Microsoft Roslyn: New Type of Compilers

Microsoft has presented an interesting project named Roslyn. Within the framework of this project, all the concept of compilers and compilable programming languages itself has been reconsidered. Apart from the realization of completely new functions, such as .NET-tools, C#, Visual Basic and the Visual Studio development environment, the Roslyn project offers the completely new concept ‘compiler as a service’, laying a road to the .NET platform to the most promising area – into clouds.

Once Microsoft gave many professional software developers the hope for well-off and predictable future, having moved the development of its own and third party technologies on the .NET development platform. So far, the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET platform are the most popular and convenient development tools, having adopted the best features of java technologies and having made some important steps ahead. When Microsoft presented the new development tools for writing apps with the help of JavaScript and HTML5, many software development companies started to worry that the .Net development had been folded up. However, the reality has exceeded all expectations – the presented project Roslyn has proved that the .NET platform has exciting future.

The Roslyn technology can be described as ‘compilation by request through the providing service’, although this description is a bit complicated. Technically, the new technology is not a service in comparison with such cloud solutions as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) or PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). The Roslyn technology is more similar to the Windows system services that offer completely new principles of compiling .NET applications – each phase of compilation is presented in the form of service that can be requested by other applications.

Usual compilers throw away all intermediate data while getting ready-made files and in Roslyn compilers all intermediate data is available via standard .NET API-interfaces. For example, the request to one single API will retrieve the whole syntax tree for the given code fragment in the form of an object. The request to another API can return the number of methods in code.

So far, one can’t predict how soon the Roslyn technology will find its place among standard development tools  – now only the trial version for C# and Visual Basic is available.

HTML5 Labs to test and set new web standards

Microsoft introduces HTML5 Labs where early HTML5 specifications will be showcased and web developers will be able to test them and share their experience of leveraging the new generation of web standards in their web development projects. Software companies and developers will be able to make suggestions on the possible ways to improve HTML5 standard, which will favour further development of web technologies based on HTML5.

Some of the draft specifications like IndexedDB, WebSockets are already on display in HTML5 labs for developers to review them. IndexDB allows storing large amounts of structured data, while WebSockets provides for enhanced bidirectional communications and W3C standardized API.

HTML5 is a web standard that accelerates web sites work, provides more articulate syntax and allows to discard the use of plug-ins and third-party APIs to manage graphics and multimedia. Dean Hachamovitch, the Corporate Vice President for Internet Explorer, pinpoints the necessity to make a clear distinction between HTML5 specifications under development and well-established standards.

Microsoft has also demonstrated its HTML5 prototypes with Christmas themes – Santa Workshop and HTML5 Blizzard. The corporation employs in its demos such technologies as SVG graphics, HTML5 audio, HTML5 canvas, CSS3 and Web Open Font Format fonts. Despite the fact that HTML5 and Silverlight are considered to be competing technologies, Microsoft is determined to develop both of them.

BlackBerry and iPhone Funerals

The operation system Windows Phone 7 has reached the RTM stage and is ready for installing on mobile devices. It’s release is being planned for October 11 and the launch of communicators for the end of October, although in the USA they can appear only in November.  The Microsoft staff has celebrated this important milestone very originally. In the company’s campus in Redmond they held a symbolic funeral of BlackBerry and iPhone: a group of people in weeds were carrying big maquettes of these devices, there were even catafalques.

That’s evident such show should mean that BlackBerry and iPhone will die after launching the new generation device under the management of the operation system Windows Phone 7. Indeed, Microsoft lays great hopes on the new platform and supposes it can be a worthy competitor to the popular at present BlackBerry OS, iOS and Android. Now it’s difficult to say how Apple and RIM users will appreciate Microsoft’s joke of burying these devices.

But no matter what the reaction will be, mobile application developers have already started thinking about applications for the new platform or moving the existing one to this platform.

