OCF Will Run Over Thread
The Thread Group and the Open Connectivity Foundation have agreed to make OCF’s application layer compatible with Thread, the IoT networking protocol initially developed by Alphabet’s Nest.
WebAssembly: A Universal Binary and Text Format for the Web
Mozilla, Google, Microsoft and Apple have decided to develop a binary format for the web. Called WebAssembly, this format could be a compilation target for any programming language, enabling applications to run in the browser or other agents.
CXXI Brings Advanced C++ Interop To Mono
CXXI, a new C++ Interop framework, allows easy interoperability between C# and C++ in Mono. Developers can, from C#, easily instantiate C++ objects, invoke C++ methods, subclass C++ classes, and more.
Designing Loosely Coupled Metro Applications with URIs
Protocols allow applications to launch other applications using URIs much as you would launch a website. This allows you to build a collection of small work-flow centric applications that work together seamlessly.
The Open Cloud Initiative Promotes Open Cloud Computing
The Open Cloud Initiative (OCI) announced at OSCON 2011 intends to bring together cloud users and vendors in order to build an ecosystem allowing users the freedom to choose their vendor and to move to another when they want to.
Microsoft Releases Java-Friendly Interop Bindings for WCF Services
In June, Microsoft released a set of open-source configurations to accelerate interoperability between Microsoft’s WCF platform and leading Java-based web service stacks. WCF bindings, which define transport details for invoking or consuming WCF services, are now available for Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Metro, IBM WebSphere and Apache Axis2.
JNBridgePro 6.0 Connects Java&.NET Apps in the Cloud
JNBridge has enhanced their interoperability tool to enable native communication between Java to .NET applications deployed in the cloud or on the ground and in the cloud.
Microsoft Has Released a PST View Tool and a File Format SDK
Three months ago Microsoft released the Outlook PST Specification documentation allowing developers to create server/desktop applications processing PST content without having to install Outlook. On May 24th, Microsoft announced two new open source projects, PST Data Structure View Tool and PST File Format SDK, making the creation of such applications even easier.
Platform as a Service, Portability and Mobility
Are current PaaS solutions really vendor lock-in opportunities? In a recent article Joe McKendrick discusses this possibility in terms of application portability and mobility. He also ties this to similar issues that affect the SOA world.
Marshal.ReleaseComObject Is Considered Dangerous
Paul Harrington, Principal Developer on the Visual Studio Platform Team, has written an explanation on why calling Marshal.ReleaseComObject() to dispose of a COM object from managed code is considered dangerous and recommends not using it.
Microsoft Has Published the Outlook PST Specification
Microsoft has published the Outlook PST file format specification in order to "facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms" as promised in October last year.
Update on IKVM, a JVM for the Common Language Runtime
The goal of IKVM is to add Java support to the Common Language Runtime in two ways. In dynamic mode Java byte code is reinterpreted as IL code at runtime. In static mode, Java source code is compiled into IL instead of Java byte code. Running in either mode, IKVM seeks to be a nearly full implementation of the Java specification.
JNBridge Brings Distributed Transactions Across Java and .NET Code
JNBridge is a technology that allows Java and .NET code to share objects without relying on cross-compilers. Under this scheme, the JVM and CLR may be running on the separate machines, separate processes on the same machine, or even in the same process. With JNBridge 5.0, these capabilities have been extended to also support each platforms native transaction support.
Silverlight 4 Brings Assembly Sharing with .NET
Assemblies built in Silverlight 2 and 3 are not binary compatible with the .NET Framework, so if you want to share code you need generally need to dual-compile. With Siverlight 4 and .NET 4, you will be able to use some Silverlight-based assemblies from within .NET 4.
Working with VBA and Visual Studio Tools for Office
Visual Basic for Applications is a dead-end and Visual Studio for Applications isn’t ready for prime time, leaving developers in the uncomfortable position of trying to mix .NET code with legacy VBA macros. Fortunately Visual Studio Tools for Office makes it relatively painless.
