Mehran Nikoo's Notes

Windows Server AppFabric simplifies the process of creating, scaling and managing web and composite applications that run on IIS and includes the following components:

• AppFabric Caching Services (code-named “Velocity”)
  • Caching services
  • Cache client
  • Cache administration
• AppFabric Hosting Services (code-named “Dublin”)
  • Hosting services
  • Hosting administration

You can get the RTW bits using the Web Platform Installer or downloading it directly from here.

The supported operating systems are both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of:

• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Vista SP2
• Windows Server 2008 SP2

You will also need a version of .NET Framework, depending on the features you want to use (more info):

• Hosting administration: .NET 4
• Hosting services: .NET 4
• Cache administration: .NET 4
• Caching service: .NET 4 and optionally .NET 3.5 (.NET 3.5 adds new capabilities)
• Cache client: .NET 4 and .NET 3.5 (depending on client application)

There are a number of additional resources linked from the landing page, including the Windows Server AppFabric wiki.

Last week, I had a enquiry from a customer about the Spanish locale for the United States. As he mentioned, it does make sense to have this locale, especially for the users based in the southern regions of the US. If you are running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, there is no such locale supported by the operating system so if you try to access this locale in a managed application by writing this line of code:

CultureInfo cultureInfo = new CultureInfo(“es-US”);

you will get an ArgumentException, which says: “Culture name ‘es-US’ is not supported”. As a workaround, you can use the “es-MX” locale or create your own locale.

But the good news is that the support for the “es-US” locale was added in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 so if you are running one of these operating systems, you can now use the es-US locale (LCID = 21514) and the same line of code we used above will work fine.

This page has a complete list of the locale IDs assigned by Microsoft so if you thinking of creating your own locale, check this list first to make sure there is no conflict with the existing locales.

Primarily for my own reference in the future but you may find this useful too. If you are running Windows Vista/7 64-bit and want to use the VSTS 2008 Web Test Recorder plug-in, the web test recorder bar may be unavailable due to the way Windows caches the list of available explorer bars. In order to resolve this, you can apply some tweaks to the registry. Michael Taute has a useful post which explains the problem and solution in more detail and covers some other issues too.

Windows 7 Beta is now available for download from the MSDN Subscriber area. It will then become widely available for download on Friday (9 Jan) via http://microsoft.com/windows7. 

I am very tempted to go ahead and install it as the base OS on my work laptop today but as usual, Microsoft IT have created the customised image to be used internally so I will wait until next week when I have physical access to the corporate network. My home desktop is very excited as its OS will be upgraded this evening

As you may have noticed, the Windows team at Microsoft have been quiet during the early stages of the design and development process for Windows 7 and there are good reasons behind this decision. You can find out more about the reasoning in the newly created E7 blog: 

“Related to disclosure is the idea of how we make sure not to set expectations around the release that end up disappointing you—features that don’t make it, claims that don’t stick, or support we don’t provide. Starting from the first days of developing Windows 7, we have committed as a team to “promise and deliver”. That’s our goal—share with you what we’re going to get done, why we’re doing it, and deliver it with high quality and on time.” 

The E7 blog is hosted by Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky where they will talk about the project and receive feedback from the community so make sure you subscribe to the E7 blog.

Microsoft will apply changes to its technology and business practices, which will cover high-volume business products including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007 and all future versions of these products.

Here are some of the specific actions Microsoft is taking to implement these new interoperability principles: 

• Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products
• Documenting how Microsoft supports industry standards and extensions
•  Enhancing Office 2007 to provide greater flexibility of document formats
• Launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative
• Expanding industry outreach and dialogue

You can find more about these initiatives here.

Here is the press release for Windows Server 2008 RTM and you can find more about Windows Server 2008 here.

As you may know, the great thing about this combined release is that Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 share a large portion of their code base. This makes the desktop and the server operating systems more consistent when it comes to common features like security and networking. This is exciting news for developers as in the past; we had to deal with the difference in the behaviour of some of the components like IIS in the desktop OS (IIS 5.1 in Windows XP) and the server OS (IIS 6.0 in Windows Server 2008). Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 are much closer in terms of their code base and behaviour and the combined release of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 brings them even closer to each other.

At the time of this writing, the following editions are available to MSDN Subscribers for download:

- Windows Server 2008 Standard (x64)
- Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (x64)
- Windows Server 2008 Datacenter (x64)

Please note that these editions come with the beta version of Hyper-V and can be updated when Hyper-V is released later in the year.

