.Net
There are 156 entries for the tag .Net
Last October I learnt my company wanted to put together a new blog/social networking policy. I decided that out of respect for my employer I wouldn’t blog until this was sorted out. This was perhaps was an easy decision to make as I was separating from my ex-wife at the time and frankly needed the time to concentrate on other things. So now the company has a brand new policy and I’m back into the dating game I thought I would blow off the cobwebs and get back to what I enjoy doing. First and foremost...
Next week I will be sitting on a panel at the Business Analysis Conference discussing “The Role Of The BA: What Is Expected And What Is Delivered” As you may have noticed, I’m not a BA and nor is anyone else on the panel! The common factor between us all is that we rely on what the BA delivers to perform our various roles. The role of the BA is a lynchpin in any IT organisation so it is to our mutual benefit that we support each other in the improving and developing each others professions. There...
A little while back I posted a question on Channel 9 wanting to know more about SQL Server ‘Madison’ project. Well Charles Torre being the extremely nice bloke that he is (Thanks Charles I owe you another beer, perhaps not London Pride next time!) got on a plane from Redmond down to Orange County and went to pay the Madison development team and in particular Christian Kleinerman for is the Product Unit Manager for the Madison development, a visit The video is a good introduction into Madison, it...
I’ve started a thread on Channel 9 to ask my questions about Madison, Gemini and Kilimanjaro which is now 2008 R2. If you’ve got any burning questions why don’t you put them there as well. The Channel 9 team are planning to do a series of video’s with the SQL Server Dev Group so they will put our questions to them. The Channel 9 thread can be found here : http://channel9.msdn.com/fo... Technorati Tags: SQL Server,SQL Server Madison,SQL...
Continuing my series of great free stuff for SQL Server I’ve pulled a rabbit out of the hat for you today! In this economic climate one of the first things that seems to get cut is the training budget so anything that can help get your head around stuff is a big plus. To help Microsoft has released SQL Server 2008 Developer Training Kit So what does the Training Kit contain … Presentations (6) Filestream Spatial T-SQL Date and Time Types SQLCLR Reporting Services Demos (12) AdventureWorks Racing...
Codeplex is a wonderful site. However not just for the .Net coder but the SQL Server guy/gal can find plenty of goodies there as well. One such goody is the FineBuild utility that does as the name suggest helps create a ‘Fine Build’ of your SQL Server install. All to often installing SQL Server can turn into a day long process with the various additional service packs, CU’s, tools and utility to install. Well FineBuild can automate all of that so all you need to do is run the start script, go off...
It’s not often we get stuff for free but Microsoft has decided to give away a complete book, not just afew sample chapters. All you have to do is go to this link , press the ‘Sign Up’ button, leave some details about yourself, if you’ve registered with MSDN before it’ll just pick up you existing details and then pdf will download. So what’s the catch? Well you will be signing up to Microsoft Press Book Connection monthly newsletter and learn about new books on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and other...
Microsoft have completely re-written Live Search, the new offering Bing! Bing is being marketed as a ‘decision engine’ as it tries to workout what you are looking for rather always giving the top ranking website out of an algorithm. Microsoft has commissioned allot of research to work out what people are actually trying to do for when they use a search engine. It is clear Microsoft cannot ‘out search’ Google but could gain market share by finding an edge and that edge is adding more depth. Achieving...
R2 ! As you may know I’m abit of a SQL Server nut so I was particularly interested in the announcement at the recent TechEd of SQL Server 2008 R2. R2 is the combination of the Kilimanjaro, Madison and Gemini projects. Kilimanjaro is adding support for up to 256 processors to the existing code base. Whilst Madison follows on from the purchase of DataAllegro last year moving data to handling petabytes of data. Lastly Gemini is about taking on Qlikview and providing Analysis Services using column-oriented...
Laptops are the client machine of choice in the Enterprise. They are an essential component of modern business allowing the workforce to turn almost anywhere into an office and place of business. In the Enterprise the laptop will steadily taken over the place of many desktops in business, there will be a place for them in static workforces but for everyone else it will be the default device. Because laptops play such an important role in the Enterprise, no Enterprise Technology blog would be any...
Google's 40 minute outage, which I reported, was caused by 'human error' according to a report by the BBC. Reading the account it seemed that several basic tasks weren't done. 1) The Live site is not checked after updates are performed on it 2) The risk that incorrectly updating the Stopbadware.org list file was something that could stop the site from working properly was not identified. 3) The site is not very regularly checked to see if it still working properly Any Web-Master will tell you that...
Servers are the backbone of enterprise computing today, most websites for example run on either Apache or IIS and will be running on a server of some description. Perhaps because of servers ubiquity it is easy to become complacent about them especially as they are rarely seen but understanding what a server can offer you and it's limitations will definitely help with software development. Servers on the whole are built more of the practicality side than for the esthetics, there is no need to make...
Hardware and Software are very much the modern day Yin and Yang, one serves little purpose without the other. I have noticed that on the whole many developers know little about the environments that the software they are writing is going to work in falsely believing they are truly abstracted from it . Come 'Go Live' there are blank faces when for some 'inexplicably reason' the software doesn't work and the remark, 'it worked fine in test' is often heard. Another common frustration is software that...
For the next few weeks I'm going to be turning my attentions to Microsoft SQL Server as the new version, 2008 is now with us and even has it's first big patch CU1. I am however not going to focus on coding as plenty of others on GWB have that sufficiently covered. It is fair to say that SQL Server has turned into a monster, it's far more than just a database product these days, it is a complete data management suit of tools. Some of the tools are fully fledged complex products in their own right...
Yesterday, Microsoft confirmed they would be lifting the licensing by physical server restriction that made using features such as VMotion & XenMotion an expensive option if Microsoft software was used. I spoke about in a previous post. The license restriction will be lifted on 41 server products, exactly which ones it isn't yet clear. Also, the EULA isn't available just yet so the exact T&C aren't known, so lets hope there isn't any nasty caveats that spoil this good news. The news licensing...
Ok so this post is all about being a very proud Brit! As of 10:47am BST we are third in the medal table! Nice one team GB...
My wife's cousin, Lara Davenport, was one of the swimmers involved in the Gold winning Women's 4x200m Freestyle Relay! Nice one Lara...
There is a bewildering array of Enterprise Architecture methodologies so it will be of great interest to me to find out which one people are actually using, if at all. So to find out, I have put together a pick poll so please take the two minutes and leave your choice. You get a chance to select up to 3 options because I suspect that people are using a combination of more than once approach, rather than following one prescriptively. This is purely for interest purposes, I'm not going to use this...
I'm following the Olympics this time round with a bit more of an added interest. Lara Davenport, the Aussie Swimmer, is family so the very best of luck to her. Also, a fellow David Oliver, is a hurdler in the United States team, so the very best of luck to David...
Need I say more? And to save time here is the link to MSDN Subscriptions Pages...
I have this belief that understanding how to manage time is an essential task of Enterprise Architecture but oddly this is a principle that isn't spoken about much, if at all. Oddly some Enterprise Architecture software tools only seem to provide time management tools for software support life cycles. Hence a previous post that went in some way to start the debate with a mindmap to capture and categorise the elements that Enterprise Architecture would be interested in. After reviewing this mindmap...
