Google has recently announced a new project : a new system programming language named "Go". Here is a little summary of what this language is.

Title : Foundations of BizTalk Server 2006

Author : Daniel Woolston

Summary :
BizTalk Server 2006 was until last year, the latest version of the middleware product from Microsoft. Since, the new version, BizTalk Server 2009, has been released. Despite BizTalk Server 2006 is not the first or second version of the product, it really needs documentation on how to use and develop on this platform as it is absolutely difficult or impossible to start on such product like this.
The book is structured around the different component or pieces of BizTalk : Messaging, Schemas, Maps, Ports, Orchestrations. It covers all the aspects of the product even tackling the application deployment.
It is full of useful screenshots and the explanations are clear enough even if you don't have the software at hand.

Review :
Working with BizTalk since couple of years, I found the book quite basic. Ok, the title contains "Foundations", so don't expect advanced explanation but rather take it as a first look at BizTalk. A good example is to read it before an intermediate or advanced training. At the end, it gives an excellent overview of what can be done and how can specific problems can be solved with BizTalk Server 2006. Another good point is that it is not a big pad to read and can be absorbed in a week-end

Summary :
F# is a new language that is coming in the pipe of Microsoft for the Visual Studio platform. It aims to tackle the functional programming paradigm eventhough it is possible to use the imperative or object oriented programming.
Robert Pickering starts his book by explaining the basics of F#, how to get and how to use the tools. Then, the book describes the F# syntax to be used in the three language paradigm, functional programming, imperative programming and finally object oriented programming. Among other things, the notion of type inference is presented. Once the syntax is presented, the book describes the way to develop web, windows or even WPF applications using the .NET framework. Data access is also addressed using the current technologies available, such as ADO.NET or LINQ. Then, a quick look at DSLs, compilation and code generation is given, presenting the lex and yacc tools coming with the language. Finally, a full chapter is dedicated to the interoperability between .NET and F#, because even if F# is based on the CLI, the language introduces several types that are not available in the other .NET languages (C# or VB.NET).

Review :
Discovering a new language is really interesting and with F#, it is the occasion to see a new paragigm, functional programming. In really short, with F#, everything is a value, even a function. It means that you can use a function as a function parameter. The concept of type inference is also very attracting. The book is very easy to understand and a lot of little examples are explained in details, making the reading very fast. The first half of the book is dedicated to the language itself. The second half is more on using the .NET framework and I would say that it is the less interesting of the book. Indeed, during the first part, you have came across various examples using types and classes of the framework and user interface development being web or windows, or data access meaning that the second part does not bring a lot a information. Once you know these topics from the .NET documentation or from another book and once you have read how to access the .NET BCL from F#, then this part is pretty straightforward and not really useful. Moreover, the examples used to depict the topics are more explaining how to use the BCL classes than the language itself. Nevertheless, the last parts discussing the interoperability and the possibility of generating DSLs are more interesting.
My final words are that it is a very intersting book if you want to see another land (functional programming). Unfortunately, on my bookshelf, I also have "Expert F#" that I just opened to see what is inside and I saw that it takes the explanations and descriptions of the language from the beginning. If I had knew that before, maybe I would have bought this one instead. So, if the goal is just to scratch the surface of F#, "Foundations of F#" is the best suited, otherwise, if the goal is to go really deeper in the topic, then prefer "Expert F#" (a review of that one will be posted).

I found two interesting Visio 2007 stencils for BPMN and UML2. If you are interested, check out where I found them

Monday, I passed the 70-631 exam to get a MCTS certification.

My next challenge for the next couple of weeks : testing the new Beta of VS 2008 TFS...

The link provided in this post may provide good starting points on how to build a development environment for SharePoint

If you want to display a .NET web form in a modal dialog, this post may be useful for you....

How to refresh automatically all the PivotTables contained in an Excel Workbook...

Sometimes, tuning cache expiration timing and attachment format is not enough to avoid this error message. Maybe it is _your_ code that cause this error to happen...

A start of building a list of question to help to decide what is really needed when the application needs a workflow engine...

I found a new toy helping me to debug Javascript code. It was existing since long time since it is shipped with Windows 2000. But, to use it, you need to know it exists.....

ZapThink organizes the 5th SOA practitioner's conference in Geneva. A good occasion to learn what is SOA and when it might apply in software developments.

I am not sure, but I maybe found a bug in the System.IO.Ports.SerialPort class implementation. Indeed, setting the StopBits property of that class to StopBits.None is causing an ArgumentOutOfRange exception.

Voilà quelques années que les TechDays font partie de mon agenda. Les TechDays, ce sont deux jours de conférences sur les technologies Microsoft plus ou moins poussées.

Un exemple de code SQL vraiment très beau à voir. An example of a very nice SQL code.

Il n'est pas possible d'être notifié quand une orchestration BizTalk se termine. Ce post montre un moyen d'y arriver tout de même, mais en utilisant WMI. It is not possible to be notified when a BizTalk orchestration ends. This post shows how we can do that, using WMI.

Comment changer le nom d'un serveur BizTalk. How to change a BizTalk server name.

Une petite chose à se remémorer sur les tableaux... A little thing to remember about arrays...

Le code HRESULT affecté dans le constructeur d'une exception n'est pas anodin. Pour qu'une erreur soit détectée du côté client, il faut que cette valeur soit supérieur à 0x80000000. The HRESULT code set in an exception constructor is very important. In order to detect the error on the client side, that value must be greater than 0x80000000.