Unless this is the first thing on technology you are reading in the last six months you will know that we are seeing a new server being launched by Microsoft. After the ups and downs of Vista (many love it and many hate it) I expect that Windows Server 2008 will be something we can all agree is a real bonus for .NET Developers. Whole issues can (and will) be done on the benefits that Internet Information Server 7.0 (IIS7) brings including really cool support for web farm (read highly scalable) and shared (read highly configurable) scenarios.

Developers are increasingly working on systems that abstract the underlying mechanisms they depend upon. SharePoint was the catalyst for this observation as I increasingly see development implementations that just don't seem to work out as hoped, with misunderstandings or in some cases bugs causing the issues.

Another version of Visual Studio is here and while there are many cool features, we can conclude a lot from the fact that it isn't a staggering release. The first Visual Studio that wore the .NET moniker was a paradigm shift and threw in many features such as Web services, which though immature was definitely a killer feature. Now we have interesting upgrades and improvements. I won't say that Visual Studio has jumped the shark because I do think it is on track and still relevant, but this is a sign that the platform has matured. Most of the cool technology is manipulatable in Visual Studio 2008, but isn't baked in as most of it was released earlier.

When .NET first came on the scene, there was fighting over whether it was a platform or not. As I have said here in the past, those debates are over as .NET has proven itself a very useful and valuable platform, expanding into areas that people assumed it wouldn't and even couldn't in the early days.

I feel as if there is a calm on the .NET waters at the moment and it's a rare and somewhat uneasy sensation. Most of the developers I know are playing with Blend and Silverlight and all the cool WPF stuff, even if their specialty is back-end database work. We all know there is another wave coming and it will probably be a big one, so you better get the exploring out of your system now while you can. The summer is also a time when most businesses and development shops rest and recoup, though our network and storage admin friends use this time to do major projects that are unthinkable near year end.

Vista is getting some traction as a client OS now and that means developers are starting to see on the horizon that they should begin to support it. This is good and bad. Good because there are lots of cool things for developers in Vista, but bad because Vista changes the game quite a bit on developers relative to security.

This month, I want to talk about Windows Workflow and what it means for the state of .NET development (in my experience and, of course, in my opinion). Before the release of Window Workflow (WF for short because WWF means something else entirely already), there were several avenues open to developers to make things work with a workflow feature.

With the Microsoft MIX conference just ending last week and product announcements happening with greater and greater regularity, it's sometimes discouraging when you think of how much work it will be to just keep up with it all.

When Microsoft announced the technology that is now known as WCF, there was a lot of expectation and some skepticism. Expectation because it sounded great and would help us solve so many problems and realize so many things that were then very hard to make happen. Skepticism because it sounded great and would help us solve so many problems and realize so many things that were then very hard to make happen...

Usually in this space I like to summarize the contents of the issue and point out anything bearing in particular on our theme, but if you will indulge me, I would like to talk more long term and big picture this month. I am thinking specifically about security. Not a big surprise for those who know me and, if you were paying attention, you might have noticed that I used to be the security editor before taking over as editor-in-chief. Security is one of those pervasive things like error handling. You don't typically notice it until it fails you when you need it most.

A lot is changing in .NET this year, but it all feels like progress. Now that Vista is released, we get to stop using Community Technical Previews (mostly) of things like WPF, WF, and WCF. The ASP.NET group has been busy bringing us AJAX tools that take a wild technology and pretty much turn it into point and click. I recall doing presentations shortly after Google Maps came out when the world was just discovering what AJAX meant and still wondering how it could be leveraged. In the demonstration on custom control development, I walked through the steps needed to build a control that updated behind the scenes with AJAX.

I am often struck by how good some ideas are and often wonder whether they are happened upon by accident (dumb luck), like the discovery of Teflon and penicillin, or whether there was just a really good idea that made it happen. I think what we are seeing in the evolution of .NET is a bit of both. .NET has arrived in my opinion. I base this on the really powerful community I see surrounding it, especially from where I sit here in the North East just north of Boston.