Many Enterprise Architecture methodologies talk about the management of time but I haven't found one that tells you how to do to that. For a practice that is about understanding the now and the step to achieving the to be, I find this an amazing oversight. Anyway, so what I decided to do was to have a go at capturing all the relevant timing information that an Enterprise Architect would be interested in. Hence the attached Mindmap, which you can click into. If you prefer you can come and join in...
Paul Homan recently commented on Green EA which set my mind thinking ... 'being more Green' is a strategic ambition and what is the process and practice for generating strategic change? Enterprise Architecture! When EA's are struggling to find some ROI reason to justify their existence in the economic down-turn amazingly one of the main ROI reasons is one of the biggest issues of our time as the 'Return' doesn't literally mean monetary and also doesn't necessarily mean more? ... it can also mean...
EnterpriseArchitecture.co.uk is my new blog for taking deeper dives into the practice of Enterprise Architecture. Don't worry I will still be posting on GWB but this is an effort to reach out to a new audience who are also Enterprise Architects, this will also be a place for them to get involved and interact as this space will not just be my blog but will grow into complete reference resource. Once I have work it out, I will be starting a forum and letting other bloggers co-habit this cool URL with...
Today I managed to sneak into the Farnborough Airshow under a trade pass to sample the delights of this bi-annual event without the public crowds of the great unwashed in my continuing search for innovation. After all, the defences, aviation and IT industries are joined at their respective hips as innovations in one are keenly felt in the others. Take for example the Eurofighter Typhoon Cockpit, it is pretty uncomplicated and has far fewer switches and buttons than most jet fighters. Pretty amazing...
The Open Group has recently released a draft version of a SOA ontology. The Open Group has always had a mandate to help boundaryless information flow and the ontology (specification of conceptualisation) for SOA is a demonstration of just that. The ontology is written in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) defined by the World-Wide Web Consortium and this for me is what makes it a hurdle to learn as it's not an intuitive meta-language but then is any? Perhaps if it wasn't for the graphical tools we would...
VMLogix LabManager is in same space as VMware Lab Manager what I reviewed recently. However, its key differentiators is around automation – enabling developers, testers and IT Pro staff to entirely automate the process of setting up synchronized multi-machine deployment (including the software stacks in the virtual machines) no matter what virtualisation technology. Yes, VMLogix LabManager is virtualisation platform agnostic! So if you decided on VMware, Hyper-V or Citrix you will still be able to...
Vmware currently is going through the wars. A change of CEO, a plunging share-price and a competitor getting alot of attention with their new product, that being Microsoft with Hyper-V. However, I just don't get it!? ESX Enterprise is still out in front in terms of features and pricing is very competitive. Any organisation performing their own unbiased product comparison evaluations is going to be hard pushed to discount Vmware's flagship product. The killer feature for many is ofcourse Vmotion that...
I have been subscribing to TechTarget emails for sometime because of the low signal to noise ratio covering a broad technology spectrum that is important to me as I'm keen to hear from more than just a few vendors so it comes as no surprise that IT Knowledge Exchange (ITKE) was recently voted one of the 10 Great Media Web Sites. ITKE is on of those dead-handy site that I keep in the 'Favourites' when I want to find an answer. It's not so good for Microsoft .Net Development questions, better off going...
Job titles are often effortless in their descriptiveness. Project Manager, Business Analyst, System Tester and .Net Developer are good examples because the subject is concise and the predicate modifies successfully, all meaning some semblance of what a person does can be derived from it. However with 'Enterprise Architecture' and 'Enterprise Architect' it’s not entirely obvious what the position is and what someone holding that position does, inevitably leading to the need for further description...
As I've been helping out with VMware I wanted to consider the old question of whether developers really could work inside virtual environments? As we know virtual environments can help maximise under utilised resources, CPU, RAM, diskspace and save on space, power, HVAC and TCO with centralised support and maintenance. Another main advantage of virtualised environments that is particularly attract to many developers is the ability to remote work which is a requirement that has become far more common...
If you are still writing code using .Net 2.0, why? WCF rocks! I don't usually get excited about development technologies but this one I do! WCF really does save time and large amounts of connectivity code and makes a big difference in SOA projects, this I discovered awhile ago when WCF was code-named Indigo. From a SOA perspective, the most important reason to use .Net 3.5 is the ability to use WF and WCF together. Before hand it wasn't really possible so an upgrade to Visual Studio 2008 is well...
Roles in Perth, Scotland Business Analyst Support Analyst/Programmers for Home Services systems Roles in Basingstoke, England Analyst/Programmers for Energy Sales systems with C#.Net or PL/SQL skills Roles in Havant, England Project Managers Business Analysts Senior Analyst/Programmers with ORACLE skills Analyst/Programmers with ORACLE skills Analyst/Programmers with ORACLE E Business Suite skills Lead Systems Designers IT Security Engineers Database Administrators (DBAs) ORACLE or SQL Server skills...
A few weeks ago 'Fluffy' was just an egg sitting in a make-shift nest behind my satellite TV dish. I checked this morning to find the egg had hatched and Fluffy the chick happily squeaking for his/her breakfast. OK, you can go Ahhhh now...
To add to my frustrating time this week with my 1418 error when setting up Database Mirroring under SQL Server 2005. I was dogged by a continuous 'Service Unavailable' message when trying to load a ASP.NET page under IIS running under Windows 2003 R2. Typically 'Service Unavailable' is a nice catch all message that doesn't give anything away, and so it shouldn't as hackers learn about websites by generating exceptions. Diagnosing the real reason for the error is a case of reading the IIS error logs...
I took up Mike Walkers offer in the previous posts comment section to look at his post entitled Making Sense of Architecture Standards and found it an ideal steer on what standards are out there, where they are positioned, how they fit together and who will use them and when to use them. However, what soon dawned on me was that the disconnect between theory and particular context is huge! Many of the standards are no more than helpful steers that as yet don't offer that distilled level of knowledge...
Recently I attended a TOGAF certification course up in merry old London town run by Architecting the Enterprise (AtE). My certification should show up in the list of other 5000 odd architects that have passed in the next few weeks. So what is TOGAF in a nutshell? Well it's a very generic architecture framework that helps build, in a non-prescriptive way, how to develop parts of an Enterprise Architecture capability. Notice the caveats, 'very generic', 'non-prescriptive', 'develop parts'. What am...
6th April, Easter, clocks going forward and first day of spring have all past. However, now we get our first real amount of settled snow, Fantastic! Here are some of the pictures I took this morning from our bedroom window. There is something about snow that can make anything look beautiful. Anyway, the wife and I are off to ruin the pristine scene with a few snow-balls...
OK, so techniques for managing our time are common place such as calendars and to-do lists. But what about managing your thinking? Being an Architect is a practice, not a process, so arguable the most important tool we have is our brain as it is our central repository for knowledge and logic but it's not like a computer. Often useful information comes flowing out it, almost randomly in no particular order that's if your lucky. Sometime the brains requires some exploration and provocation to tease...
