How do you build line-of-business applications in Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) that can be maintained and extended over a period of years? How do you design and code to handle real-world complexity? Composite Application Guidance (a.k.a., "PRISM") from patterns & practices offers guidance, libraries and examples--in small, free-standing, digestible chunks--that you can use to tame the complexity.

In this episode of ARCast.tv, I sit down and chat with Ward Bell to learn how to compose complex UIs from simpler views, integrate loosely coupled components with "EventAggregator" and "Commands", develop independent modules that can be loaded dynamically, and share code between Silverlight and WPF clients.

The ongoing economy unraveling is the defining moment of our time. Many professional developers are fearful for their livelihood, as employers and customers cut and slash development plans, and as economic activity grinds to a halt.

But not everywhere.

In centers of technical excellence and innovation such as the Silicon Valley, the major players, from investors to industry leaders, are aligning themselves with the next boom in software, a field Juval Lowy calls the Energynet. Alternative energy covers a wide range, from new cars, to micro renewal sources energy producers, infrastructure upgrades to charge stations and distribution, new power and transformation grids, and integration of billing systems, let alone commercial building and homes modification. And the key for making all that work is software. We simply cannot make the physics or the chemistry substantially better, but we can profoundly integrate systems, iron out inefficiency, automate and vertically integrate energy trading, production and consumption; and the key to all of that is great software. This massive new software system is the Energynet, and the analogy to the Internet is a good one - instead of packets and request the Energynet transfers watts and usage data, connecting anything and everything in the energy market. In this unique session, Juval Lowy presents the case for the next boom in software, shares personal observation and perspectives, and points out the skills and expertise required of developers that want to not only survive but thrive on the next boom in software.

Be sure to check out this compelling interview conducted by my colleague Bob Familiar.

Architecting an enterprise or web application for high performance, scale, and availability can be a challenge without an appropriate caching strategy. One approach is to leverage a distributed caching platform to support the needs of performance, scale, and availability. In this ARCast episode, Scott Hanselman and Joe Shirey discuss Microsoft's codename "Velocity" project and how it supports building out these types of applications as well as what architects and developers need to think about when implementing a distributed caching approach.

On 30 – 31 March 2009, at Weston Manor, Oxford UK a group of senior IT architects from across the industry met to consider the coming ‘Cloud’. What it is, what it means for business and the software profession and what has Microsoft been up to in the cloud?  This episode is part one of the discussion, what the cloud means to the user.

Microsoft System Center products and solutions help capture and aggregate knowledge of IT infrastructure, policies and best practices to help IT organizations build manageable systems and automate operations to reduce costs, improve application availability and enhance service deliver. Dhananjay Mahajan interviews Vij Rajarajan, GM of System Center, about his vision of the future of System Center and how it is poised to help Enterprises prepare for new industry trends and challenges. We will learn how System Center fits in the Dynamic IT and broader Microsoft strategy, as well as how Enterprise IT Architects can help prepare their organizations for upcoming changes.

Green computing. The topic is gaining a lot of mind share in our industry as IT organizations look for ways to build sustainable systems and network infrastructures. This initiative has gained new momentum with the advancement of cloud computing. Massive data centers must be constructed to provide so-called “infinite scalability,” and they must be environmentally responsible while controlling the overall cost of energy to keep them running.

At TechEd Developer last summer, a panel discussion was held to discuss the state of the green computing initiative and discuss way to further it. We caught it on camera and it is now the latest installment of ARCast.tv. This panel includes George Cerbone, Michael Manos, Beth Humphreys, Kathy Malone, Lewis Curtis, and David Platt. Check it out and voice your opinion on this important topic.

Ah, Microsoft Access. I can still remember writing my first data-driven web application on my PC using Access as my data repository, only to upload it to a web server and have it seize up the minute more than ten people tried to use the site at the same time. What Access provides in ease of use it lacks in scalability, but still, many enterprise line-of-business and web applications still leverage Access in the data layer. Eventually, these applications need to migrate to a more scalable RDBMS, but taking that effort on can be daunting without solid experience and guidance.

This week’s episode of ARCast is all about the data layer and the role that Access has to play in it. In this interview, Luke Chung, founder and president of FMS, shares his view on Microsoft Access database solutions -- where they fit well, what challenges users and developers often face in creating and maintaining them, and how they have evolved from standalone desktop solutions to having the capability to be integrated with web-based and SharePoint centric solutions.

