First off, I can't speak to how MS spends its marketing budget - honestly, I'm just not qualified.
As for internal practices within MSFT, I think it would be fantastic if more ITG/OTG people would blog about how use technology to run our business. I'll see what I can do - stay tuned.
As for my own experiences, I'm applying what I learned about integration every day on the job.
Currently, I'm working on a cross-group project that requires me to integrate pieces of technology that haven't been tested on the same box yet. There are several developers working at different paces, sometimes with different local configurations.
We're able to make progress by agreeing on schemas, not classes.
I'm not loading a bunch of in-progress/not-ready-for-consumption DLLs.
Rather, I'm programming against some declarative XML data that is described (for better or worse) by some XML schemas.
The absolute truth is the data we exchange. Each of us imposes our own subjective interpretation. Hell, even the XSDs get interpreted subjectively (some folks infer static types, others use more dynamic-language-esque techniques).
Posted
Jul 21 2005, 09:18 PM
by
don-box