And the following editions will be coming soon:

- Windows Server 2008 Standard (x86)
- Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (x86)
- Windows Server 2008 Datacenter (x86)
- Windows Web Server 2008 (x86, x64)
- Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-Based Systems
- Windows Server 2008 Standard without Hyper-V (x86, x64)
- Windows Server 2008 Enterprise without Hyper-V (x86, x64)
- Windows Server 2008 Datacenter without Hyper-V (x86, x64)

More information on Windows Server 2008 editions.

Although the SP1 for Windows Vista has reached the RTM milestone, the broad release of Windows Vista SP1 is currently scheduled for mid-March. This will allow the hardware vendors to address the issues with their device drivers before SP1 is broadly released to the customers. You can read more about the release for Windows Vista SP1 here.

Update 1 (10 Feb 2008): Windows Web Server 2008 (x86, x64) and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard (x86) are now available for download via MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

Update 2 (14 Feb 2008): All editions mentioned in the above list can now be downloaded from the MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

I presented the ”Practical WCF” session last week where I talked about WCF Endpoints (Addresses, Bindings and Contracts), Hosts, Clients, Behaviours and Inspectors.

You can download the materials from my SkyDrive.

I installed Windows Vista on my “very” new PC yesterday. I think I can live with Windows Experience Index of 5.6! (my last experience was a rating of 1.0 on my 3-year old Dell laptop…). The poorest performer is the CPU, which is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, running at 2.8GHz (overclocked) so I assume I could achieve a base score of 5.9 if I used a Core 2 Extreme processor (without overclocking).

  
                               Click for a larger view [opens in a new window]

Ordering Experience

Why did I say “my very new PC”? Because it was born yesterday morning. I don’t normally mention any vendor names on my blog but I can’t resist it this time. As suggested by one of my colleagues, I placed my order on Overclockers UK web site at 12:26pm on Friday 24 Nov and I received an instant (automated) confirmation for my order. At 12:43pm (same day!) I received another email entitled “Your order has shipped”. In its body the email was saying that my order was packed and ready for collection by the courier and it included the reference number too. And guess what? On Saturday morning around 9am I was woken up by the courier knocking at the door. I am extremely pleased with the service I received from Overclockers UK, well done! I hope other people have had (and will have) a similar experience with them.

Disclaimer: I am not a sales agent, don’t work for Overclockers UK (I live in Surrey and they are based in Staffordshire!) and don’t receive any freebies from them either!!!

As you can imagine, I didn’t go back to bed and started assembling the PC instead.


What is inside?

Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 ICHR8 Mainboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4 GHz
2 x Corsair XMS2 Dominator Twin2X2048 PC2-6400 C4D
Western Digital Raptor X 150GB 10,000RPM
Galaxy GeForce 6950GT 512MB DDR3


Windows Vista Setup Experience

The next “Thank You” goes to Microsoft. The whole setup process took less than 20 minutes (setup files were on the hard disk) and was very smooth. Maybe two or three automatic restarts as I was drinking coffee. By the time Windows was preparing itself for the first use, I was thinking of the next step… going to Gigabyte and Galaxy web sites to get the drivers for Vista (when I installed Windows XP on the same machine in the morning, I had to install drivers for Graphics Adapter, SATA/USB 2.0 and Gigabit LAN before I could use those features). My thinking was interrupted by a nice fading effect on the startup screen displayed at 1600×1200 resolution. I called myself a “fool” as I should have remembered that Windows Vista comes with thousands of drivers so it is unlikely that you need one unless you are using older items. A quick visit to Device Manager confirmed this as all drivers were working fine and Aero Glass kept dazzling my eyes as I navigated through the Control Panel.

Windows operating system has come a long way and although many of us are happy with the current previous version (Windows XP with SP2), I believe Windows Vista is going to rock and will make more happy customers for Microsoft.

Even More Credits

go to hardware manufacturers including Intel for creating faster processors with lower power consumption and Gigabyte for creating a mainboard with excellent layout design and effective cooling technology.

I have to stop now, it’s the time for a nice Sunday lunch in the rain…

Windows Vista is now available for download on MSDN Subscriber downloads. There is a single .iso image containing the following editions:

Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Business N
Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Basic N
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Starter
Windows Vista Ultimate

but the product keys for Business N, Home Basic N and Starter are not available yet (don’t care – who wants Windows Vista without Media Player anyway?!!)

Looking forward to seeing it on the shelves in January!