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The Story behind: Adventure Works Cinema

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Hi...

maybe you have already seen the sample project that the German MS Sub did for Visual Studio 2005. It is called Adventure Works Cinema (see here https://www.microsoft.com/germany/msdn/library/vs2005/samples/default.mspx?mfr=true)

There is an interesting story behind this. It happened to that time Visual Studio Whidbey (which is now called Visual Studio 2005) was Beta that I was asked to have a look over "German MSDN samples". The idea was to have some samples on specific German issues shown in code samples for MSDN. We asked a group of students to provide the samples, they would have been code reviewed by Corp guys and of we go.

I saw the suggested samples (for example sorting a string so that all special characters like äöü are on one side) did not really convince me. I suggested to have a sample which shows what the platform can do. SO have something which combines several clients (web, WinForms, mobile) with a backend using what was that time state of the art.

I was told that this is unrealistic and I had to fight a bit internally. To make this clear: I understand everybody telling me that this could not work because of time constraints, the fact that none of the students ever did such a project before etc. It was a challenge and it could have rendered us having no samples at all. But I believed in it and managed to convince all the stakeholders to trust me. Especially Christina (if you ever read this you know who I am mean ;-) who was responsible for the project, thank you for trusting us!!!!

So I asked the students to come up with a proposal and they had some ideas. The best (as we found) was an application using a cinema scenario. We chose that one and they started working on it.

I will never forget how passionate those guys worked on it. Especially Manuela Miller the project lead. She had a hard time keeping all the guys together, delivering the milestones, managing the team and us the same time. It was a real project....

In the distance of years the result halo the hard times during the work. We had finally a meeting during the Visual Studio launch in Karlsruhe. The project was delivered, all problems (nearly all) were solved (we had to come up with a list of possible movies in the cinema together with some pictures and possible actors. The task was not to get cross with copyrights in any way. This has nothing to do with development but is a serious problem). For me this moment in Karlsruhe was a very emotional one. To be honest I nearly cried. Some of the guys took enormous efforts, lost months in their studies. I was so proud of what they did and still I am proud. Especially Manuela Miller did a tremendous job.

Still the application is very interesting. Look at the architecture:

Hey, this is a S+S architecture at its best ;-) See the orange and grey band going through all of the clients? This is a shared component, some source through all of the clients. Some would call this a micro-kernel (for me kernel is somehow an OS. I know I am old fashioned here. I call it a common component, sorry).

What I did after that was trying to make it as famous as it can be. They did articles and webcasts about it and I hope that this gave them all a booster in their lives. They really deserved it. Manuela works now for SD&M and I hope that the project helped her to find the job she deserves.

By the way: If you ever get an application of somebody listing the participation on project Adveture Works Cinema invite this guy. You will be glad you did it. Trust me!!!

And if you ever need a project manager to bring a party of people to Mars check out Manuela Miller ;-)

CU

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