The goal of the Microsoft incubation project codenamed Astoria is to enable server applications to easily expose data as a service that can be consumed by AJAX clients across the internet. Standard HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE are used to perform operations against the service, and data is exchanged via open formats such as plain XML and JSON. This session will provide a sneak preview of Astoria, which is now available in early release on MSDN.

SYS-CON Events announced today that 'AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 West' main sponsorship opportunities are now sold-out! Limited number of expo and event sponsorship opportunities that are still available are expected to be completely sold before the end of the month. The new sponsors who joined the conference this week, and are not yet listed on the conference Website, will also be announced later in the week.

I will be teaching a one day Bootcamp course on Ajax at the AJAXWorld Conference in Santa Clara, California on September 23, 2007. Details are at http://aja xbootcamp.sys-con.com I will be expanding the Ajax construction tools section from the Ajax Bootcamp I taught in New York at the SOA World conference. I am very impressed with TIBCO GI and Sun jMaki

While I'm not at the point where I can divulge any of the official Table of Contents yet, I thought I would put up a quick post letting people know that I'm still alive. You may have noticed that my post count is a little low lately. I have a pile of code samples that I want to write (including finishing up CLINQ since I've got some fun plans for that!) stuffed into a notebook. There's also a lot of reading that I want to do, including Petzold's book on 3D WPF stuff which is on the top of the list of books that need to be read :)

The inaugural iTVCon - Internet Video Conference & Expo (November 12-13, 2007) is building out its program and the Conference Advisory Board is busy sorting through the hundreds of proposals for technical and strategic sessions that have been coming in. Final deadline for proposals is September 10, 2007.

The so-called California Group, the hardcore collection of states attorneys general who fought Microsoft's antitrust settlement down to the wire, have filed a brief with the court overseeing the case questioning the effectiveness of the consent decree. They have no remedial suggestions however but would be happy to discuss what, if any, changes the court might consider at the next status conference in September 11, two months before most of the remedial regime imposed by the court on Microsoft expires.

Microsoft has now managed to articulate the thought that the first Vista Service Pack will arrive sometime in the first quarter of 2008, which, if memory serves, was when the smart money thought it would be out anyway. Expectations of course are that it will give Vista a hot foot and move it into wider deployment though Microsoft claims SPs aren't as important as they once were because it can send out online patches any ole time.

Microsoft was ever so prescient in calling the next Windows Server Longhorn because it's taking a formidable length of time to get here. On Wednesday, Microsoft confessed that it has been delayed still again. The company had previously promised to RTM the widgetry by the end of the calendar year.

If you cast your mind back to July 5, you'll remember that was the day that Microsoft told the Free Software Foundation (FSF) that it could take its GPLv3, rewritten in an attempt to gut Microsoft's patent claims on open source, and put it where the sun doesn't shine. Microsoft issued a statement saying it's not a party to the GPLv3, has no legal obligations under it, and that the Free Software Foundation is on shaky legal grounds in claiming that distributing certificates for Novell SUSE support services puts it under the GPL's thumb.

The August 17 ruling has provoked DLA Piper partner and pro bono OSI general counsel Mark Radcliffe - OSI, or Open Source Initiative, being the arbiter of what exactly constitutes an open source license - to blog that 'this case was wrongly decided and if allowed to stand may deprive open source licensors of the ability to get a court order (an injunction) to stop violation of the terms of their license, an important remedy for breach of such licenses.'

A core component of Microsoft's overall strategy for the Web, Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs). In addition to making the beta of Silverlight available for download, Microsoft announced unprecedented support for dynamic languages including Python and Ruby, powerful services integration and new tooling in the Expression Studio and the next edition of Visual Studio, code-named ?Orcas,? for building Silverlight applications.

First off, it might be worth it to note that there is a Silverlight 'Quick Start' for performing this task. The problem is that the Quick Start sucks. It actually tells you to go off and follow the directions for creating a basic ASP.NET Web Service - which is wrong. In order to do this, you need to create a POX service using Orcas, not a WSDL-spewing bloat machine like the default ASP.NET .asmx services.

