2009. We also release the RFID Mobile and RFID Standards pack. The first thing any BizTalk’er would want in the new version is support for the latest platform versions. Even in BizTalk 2006 R2 you had to use VS2005. With BizTalk 2009 you can use Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. The new version also has extended support for Oracle e-business suite, IBM CICS, IMS, DB2, and WebSphere MQ. There is new support for UDDI v3.0, which is important in service registry scenarios. You can grab the beta over here . An update to the ESB Toolkit is available...

SharePoint has become a huge product. Almost everywhere I go, someone is asking me about SharePoint. They either want to know how to develop on it or how to deploy it, or they want to find someone who knows how. If you are looking for resources to learn more about SharePoint, I recommend a podcast by Rob, Nick and Brett. Their podcast is called “SharePoint Pod Show”. There are some good books out there, but hearing experience MOSS developers talk about it on a regular pod show really immerses you into the technology. Their current show is about SharePoint skills, and how they fit into your career and the current ‘economy’. Their show is based on a recent poll. It’s very interesting. If you are into SharePoint, or have to work with it, I suggest you give them a spin.

I often give a talk called “Soft Skillz: They aren’t just for humans anymore”. It focuses on many of the lessons I have learned over my career. Such topics as how to speak to humans, how to read body language, and how to manage your own career. If you aren’t happy with where you are in your career, then you only have yourself to blame. Your career is something you need to actively manage. When you are taking a new job, it should only be because it fits into your plan for your career, never for money. To avoid any money related problems in the search for a new job, you should already know if you want a positions BEFORE they offer it to you. At that point, if you KNOW it supports your career plan, and is a company you can feel at home for a while, then you know it is a job you should possibly take. Of course, the actual job offer and it’s details must work out logically for it all to make sense (which is a whole other blog post). There is a very simple process that you can use to mak...

Where: QSI Training Center, 440 Polaris Parkway, Suite 500 When: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 @ 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. RSVP: Natalie Marsch @ nmarsch@quicksolutions.com *Food & beverages will be served at 5:30 p.m. Title: Cloud Computing with Windows Azure Speaker: James Bender Description: Cloud computing is poised to be the next big breakthrough in Enterprise computing. Companies like Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are making large investments in this new paradigm and positioning themselves to be leaders in this new space. But why is cloud computing so important? This session will answer that question and help you as a developer and/or architect get a handle on cloud computing. You will also see how easy cloud computing can be with Microsoft Azure in a variety of Enterprise scenarios. Bio: James is an Architect with Quick Solutions and has been involved in software development and architecture for 13 years. He has worked as a developer and archit...

Yes, that's right, on the iPhone. Not only there, but on the Wii and the Android phone as well. Side note: I got to look at an Android phone at CodeMash. It was ok. It felt heavy for it’s size. The UI was confusing for me, but the GMail interface was very strong. Anyway, I was browsing ArsTechnica this morning and came across this article, “ Open source Mono framework brings C# to iPhone and Wii ”. What really piqued my interest was because I just got back from CodeMash, where we had an iPhone development workshop. In it Ryan Paul discusses how developers have been getting around Apple’s restrictive policies on not allowing interpreted and runtime based platforms on the iPhone. If that isn’t directly aimed at .NET, Java, and other really popular languages right now, I don’t know what is. It seems that people are using Mono (from Novell, the brain child of Miguel de Icaza) to generate binaries. Mono provides the ability to skip CIL in the compilation process, and go stra...

nPlus1.org, a great web site that is helping architects become better architects is putting on another ArcSummit. This one will be in Columbus, Ohio on 2/25/2009. Microsoft is sponsoring, so it will be at the Microsoft office. The event goes from noon to 5pm, and we will be providing lunch. The event will be partly presentation, and part fishbowl discussion, and will follow the same agenda as the ArcSummit in Cincinnati. Read the recap here. We will start by talking about Software + Services, and what it can mean to your business. The second half will be a lap around Windows Azure, and how it works. The nPlus1 team wants to keep the number of people at the event small so that the conversations can be richer, so sign up fast, they are capping it at 40 people. To Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032400944&Culture=en-US Location: Microsoft Office - Columbus 8800 Lyra Drive - 4th Floor Suite 400 Columbus Ohio 43240 MAP ...