In a cross-platform world where software giants nevertheless continue to vie with each other for developer mindshare, it is significant that only one major company has managed to synch up its release numbers with the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Microsoft is not resting on its laurels though, and the .NET Framework 2.0 is now going to be subsumed into the renamed WinFX, now dubbed the .NET Framework 3.0. So clearly the intention is to stay ahead of the curve.

'Ease-of-use' is one of those buzz terms that software marketeers routinely inject into their promotional copy to describe their product. The term is one of those unarguable concepts; after all, who's not in favor of ease-of-use?

Last month, we addressed platonic concepts in this space, albeit in as surface-level a way as possible. Just added a little pretentiousness to what could have otherwise been a deadly dull column. The topic of hand was 'ease-of-use' and the practical reality of achieving such a thing in the world of software development.

If you don't like change, stay away from the software development world. But if you embrace change, then these are among the most exciting, if volatile, times in years.

When newsstands throughout America on Monday, March 27, started displaying the April 3 issue of Newsweek with its cover story about Web 2.0 - 'Putting the 'We' in Web' - it seems to me that we have reached one of Malcolm Gladwell's now-famous Tipping Points.

As I listened to Bill Gates speak at the Office Developer's Conference in Redmond last week, I couldn't help but think how far Microsoft has come in terms of developer access to the Office Suite of products and how the Smart Client Revolution was in full force.

We're not even at the end of the first quarter yet, and 2006 seems already to have brought with it as much change in the world of Internet technologies as all four quarters of 2005 combined. Despite the headline-grabbing mega-deals of '05, in '06 the mid-market is still the engine room of technology M&A, with 95% of deals valued at less than $600M - and there have been dozens of them already.

When I was a kid, I remember someone saying, 'If you like where you're sitting, you had better stay there!' They were referring to a prediction that the Earth's population was going to increase to the point that there wouldn't be enough room for everyone to sit, so we'd all have to stay standing forever, or some such nonsense.

I've been doing a lot of coding lately. This has been a bit of a departure from my usual work as a technology evangelist or a development manager, but - as you might imagine - it has been quite a lot of fun! Having said this, the process of actually sitting down and coding for 12 hours a day over the past few months has left me wishing that Visual Studio .NET shipped with a handful of additional capabilities in the box.

What would it take for your organization to move to all the latest-and-greatest Microsoft tools - Visual Studio 2005, Team System, etc.? This is a question that I have been more interested in since my move from being principal consultant at Magenic Technologies, a premier provider of Microsoft platform software-development consulting, to associate director of Information Technology at Bear Stearns, a leading global investment banking, securities trading, and brokerage firm.

I am writing this on the morning of the day on which Microsoft will officially launch Visual Studio 2005, along with SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006. I think that it is fair to say that this is the most important technology launch in the history of Microsoft - and I'll tell you why!

I have been redoing our 'family computer' this week, as I am changing jobs and have needed to use a computer in between the end of my work at Magenic and the start of my work at my soon-to-be employer (more details on that shortly). As a part of overhauling our family computer, I moved from Windows Media Center Edition (never a good fit for the older hardware on our family computer) to two new operating systems on separate partitions: Windows Vista Beta 1 and Novell's Linux Desktop (SUSE, if I correctly understand the nomenclature).

From time to time, I find myself lassoing a sacred cow in this Editorial space, dragging it over to the slaughterhouse of rhetoric, and ultimately barbecuing its falsehood over the stainless-steel, six-burner, propane-powered grill of real-world experience. To wit, the current industry obsession with SOA as a panacea for every information system ill from performance to security is, in my humble opinion, a phenomenal load of crap.

As I write this, I am simultaneously preparing to present on ASP.NET 2.0 at three local MSDN Events (www.msdnevents.com), building an advanced ASP.NET 2.0 Web site for my client at Magenic, and pulling together the last bits of the magazine that you now hold in your hands - our ASP.NET 2.0 Focus Issue for 2005. While the specifics of each of these ASP.NET 2.0 projects differ from each other, the one thing that they all have in common is that they all involve a lot of master pagination.