There'll be no running off to Denver to save the day for SCO. It had asked the Utah district court hearing its case against Novell to let it appeal the court's summary judgment finding that Novell owns the Unix copyrights to the Court of Appeals in Colorado before the trial starts on Monday. That ain't gonna happen. The judge said no. And it ain't gonna be a jury trial like SCO wanted. It's going to be a bench trial with only Judge Dale Kimball deciding how much of the $25 million SCO got from Sun and Microsoft should go to Novell.

Much has been made recently of what will or will not be included in SP1 and when it will be released (some accurate, some otherwise). Now Microsoft says a Beta release of Windows Vista SP1 is slated for availability in 'the next few weeks.' A small group of testers has been putting a preview of the SP1 Beta through its paces to help prepare for broader release.

The Linux Foundation (LF), very sensibly, is going to start keeping track of where exactly Linux development's at. It's going to be using the so-called Linux Weather Forecast assembled by LWN.net editor and kernel community member Jonathan Corbet to follow the state of projects likely to appear in the mainline kernel and the major distributions. It's supposed to provide an easy way for Linux users, vendors and ISVs to see the status of projects that factor into their business plans by highlighting the 'progress points.'

As part of an apparent joint aim to reassure consumers that, if they use Microsoft's software, it will continue to work with Cisco's networking products, and vice versa, the CEOs of both companies spoke at a press event in New York this week about how, while competing as vigorously as ever, Microsoft and Cisco will also be working together in ten areas where their technologies overlap.

Linspire president and CEO Kevin Carmony, the guy who cut one of those patent protection deals with Microsoft, has - poof! - disappeared replaced by the company's sales chief Larry Kettler. Linspire has said nothing about the transition to its third CEO since it started. It merely canned a quote by Kettler with his new title in a press release issued Wednesday. A call to Linspire has gone unanswered.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Microsoft joined AJAXWorld Conference & Expo as 'Gold Sponsor.' Microsoft technologies enable designers and developers to create next generation web experiences. With frameworks like ASP.NET AJAX, developers can quickly create pages with sophisticated, responsive user interfaces and more efficient client-server communication by simply adding a few server controls to your pages. Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq 'MSFT') is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. More information about Microsoft's rich internet application solutions can be obtained at http://ajax.asp.net.

General counsel Dian Peters is gone - reportedly to Mozilla - and her job has been essentially outsourced to former Black Duck counsel Karen Copenhaver, an ex-IBMer and licensing expert now a partner with Choate, Hall & Stewart, and Andy Updegrove, the consortium expert who had his own shop, Gesmer Updegrove, and high-profile among the open source set because of his Standards Blog.

Novell has whistled up a legal reinforcement, adding another Morrison & Foerster partner, Eric Acker, a practiced IP litigator and former federal prosecutor, to its defense team. One of Novell's team of 13 lawyers has been sidelined by illness so maybe he's a substitute or maybe he's there to use his Assistant US Attorney experience and assess Novell's risk. He also might be a good negotiator 'cause this thing could settle on the courthouse steps.

HP is picking up thin client house Neoware for its Linux charms and now Wyse, Neoware's major competitor, says it's working with Novell to bring a new generation of Linux thin clients to market and get customers off traditional desktops. Apparently Wyse already has SUSE Linux Thin Client on its machines in limited installations.

A San Diego judge Monday struck down the precedent-setting $1.538 billion award that Microsoft had been ordered to pay Alcatel-Lucent for supposedly infringing on two of its MP3 patents. Unless Alcatel appeals the decision to the Federal Circuit and gets it reversed, the French will get zip out of the first of several MP3-related infringement suits it has brought against Microsoft in a prelude to demanding handsome royalty payments from the rest of the industry as well.