My Wife is a Girl Geek and so are my cool friends Eileen and Sarah. So, it is with some interest that the BBC chose today to pick up on survey results out today from Tesco’s which concludes ‘Girl’s more skilled on computers’. I don’t wish to dispute the findings or the conclusion. Infact I think the evidence points to the very crux of the problem why any human, no matter age or gender, can find computing difficult. Skill has little to do with it in my opinion, the main problem is confidence. Children...
Recently I've squirreled myself away working on a project that had an utterly predictable answer leaving me feeling, why on earth did I bother!? What am I talking about? Migrating from Microsoft Office to an alternative product like Google, Lotus Symphony, Zoho, OpenOffice or Ability. Microsoft Office has long been a mighty cash-cow in the Microsoft farm-yard for many a year now but it has a singular big weakness, the chink in the armour and that is the licensing cost. On face value it's price is...
So what does the New Year have in store? Well I don't know! There are however some reasonable certainties such as the economic down-turn but one's things for sure unpredictable events will happen. My predictions are going to be nothing more than my personal musings on the state of affairs and not on insider information, so be warned, don't necessarily put money on horses I'm backing. So in no particular order here's what's on my mind ... Microsoft will make huge efforts to bolster Vista Lets be honest,...
Selling the theory for SOA is pretty easy, the execution is harder because technically it isn't actually a very simple thing to do, let alone the changing of the structure of your IT organisation to house-keep. The book SOA Approach to Integration is aimed fairly and squarely at the Architect and Senior Developer who has the job of designing and implementing SOA technical level. The book is very resolute in keeping a strong focus on the technology and pleasantly realises that successful integration...
Oslo is the codename for technical thinking aimed specifically at simplifying designing, building, managing and scaling of service-oriented and composite applications that can span from the enterprise to the Internet. It is thought the first version of Oslo will be delivered through the next versions of our application platform products such as Microsoft Visual Studio 10, Microsoft System Center 5, BizTalk Server 6, BizTalk Services 1 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4. So, we are talking a 18 months...
I first started coding at the age of 10 on a Commodore Vic 20. Last week I finally un-installed Visual Studio 2003 on my laptop because I need the space and I never touch it. It was sad admitting that I don't code and my role does not require me to. If I did find myself coding then I probably shouldn't because there is so much else to do and we have more than a few guys and girls that will happily do the job and only a couple doing EA. Yep, I get the argument that a good architect should have more...
Microsoft have release a really cool tool for downloading and reading the Architecture Journal magazine offline. The new reader is a locally installed application that enables you to read every issue of the Journal into a searchable and easy-to-read form. The application synchronizes with our content management services so that you'll automatically have access to the latest Journal issues without needing to download PDF files or checking online. Please note the tool is still in Beta so there is bound...
I've just caught up the latest installment in the " 'To Process' or 'Not To Process' " debate that has become a blogger slanging match between James McGovern, Robert McIlree and James Robertson played out in the comments sections and blog posts. To summarise the debate has moved on from whether EA is just a set of processes or whether it's a practice. My pitch was that it's actually both and applied appropriately. So a debate about direction and ethos. So a pointless opportunity for procrastination?...
John McGovern and Robert Mcilree have fired off the latest salvo in one of EA's biggest and most maddening debates. In short the debate is about whether Enterprise Architecture is a process or practice? Maddening? Why! Because common sense has the answer and I'm surprised at the heavy weights in EA not realising that. Toyota is often hailed as the example of how processes have got the company to be a world leader in automobile manufacture. RBS and ODP diagrams that document processes and the processes...
Mary Jo posted an article called 'Will IBM’s Lotus Symphony succeed where other Office killers haven’t?'. The gem in the new Symphony crowd is Lotus Notes 8. Now I've been luck enough to get to use the new Eclipse based client and the UI is indeed much prettier and generally nicer to use but still has that Notes familiarity around it so an existing user can pretty much get up and running straight away. So all in all abit of a tick in the box for IBM until you notice this ... ... the first two process...
The reason why I haven't been blogging so much recently is because my wife and I have bought a new house and it needs a lot of TLC. This is the Front room for example before the smaller fire-place (to the very left of the picture) was removed. After a steel girder was added to the roof to stop the chimney from falling down kind of left our bathroom in a bit of mess. And a hole in the floor ... But it's all worth it! This is the view from our bedroom window ... Anyway I hope you have enjoyed this...
The post is a cautionary tail of the latest episode of common sense versus cool. AJAX is a great technology that allows webpages to have much richer content. Google Maps was the turning point for this technology as it brought the technology to the attention of the Technorati that has enjoyed a superficial level of hype ever since because it is encompassed as the lynch-pin of Web 2.0. The key part of AJAX is Javascript which is a language that all mainstream browsers, no matter what operating system,...
I have been watching the channel 9 video on Biztalk.Net Services. I have to say I’m pretty excited about this project and the reason why will become apparent later on in this post. BizTalk.NET Services ( http://labs.biztalk.net ) is an experimental project (it’s at CTP currently) that extends WCF and is all about generic, secure connectivity. It’s a free download so fill your boots! The project has come about from the result of customer feedback where many have asked “how do I notify client applications...
One of the announcements that came out of this years TechEd which I'm particularly excited about is the announcement of the next version of SQL Server. SQL Server 2008 improvements are based on 4 pillars. 1) Mission Critical Using the new Database Mirroring feature to seamlessly increase the reliability of applications. Simplifies the recovery of applications from storage failures along with providing the ability to add system resources like CPU and memory without affecting applications. 2) Not Just...
Let us not beat around the bush, Google is the default search engine for much of the Internet, I need look no further my blogs site visitor statistics for evidence of that! 46% of my visitors come via search engines and 93% of those come via Google. So thank you Google for sending me nearly half of my readers! Ok so Google is popular but I'm not married to Google, I don't own shares, so my loyalty only comes from Google being good at it's job and helping me find relevant sites after entering my search...
Hot in the heals of Fridays beta release of Channel 9 version 4 are rumors that there will be a new MSDN channel 9 style forum called Channel 8 but this site will perhaps be aimed more specifically at students. Students do not particular get a rough ride on Channel 9 as many make a great contribution but it can't be all that cool for students to hang-out with a bunch of old techies like us, perhaps the reason for the site? Attracting more students in an effort to support them better, why not! After...
Check out the future of Channel 9! Nice one chaps, it's looking great! http://beta.channel9.msdn.com/ I will tell you more about it once I've had more of a play, but for now get suck in...
I like the idea of the Apple iPhone, I think that anything that pushes innovation in this market space is great. However the HTC Touch P3450 (Elf) is serious competition for the iPhone mainly because of the interface. This video from BBC demonstrates the HTC Touch's user interface. You can order the device today if you wish. Sadly the iPhone is not yet available to purchase in the UK yet but there is massive interest. Of course the device is a Smartphone running Windows Mobile 6 which means connecting...
DDD is held in Reading and it is a great event but it does have a capacity and is sadly oversubscribed. One possible answer is to have regional DDD's this way more developers have more of an opportunity to experience the delights of DDD. I'm all in favor of this and more than happy to show my support as I can see this as a great way for Microsoft UK development community action to continue to grow. Join the debate here on fellow Geekswithblogs member David Chistiansen and here on Channel 9...
