I use Facebook, quite a lot actually. But over time I’ve changed how I use it.

I used to friend anyone who asked. So I had a lot of friends (probably close to a couple thousand). Most of whom I didn’t actually know.

Of course if you actually use FB, you post things about family, friends, politics, religion, etc. Things you might not want to share with prospective customers, vendors, or random strangers.

So a while ago I created two public pages:

• www.facebook.com/RockfordLhotka – a page you can “Like” if you want periodic updates on my professional activities and my editorial thoughts on the software development industry
• www.facebook.com/CslaNet – a page you can “Like” if you want periodic updates on CSLA .NET, and related things like ebooks and videos

After creating those pages, I went through and removed lots of “friends” from my personal FB page. If I didn’t look at a name and immediately know who the person was, I removed that person. This means I’m still friended to a lot of pretty casual friends – more like acquaintances – but at least I’m not friends with total strangers.

This arrangement is much better. Now I can post about professional stuff on my professional pages. And I can post about non-professional stuff in a venue visible to people who (presumably) care about my favorite foods, the lives of my children, etc.

If you are one of the scores of people who’ve requested that I friend you – and you are wondering why I ignored the request – now you know   Please go “Like” one or both of the professional pages listed above to keep in touch – thanks!

(as an aside, I do sometimes use twitter at http://twitter.com/RockyLhotka – and that’s a total mix of personal and professional babble – exactly what twitter is meant for I think)

The servers hosting the various lhotka.net sites (www.lhotka.net, http://forums.lhotka.net, http://download.lhotka.net, http://store.lhotka.net, etc.) are being physically moved this weekend.

The lhotka.net sites will be down for hours during June 17-19.

Please refer to www.facebook.com/CslaNet for status updates during this weekend.

Thank you for your understanding!

The final draft of the Using CSLA 4: ASP.NET MVC ebook is now online, and available for purchase.

If you own the Using CSLA 4 ebook series, you already own this new ebook and can download it from http://download.lhotka.net/Default.aspx?t=UsingCsla4.

If you are buying the ebooks individually, the new book is now available for purchase from http://store.lhotka.net.

This ebook also includes a code download, containing the latest ProjectTracker codebase. This includes the Mvc3UI project: an ASP.NET MVC 3 application built using the CSLA .NET business layer.

I am pleased to announce that the Using CSLA 4: Data Portal Configuration ebook is available for purchase in draft form.

Owners of the Using CSLA 4 ebook series can also download the updated ebook draft.

This ebook (141 pages in PDF format) covers the use of the CSLA 4 data portal technology, which enables flexible n-tier deployments of your applications in 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-tier physical configurations. The ebook covers the use of the data portal in .NET smart client, Silverlight, WP7, and ASP.NET web applications.

The ebook also covers the authentication techniques supported by CSLA .NET, including Windows integrated domain or Active Directory authentication, the use of the ASP.NET MembershipProvider model and custom authentication against your own security data store.

The ebook includes a complete set of sample applications demonstrating the concepts and techniques discussed in the book.

Here is a high level list of the content in this ebook:

1. Data Portal Deployment
   1. Data portal concepts
   2. Deployment options
   3. Using the local channel
   4. Using the WCF channel
   5. 4-tier Silverlight and WP7 deployment
2. Data portal configuration reference
3. Serialization
   1. .NET serialization
   2. MobileFormatter
4. Custom data portal proxies
   1. Supporting multiple application servers
   2. Dynamically switching between online and offline mode
5. Authentication models
   1. Custom authentication
   2. ASP.NET membership authentication
   3. Windows authentication

Today I spent hours trying to make one line of code work. Fortunately Miguel Castro was ultimately able to help me troubleshoot the issue thanks to his deep understanding of all things ASP.NET.

The line of code seems so simple:

var data = Roles.GetRolesForUser(“rocky”);

In this case Roles is the RoleProvider API from System.Web.Security, and the method returns a string array with the roles for the user.

This line of code works great in my aspx page. No problem at all.

But in the same web project it throws a NullReferenceException when called from a WCF service (in a svc).

No stack trace. No detail. No nothing. I Binged, and Googled, and created a whole new solution (figuring my first solution was somehow corrupted). But nothing helped.

