Indigo is now just a memory... Windows Communication Foundation is the new name for the upcoming communication stack!

The newly released beta 1 of WinFX can be downloaded here and the SDK can be found here. Note: WinFX beta 1 SDK requires Visual Studio 2005 beta 2. Read the release notes here for more info on existing issues.

Roman Kiss has written an article on how to use WS-Transfer from an Indigo application. The article has a complete sample based on the Indigo Beta 1 RC1 release. Read the article at http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/WSTransfer.asp.

Pierre Greborio has written an add-in for Visual Studio 2005 that will generate the proxy code for an Indigo service similar to the "Add web reference" function in VS. The add-in is a wrapper for some of the commands to svcutil.exe but it allows us to stay inside Visual Studio while we work. The add-in is posted at http://weblogs.asp.net/pgreborio/archive/2005/06/07/410662.aspx.

Update: now the add-in has been posted as a "GotDotNet" workspace, http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid=2b95225a-5c43-4246-bea3-d2315aae6da8.

Finally Microsoft has put together a Virtual PC image with the whole Visual Studio 2005 Team System server. Even though the process is much improved in the latest releases it still takes a while to get all things in order. So thanks for putting this image up on MSDN!

Here's part of the release notes stating the content of the image and the run-time requirements:

VPC Contents
-------------
o       Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (expires September 16, 2006)
o       Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Beta 2 (expires May 1, 2006)
o       Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 2
o       Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Redistributable Package Beta 2
o       Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Community Technology Preview
o       Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition
o       Microsoft Live Communication Server 2003

Minimum System Requirements
-------------------------------
o       PC with 2.0 gigahertz or faster processor
o       1.5 GB RAM minimum
o       10 GB available hard disk space
o       Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher video
o       DVD-ROM drive
o       Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1 software

David Pallmann was first to have an Indigo book out in the public. See http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/7703.asp for details.

Two sample chapters are available on the MSDN web:

• The Programming Model. http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/progindigoch3.asp
• Contracts. http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/progindigoch5.asp

I'm halfway through the book and so far its well worth the money! The book is more of a how-to book than a reference book, but for a first book on Indigo that is just right!

Unfortunately the book has some minor flaws (like typos and plain errors) which makes it necessary to look up details in the SDK documentation from time to time instead of just reading the book.

I'll update this post with a resume of the book.

The setup procedure described in the SDK documentation to reinstall Indigo has some bad file references. The docs should be updated for beta1 but until then this is the correct procedure (with the correct file paths):

"%windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50215\aspnet_regiis.exe" –i
"%windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50215\xws_reg.exe" -i
cscript "%windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50215\InstallIndigo.js"

Yasser Shohoud (Microsoft) has published a set of slides about Indigo Beta 1 (RC1). The files are on his site http://www.learnxmlws.com/ (download the presentations directly here: http://www.learnxmlws.com/files/LapAroundIndigo.zip).

I've long thought about ways to share small, hopefully useful things I come up with. I've also wanted to collect and share interesting and sometimes not obvious things I find in the development community. I've managed this in various ways so far, until it recently occurred to me - I need a blog. My blog should be a place where you can find things about architecture and development in general but with focus on communication solutions (i.e. web services). I've recently played a lot with Microsoft's new communication platform, Indigo, and I think there are a lot of stuff to share in that area. I hope this will be a useful source of information to others.