Now I'm a bit of a history buff so I'm very much excited by this piece of news! In November I posted about Photosynth which is a fantastic technology that maps photographs together onto a three dimensional frame to effectively cover the frame. This allows you the to view the frame from different perspectives and see the different photographs in position and context. Microsoft Live Labs and Auntie Beeb are collaborating to reproduce representations of a few of the UK's interesting historical sites...
Today Google announced Google Gears at their Global Developer conference. The blurb says ... Ok so it doesn't take a genius to work out that it's a client side data cache. Client side data caches are not new and architecturally speaking it's always cool to make 'chunky' data calls because a 'chatty' application will reduce the performance and the users experience of an application and that's it! do not pass go do not design a 3 tier application with everything on the client. Gears is about 'To do'...
What makes me quite annoyed is grand statements such as the title to this post. It is true that REST is getting more exposure these days and it being primarily a connectivity technology i.e. a web service it's not unlikely that SOA and REST will inevitable get linked together. The Burton group has stuck it's neck out and said that yes REST is the future of SOA. Funnily enough today at work I was talking with some colleagues about REST and one raised a good point, where are the working examples? So...
If you are like me, you will use Live Writer a lot to blog with. I think it's a great tool. I especially like the new Beta 2 which has got in-document spell-checking which the previous version didn't which is a huge boon for me because my spelling is rubbish. One small draw back, can I have an British English dictionary please? It does have a new kind of Vista feel about it which is perhaps just the colour scheme but is still a lovely and simple, uncluttered and straightforward freebie tool to use....
The DDD5 agenda is now live here. Oliver Sturm and Ian Cooper are both doing two sessions, one of them is together and it's a double, so guys after that you're gonna need a beer! Chris, Barry and Dave my fellow NxtGenUG boyz have sessions on top tips on securing the web, an introduction into .Net 3.0 Cardspace and XSLT Xtreme, an advanced session on XSLT. Alan is presenting his session on Object Thinking, this will be the session that gets everyone talking...
I spoke recently about Astoria as a possible answer to the snowballing standards of the WS-I. Anyway, I decided to look into this a bit more and I found this perfect article written by Michele Leroux Bustamante of IDesign, entitled "Making sence of all those Crazy Web Service Standards" that will happily explain the new standards with handy diagrams and bite-sized explanations...
Lots of buzz came out of Mix 07 about Silverlight which was undoubtedly the star of the show but one of the other announcements caught the attention of my colleague Big Al on an experimental web data service technology grandly codenamed "Astoria". Now I am a fan of WS-I Web Services, I think that any technology that can gain that kind of ubiquitous acceptance across the whole industry, including all the major players is some achievement, however I can understand the argument that accuses the WS-I...
Developer Developer Developer Days have been a great success for the UK Microsoft development community, because it is a community event run by the community for the community. But credit where credit is due, this event would not be possible without the support of a generous sponsor. NxtGenUG Fest 07 is an ambitious community event; the aim is to create an event that is the best it can be with a strong theme about looking into the future. To have truly world class speakers and presentations about...
One of the key parts of a SOA’s is the Business Process Logic Layer. One of the key technologies in this layer is Windows Workflow Foundation, one the key things that was missing from WF was support for BPEL so this called into question Microsoft commitment to the XML standard. Anyway, I’m happy to report that BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March CTP is available able from MSDN Download. With this add-on you will be able to import and export BPEL from WF. Remember it is still in CTP so is officially...
Announced at this years Cebit the brand name Commodore has risen from the ashes to title a range of some rather high speced PC's. These machines are aimed fairly and squarely at the PC gamer. Amongst the distinguishing features of these PC's is the option to chose a different piece of art-work for your case called a 'C-Kin'. The art-work is very contemporary in style and ranges from recent game-titles to street art from simply garish to - not '3' bad. The PC's themselves have the highest speced graphics...
This coming Wednesday (March 7th) Benjamin Mitchell who is one of the founders of DDD, will visit us at Oxford NxtGenUG to give us the 101 on the Windows Workflow Foundation and a few demos on how to quickly building workflow enabled applications. Now if you're like me who has a suspicion that 'Dub' F is going to useful but don't have the time to investigate it fully then this is the perfect opportunity to find out ... and eat pizza, meet fellow coders and a change to win swaaaaggggg! I just want...
I've just come back from a brilliant evening with the Oxford chapter of NxtGenUG. So why do I think it was brilliant/fantastic? These phrases are banded around so loosely these days, well I quantify my statement. Take Biztalk for example, not many developers out there get really what Biztalk does and there aren't enough hours in the day to learn. Unless a developer has a specific reason they aren't really going to look it up. But when you do start looking into Biztalk all to quickly you find yourself...
News is coming out of NxtGenUg HQ that another top-draw developer event run by the UK community is going to happen this year. (if DDD and WebDD weren't enough!)It is called Fest 07 and the web site is up now HERE.Date: 23rd May 2007Location: TVP, ReadingAlready confirmed speakers are,Rafal Lukawiecki - was voted top TechED speaker for about 7 years runningRichard Costall & Dave McMahon - swag & cabbagesDaniel Moth - Microsoft DP group - the man who gets to "play" with the latest and greatest...
After Fridays post I decided to do some more digging around and find out if anyone independent has performed an authoritative test. Of course there are the usual magazines but rather surprisingly I hadn't found one yet that had made any major comparisons yet. However, I found Virus Bulletin Magazine which is "a regular source of intelligence about computer viruses, their prevention, detection and removal, and how to recover programs and data following an attack." The magazine is British based and...
This is the second in the series of posts (the first being here) that lets you know about my journey in finding security software for Windows Vista. Well it seems NTL, Telewest & Virgin.Net have all joined forces and are now Virgin Media this happened after ntl:Telewest purchased Vigrin Mobile for £1 billion last year and have chosen to merge under the stronger brand. Virgin Media offer cable & ADSL broadband, land & mobile phone, cable and mobile TV (using the HTC Monet) Virgin Media...
Now I have Vista installed I want to protect my installation with some decent security software. NTL NetGuard the free Internet Security software for NTL subscribers which is made by Radial Point is actually very good and meets my needs very well but during installation under Vista an Error 1321!? appears. After speaking to NTL technical support it seems they will support Vista eventually but the operative couldn’t supply me with any dates. Jan 30th I suggested! Another reminder that I would have...
Biztalk is a fantastic piece of software but many I.T. professionals haven't had an opportunity to see it and understand what it can do. Our next session at NxtGenUG is going to one of our best yet as it will be topical with a nugget by Tim Leung about Microsoft latest operating system, Vista, and the main presentation will be Ben Goeltz, 'The Business of Biztalk' which went down extremely well at the Birmingham chapter in November. I can also report that we are now completely and utter SWWWWAAAGGGEDDDD...
Yep, I got tagged, ug! 1) I gave my wife a hamster ball for Christmas without a hamster, I told her that we where going to find out what it feels like to be a hamster ... in water! 2) I like prawns but they don't like me. 3) I like skydiving indoors! 4) I used to sing 'badly' in a choir. 5) I used to 'Fox-Hunt' with cars ... and no furry animals ever got hurt. I'm going to tag C9 & GWB...
