Customer Dynamics, a local Microsoft partner that focuses exclusively on Microsoft CRM, is hosting a special Microsoft CRM 4.0 Open House today (03/19/2008).  The event takes place at our local Microsoft offices and runs from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM.  Customer Dynamics has invited us (Experlogix) to come share in the event.

It's my privilege, therefore, to attend the event and provide a short presentation on Experlogix's Product Configurator solution for CRM and interact with customers.  I'm very excited as I look forward to this event.  If you haven't already registered and your company uses (or is investigating the usage of) Microsoft CRM, please sign up and we'll see you there!

Microsoft Corporation
123 Wright Brothers Dr. Suite 100
Salt Lake City, UT 84116

In the world of AJAX and JavaScript, JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is ubiquitous; that is, it's everywhere.  JSON is, in a nutshell, a terse, convenient mechanism for representing objects and their property values in a manner that the browser (via JavaScript itself) can reconstruct as an object.  I'm not going to go into the details of JSON and its intracacies here as there are plenty of other discussions on the topic online elsewhere.

I just wanted to point out that there is some first-class support for JSON serialization in the .NET framework v3.5.  I bring this up because a while back I was about to create my own attribute-based JSON serializer but I figured there had to be something already in place for it.  I'm glad I looked.

Using the [DataContractAttribute] and [DataMemberAttribute] which are usually associated with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) you can easily serialize your objects to/from JSON form.  The object that provides this support (not coincidentally named DataContractJsonSerializer) is found after referencing the System.ServiceModel.Web assembly in the System.Runtime.Serialization.Json namespace.  When (de)serializing your objects, you do so against a stream.

Say, for purposes of the discussion, that you wanted to create an HTTP Handler that returned product information to the caller.  You could very easily serialize your product set in the following manner:

void IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) {
  HttpResponse res = context.Response;
  res.ContentType = "application/json";
  DataContractJsonSerializer jsSer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof ( Product[] ));
  jsSer.WriteObject(res.OutputStream, getProducts());
}

The JavaScript client could then parse the result and do with it as it sees fit.  Pretty handy!

This past week I've been in Orlando, Florida attending the Microsoft Convergence 2008 conference.  This marks my fourth such conference and they keep getting better and better!  My primary responsibilities at this conference (and the MS Partner Conference for that matter) revolve around the booth that we have in the Expo hall.  Five of my team and co-workers were in attendance, manning the booth (Christian, Jeff, Gwyn, David, and myself) as well as an associate, Scott.  It was a good thing all five of us were there because we hardly had a moment to breathe what with the traffic our booth brought in.  It was awesome.

Not only was the week full of activity in the conference proper, we had the opportunity to witness the Space Shuttle Endeavour launch on Monday evening/Tuesday morning, hang out with partners and customers, and all-in-all have a great time.  We keep hearing how much our customers and partners LOVE our product; that sure makes a developer such as myself feel even better about what I do.

I already look forward to the next conference.

When I came to Orlando, Florida for the Microsoft Convergence 2008 Conference I didn't expect to get such a treat.  I found out yesterday, shortly after my arrival that we were going on an outing to watch the Space Shuttle launch.  Boy was I excited!  I had no idea it was going to launch in the first place, but was even more excited to be able to witness the launch in person, and at night.

I vividly recall when the Space Shuttle Columbia landed just 30 minutes from my house (a night landing) at White Sands in NM but I wasn't able to attend that event.  In fact, I have wanted to see a shuttle launch since the Columbia first went into space; it set many of my dreams into motion, few of which will ever come true - though seeing a launch in-person has just now!

The event was amazing.  We were situated across the water from the launch pad (geographically, I'm not sure how far it actually was).  Right at 2:28 AM we saw the first billows of smoke rise from the launch pad, then the bright flare of the flames from the rockets.  The rocket, the size of a lit match's flame at arm's length, ascended rapidly but very silently into the night sky.  Perhaps most astounding and brilliant was the entire sky...not just the horizon where the launch took place, but the ENTIRE SKY turned a bright orange during the launch.  It appeared as though a small sun had risen.  The rocket was then engulfed in the low cloud coverage.

The rocket disappeared.  After a small delay of about 10 seconds or so we began to hear and actually feel the trembling and roar of the rocket boosters.  This got increasingly louder and more rumbling before waning.

Poetry in motion.