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MSDN Redux With 64-Bit Servers and ASP.NET 2.0
Microsoft's Larry Jordan describes how his team reinvigorated MSDN with 64-bit servers, VS 2005, and Web services.
by Roger Jennings

VSLive! San Francisco, February 2, 2006

Watch the video of the keynote! (Running time: 58 minutes)

Larry Jordan Development Manager, MSDN and TechNet Development Team, Microsoft

Larry Jordan, Microsoft's Development Manager for the MDSN and TechNet Development Team, billed MSDN as "the source of truth in technical documentation" during his Wednesday keynote presentation at VSLive! 2006 San Francisco. Prior to the complete MSDN site makeover by Larry and his team that began two years ago, relying on MSDN Search to seek the "truth" frustrated developers to no end. According to a show of hands from the keynote audience, most developers use Google to find the MSDN software documentation pages they need.

MSDN Search is just one of the site's technologies to be replaced; you can test the beta version of the new MSDN search engine at the MSDN Lab site (see Figure 1 and Resources). The MSDN team ported the original ASP site to ASP.NET 2.0, migrated document storage from the Windows file system to 32-bit SQL Sever 2005, and wrote XML Web services to serve as an API for metadata and document access.

The MSDN group consists of about 180 people who are responsible the aggregation of all Microsoft technical documentation for online and CD/DVD subscriptions. According to Jordan, "MSDN receives technical documentation in nine different languages from several hundred sources within Microsoft. Incoming documentation is in many disparate formats across several delivery mechanisms. MSDN has had a static content acquisition and publishing process for the last five years." Jordan admitted that "it's embarrassing that MSDN has been on ASP for four and a half years. … We got ourselves into a brittle space. The documentation and bat files meant that we could not easily pull ourselves out of that."

According to Jordan, ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 have enabled his 28-developer team to:

• Deliver tens of millions of unique topics from a data-driven site
• Offer new ways to access relevant technical documentation, such as F1 from VS 2005
• Introduce an improved feedback loop to measure user satisfaction with documentation refresh activities

MSDN currently serves about 75 million page views to 8 million different users per month from 3 million pages. Traffic levels are consistent during weekdays, but spikes occur in the morning around the world.

Using ASP.NET 2.0 Controls Out-of-the-Box
Jordan says that MSDN's original ASP version primarily aggregated XML documents and rendered Web pages, but ASP lacked templating and other features that were needed for a production Web site that runs a central set of services. The MSDN team began migrating the site with ASP.NET 2.0 pre-beta 1 bits and completed the task by eliminating proprietary code for TOC management, site maps, and rendering. The current MSDN site is "100 percent out-of the box ADO.NET 2.0 components." Removing proprietary code lets other developers replicate many of the MSDN team's content-management techniques.

Andy Oakley, lead program manager for the MSDN rewrite, described these programming components implemented or enabled with managed .NET 2.0 code:

• Rendering
  • Virtual path provider, a critical part of the infrastructure which enables database storage
  • Master pages to support CSS and provide a consistent look and feel
• Programmatic API used with SQL Server 2005 and VS 2005 to deliver a seamless client experience
  • Online help integration
  • Content discovery
  • Content delivery
• Content acquisition that assures XHTML compliance to enable transforms for a consistent look and feel
• Database storage and connectivity, which enables inventorying content
• Aggregation system with offline data processing