Bless Grady Booch! Love him or hate him you can't keep him down! Just only a few weeks after open heart surgery he has posted another classic! This time Grady has decided to take a few pot-shots at SOA picking fairly and squarely on the hype. Well to be honest Grady, IBM doesn't actually get away scott-free when it comes to SOA marketing hype, the 'middleware' campaign over the summer springs to mind. Anyway, I for once pretty much agree with him on this one, infact I touched on this a few months...
Virtual Environments are very much in vogue right now because of the obvious advantages they bring in getting the most out of your hardware investment, infact having a large server these days running just one single OS does seem such a waste. There is a down-side, the most common problem encountered with virtual environments is resource hogging. How do you prevent a virtual server or especially a virtual application from stealing all your processor time and/or memory? With environments such as Citrix,...
Remember the date: 1st November Remember the place: Oxford, Research Machines ... and the time: 7 - 9 pm (no-doubt with beers afterwards, rude not to!) This marks the first session of the Oxford chapter of NxtGenUG ! NxtGenUG, (Next Generation User Group) is a non-profit user group for Microsoft Technologies. It is a community event, setup and run by the community for the community, so please take part! This is a chance to be in a new user group chapter at the beginning ! Barry Dorans will be doing...
In this post I will be taking a high level look at what a possible SOA implementation architecture scenario and what it might look like giving an indication of what technologies are involved. This example scenario is a SOA implementation for call-centres using Microsoft Technologies, some you may have heard of, and others that are sadly as yet unsung. A few things to note, I haven’t come across a medium to large organisation that doesn’t use Citrix for the UI deployment so this is why...
I don’t usually like to be blunt as a general rules these days as you can imagine that a whack over the head can often offend but in the case of SOA 2.0 I’m willing to let this rule slide. Oracle and Gartner are starting to talk about a term called SOA 2.0. In a nutshell SOA 2.0 is SOA + EDA or Event Driven Architecture. The natural progression of service is towards an event driven model but this does not necessarily mean that this is an upgrade to SOA. EDA can happily fit inside SOA...
At the weekend I heard that Robert Scoble has decided to leave Microsoft to join a start-up in Silicon valley, PodTech.Net. Robert was the human face and ambassador for Microsoft that did so much for their image, he did it by tapping into the 'real Microsoft' which many us really didn't know existed, the legions of hard-working people that passionately believe in what they are doing that never really recieve much in the way of recognition, these people are the real creators and innovators, Robert...
Microsoft has, with very little fan-fare, launched another site specifically aimed at Architects called www.skyscrapr.net. The differences being it is aimed specifically at Solution, Infrastructure, Strategic & Industry Architects which to be fair aren't areas that Microsoft has covered much before. The site has afew articles, blogs and links to podcasts with a novel new feature called the 'Archipedia' is to provide plain english definitions of architectural topics such as for example 'What is...
“It's not a question of whether we'll open source Java, now the question is how” said Sun’s new chief executive Jonathan Schwartz at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. Sun so far has resisted calls to release the code over concerns for fragmentation and forking, pressure from IBM and BEA has perhaps finally encouraged a change of heart. However this isn’t going to stop Sun from moving forward and developing Java itself, ‘Mustang’ is expected later this year...
As we all know the development cycle at many a code shop is floored and there has been a number of methodologies and initiatives to help us get over some of the core problems. The simple fact is that I believe that a great deal of the problems in the development cycle or more uncomfortably closer to home. I alluded to this in a previous post ‘Software design and why developers suck at it !’ but to but it bluntly, it’s our attitude towards our work and the other people (other than...
? Google has it, Apple's got enough to bottle and give away.What am I talking about? It's Coolness.Coolness that most fickle and allusive of all sort after qualities, sells. Admittedly it's no guarantee of success or even profit but it it desirable and certainly an aid to help your product fly off the shelves.So is Microsoft cool? Only amongst the die-hards and apologists perhaps, but not the man in the street. IMHO Microsoft's image is pretty cheesie. The video about if Microsoft designed the iPod...
Someone (they didn't leave a name) recently suggested I should stay off the coffee before I start talking about SOA, hence the picture (thanks consumerist.com for the use of), fellow GWB'er Chris Williams also suggested I should get things off my chest, so here goes. I’m sick of SOA and the state of affairs it’s in now. SOA is suffering from a very major credibility issue that threatens to kill off the term and therefore I fear the ideal. Ironically, the cause of the problem is the very...
I've had this wonderful blog for sometime and I've come to a crossroads with it. I should imagine I'm just like many other bloggers that reach a point where you ask yourself telling questions and the ones I am asking myself are .. Why am I blogging? Enjoyment? Self-Promotion? Getting in touch with others? What is the focus of my site? Who are the people that read my site? Is keeping the blog uptodate taking over? I feel sometimes I'm just regurgitation news, admittedly sometimes with my own spin...
Gaston Milano and friends have been busy writing some handy little tools for Visual Studio 2005. Blog entry here, download here
Colin and Richard have both recently commented on email, so here’s my 2p The problem with email is that it equates to an electronic pile of paper, cluttered, un-ordered, random and messy. It’s easy to miss something key, even nowadays spam uses the importance flag. The advantage with RSS isn’t so much the technology but how it is applied, with an RSS feed it is categorised by you in your aggregator from the very beginning. Yes it is possible to create a rule that places emails into...
I thought it would only be a matter of time before the patterns from the Gang of Four appeared in Microsoft's DSL design tool add-in for Visual Studio 2005 . ClipCode has done just that. So, what is a DSL? A picture can says a thousand words and this is why greater understanding is achieved with diagrams. As you can imagine, an icon or graphic can have a different meaning depending on the group, company or industry, i.e. 'the domain' you work in. It is difficult to have a diagramming system that...
Office 12 will be named Microsoft Office 2007 on release. The official release date is still tba but is expected late 2006. The Microsoft Office 2007 fact sheet can be found here. One of the interesting additions to the Office suite is Microsoft Office Groove. Groove is all about people collaboration. Increasing people need to work as a team, but the teams boundaries could be geographical, organization or disconnected. The Groove.Net site products overview page explains it better than I can, "What's...
Katy Pearce has organised the next London Girl Geek Dinner The guest speaker for the evening will be Cory Doctorow. Usual rules apply, guys need to bring a girl, this way then event keeps a nice balance. I'm going with Sarah and no I'm not her secret admirer. 1) I'm married to the lovely Louise 2) My admiration for Sarah (although platonic) is no secret. FULL DETAILS:DATE : Tuesday, March 14th 2006, 8pmWHERE: Pitcher and Piano 68 Upper Street, Islington, London N1 0NY Map HOW MUCH: £15 cos the...
Yahoo has created a design pattern library in their developer section and can be found here. Sadly no code drops to accompany the design patterns but it's a good start. Nice one Yahoo! I hope MSN and Google will follow suit. ...
I noticed that a new version of the Enterprise library for .Net 2.0 and is available for download here. The Key changes are, Configuration now built on System.Configuration • Configuration Application Block no longer exists • Easier to use blocks with or without configuration files Instrumentation configurable is disabled by default Much improved Logging Application Block • Flexibility and performance Simpler and more powerful Data Access Application Block • Use with OLE-DB,...
