My buddy Phil already blogged about it, so my only task is to spread the word further... Sitecore has a new forms module, especially targeting marketers. It is really perfectly integrated into the Sitecore eco system and looks impressive.

Take a look at it at Sitecore Australia's website: http://www.sitecoreaustralia.com.au/webforms/

Today I read "ASP.NET MVC Framework Preview", a short book from Apress about the upcoming ASP.NET MVC Preview. Although it is a very short book (I finished reading it in about an hour), I really liked it. The points and conclusions drawn in the book are pretty much the same as the ones I made in a previous post, especially regarding the way most people use ASP.NET WebForms the wrong way. You should definitely take a look at it.

When I read the book, I came across some thoughts I had in mind before but managed to forget... sometimes GTD guys are srewed if they don't have pen and paper :-). One of the really big benefits of ASP.NET MVC within our Reference Architecture model at netzkern is that we can use existing contracts (in this case: DataContracts) in the view after we have retrieved them from our BusinessServices layer (facade pattern). That way the MVC framework helps us to manage Server-side UI components like we use DataContract messages in the Client-side UI after we have received them from the BusinessServices layer using WCF.

This is a really coherent application of contract first development style in service-oriented fashion, completely component-based within the services.

As I stated earlier many times, I'm a fan of "real AJAX apps", especially if they are based on the new ASP.NET MVC framework and JQuery. The netzkern Reference Architecture for web applications uses WCF as Business Services Facade to allow both Server-side components (ASPX-Pages, MVC Controllers, etc.) and Client-side components (Microsoft AJAX Library, JQuery) to access the same business services, but if you only create a small application, you should take a look at this InfoQ article from Robert Bazinet.

I just finished watching a Channel 9 interview with David Chappell (you should definitely subscribe to the feed of his blog), who talked a bit about "Oslo" and the ideas, products and services around it. Obviously there is indeed a new server product coming as part of the initiative. At the moment it is called the "process server", having features like a "lifecycle manager", a hosting component for WCF and WF and a centralized repository, which uses a new DSL (domain-specific language) to define models, schemas and other types of entities. Looking at the timeline, David outlines a step-by-step release schedule starting with a new version of WF in the upcoming .NET framework code-named "4". He expects at least parts of the process server to be released shortly after that new .NET version and the according Visual Studio product.