There are other official announcements on this floating around elsewhere, but in case you missed it, I have incluced the some "official" verbage below.  Good stuff and worth keeping an eye on...

------- 

Application Request Routing for IIS7 is a proxy based routing module that forwards HTTP requests to content servers based on HTTP headers and server variables, and load balance algorithms.  Application Request Routing can be used to:

• Increase application availability and scalability.
• Better utilize content server resources.
• Facilitate application deployment including pilot management and A/B testing.
• Lower management costs and create opportunities for shared hosters.

Application Request Routing relies on URL rewrite module to inspect the incoming HTTP requests to make the routing decisions, and therefore, the URL rewrite module is required to enable Application Request Routing features.

Download the modules:

·         Microsoft URL Rewrite Module for IIS 7 (x86)

·         Microsoft URL Rewrite Module for IIS 7 (x64)

·         Microsoft Application Request Routing for IIS 7 (x86)

·         Microsoft Application Request Routing for IIS 7 (x64)

Features:

Using the module

These articles explain how to configure and achieve the core scenarios using Application Request Routing.  It is recommended that the articles are read in the following order as the scenarios get richer with each article:

• Install Application Request Routing
• Define and Configure an Application Request Routing Server Group
• HTTP Load Balancing using Application Request Routing
•  Configure 3-tier deployment architecture using Application Request Routing
• Pilot Program Management using Application Request Routing
• Shared Hosting using Application Request Routing
• Using Failed Request Tracing Rules to Troubleshoot Application Request Routing

Well, I've decided to start a personal blog.  Really just more a place to rant, vent, muse, and comment on stuff I read or hear about.  I don't suspect anyone to read it really, but somebody might and maybe even comment.  I enjoy debating so feel free to agree, disagree, whatever.  Then again, it reminds me of the old saying...

If you blog and nobody reads it, are you really blogging????

Brand Name Productions Blog

A week from today (and while I am in MI on vacation unfortunately!) the Twin Cities Developer Guild will have its first meeting ever.  Kicking it off with a cookout followed by two time Spaghetti Code Podcast guest Jason Bock talking about "Writing Better Code".  Not only am I bummed that I will not be there due to vacation, but the extended forecast shows it as a beautiful day and I could have used some good tips on cleaning up my coding for my side project. ;-)

Check out the Developer Guild website to register for the event (gotta know how much food to get) and to see what else is on tap for future events!

I was digging around in a cabinet I hadn't probably opened in years and years.  I'm thinking about selling my townhouse and trying to move a bit upmarket since prices are good, and its got me doing a bit of house cleaning.  I digress.

What did I find in said cabinet?  A veritable treasure trove of old RPGs.  Yep, a bunch of Shadowrun stuff, some Torg, and a good stack of GURPS, and some other pieces and parts.  It was so much fun to flip through the pages and revel in a lot of old gamer memories.  I can't remember the last time I actually played an RPG.  It has been at least a decade, maybe more. I continued to buy RPG stuff that caught my eye even after I stopped playing since many of them are almost like buying a mini-novel in a way.  That little trip down memory lane really made me miss playing, though I am not sure if I could get into it as much as I used to, but maybe I could.  Finding the time to do it is one challenge, and getting a group together is likely to be an even bigger challenge since walking into a group of unknown gamers is not something I am likely to do and I tend to run the game instead of be a player.

So with the sad realization that I would probably never RPG again, what did I do?????

I read a few pages here and there from the various games, put the books back, closed the cabinet, and will plan on digging back in there for another nostalgia trip in a couple of days......

Shall we play a game???  Immortal words for those of us that grew up in the 80s.  This installment of Spaghetti Code is all about developing games with XNA and guest, Chris Williams.  Chris is a Microsoft MVP, head of the Twin Cities XNA User Group, and developer of the classic game Heroic Adventure.  Chris and I sit down and talk about game development with XNA, getting started, technical stuff, and game development in general.

