ESRI have now released their pre-conference Q&A and you can find it here:
http://events.esri.com/uc/QandA/index.cfm?ConferenceID=2F6DC1A1-1422-2418-883C3868A9004888

Here are some interesting blog posts about it:
http://blog.geocortex.com/2010/07/01/esri-pre-conference-qa-now-available/
http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2010/07/01/the-esri-uc-qa-response-is-up/

In this Q&A session you will find information such as:
-The WebADF will be deprecated in the next release after ArcGIS Server 10
-The next release of ArcGIS Server after 10 will run entirely as a 64-bit application

The ESRI UC starts on the 12th of July. Twitter: #esriuc

I found a cool new feature today in Windows 7 that really saved me some time!
I started a project today for a client where they want me to migrate an old classic asp application to ASP.NET MVC 2. In order to test the functionality in the old application I decided to install it on my developer machine which is running Windows 7. The problem here was that the old application had connections with an Access database that required MDAC installed on my machine. But since I run Windows 7 on x64 I can’t install this on my dev machine so I then decided to set up a new VPC on my dev machine with a XP x86 installation. But then a friend recommended to take a look at the new XP Mode in Windows 7 instead and that turned out to be awesome!

All I had to do was to download the Windows XP mode from Microsoft's website (around 500Mb) and then install it. That’s it! No booting up from DVD and installing the OS or anything like that. Once the virtual machine was up and running I installed IIS and then installed the old classic asp application. I had the old application up and running within minutes!

But the cool part here is that I don’t have to have the Virtual Machine up and running to access my application. I can simply run applications from the Virtual Machine without open it up! I can create shortcuts that I then can access from the Windows 7 start menu under “Windows XP Mode Applications”. Pretty cool stuff!

So this is a excellent way to run applications that for some reason does not work on Windows 7 or on x64 like in my example.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

I am now back from the devsummit in Palm Springs and a really good holiday afterwards in California!

Other people have already summarized the devsummit very well such as:
James Fee
GeoCortex
MapButcher

I wont go through all my notes here since most of that is already covered, but the main thing I take with me from this years conference is that the webADF is now officially dying! From now on (version 10) it is all about the REST API and all their client APIs. In ArcGIS Server 10 you can easily extend the REST API with your own functionality by writing your own SOEs, pretty cool stuff!

ESRI about the webADF:
The webADF is what we consider a mature product at 10. So what we have done for version 10 is to put in the most requested features to finish it off in terms of the feature set. The future is the webAPIs such as Silverlight, Flex and Javascript. The reason for the shift of focus is not just ESRI, its the way the industry is going. We will maintain the webADF and it will be supported but we are not doing active development on the webADF.
(check out the video “Getting More out of Your .NET Web ADF Application” for the whole answer)

Devsummit 2010 Videos:
http://www.esri.com/events/devsummit/videos/index.html (Plenary)
http://www.esri.com/events/devsummit/tech-session-videos/index.html (Sessions)

Me and a mate in the dessert..

Another mate in front of a massive truck, dont get many of them in England..

I have now just finished packing my suitcase and I am all geared up for the dev summit next week in Palm Springs. I am really looking forward to it since I have been really busy the last few months building a big ArcGIS Server Portal for a client. We released it on Wednesday so now it is all up and running. It will be nice with a few weeks break after months of really hard work.

Since British Airways cabin crew decided to start their strike tomorrow I had to reschedule my flight so now I am off to Las Vegas instead of LA. I will stay there for a night before heading towards Palm Springs on Sunday. We might stop at Lake Havasu on the way since I really like that place!

I have prepared my laptop with various geeky stuff so that I can use the time on the flight to do something useful. I have promised one of my mates (who is a designer) to do some Silverlight stuff for him. It will be quite interesting and a nice break from all the webadf stuff I have done lately. And the best part is that I can do it all in Silverlight 4 which is good (release next month!)!

The developer summit this year will hopefully be really good since ArcGIS 10 is due this year. I am part of the beta programme so I have been testing both the first and the second beta but it will be interesting to see what else ESRI will show us. I also hope that ESRI will have some nice surprises just like Microsoft usually have. The biggie last year was the Silverlight API (even though it wasn't really a surprise)!

There will also be a lot more user presentations this year which is good. My session about tips and trix in Visual Studio was voted through but I had to turn it down due to lack of time and that my colleague couldn't go this year.

Links:
Developer summit website
Agenda at a Glance
Session search (including user presentations)
David Chappell – Keynote preview
Devsummit blog

Don't forget twitter: @devsummit

I am not a big Apple fan and I wonder sometimes why people get so excited about everything they release.
Who would for example like a phone with these "faults":

• Basic camera
• No multitasking!!
• BigBrother Apple must approve everything all the time
• Can’t deploy your own apps to the IPhone (without paying!)
• No Flash/Silverlight yet.. Will there ever be?
• Bluetooth functionality is not brilliant

But since it is a product from Apple everyone just loves it. I must admit that the design is quite slick and the performance is quite good (probably because it can only do one thing at the time :) ). And the AppStore is obviously working very well.

Anyway, as a developer you realize that IPhone, IPad and IPod can open up a big market for your applications. You have potentially millions of buyers if you come up with a really good idea!

I have written applications for various platforms in different languages but I have never written applications for the IPhone. So to get an idea on how it all works I bought this book (for my Kindle):

I have now read it and I must recommend it. The book was really good and gave me most of the information I was looking for. I still haven’t written a single IPhone application yet, but now I know where to start!
It actually looks pretty easy to write IPhone apps, especially if you come from a C background.