He further explains primary reasons why some Access database solutions are migrated to SQL Server database based solutions, what different approaches are used to carry out migrations, and how to get started with the migration process when a large number of Access databases are involved.

The first time I saw Ron Jacobs talk about service-oriented architecture was at Microsoft TechEd 2004. He did a talk with John Devados and it was the first time I can remember someone talking about services in a way that made sense to me as a developer as well as an architect. It seemed that every time I went to see a talk on SOA, I was looking at a lot diagrams of clouds with lines connecting them to other clouds. Any questions about the practical application of services was met with the answer, “Well, it depends.” Ron was the first person I ever saw who offered real, prescriptive guidance on how to design and implement properly factored services, and it had a big impact on how I’ve approached SOA ever since.

Beyond being an in-demand conference speaker, Ron is also the creator of ARCast.tv, the show that I and several other architects at Microsoft got the chance to co-host just a little over a year ago when Ron moved-on to become a technical evangelist for the Windows Communication Foundation and Workflow Foundation product teams. Heck, I even had the opportunity to do an interview with Ron back in 2006 at the Microsoft National Architecture Forum in Vale, CO.

In our newest episode of ARCast.tv, Ron gets to sit in the interviewee seat and talk about some of the key differences and benefits of SOAP-based and RESTful services, and how Windows Communication Foundation supports the implementation of both types of services.

User experience.

For so long, many of us in the software industry felt that it just didn’t matter. The attitude of “build it and they will come,” especially in the enterprise, was a little too common. Software users today are becoming more sophisticated as they use their computers more often to do more things, and their expectations of the experiences they should have their software and the websites they visit are rising. As developers and architects, the status quo for so long will no longer be good enough, and we ignore this fact at our own peril.

This past summer at Microsoft TechEd Developer 2008, my buddy and colleague, Bob Familiar, sat down with author, speaker and “Supreme and Exalted Dictator for Life” of Rolling Thunder,  David Platt to discuss, well, why software sucks. In this interview, David talks about the growing divide between software developers and their customers and provides some practical ways to make software suck less.

David is an extremely funny guy and this interview is very entertaining while also providing some great insights about usability issues with software today.

Check out the interview and be sure to visit David’s site, SuckBusters, and report any particularly sucky applications or web sites you’ve come across!

So, what do software architects really do anyway? It sounds like a question that should have an easy answer, but put five of us in a room and ask us about the types of work we do on a regular basis, I can almost guarantee that you'll get five different answers:

Q: Do we design software applications and systems?
A: Yes.

Q: Are we thought leaders in our respective organizations?
A: Definitely (or at least we try to be).

Q: Do we mentor and help other developers and architects get better at what they do?
A: Sure.

Q: Do we advise senior management in areas of corporate IT strategy, technology adoption, software standards and governance?
A: More than I like, but certainly.

Few other roles in the professional world have such a wide and varied set of potential responsibilities. In fact, it can be argued that software architects are what their organizations need them to be, truly geeky embodiments of the phrase, "Improvise, adapt, overcome."

Last June, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion at TechEd Developer 2008 in Orlando, Florida with four of my colleagues: Joe Shirey (moderator), Michael Stiefel, Miha Kralj, and Patrick Weikle. The topic of discussion for that session was the role of the architect and, as you can clearly see from this panel of "experts" on the subject, there was some consensus, but quite a bit of disagreement as well.

I've had some people tell me that they think this conversation is frivolous and a distraction from doing the "real work" that needs to be done in the world of software. To a certain degree, I understand where this point of view comes from. However, the role of the architect in software is very new, tracing its roots back only thirty years or so. When you stop and consider the amount of time the role of the architect in the structural engineering and construction world has been around, it's no surprise that there is considerably more clarity around what they do. I believe that only through having this discussion with a wide variety of architects from all manners of corporations, educational institutions and government organizations from around the world will we ever be able to get closer to understanding the real value that the architect can bring to IT.

This panel discussion was posted on ARCast.tv yesterday on Channel 9. Please take a few minutes to watch the video and join in on the conversation, either here on my blog or on Channel 9.