While getting a podcast scheduled with Kris Nyreen to talk about some of the cool stuff he has been doing with Silverlight, he called this to my attention - Podcasting Kit for Sharepoint.  I will steal his feature list and repost it here, and an impressive list it is:

Very cool - check it out at http://www.codeplex.com/pks

Tim Barcz blogged about attending a session at the recent ALT.NET conference that centered around why people choose a first gen Microsoft product (but you can apply this to any vendor really) over a more mature open source project.  You can read Tim's thoughts here.  Tim gives a good example of one of the big benefits of open source and that is being able to fix the source when you encounter an issue, but I'm not sure it really tackles the original question though - "why some (many) developers, managers, and executives feel comfortable choosing a brand-new Microsoft product when a far more mature open source alternative exists?"

Tim demonstrated one great aspect of having open source - being able to fix bugs on your own or modify the code to suit your particular application or scenario.  But the reason Tim talks about for not wanting to go open source in the first place (lack of known viability and a desire to NOT have to support that code base) still exists.  Yes, you were able to fix an issue, but you are still responsible for maintaining and versioning that code from now on.  Now, if you submit the bug fix back to the project and it gets rolled into the code base, life is good. 

Yes, having the source is nice in the scenario Tim paints - fixing bugs, extending, whatever.  But it does not alleviate the original problem of "I don't want to support that code."  Now for larger open source projects, that is probably not a valid reason to not choose open source since they have become so large and popular that they have a high probability of being around for a long time.  For small to medium projects, however, the long term viability may be a bit more dicey.  If I have a "big vendor" solution where I have a higher degree of confidence that it will be around for a while (yes, vendor solutions sometimes "disappear" as well), then I have mitigated the support risk out of the equation.  Yes, I give up a lot in exchange for that, but it is a trade off that makes business sense in a lot of cases.

Now some will say, "but if vendor A discontinues that project" or "if Vendor B goes belly up" you are much worse off because you don't have the source.  I don't agree because what I am really faced with is a migration effort to another supported platform or taking on support of someone else's code.  If my desire is to mitigate the amount of code I have to support, having a particular closed source solution basically needs I would need to migrate as opposed to take on a software support activity.  That is a valid goal for organizations where software development is not their core competency. (because I have the source does not mean I have the time, resources and/or technical expertise to support it or even take advantage of it). I shudder at having to think of having a large code base that I am now responsible for making sure runs on the next version of x dev platform or y operating system.  I think this stems from a lot of open source advocates of not realizing that if your business is making widgets, your really don't want to get in the habit of directly supporting any more code than you absolutely have to.  If I have limited on staff dev resources, I can see a lot of scenarios where I would rather bite the bullet and migrate than take on support.

Another way to look at it is the exploding interest in SaaS applications.  Companies today do not want to even support applications on premise if they can avoid it.  They would much rather let someone else support certain applications since it is cheaper and a better utilization of the company's core competency assets.  But for some reason being able to bring large amounts of source into my organization with the idea that I may some day have to support it and say that that is always a good thing doesn't make a lot of sense.  That is a very broad brush to use and by no means am  I saying that open source is bad, shouldn't be used, etc.  There are a ton of great open source solutions out there, but there are a ton of good reasons to go with vendor solutions (even less capable ones) if you look at things through a different lens.  I don't think its a slam dunk either way and both sides can be right depending on the solution, the vendor, and the company.

The Aspiring Architect Series 2008 builds on last year’s content and covers a number of topics that are important for architects to understand. Please make sure that you have gone through the 2007 series which can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/tags/Aspiring+Architects/default.aspx . Hopefully you will find the upcoming series to be a very useful investment of your time.

June 16^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Introduction to the aspiring architect Web Cast series

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380836&Culture=en-CA

June 17^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Services Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Service Bus – Beyond the hype

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380838&Culture=en-CA

June 18^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – TOGAF and Zachman, a real-world perspective

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380840&Culture=en-CA

June 19^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Services Oriented Architecture (Web Cast in French)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380842&Culture=en-CA

June 20^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Interoperability (Web Cast in French)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380844&Culture=fr-CA

June 23^rd , 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Realizing dynamic systems

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380846&Culture=en-CA

June 24^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Web 2.0, beyond the hype

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380848&Culture=en-CA

June 25^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Architecting for the user experience

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380850&Culture=en-CA

June 26^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Conclusion and next steps

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380852&Culture=en-CA