I find it really exciting that Microsoft are investing so much still into Visual Basic. VB.Net 2005 has only been out a since November and we are already talking about the next version. Visual Basic 9 is actually going to be a very exciting language as it incorporates LINQ, if you don't know what link is I'll let Don Box and Anders Hejlsberg explain from their whitepaper that can be found here. "After two decades, the industry has reached a stable point in the evolution of object oriented programming...
What Colin doesn't know about VMWare isn't worth knowing after all it's only going to be a matter of time before server are build with a virtualisation product as standard because without one a whole server to run one OS will seem such a waste! So, if I was you Colin's new blog is going to be one to watch and an opportunity to get with the learning curve. And as VMWare Server entry level product is now free, so what are you waiting for? Colin's blog is here here. Free VMWare server is available here,...
I noticed that Sarah has got the hump about the 'meme's at MOMO. Personally, I've always thought that marketing guys really need tech as much as we need marketing guys to get the message out. Microsoft has Evangelist which is a sort of 30%/70% toward tech split and so they get it and there fore are cool, the guys at MOMO are missing the trick, so it's a my wag is bigger than your wag contest. They are forgetting the first rule of marketing, your need to be near the skin to feel the pulse! I have...
Ug! Channel 9's Blowdart aka Barry Dorans blog tagged me, so here goes …Four jobs I've had: Technical Architect .Net Developer Soldier Pizza Delivery Scooter Boy Four movies I can watch over and over: Aliens Dr No Human Traffic Withnail and I Four places I've lived: Woking London Munich Aldershot Four TV shows I love: Battlestar Galactica (new version) Lost Black Books My Name is Earl Four places I've vacationed Lake Como Blue Mountains Venice Florence Four of my favourite dishes Anything with...
IBM recently introduced a free version of its DB2 database called DB2 Express-C, a move designed to win software developers over to its products. The database is essentially the same as there commercial product but is limited to a single dual core processor and a memory limit of 4GB. IBM's decision to add a free database to its lineup is really keeping up with the Jones follows moves by its largest rivals in the database business, Oracle and Microsoft. With the release of SQL Server 2005 in November...
I had promised you another post on my predictions for 2006. Well, after listening to feedback (thanks all that have emailed me) it seems that most of you would like to see a deeper dive into technologies that interest me (with diagrams) but in an easy to digest way. So, this is the first in the range of these posts. What is Ajax? Introduction Ajax or Asynchronous JavaScript And XML is a term that describes the use of a combination of existing web technologies to build rich and interactive web pages....
It's funny really, my organisation hasn't got an official blog or gotten around to adding RSS feeds to the site (I'm sure they will do sooner or later) but plenty of people in my organisation are beavering away with their own blogs. Here is a list of the ones I've discovered so far (I'm darn sure there are more) and as it's all personal content I'm sure our corporate communications department wouldn't get upset about any of it. But as for certain political parties, World of Warcraft players and certain...
Dave Caddick's excellent original post here ... ... not forgetting then GPS you can wear on your wrist! The Forerunner 205 and the 305 unveiled at this years CES in Vas Legas. Both the products provide information in real-time to the users and help keep track of their fitness regime and goals. Garmin Forerunner 205 and 305 are waterproof and come in a new design where the GPS antenna wraps around part of the wrist helping it to have a better view of the sky. GPS receiver sensitivity has been enhanced...
No rest for the wicked! My first week back has meant clocking up the miles and visiting vendors and attending meetings. One of the software vendors I went to visit was Sybase at their Maidenhead office and particularly their mobility division. I would like to thank Ian Matthews and Tim Roberts for there hospitality. The day visit was a deep dive into the Afaria mobility management product. Afaria, if you have done your homework, is the pretty much the market leader in the mobility management space...
I'm off to a Slovakia Bar (yummy!) on London's South Bank with Mr C and Co where we will see the New Year in and watch the fireworks over at the London Eye which is just around the corner. So take care and have a lovely New Year !
As the year comes to a close I will be taking a few guesses in a series of two posts that will outline what I think the next twelve months has in store for us in I.T. and beyond. So here is the disclaimer, none of this stuff is true! It’s just guesses and should be view as just pure entertainment, so if any of it proves to be accurate that’s just luck! So sit back and enjoy the ride into my imagination. It’s a pretty safe bet that 64bit computing will be on every hardware and software...
When companies such as BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Siebel Systems, IONA and Sybase comes together it is for an important reason. There are two main reasons for this, firstly Enterprise Java Beans initially didn’t come up with the goods, it didn’t really do the job it was advertised to do and it was clunky and clumsy. Secondly, because J2EE wasn’t as good as hoped it endured a few major revisions which has made it difficult (and expensive) to get JCP certified. Ok, so there is...
Tuesday I posted about one of the pitfall of going 64bit and that was that 16bit applications wouldn’t work and because our current 32bit operating systems will happily run 16bit we may be none the wiser. One of the ‘Usual Suspect’, Mike Dimmick kindly posted in my comments, “I'm not sure if a 32-bit OS running as a guest under Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMWare on a 64-bit host will support 16-bit code. I'd hope so. That may not help you since this is presumably a client-side...
IBM, I’m totally and utterly baffled by WebSphere! There are so many products under the WebSphere banner, (I lost count at around 200) also it’s not really clear what pieces of the puzzle fit together in the suite. So, let say I want to integrate two disparate applications, what product under the WebSphere banner do I use? Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite? WebSphere Information Integrator? WebSphere Integration Developer? WebSphere Translation Server for Multiplatforms? WebSphere...
Look guys, I would rather be 4, then 35 or 40! (link) Sarah and Barry apparently went though a lot of both to arrange special surprises for me. (link) Gosh I'm such an ungrateful git! Tomorrow is the C9 Geek and Greet, (Still places if you're interested) I wonder what 'tom foolery' I can expect from the resident practical jokers in the usual Geek suspects...
There can’t be many more pleasant ways to spend a cold December evening in London than with beer in hand in a room full to the brim with Geeks. Yep, last night I attended another London Geek Dinner with Robert Scoble at the Texas Embassy. Richard & Beth have managed to sum-up some of the weirdness of the evening in text and pictures which you can catch here, which now Robert Scoble has linked to. Being on the receiving end of a pair of chocolate nipples does tend to take one momentarily...
"TestDirector for Quality Center led in the Test/QA Management and Integrated Test Suite categories. Microsoft came in a surprising second, with the not-yet-shipping Visual Studio Team System capturing the top votes in the Defect/Issue Management, SCM/Build Management and .NET Test & Performance categories." Full article here. This is cool, but they obviously haven't tried to install it!? Whilst on the subject of installing VSTS there is a survey for any of those folk who are suckers for punishment...
Microsoft UK's new developer security education website's main character 'Developer Dave' is not modelled on me, honest guv'nor! The site can be found here. The message is actually very clear that it is easy to ignore security in your developments. It's not just developers that produce website that face the Internet that are ay risk, but as many recent surveys have pointed out the largest risk of security breeches comes from inside in organisation. I'm not saying you can't trust your fellow workers,...
