Books: “Programming Windows Identity Foundation”, P&P claims guide & others

Want to know why I spent one hour every day of my vacation practicing touch typing? Well, apart from the fact that it’s simply scandalous that after 20+ years spent on keyboards I still hunt & peck: in the next few months I’m going to need all the typing speed I can gather… I am signed up to write (or otherwise actively participate in) three books about identity:

“Programming Windows Identity Foundation”, MSPress

The title is still provisional, but the scope is clear. We want to provide .NET developers with a reference to Windows Identity Foundation, going from the basic principles & programming model to the intended usage of the main product features, active & passive cases, on-premises & cloud scenarios, and so on & so forth. The book will take on the same mission as the identity developer training kit, but will of course expand and integrate it accordingly.

I know this is going to take a lot of evenings & weekend, but I am sure it will be fun! As usual, PDC is a monumental task and I may have to shuffle priorities around: I have a quite precise idea of by when it should be available, but I don’t want to commit on a date in case I flunk it even by few days… ;-)

“Claims based Authentication & Authorization Guide”, Patterns & Practices

It’s since March that I am collaborating on Eugenio’s latest project, on a P&P guide on claims based authentication and authorization. Recently the project really took off in big style, with big names actively involved in it (Keith, Dominick, Matias) and Eugenio started sharing details on his blog. For this guide I don’t really write anything, my role is mainly being an advisor (and not even a good one, since I am constantly late and I am often pretty radical) but I am truly honored to be working with such a star team.

Note. The overlap between “Programming Windows Identity Foundation” and this P&P guide will be minimal: the former will be focused on WIF development and will loop in other products (ie ADFS, Windows Azure) only when they are part of WIF development tasks, whereas the P&P guide will be focused on scenarios.

Mysterious third book

Eh, mentioning this third book here is kind of cheating since I am not going to do any work for it: one (already written) article of mine was selected to appear in an anthology on Identity, hence it would appear that my name will end up on a front cover without further efforts. Ah, some ROI… nice :-) Since I am not sure what I can safely share about this title, I’ll just not say anything more until further notice.

Well, now you know what I will do during the 37+ hours of flights to & fro TechEd AU/NZ… or better, for as long as the 2 tablet batteries will last. Now you see why I am trying to learn how to touch-type: hunt&peck in economy class means shoving your elbows in the ribs of your neighbors, and that’s veeery bad practice ;-)