Microsoft says it's got an early pre-beta Vista SP1, content unknown, out with trusted testers and released those two updates that leaked last week to its download center ahead of its Windows Update site. One, KB938979, tickles performance while the other, KB938194, addresses compatibility and reliability issues. And saying something about Vista, there's also an XP SP3 in the works that Microsoft's supposed to put out next year.

Novell owns the Unix and UnixWare copyrights, according to a 102-page summary judgment issued late yesterday by the federal judge hearing the SCO v Novell case for slander of title. And since Novell owns the copyrights, Judge Dale Kimball decided that Novell had the right - as it has done - 'to direct SCO to waive its claims against IBM and Sequent, and SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent,' a ruling that apparently shuts down SCO's case against IBM for poaching code from Unix and putting it in Linux.

AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East sponsors included: Laszlo Systems (Diamond Sponsor), JackBe (Platinum Sponsor), Adobe (Platinum Sponsor), Cynergy (Platinum Sponsor), Backbase (Gold Sponsor) Google (Gold Sponsor), Nexaweb (Gold Sponsor), ICEsoft (Gold Sponsor), Oracle (Gold Sponsor), Helmi Technologies (Gold Sponsor), JetBrains (Gold Sponsor), TIBCO (Gold Sponsor), Kapow Technologies (Gold Sponsor), Sun Microsystems (Silver Sponsor), Parasoft (Silver Sponsor), Servoy (Silver Sponsor), Etelos (Silver Sponsor), Microsoft (Expo Plus Sponsor), Lightstreamer (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor), IT Mill (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor), FrogLogic (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor), ThinWire (Expo Sponsor), Quasar Tecnologies (Expo Sponsor), Zapatec (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor), MB Technologies Bindows (Exhibitor), OpenSpot (Exhibitor), ILOG (Exhibitor), Passport Corporation (Exhibitor), Addison-Wesley (Exhibitor), The Thomson Corporation (Exhibitor), Isomorphic Software-SmartClient (Exhibitor), Universal Mind (Exhibitor), Farata Systems (Exhibitor Plus), Manning Publications (AJAX Book Sponsor), Apress (AJAX Book Sponsor), Conference Guru (Media Sponsor), Flash Goddess (Media Sponsor), AJAXWorld Magazine (Media Sponsor), Web 2.0 Journal (Media Sponsor), SYS-CON.TV (Media Sponsor), IT Mill (Media Sponsor), Methods & Tools (Media Sponsor), Web 2.0 Journal (Media Sponsor), and OASIS (Association Sponsor).

This article is based on my presentation at TechWave 2007 and is intended for the beginner or moderately experienced PowerBuilder developer. I hope to share some of the useful information I've picked up as an application developer using PowerBuilder and EAServer.

Version 3.0 features in-depth code analysis for C# and a host of new productivity-enhancing features such as a superior unit testing solution, efficient handling of to-do lists, plus new navigation and search commands. Another major boost is the addition of Visual Basic .NET support, backed by cross-language functionality between C# and VB.NET. ReSharper also brings versatile support for XML and XAML.

JetBrains, creators of intelligent, productivity-enhancing applications, started shipping JetBrains dotTrace 3.0. The third major release of the company's intelligent profiling tool for Microsoft .NET applications features a quadruple increase in the number of performance profiling tools available to its users, a new way to catch memory leaks, and other extensive enhancements and improvements.

The Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) is going to vote on whether to standardized Microsoft's HD Photo file format, shipping with Vista and renamed for the occasion JPEG XR, XR for Extended Range. It would replace the current format standard, which is growing long in the tooth, and be part of an overarching JPEG Systems architecture. JPEB XR is supposed to ensure interoperability across cameras, printers, displays and software and offer, according to Microsoft, better image fidelity, higher image-compression and flexible editing than the current widgetry.

Eolas and Microsoft are off talking settlement. The retrial of the patent infringement case that resulted in a $521 million award to Eolas and the University of California was supposed to have started Monday, but it's been put off a month so the two sides can negotiate. An appeals court ordered the retrial so Microsoft's claim of prior art (the so-called Viola graphical browser) allegedly invalidating the Eolas patent could be heard.