Web applications suck! Well, perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement. Let me rephrase: Web applications are not appropriate for all situations. In my case, I have spent the last few months working on a series of ASP.NET applications that should really have been done as Smart Client applications. While working on this, I have been playing with the new Object Data Binding features in .NET 2.0 and falling in love with them.

I'm constantly impressed by the imaginative uses to which people put Microsoft's .NET technology. As I reviewed the articles for this month's issue of .NET Developer's Journal, it occurred to me that the microcosm of applications presented in our magazine this time around are just about as varied and imaginative as they come!

The following editorial will have little or nothing to do with the content of this issue. Admittedly, it will be about development and, in fact, it will be about development using .NET. However, I will leave it to Patrick Hynds, this issue's Guest Editor, to focus your attention on security - which is the primary topic of this issue. For further information on this, please see his Guest Editorial.

This month we dedicate our issue to security. This is a topic I find developers either love or hate; there are few who can take a neutral stance on it. As the security editor of this publication, you can probably guess which side I come down on for the question of my feelings about security. I am standing in for Derek this week in the editorial department. I think about security all the time and find it is a very interesting subject, and it's a challenge to stay up to date about it.

Welcome to the 2005 Mobility Focus issue of the .NET Developer's Journal. Long-time readers know that mobility is an area of special interest to me. In 2001, I wrote the first book about .NET mobility - Mobile .NET. From 2001 to 2004, I was chief technology evangelist for the world's first mobile IT management software company, Expand Beyond. Then, last year, I was named one of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professionals for the .NET Compact Framework - a dream fulfilled!

People ask me all the time 'Why do you play with these toys?' - and yes, there is the aspect of an addiction to gadgetry. Tablet PC, Pocket PC, My SPOT watch - I call this my device trio because I personally carry all three and they are cool! But I also carry them for reasons other than just liking gadgets.

Last week, I was happy to spend a few days serving as .NET track chair for the Web Services Edge 2005 conference in Boston. It was the fourth time I had served in this capacity, and the conference continued its proud tradition of improving on itself year-after-year.

Fate likes to urinate in my breakfast cereal! Just days after submitting my previous editorial for publication - wherein, you may remember, I had extolled the virtues of local software expertise over those of off-shore development - I was asked to extend my consulting engagement in San Francisco for a period of several months.

I am new to consulting. For the past eight years, I have worked as a full-time software developer with a couple of startups here in Chicago. Joining Magenic Technologies - a Microsoft-platform consulting company - has been a change of pace for me, both in terms of no longer working for a startup (we're currently celebrating our 10th year in business) and in that I now move from client to client on a much more regular basis.

And so, we come to the end of 2004. This is the end of this magazine's second year in print, and we have made substantial progress over the past year in pursuing our goal of becoming the premier source for information of interest to .NET software developers!

By the time you read this, the election here in America will (hopefully) have been decided. I inserted 'hopefully' in there because, as I write this, both candidates are tied at exactly 48% of the vote - indicating a very high likelihood of another extremely close election like we had in 2000, followed by another round of vote disputes, also like we had in 2000.

In his book Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework, Dan Fox begins with a brief discussion of the etymology of 'mobility.' Coming from the Latin word mobilitatem, Dan explains that mobility is the capacity for motion. When I'm talking to user groups, I like to mention these facts so that I can sound intelligent. But, when I talk to customers and specifically decision makers, the talk is about the value of mobility.

Maintainability and extensibility are over-rated. If you work in a start-up environment, at least, you should focus primarily on bringing your products to market in the fastest, most bug-free manner possible. The market never gives a second chance to make a great first impression, so - in a start-up environment - you should focus on making sure that your company's product is the first in its space and that it rocks...regardless of what's going on underneath the hood!

A few months ago, you might recall, I publicly declared that Microsoft's new Partner Points system had dissuaded me from renewing my long-since lapsed MCSD certification. For only slightly more than 1% of the total points my company, Expand Beyond, would need in order to remain a Gold Certified Partner in 2005, I reasoned - why bother?