Two days running! I’m blown away again! Today it was the turn of Neon and their product called Shadow RTE and how they have simply cracked the problem of getting the IBM mainframe to become a full partner in the Service Orientated world. The scary bit being that not many mainframe guys are going to do much complaining with this technology and it may work well enough that you may even rethink your plans to migrate away from the wee blue beastie!!! Put very simply Shadow RTE is a range of tools...
This is an entertaining account of a C# fan boys first encounters with Java. It pretty much does demonstrate why there aren't many developers going in that direction and what Java has to do to get it's house in order. I personally loved Java until Microsoft caught up and took over, specially now VB.Net has got it's cool back with VS2005...
Well, what can I say ... other than it's here Thanks to Sarah and Barry for hosting and letting me have soooo much fun in doing it. So have I listen to it yet? Actually no, I've kind-of decided that I really don't want too. The best part for me was having the opportunity to meet everyone and have a good time with them, having a laugh and some fun, and for that I am honestly gratefull. Take care all, I'm looking forward to meeting you all again soon. P.S. I also have some news on the podcasting front...
I’ve had a busy week on the road, well until the gear-box on my car broke! Anyway, it gives me a chance to catch my breath and post about a few things that have caught my eye recently. Microsoft has gone all abit Live! Press announcement here. In brief, what was announced is that some new and existing product and services will align themselves under the Windows Live, Office Live or Xbox Live banner. For example MSN Messenger will become Windows Live Messenger with the next version. MSN will...
Haven’t you heard yet? Well the wait is over for MSDN subscribers. .NET Framework 2.0Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition … have shipped! Apparently the download speeds aren’t great but what do you expect? … the Internet can’t handle it! Anyway, I’m not going to even start downloading them till Monday! EDIT: I couldn't resist! I’ve set my work machine to do the task of downloading for me over the weekend. It’s going...
Dave C is running today with a post on medical software on PDA’s here. Pretty darn impressive stuff … but is the software free? Well may be if it was written by IBM as they have decided as from today not to enforce most patents they own under health-care or education. Nice one IBM! Now I don’t often say that. Full story here...
What were you doing on Saturday? Traipsing around the shops looking for new socks? Spending hours in the Supermarket? Getting the car sorted out? That badly need haircut perhaps? It’s sometimes a bit of a rubbish day-off. But last Saturday it was another fantastic Developer Day 2 @ Microsoft in Reading followed by a Geek Dinner! Ahh my Geek Heart almost exploded with excitement. Now I didn’t go there for the freebies! Who does that? Please! I did however go to socialise which is one of...
Sarah being the cheeky lady that she is put my name down on the Girl Geek Dinner Wiki, like I needed persuading! It was indeed a good opportunity to meet some really interesting people, men and women, as there was a pretty good mix even though the night was really all about the Girls. It does have to be said that there is no stereotype that can fit a Girl Geek, it’s pretty clear that you couldn’t put a Girl Geek in a box and label it. A Girl Geek can not be categorized by looks, age,...
"Companies developing plans to better serve customers running JBoss Enterprise Middleware System on Microsoft Windows Server. ATLANTA and REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 27, 2005 — JBoss® Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to explore enhanced interoperability between their respective JBoss Enterprise Middleware System (JEMS™) and Microsoft® Windows Server™ products and deepen JBoss support for the Windows Server operating system. While the two companies will continue...
As with so many of these debates we never seem to draw conclusions. I would like to take this opportunity to do that as this is an old debate and one that really needs finally putting to rest.I started this debate here on Channel 9 because this old issue hasn't really been resolved as VB does encounter a lot of FUD.A good example is that many UK companies will hire a C# developer for approx £5000 more than a VB.NET developer, this is because the HR guys have been steered by us, we have created...
I shouldn't feel ashamed! I'm not a second class developer!I've been developing for years from COBOL, C, Ada, Smalltalk, VC++ and VB is still my favourite language.Before .Net I really wanted VB to be fully OO. Like many, I got OO, I just couldn't afford to be blue-sky purest all the time when a dead-lines looming and VB has always been great for productivity.VB has taken all kinds of FUD over the years amazingly even when it became a .Net language. So how is C# better than VB? It isn't, the plain...
Our leader at GWB, Jeff Julian, has given the front-page a nice new look. Love it Jeff !
And now for some more weekend fun ... ... you to can all have one of Sarah B's famous Binary Watches for free! Download from here at PeetM's blog...
News coming out of the PDC about an exciting new a set of standard query operators for use in working with data regardless of the data source! In essence they are a set of .net libraries that will extend C# and Visual Basic, from the examples on Microsoft site there is a strong impression that this is a sort of SQL type addition to the languages, that still happily works in a OO fashion. For example extracted from the Microsoft website. Where - Simple 1 This sample prints each element of an input...
How does Dave Caddick do it? He's got the scoop on this story before anyone else? Dave's post here on GWB and ZDNets story ! Dave's currently sunning himself in Egypt miles away from any internet connection so is unavailable for comment. Do you know what I think? Nokia are late to the party. Their offering isn't as complete as everyone else's and doesn't look like it's going to be for while yet, what Q2 next year ... and you are going to pay extra for it? Nokia do you think we are all mugs? Or are...
I’ve been pretty busy recently with two of my projects, mobility and SOA, getting to critical stages, the first project mobility I will talk about here in this post and the second in the following. So my mobility project has finally made it to POC (Prooth Of Concept), which means that a small-ish test group of actually user are using hand-held devices as part of their primary function. As yet I’m not at liability to say what the mobility project entails in great detail but I promise I...
A new month! Pinch, Punch and all that. I’ve been a way on holiday visiting relatives in Wales, so I'm all rested and ready to go. A few things have happened since I’ve been away; most noticeable Channel 9 has had a slick new design. My mobility project has gone live, earlier than I expected, everything was in place so the powers that be decided to just go for it. I like that attitude. Sarah is wanting to organise more Geek events I can't go to. Ok! I can take a hint! Mr C's found a cool...
Performance is a key factor in deciding the architecture of a system. With distributed applications performance becomes even more key as data is passed between the different layers. Microsoft has seemingly completing technologies in this space so it is very much a mystery on which will be the best technology for a given scenario. A new article on MSDN called Performance of ASP.NET Web Services, Enterprise Services, and .NET Remoting by Ingo Rammer of Thinktecture and Richard Turner of Microsoft examines...
Let’s talk more about SQL Server 2005 new stuff! As before I will keep it short and sweet. I won't go into depth of what can be done with these commands because I think I would bored you, but I just want to give you a hint of what I've found cool. The OUTPUT clause IMHO is a great time saver. The one thing I do with an insert stored procedure is to return the new key ID. Now, I haven’t been all that happy with using statements such as … SELECT MAX(tableID) From DavesTable …...
Whilst on the subject of SQL Server 2005, I wanted to just talk about a new feature that is coming in the new SQL Server Mobile Edition that I’m excited about. Well you know when you can run .Net code on a mobile device from the Visual Studio IDE? Well in the new version of SQL Server Mobile Edition and SQL Server 2005 you will be able to run SQL on the device from the SQL Server Management Studio! Big deal!? Well yes if you have tried to use the SQL editor on a PDA which is so painful typing...