To cut to the answer, this works in a WCF service:

var data = Roles.Provider.GetRolesForUser(“rocky”);

See the difference? Instead of relying on the static helper method on the Roles type, this code explicitly calls the method on the default provider instance.

(fwiw, I think this behavior is relatively new, because that code used to work. I just don’t remember how long ago it was that it worked – .NET 3 or 3.5 – so perhaps something broke in .NET 4?)

In any case, problem solved – thanks Miguel!!

Dunn training will be holding their next CSLA training class in Atlanta, June 21-23.

If you are gearing up to use CSLA .NET and want some solid classroom training to get started, this is the way to go!

The Minnesota chapter of IASA is holding an IT architect training event in May. Details:

• Date: May 16-20, 2011
• Place: Blue Cross Blue Shield offices
• Registration: http://www.iasaglobal.org/assnfe/ev.asp?ID=81&SnID=1769887649

Course Summary:

Foundation Core Skills - The Key Distinguishing Factor for IT Architects

• Business Technology Strategy - Identified by Iasa members and global thought leaders as the core value proposition of any architect and the key set of skills in our profession, business technology strategy ensures immediate business value from technology strategy. It ensures that your organization will succeed in converting technology and IT from a liability to an asset.

Foundation Supporting Skills

• Design- Architects commonly use design skills to create solutions to problems identified in developing technology strategy solutions.
• Quality Attributes - Quality Attributes represent cross-cutting concerns in technology solutions such as Performance, security, manageability, etc that must be considered across the entire enterprise technology strategy space.
• IT Environment - Technology strategy must include a general knowledge of the IT space including application development, operations, infrastructure, data/information management, quality assurance, and project management. The IT Environment skills prepare an architect for the IT side of a technology strategists job function.
• Human Dynamics - Much of an architects daily role is working with other stakeholders to understand and define the technology strategy of the organization. The human dynamics skills represent the means for working with others in the organization including situational awareness, politics, communication and leadership.

I have been working on the Using CSLA 4: Data Portal Configuration ebook, part of the Using CSLA 4 ebook series. One section of the book covers the use of Windows Azure as the application server, where the server-side components of the CSLA .NET data portal and your application will run.

Perhaps the most interesting part of that section of the ebook is that there’s no meaningful difference between hosting in Windows Azure and hosting in IIS on an on-premise Windows Server. In fact, the only difference at all is that the project in Visual Studio is an Azure ASP.NET Web Role project instead of an Empty ASP.NET web project.

This is because Windows Azure allows WCF services to host in a web role in the same way IIS hosts WCF services. When using the WCF data portal channel, the server components are accessed through a standard WCF endpoint – nothing special or fancy. That means any place you can host WCF, you can host the data portal.

In my example solution, there’s also a Silverlight client app. It is part of that same Web Role app, so a user simply navigates to the web page in Azure that hosts the Silverlight app. The Silverlight app runs on the client, and uses the data portal to interact with the server-side components of the application running in Azure.

There is some potential value to hosting the data portal (your application server) in Windows Azure.

There’s the obvious scalability benefit. Because the data portal is stateless, and typical server-side business code in a CSLA application is also stateless, there is no problem with just adding more web role instances to the app. If more capacity is required on the server, just change the Azure configuration and just like that you have more capacity.

The business code running in Azure typically implements persistence. Another value of running the application server in Azure is that the application can store its data in SQL Azure. Pretty comparable to SQL Server, but based in the cloud. In that way, the entire app can be cloud-based, with the Silverlight client using client-side CPU and memory resources, while the rest of the app scales happily in Azure.

Alternately, the application could store its data in Azure Storage. That isn’t a relational data store, but does offer some interesting super-scaling capabilities that may be quite valuable.

In the end, perhaps the most notable thing to consider is this: when building an application using CSLA and the data portal, it is entirely possible to switch between hosting in IIS to hosting in Azure, and back again, without changing anything except the application configuration.

Sure, if you use Azure-specific features in your business code (like Azure Storage), you can’t easily move off Azure. But if you stick with SQL Server or SQL Azure, and avoid Azure Storage, the .NET Service Bus, and other Azure-specific constructs, CSLA can help you build an app that can exploit Azure, without being locked into Azure forever.