Windows Web Solutions UPDATE—brought to you by the Windows & .NET Magazine Network
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November 4, 2003--In this issue:
1. Editor's Note
2. Commentary: Microsoft PDC 2003
3. Keeping Up with IIS
- Patch Available to Correct FTP File Rename Failure in IIS 6.0
4. Announcements
- Work with SQL Server?
- 2004 Date Announced: Windows & .NET Magazine Connections
5. Resource
- Featured Thread: Mysterious Error in Application Log
6. Event
- Don't Miss Our 4 New Web Seminars
7. New and Improved
- Identify Problems at the End User's Desktop, ISP, and Server
- Tell Us About a Hot Product and Get a T-Shirt!
8. Contact Us
- See this section for a list of ways to contact us.
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1. Editor's Note
We're consolidating several email newsletter products to reduce the total amount of email we send to our readers. As of today, we're discontinuing Windows Web Solutions UPDATE. However, we'll provide Web administration and IIS coverage occasionally in Windows & .NET Magazine UPDATE, which you can subscribe to by clicking on the link below. Thank you for reading Windows Web Solutions UPDATE!
2. Commentary: Microsoft PDC 2003
Microsoft held its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003 last week at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This PDC was the largest one ever. The convention center holds a maximum of 8500 people, and PDC was sold out weeks in advance. PDC badges were even being sold on eBay up to and through the event.
For those who are unfamiliar with this event, Microsoft shows technologies that it's developing at PDC. Microsoft uses this conference to make public announcements about technologies that have been kept secret for months and even years. For those fascinated with the bleeding edge, PDC is the best conference of the year. And this year's PDC didn't disappoint.
Microsoft went public on, and consequently demonstrated, several technologies that aren't even in the beta stage yet. Two strategically important technologies are Whidbey, the next major version of Visual Studio .NET, and Longhorn, the next version of the Windows OS.
Whidbey provides a host of new productivity-enhancing features for software developers. I attended a session about rapid application development with Whidbey and was truly surprised by the productivity enhancements. Whidbey promises to not only simplify development of Microsoft .NET applications but also reduce the amount of code for common Windows and Web scenarios by 50 percent or more. When Whidbey ships, building enterprise software will be easier. As Rick Rashid, senior vice president of research, said in his keynote address, software development "will evolve from an art to a science."
According to Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, Longhorn is the "biggest release of Windows since Windows 95." This sobering statement summarizes how dramatically different and improved the next version of Windows will be. Compared with past Windows OSs, Longhorn promises to provide faster and easier development, a broader platform, and richer capabilities. New platform features include a new managed-code programming model, declarative development, and four major new subsystems: Avalon, Indigo, Windows Future Storage (WinFS), and WinFX.
Avalon is the code-name for the Longhorn subsystem that serves as the foundation for the Longhorn shell. Avalon provides a unified architecture for presenting UIs, documents, and media in the system. The subsystem lets developers easily take advantage of leading-edge graphics and hardware and provides native support for declarative, markup-based programming, which makes building Windows applications easier. In an impressive keynote session, Amazon.com demonstrated an Avalon-based smart-client shopping application.
Indigo is the code name for a set of technologies that connects people, information, systems, and devices. Indigo's support for advanced Web services facilitates secure, reliable, and transacted connections. The technology's messaging capabilities and programming model simplify the development of services. Indigo promises to fill the need for true distributed computing.
WinFS is the code name for Longhorn's unified data storage. Keynote and session demonstrations of WinFS were impressive; they illustrated WinFS's vastly improved ways to find, relate, and act on information. With WinFS, developers can leverage prebuilt data structures in their applications and extend those structures to handle unique requirements.
WinFX is the code name for Longhorn's programming model, which builds on and extends the Windows .NET Framework. WinFX provides a set of managed-code classes for Windows, which will improve developers' productivity.
PDC's overall message is that the next wave of software innovation is beginning. Unfortunately, Longhorn is so far away from shipping that the pain in waiting for it will be excruciating. When I talked with David Treadwell, the general manager of the .NET Developer Platform Team, I commented that developers need Whidbey and Longhorn now. He replied with a smile, "I know...I've been hearing that a lot this week."
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3. Keeping Up with IIS
A timing problem in the FTP component of Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 can prevent you from renaming a file after you upload a large file to the FTP directory. Microsoft has released a patch that's available only from Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS). For more information about this patch, read the article "New Bug Fixes for Windows 2003 and XP Systems" at the following URL:
4. Announcements
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5. Resource
Guru forum member Bill Hubbard has a Windows Server 2003 machine with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 installed to run only Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS). SUS is working fine, but the following error is recorded in the Application log about every half hour: "The Template Persistent Cache initialization failed for Application Pool 'DefaultAppPool' because of the following error: Could not create a Disk Cache Sub-directory for the Application Pool. The data may have additional error codes." If anyone has information about this error, click the following URL:
6. Event
(brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine)
Sign up today for these upcoming Web seminars: How to Pick the Right Anti-Spam Solution, Assessing IM Risks on Your Network, Choosing the Right Patch Management Solution, and the Costs of Spam. Don't miss these free events!
7. New and Improved
Visualware announced its Desktop Management Suite, a solution that lets enterprises control their Internet applications' service delivery and maximize the applications' availability to end users. The suite consists of four applications: DesktopResponse, DesktopProfile, DesktopPerspective, and DesktopAnalyzer. Together, these applications provide automated monitoring of service delivery to customers and the diagnostic tools to identify and resolve problems, regardless of whether those problems are occurring at the end user's desktop, the ISP, or the application server. Desktop Management Suite, which runs on Windows 2003/XP Pro/2000/NT, starts at $28,450. Contact Visualware at 703-802-9006, 866-847-9273, or [email protected].
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8. Contact Us
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