Here's what we talked about at last weeks weeks Architecture chat...

• Black fibre (sparked off by this story in the US)
• Unmarked helicopters.
• Open XML SDK 2.0 April Refresh.
• Need for XML Tidy / Reformatting / Code clean of word xml before parsing/processing it with automated tools to simplify/combine runs etc.
• Writing your own mini-DNS server, and approaches to programmatically balancing load and geographic distribution via DNS.
• Legacy codebases, and the true cost of "small updates" to legacy apps.
• Outsourcing horror stories.
• Encrypted stored procedures.
• Wolfram Alpha, Google squared and Google wave and the joys of tabular data.
• Data centre location/latency issues (especially for parts of Europe and the pacific/Oceania regions).
• Project Natal for XBox 360

Next meeting is Thursday, 18th June 2009 - see you all there!

Apologies for not posting these sooner - here are the write-ups
for the last month and half of Architecture Chats.

• Word & Excel document generation - testing approaches,
  the problems with verifying document structure without styling,
  interop performance bottlenecks etc.
  
• Metadata, n-triples &
  semantic
  web.
  
• Supporting micro formats, formats that aren't formats etc.
  
• Symantec SVS.
  
• Software Engineering degrees vs. Comp Sci degrees, comparing
  volumes of practical experience, projects etc.
  
• NDA's & Student projects and the risks involved with
  offering projects to students vs. protecting IP / perceived
  business advantages.
  
• NUnit 2.5 details.
  
• Winforms to WPF -
  talking about why such a thing exists, the obvious risks and
  potential messes such a tool can create if not taken as just a
  learning tool.
  
• Longevity of purpose built languages vs. general purpose
  languages.
  
• ExtJS - I've talked about
  this JavaScript library a few times, but I don't think I've
  ever linked to it - so go check out the samples if you
  haven't.  Great fit for MVC based RIA's.
  
• Making code changes on site - advantages, disadvantages - and
  the relationship/perceptions it creates with customers (customers
  are either impressed, or begin to feel you can fix anything given a couple of
  hours).
  
• Observing customers on site using your software, difficulties
  in doing this without being onsite, ways to automate this etc.
  
• Entity Framework - ESQL.
  
• NHibernate HQL
  AST
  
• Visualising Linq queries, current options, what's missing
  etc.
  
• Flagging builds which are released to customers vs. builds
  which are released internally, and different approaches to
  versioning etc.
  
• Domainz hacked, msn redirected. 
  
• Sql injection attacks still working far too often.
  
• Nokia 1100 - huge demand, changing numbers, banking scams.
  
• Scaling and implementing document &
  distributed/persistent hash tables... including talking about
  CouchDB, MyISAM and Esent (Extensible Storage Engine).
  
• Lucene.Net -
  using/abusing it for storing your data along with search
  documents, and performance implications (i.e. the observation
  that it's still quick).
  

Apologies for the last minute notice, been a crazy week!

Tomorrow is the Auckland Architecture Chat, some quick thoughts as to topics:

• Google wave - worth watching the video if you haven't.
• SilverUnit - unit testing for silverlight controls.
• Automapper - fluently configured object-to-object mapper, this Dimecast provides a quick overview.
• Linq2Sql changes for .Net 4.0.
• NHibernate - Executable DML, no criteria support but pretty handy none the less, especially when targeting multiple databases.
• Simone's .net ajax survey, some of the comments re: update panel etc. are interesting reading too.  It's not too late to take the survey here either.
• Video for everyone, nice fallback approach to embedding video for all browsers.
• Microsoft bing, "Decision engine" ?
• Displaying eager load graphs in lightspeed designer - cool feature.
• The Azure Services Platform Developer Challenge.

We'll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Tomorrow (Thursday 4th June 2009) - and the topics above are just there in case we run out of anything else to talk about (which is rare).

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

Hi All, Architecture Chat Tomorrow!

Below are a few topics that have caught my eye lately:

• Ivan Porto Carrero is working on a mocking framework for IronRuby called Caricature.
• TypeMock Racer goes 1.0 - another great tool for the toolbox.
• Mutable Linq Expressions - interesting hack from Ayende.
• Commercial Suicide - Integration at the Database & Service Level.
• Moonlight 2 Preview 2.
• The fallacy of the always-valid entity.
• OpenRasta - I've been playing with this a bit lately, after watching the presentation @ E-VAN.

We'll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Tomorrow (Thursday 20th May 2009) - and the topics above are just there in case we run out of anything else to talk about (which is rare).

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.

Hi All, Architecture Chat Tomorrow... here are some possible topics of discussion.

• 2009 NZ Imagine Cup Winners
• Castle Windsor 2.0 released (finally!)
• Windows 7 RC Available
• More Microsoft layoff notices
• Pesky Utility & common libraries
• .Net support in Jade 6.3
• Video on Entity Frameworks Model First in .Net
• Vista SP2 and Windows 2008 SP2 Available
• Mike Shapiro has an interesting piece on purpose built languages.
• NUnit 2.5 and TestDriven.Net support for NUnit 2.5.
• To MVC or to WebForms?
• WinForms To Wpf?

We'll be meeting at the usual time of 11:30am @ Garrisons, Sylvia Park, Tomorrow (Thursday 7th May 2009) - and the topics above are just there in case we run out of anything else to talk about (which is rare).

For more details on the location and write-ups of previous sessions you can consult the associated wiki.