Thursday, December 6, 2007

Microsoft Volta

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Developers can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting for you. Volta comprises tools such as end-to-end profiling to make architectural refactoring and optimization simple and quick. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without any changes to the application.

Friday, September 21, 2007

C# 3.0 - curtain raiser on var keyword

Hello readers, I'm going to start a series of blog posts here to get acquaintance with C# 3.0
Ok then, where to start?

Lets start with the “var” keyword. Perhaps that’s one of the most interesting thing in C# 3.0, So here we go,

In C# 2.0, you can declare an integer (or anything for that matter of fact) as -

int i;

You could also write something like -

int i = 1;

Generally speaking -

[ datatype ] [ variablename ] = [ initializer ] ;

Okay good. The important thing to realize is that "i" is an integer. In C# 3.0, the below is a valid statement -

var i = 1;

But what is "var"? "var" is an implicitly typed local variables (or var for short) that instructs the compiler to infer the type of a local variable. For example:

var i = 1;

So, var i = 1; will result in creating a variable called "i", whose data type is "integer". It’s important to understand that this is still strongly typed. In a dynamic language, integer’s type could change later. To illustrate this, the following code does not compile:

var i = 1;
i = “hello atif”;

The C# compiler will report an error on the second line, stating that it can’t implicitly convert a string to an int.

Rather, this can be used as;

var i = “1”;
i = “hello atif”;

Now this time, var i, has become an string. This implies that var can be anything, from int to string or float or double, or even it can be some kind of object of classes or even table of datasets.

But then what is the difference between "var", "object" and "variant" (from COM or VB6 days)
Variants had issues regarding to occupy way too much memory. Objects have boxing unboxing issues. Both Variants and Objects are not strongly typed.

Note that "i" is strongly typed to an integer or string - it is not an object or a VB6 variant, nor does it carry the overhead of an object or a variant, To ensure the strongly typed nature of the variable that is declared with the var keyword, C# 3.0 requires that you put the assignment (initializer) on the same line as the declaration (declarator). Also, the initializer has to be an expression, not an object or collection initializer, and it cannot be null. If multiple declarators exist on the same variable, they must all evaluate to the same type at compile time.

You could also create "arrays" of "var" as follows –

var intArr = new[] {3,1,4,1,5} ;

Perhaps that has given u readers a clear word of what “var” is.


hit counter


Thursday, August 2, 2007

Microsoft Cloud OS

Perhaps this is "The next big thing" from Microsoft.

Microsoft plans at creating core infrastructure services like storage and alerts which developers can build on top of. This set of capabilities are being referred to as the Cloud OS, though it’s not a term Microsoft likes to use publicly. But this was hinted at by Brian Hall, Ballmer and Ozzie at the Worldwide partner conference in Denver.

Microsoft has publicly announced that it too, has a cloud-like structure in mind.

This looks like the next big thing that Microsoft is working on, with Ballmer stating “”We are in the process today of building out a services platform in the cloud.”

Ballmer said that later this year Microsoft will deliver the first version of a set of developer tools to build on top of Microsoft’s Windows Live effort and noted that the tools will be based on .Net.

This looks like Microsoft is opening up more of their services and with the Web 2.0 trend of web services, looks like Microsoft wants to continue their presence on the web the way they have been ruling the desktop world.

Microsoft also previously introduced two new Windows Live Services, one for sharing photos and the other for all types of files. While those services are being offered directly by Microsoft today, they represent the kinds of things that Microsoft is now promising will be also made available to developers.

Among the other application and infrastructure components, Microsoft plans to open are its systems for alerts, contact management, communications (mail and messenger) and authentication.


References:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/07/12/microsofts-cloud-platform-gets-some-steam
http://techcruising.wordpress.com/2007/07/22/microsoft-cloud-os/

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Microsoft Silverlight

this is my first post, and i m going to write about a new revolution - Microsoft Silverlight.

Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

Technology Evangelist Headline

Atif Siddiqui - Technology Evangelist

Search Results

Recent Tweets

    follow me on Twitter

    Comments