If you have a relationship with Microsoft UK in the mobility space you will know who Jason Langridge is. Jason is one the guru's at Reading who has his finger on the pulse, so it's unsurprising that he has now started blogging. It's only been afew days and it's already a good resource! Jason also hold an annual sailing event for suppliers and invited guests but Jason isn't famous for his sea-legs, perhaps it has something to do with the pints at the bar the night before? Welcome to the Blogasphere...
I had a really brilliant week away! Louisa and I stayed at the Hotel Aurora on beautiful Lake Como in Northern Italy. Now I have to say that this place has to be one of the prettiest places on earth, yes seriously and we can’t wait to go again next year. Go again? Why? Well this has got to be one of the best places to water-ski and wake-board which my wife and I are nuts about. The setting is stunning but more importantly the water is clean, flat and warm, which as you can imagine is very important....
John G has answered my question of 'what is a SAN?' Read his explanation here. Thanks John
Sarah’s is trying to positively sexual discriminate!Let me explain, Sarah Blow of WaterBaby blog fame is trying to put together a female centric ‘Geek meet’, geek males can come as long as they are accompanied by a geek female.Her reasons are simple, she wants to get to know other females in the I.T. industry.See her site for more details.It doesn’t take a whole raft of statistics to show that I.T. isn’t exactly awash with the fairer-sex. I know that many put this down...
Right, we all 'get-it' that we should be moving to using web service and SOA (well you could've got the hint by now if you've been reading this blog for any length of time), but taking the first step is difficult, so where do you start? All the SOA articles on ‘how-to start’ advise that you should begin with the contact … and I’m not disagreeing. Thinktecture are developing a great new free utility for .Net that will allow you to do just that and can be found here. Enjoy...
My old mate Dave Caddick has written about something that is a pain in the neck for everyone in I.T. How do you make the log-in first thing in the morning quicker? Email this article on to your techie guys … revolutionary stuff Dave...
Recently, I have suffered from GeekBlock. Fortunately, I found an answer here
John Grove, a friend of mine, has started blogging here at Geeks. John is going to cover subjects relating to some serious server room toys. Now I believe John has a niche area here, I can't actually find all that many blogs or even websites that cover his subject area in all that greater depth. So, John I would like to recommend that you put together a range of tutorial posts for us newbies. What's a SAN? ...
It’s been a little quiet on the blog of late for good reason. At work this product has been keeping me busy. Unfortunately because of corporate communication policy I cannot tell you how or where we are using it. Some of you in the Enterprise space may have heard of Barloworld, for those of you who haven't it's the market leader in the inventory management space and will soon be migrating from Delphi to a full .Net product, which isn't common knowledge. Barloworld have a strong open-source...
David Caddick has written a very powerful article on the concept that Disaster Recovery is Dead! Being an Enterprise Architect the whole idea of DR is foremost in ones mind when designing system so what David is purposes is more than a little intriguing. After reading David’s very clear article I understand that the point of ‘failing over’ from one site to another does actually sound archaic. Anyway, I enjoyed it so I won’t steal any more of Dave’s thunder … go...
So, some of you may know I posted my previous post up on Channel 9 and the guys didn’t let me down. Bob Tabor (of Learn Visual Studio.net fame) came up with the most comprehensive set of answers and before coffee, impressive Bob, not a mere mortal then? So here is the list so far, 1) Team Explorer window - Add Work Item context menu 2) Team menu item - Add Work Item 3) As someone else identified, through Excel and Project (actually, its not that burdensome, IMHO) These are options on the Team...
This is the question posed by Damen Carr. His initial post is here. In this post I would like to respond to this question. Agile development in my view is not prescriptive and many organisations have embraced their own style to fit with their culture which has been an evolving process that is in itself improving with every project as more is learnt. For instance many organisations find some Agile Development techniques such as pair development contentious and therefore are not adopted, whilst many...
Dave Caddick only started blogging recently has moved to us here at GWB. URL: http://www.geekswithblogs.n... RSS: http://www.geekswithblogs.n.../rss.aspx As Dave would say … Sensational...
Sarah has stepped in at the last minute to help raise money for the British Heart Foundation by doing the London to Brighton bike ride which takes place on the 19th June and you can do your bit by sponsoring her please. More details can be found HERE on her blog...
Sarah Blow has moved her blog ‘A world of technology in the wireless age’ here to Geeks With Blogs. Sarah is much respected and has already an established following here in the UK’s Microsoft mobile community. Sarah is push the envelope of what the technology can achieve and has been at the forefront of .Net since the first BETA. She is very much the pioneer. Her decision to join GWB was based on the ability to create without restriction, so it is with a considerable amount of anticipation...
Now this is a real treat! Dave Caddick a well renown UK Citrix & Mobility expert has now started his own blog. In many cases it's all to often said but 'what he doesn't know isn't worth knowing' is very true in this instance. Annoying it's not here at Geeks as he does indeed have the cred to be with us, but never mind. As for the 'Wallaby Fan' bit? Well he's an Aussie so I won't even ask. Dave's style is unique, his blog is literally his notes raw and unabridged, so there is a real wealth of...
Have you built a mobile solution for you company from scratch? Yes, I’ve tried it too. Don’t get me wrong Visual Studio is a very powerful tool and the emulators are a great step forward but for my mind most of the pieces of the solution just aren’t there and you have to end up building most of that yourself. The risk is the components parts are not built to best practice and often aren’t as productive as they could be. In this space you are still very much on your own. Often...
Ted Pattison, one of my hero's, and author of the best COM book there is (COM whats that?) is blogging on Pluralsight (home of the Spoutlet) URL: http://www.pluralsight.com/... RSS: http://pluralsight.com/blog... can't wait for the first post...
Great News!!! I did say in a previous post (and Sarah mention it on her blog too) that wouldn't it be cool if Liam Westley, presenter of the 'Using Interfaces with .Net, Simplifying access to multiple DB providers in .Net' of Developer Days UK fame released his Bengal RapidDB? Liam has decided to do just that and the project will appear on SourceForge soon. Keep in mind that it's Liam first time releasing a project on SourceForge so he will have a learning curve, so no pressure and he has a day job....
Ian and Richard have both posted on their blogs and on Channel 9. It would seem I wasn't the only personal that got a great deal of value out of the day. I did hear one story from my friend who was in a car that took the wrong turn out of Reading and ended up on the M25, they wanted to head towards Portsmouth ... opps. We are having some frank and honest dicussions today about the event which I am trying to stimulate so some of the newer members can reap more benefit. Concern was raised about Benjamin...
This is a work-in-progress, but I thought I would put it up for comment. http://www.geekswithblogs.n... Thanks
Yesterday, I attended DeveloperDays at what Microsoft Campus in Reading, UK. A good days was had by all and I sure as hell learnt allot, but I did feel very much overwhelmed when I got home last-night, so I hit the sack with one hell of a head-ache, hence writing about it today. The session I enjoyed the most where … Craig Murphy's introduction to Scrum. Now I must say that I’m very much an advocate of Agile development, so learning about Scrum and learning how you could project manager...
Bryan Corazza has just started blogging too. "... From little seeds mighty trees grow ..."