Microsoft is denying Forrester Research and Gartner findings of discontent and defection among some of its Software Assurance customers who pay a fee equal to 29% of their total license for automatic upgrades. According to a web site Q&A with Joe Matz, corporate VP, worldwide licensing and pricing, renewals of Microsoft's Enterprise Agreements, which include a mandatory subscription to the Software Assurance program, 'exceed the high end of our historic range of 66%-75%.'

Microsoft seems to be chewing on a 'Vista Performance and Reliability Pack' and 'Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack' that leaked out from outside Windows Server 2008 beta testers then - poof - disappeared that may or may be part of - or even the whole of - the date-undetermined and therefore increasingly mysterious Vista Service Pack 1 on which many a Vista deployment hangs. Microsoft won't say and refers to them as updates.

As a software vendor developing a Windows-based PowerBuilder application often competing with Web-based applications, we decided that we need to embrace as many Windows advantages as we can. As you know, the latest hot-ticket item in that arena is Windows Vista. When we decided to pursue Vista certification for our product, we didn't fully understand what that really entailed. This article will give you some insight into how to structure a project to certify your PowerBuilder application for Vista - and it needs to be treated as a project, since it involves many different components.

In a decision that will distress OpenDocument Format (ODF) fans, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ODF's biggest booster, has gone ahead and as an acceptable format for state records alongside ODF. So now all those state office workers can go right on using Office.

AJAXWorld 2007 West will take place on September 23-26, 2007, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California, and will offer a new dedicated 'iPhone Track.' Another dedicated track will offer a comparative education opportunity for conference delegates on emerging RIA tools, including a Diamond track on OpenLaszlo and sessions on Microsoft's Silverlight, Adobe's AIR and Sun's JavaFX.

BPEL or Business Process Execution Language is an XML and Web standards-based SOA (service-oriented architecture) standard that allows business people to combine services into automated processes. As described in this review, Active Endpoints' ActiveBPEL product family includes a visual designer that works by allowing non-programmers to assemble Web services into processes by dragging and dropping graphical representations of components (Web services) and 'wiring' them together in sequences and flowcharts.

A seasoned Java professional has to know more than just the syntax of the Java language. Java EE offers a set of standardized technologies for enterprise development. A number of open-source frameworks such as Spring or Hibernate are widely used in a variety of Java applications. Familiarity with new 'beyond-Java' languages and technologies will widen your horizons and make you a more valuable Java professional. Real-World Java Seminar is sponsored by CodeGear, Red Hat, Nexaweb, Farata Systems, and PushToTest.

Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is a very powerful new technology coming to us with Visual Studio 2008. There is a great deal of innovation going on in the LINQ space, including innovative projects like LINQ-to-Flickr and LINQ-to-Amazon (among many others), in addition to the great things Microsoft is providing in LINQ-to-SQL and LINQ-to-XML.

I'll be running a new special interests group on Rich Internet Applications for New York Software Industry Association. We are going to cover Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, AJAX, JavaFX, OpenLaszlo and more. I invite you to attend our first meeting on Oct 9,2007, where I'll give an overview of what's currently is out there on the market of RIA technologies for development of the entrerprise applications. I'll be inviting people representing various RIA technologies to help software engineers and development managers in making the right choices for their new projects.

Linspire, one of Microsoft's new patent covenant buddies, has joined Microsoft's Interop Vendor Alliance, which already includes Novell, of course, and the purer, untainted Red Hat. This is after Microsoft amended its patent protection/interop erability pact with Linspire to exclude any GPLv3 code that Linspire may incorporate in its distribution. The arrangement also excludes foundry products, clone products, server code, any CNR applications that are bought separately and maybe upgrades as well as Linspire's freebie Freespire operating system. Resellers aren't covered either, only paying customers.