Apple became the world’s leader at the number of vulnerabilities

Apple Corporation became the world’s leader at the number of vulnerabilities detected in its applications, writes Ars technica with reference to the research conducted by the company Secunia specialized in IT security.
Apple managed to overcome the former leader at the number of vulnerabilities – Oracle Corporation. The third place is occupied by Microsoft, HP, Adobe, IBM, VMWare, Cisco, Google and Mozilla Corporation are also in the top ten. In general, these 10 companies are responsible for 38 % of all detected vulnerabilities.
The report covering the first half of the year 2010 doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the detected errors, bugs and vulnerabilities. Thus, the products from Apple application developers can be rather safe if their disadvantages are very difficult to use for cracking.
Secunia has been keeping the record of vulnerabilities since 2005 and annually detects in average 4464 problems connected with security. More than 80 % of vulnerabilities allow cracking the system remotely, 10 % require for cracking the access to the local system and 8% require the access to the local network.

Mobile OS Racing: BlackBerry, Android and iPhone. Who Wins and Who Loses?

comScore, a well known web statistics provider, released the results of its regular research. It conducted a study of the American mobile market, analyzing platforms of the most popular phones and smartphones.
So, BlackBerry smartphones kept their leadership in the USA. The comScore study covered the period from November, 2009 to February, 2010. And at this time BlackBerry occupied 43% of the market. This is 1.7% more than in August-October, 2009.

Nevertheless, positions of BlackBerry were threatened by the Android platform. This OS from Google, that took the fancy of mobile apps developers all over the world, demonstrated the highest growth rates. Android needed just a quarter to increase its presence in the United States from 2.8% to 7.1%. At the same time, the market share of mobile operating system from Microsoft declined from 19.7% to 15.7% during the analyzed period. On the other hand, there were no changes in the rates of iPhone: Apple smartphones stably occupied 25.1% of the U.S. market.

So, mobile application development for Android and iPhone platforms can be estimated as good investment in your future development.

Microsoft adds new features in Eclipse for PHP and Java developers

Eclipse Summit that was organized in Germany brought fresh news: Microsoft together with its partners Tasktop and Soyatec are going to release a range of tools and updates for Eclipse.

• Eclipse will support Windows 7 and all its new interface functions;
• Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) will be expanded to work with new features in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2;
• The open source tools Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse will be available for PHP developers;
• The open source Windows Azure Software Developer Kit (SDK) will be available for Java developers;
• The Eclipse Tools plug-in will be available for Silverlight.

So, Windows Azure SDK for Java allows leveraging Azure storage service while developing Java applications. Its logical architecture is quite simple:
It is reported that according to the voting (see The Open Source Developer Report 2009 based on Eclipse Community Survey), conducted among Eclipse users, more than 64% are using it in Windows OS. It’s obvious that PHP and Java programmers will appreciate this significant commitment from Microsoft.

Microsoft DevDays in Minsk. Visual Studio Team System 2010

My expectations were justified – it was the most interesting part of conference “Microsoft DevDays“: the presentation of the first demo of Visual Studio Team System 2010.

Approximately in a year we’ll be able to see all new features ourselves, but now only announcements and demos. According to the company official information it will be the largest release in the history. All graphic interfaces will be rewritten using WPF. That will allow to accelerate work of visual editors and to reduce the size of required free space. By the way, rumors that the installation will require 75 Gb of disk space, are just rumors.

Microsoft DevDays in Minsk. Introduction

Microsoft DevDays is one of the largest developer conferences in Europe. It is visited by thousands of developers and becomes more popular each year. Today it was held in Minsk. There were reported several topics naturally related to Microsoft solutions:

• Usage of SilverLight 2;
• Introduction to Windows 7 for developers;
• Development of applications using Live Services;
• Visual Studio Team System 2010: first view.

High qualified specialists announced their products and answered our questions. It is very pleasant that such conferences become a good tradition. Thank to Microsoft for the provided information and for sure, thanks to us, developers, their products become even more popular, and customers will have no doubts in a platform choice.

More details about conference topics in next posts…

Internet Explorer 8 for developers

Today Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is available for downloading. Microsoft will release the final version of Internet Explorer 8 at the end of this year. All of you know that it will be more standards-compliant in the content rendering behavior. But also a new version of this popular browser will have a lot of features which can be useful for users and web developers.

There are some of them:
• Accelerators
• WebSliences
• Search providers
• Search suggestions
• Developer tools
• InPrivate browsing
• Deleting data for not favorite sites
• Browser security settings
• Ajax navigations
• DOM storage
• 6 connections to the host (instead of 2)
• CSS 2.1 support
• W3C ARIA support
• JSON Support
• Javascript improvements
• XMLHTTPRequest improvements
• And others

And I’m going to tell you about the features for developers in detail.