Microsoft Certified program diagram

I am not very smart guy you know and I am getting hard time to understand all this new certification paths and upgrades in Microsoft Certified program. I find this Microsoft Certification Track diagram really helpful, so may be it will help you too.

TechEd 2006 and WinHEC 2006 presentations

In case you did not make it for TechEd 2006 and WinHEC 2006, like me :), here are the links for downloading the presentations.

TechEd 2006 presentations


WinHEC 2006 presentations

Depeche Mode in Bulgaria

Depeche Mode is going to perform on the same day when I speak three sessions for MS DevDays 2006. It is going to be a hard day :).

Microsoft DevDays 2006 is "sold" out

Microsoft Dev Days 2006 is “sold” out. Well, it is not actually sold, because the event is free, but still the registration is closed. I guess there going to be about 1,800 people attending the event. It is going to be huge!

Software Test Automation - 2006

Tomorrow (Sat 17.06.2006) Bulgarian Software Quality Association, with the support of Bulgarian Association of Software Developers, is organizing Software Test Automation seminar. The seminar is free and as far as I know all seats are taken already with the total of 150 people.

“The goal of this open seminar is to present to the audience the positive and negative experience as well as other challenges associated with implementing test automation in leading Bulgarian Software firms.”

Seminar will start at 13:00 on 17-06-2006 and will have following program:

• 'What test to automate? To build or to buy software testing tool' – Pavel Tankov (Tumbleweed Communications Inc.)


• 'Automate software testing with Rational Functional Tester' – Boyan Vatev (MusalaSoft)


• Coffee Break – 15:10 – 15:40


• 'Approaches for software test automation depending on project specifics' – Dimitar Dimitrov, Lachezar Ribarov, Iva Krusteva (Rila Solutions)


• 'Automation client-server technologies testing' - Miroslav Saraidarov (Tello)

The seminar is sponsored by Sciant (www.sciant.com) and MusalaSoft (www.musala.bg) and in partnership with Bulgarian Association of Software Developers (www.devbg.org).

.NET Framework 3.0

From Somasegar's blog:

The .NET Framework has always been at the core of WinFX, but the WinFX brand didn’t convey this. The WinFX brand helped us introduce the incredible innovations in terms of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and the newly christened Windows CardSpace (WCS) formerly known under the codename “InfoCard.” The brand also created an unnatural discontinuity between previous versions of our framework and the current version.

With this in mind we have decided to rename WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. .NET Framework 3.0 aptly identifies the technology for exactly what it is – the next version of our developer framework.

Sense of Bulgaria

http://senseof.rallybulgaria.com/

MS DevDays 2006

Almost to forget. This year Microsoft Dev Days registration is open. The event will be held at Arena Cinema at Mladost on 21st and 22nd of June – it is a big cinema complex so I expect that many would join and no one will be returned. In the afternoon you can also watch football from World Cup 2006 with big paper-bag popcorns :).
I am going to present the following sessions (in Bulgarian only):

• The Future of Software Factories in Visual Studio Team System
  


• Improving application performance and quality with Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers
  


• Introduction to Windows Communication Framework (WCF)
  

Here is the official site and program for the event (sorry, in Bulgarian only):

http://www.msbgregistration.com/

http://www.msbgregistration.com/programme.aspx

The server committed a protocol violation

Skype nearly got me into screaming this night. I was debugging an ASP.NET 2.0 problem and at some time the IIS started to behave very strange. The debugging in Visual Studio failed with error “Unable to start debugging on the web server. The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseStatusLine” and any attempt to load a page from the local IIS server returned an empty page even for those that did not exist :). At some time (couple of hours lost) I saw in the IIS Management Console that the web site was not running at all. When I tried to start it I got the error “Unexpected Error 0x8ffe2740 Occurred” and the long awaited event log entry (there was no entry at the time I tried to start the web site) – Event ID: 115 Description: “The service could not bind instance 1.”. A quick google showed that this error is due to already opened port 80 and the web server just could not open and use that port. Indeed netstat –a showed that port 80 is already opened but there was no way to see who was using it. This is where TCPView, marvelous tool from Sysinternals, helped a lot (Update: I just found that netstat –b would display the owning processes of each connection.). There was Skype listening on port 80, obviously taken ownership of the socket during the number of restarts when I was debugging. How stupid is that?
Attention to all web developers who are using Skype! Make sure to uncheck the option for using port 80 and 443 from Tools\Options\Connection dialog.

MSDN Webcast on reliability in SOAP

William Tay has very good comments on WS-ReliableMessaging in WCF. He recently did MSDN Webcast - Acks and NAcks: Why We Need the Principles of TCP/IP Reliability in SOAP. Make sure to watch it if you feel that WCF is on your heart.

William, I am sure that the connection problem you had shows how important is to have the reliability features in mind when you design a web service :)

Google is hiring in Sofia

Google: Bulgaria Consultant - Sofia
...
The Bulgaria Consultant should be based in Sofia and will be responsible for leading business development initiatives that are critical to the growth of the company. Our ideal candidate will have demonstrated leadership in general management, marketing, sales or business development for an internet/technology or advertising company, and have graduated at the top of their class from a leading graduate academic institution (MBA preferred).
...

MCSD, MCTS, MCPD, close the door please

Today I decided to take a look at my MCP Transcript and see what betas I have taken. For my surprise it seems that taking those exams, got me MCPD and MCTS status :).
Additionally I passed the first upgrade exam for MCSDs (#553) and that also may have reflected. It is so hard to follow up these certification tracks.
Now I feel a little bit confused what certification titles should I include in my presentations. Image when I show up in front of you and say – “Hi guys, my name is Martin Kulov and I am currently MCSD, MCSD.NET , MCTS: Web, Windows, MCPD:Windows, MCT”. And this not the full list though. I wish that Microsoft take more time to think about all these abbreviations and provide meaningful names with goo organized hierarchy for all of the titles. Now there are several versions of MCTS, MCPD and MCSD, which I find confusing.
May be I will stick to MCSD and MCPD to make the list just a little bit shorter.

Team System for Database Professionals

Microsoft announced the release of Visual Studio Team System – Team Edition for Database Professionals:

Take Control of Database Change
Take control of your database schema by creating a baseline version of the database with an off-line source controlled project.
Streamline changes to your database with tools that allow you automatically cascade changes throughout the database schema in a controlled and consistent manner.
Reduce the risk involved with changing database schema by comparing the source controlled version against test and production systems and automating the creation of change scripts.

Automate Database Testing to Improve Quality
Create full unit tests for your database schema that can be run independently or in combination with Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite to provide a comprehensive set of tests for the application and database tiers.
Author tests in either T-SQL or managed code with extensible unit test functionality and a new test editor.

Improve Collaboration and Communication
Establish the Database Professional as an integral part of the project team with a unique Visual Studio role-based experience and full access to the benefits of Team Foundation Server.
Improve collaboration between the Database Professional and other members of the development team through use of the shared team portal, integrated change management and a common version control and data repository.
Communicate important changes to the database to the rest of the team through work-item updates and event-based notifications.