You can now vote for which user presentations you would like to see at the Developer Summit in Palm Springs in March. The voting is open until the 7th of February. I had a quick look through now and it looks like most of them are related to ArcGIS Server.
If you would like to know more about how to use Visual Studio more effectively I would recommend this session: “Visual Studio 2008/2010 Tips and Tricks”. It has been prepared by myself and my colleague Rob Clark.

You can find all the presentations here: http://esri.force.com/devcon2010

A friend recommended Fence not that long ago so I have now used it for a while and I like it a lot!
With Fence it is very easy to organize your computer desktop and arrange things in to modern looking windows.

And if you give a presentation or if you for other reasons want to hide all items on the desktop you can just double click anywhere on the desktop which will then hide all the objects:

Double click again to show them.

Also, creating a new window is easy, just drag a rectangle whilst holding in right mouse button, give it a name and hit ok. That’s it!

There is a free version and a pay version which you both can download from here: http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

It is supported on: Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 and hardly use any system resources!

So ESRI have now decided to rename their next release from 9.4 to 10. The reason for this seems to be that it is a larger release then the last few dot releases. Especially desktop side looks and works a bit different than 9.3. Jack Dangermond also says in the podcast (see link below) that the beta users have asked for this to be a major release and they have listened to the users.

It will be interesting to see at the Developer Summit what exactly they will add to the 10 release. Because there are quite a few things that aren't in the 9.4 beta version that people expects the next major version to include.

ArcGIS 10 is still planned to be released mid-late Q2 this year.

Listen to the podcast

Looking back at 2009 I am quite happy that I got the chance to work with new technologies such as Silverlight 3, WPF, ASP.NET MVC and WCF. Even though it can be a bit stressful working as a developer with new stuff released every day it is still a pleasure when you realize that something new is actually very good and helps you build better applications. One thing that I have come to love in 2009 is the Entity Framework! That helps me build better DALs faster. Another thing that I really like is the ASP.NET MVC 2 that makes it easier to build great web applications.
One thing that disappointed me in 2009 was the .NET RIA Services that wasn’t all great under the hood. But I think that WCF RIA Services will solve most of the problems I had with the .NET RIA Services. 2010 will tell..
Another thing that disappointed me was Google Wave, I was “lucky” to get an invite almost straight away but I was a bit let down by the whole thing. The ideas behind it are quite good but since the hype was to big I was expecting a lot more out of it! Lets see what's happens in 2010..

Here are a few things I would like to do in 2010:

• Sharepoint 2010 and ArcGIS Server/MapIt: This will allow us to do some new cool stuff
• Scripting: It will be interesting to see what ESRI release at the developer summit but I need to get up to speed with all the scripting languages
• MapIt: I have done quite a bit of development with MapIt in 2009 and it will be interesting to see what ESRI will include in the upcoming versions in 2010. I still need to finish off the list with improvements ideas I promised to email ESRI..
• Silverlight 4: I hope that more companies will add Silverlight in to their IT plans so that I can deliver more powerful solutions to them. I have actually seen Silverlight in a few client sites already! More of that please!
• WPF: I hope that I don't have write another winform application, I want to do them all with WPF! ArcMap extensions rewrite to WPF?
• Expression Blend: I want to improve my skills in Expression Blend this year!
• ASP.NET MVC: I probably have a few classic asp applications that needs to be rewritten. This has to been done with MVC, cant wait!
• FGDB API? We have waited for ESRI to release the API for File Geodatabases for years.. Time now?
• Multitouch: I hope I can start looking in to the multitouching APIs in Windows 7 (and perhaps Surface?) this year.
• ArcGIS 9.4: I have already spent quite a bit of the time with the first beta version but I guess 2010 will be all about 9.4 which is good!

Happy new year everyone! 

One of the most interesting new feature in Silverlight 4 is the COM interoperability functionality. This enables developers to access other components on the users machine (if the user allows the application to have elevated permissions).

There is a few examples out from Microsoft on how developers can access Microsoft Excel through it’s COM interfaces and pass data between the Silverlight application and Excel (and the other way around). This is quite cool but I wanted to develop my own COM classes and hook them up with a Silverlight mapping application.

So what I have done here is to build a mapping application with ESRI ArcGIS Server where the user can access data from ArcSDE (and also update the data). This can obviously be done by webservices (or the WebADF) today but in this example this is all happening on the clientside which is quite cool! This is just an example but the interesting thing now is that it is now possible to access ArcObjects (and other COM objects) on a users machine  from a web (OOB) application!

It might also be possible to stream down a COM dll from the server in a trusted application, register it on the client machine and then access it from Silverlight. I haven't tested this yet but I heard people mention it at the PDC. That would make it really simple to deploy your own COM classes and then do more stuff on the client machines!

Anyway, here is a video on how to integrate ArcSDE with your Silverlight application: 

I have a lot of ideas on how this can be useful to existing ArcGIS users (both desktop and server). You could potentially build COM classes with the ArcObjects functionality you want to use on the client side and have that streamed down and registered (and license with an Engine license perhaps?) on the client machine.
There is also other libraries that would be useful to get access to from a web mapping application.

These Out-Of-Browser applications (with elevated permissions) can be centrally managed through Group Policies (in Active Directory) which will make it very easy for IT admins to manage these applications within a Enterprise.

Links
Tim Heuer - Silverlight 4 Beta – A guide to the new features
Tim Heuer - COM Object Access in Trusted Applications (video)
The ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight™/WPF™