An interesting discussion popped up on Twitter between myself, Steve Rogalsky, Terry Bunio, Mike Iwasiow, David Alpert, and some others around using hours as a software estimating unit of measure. Steve’s been reading the book Beyond the Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and blogged about his stance on using hours for sizing work items. In a nutshell Goldratt offers the following arguments: Asking someone for a timeframe to complete a task puts their image in jeopardy PMs will always try to squeeze whatever...
As many of you may already know that, I'm working at a global gaming and entertainment company taking the responsible for design and implement the next generation platform which will be running on the cloud, and also design the cloud platform as well. Currently one of the goal is to replace the active directory integrated security and identity solution with certificate-based solution in our product. In short, we need to work with Active Directory Certificate Service to request and issue the certificates...
The West Palm Beach Developer Group is off to a good start in 2012 with our special IASA Architecture event on January 24th, 7:00 PM. Microsoft’s Architect Wayne Filin-Matthews will be our speaker on Enterprise Software and Infrastructure Architecture Best Practices. This topic is unique in value as most content will be a reflection of Wayne’s personal experience having successfully helped a multitude of customers with his acquired tacit knowledge of Architecture. To register for this FREE event...
With TFS 2010 a basic installation of TFS has been reduced to a matter of clicks, the pain however lies in getting an appropriate environment provisioned from the Infrastructure team. There will be planned and unplanned downtime as the infrastructure team takes the environment down for patching. There are various TFS hosting services available out there that’ll take this pain point away from you. Some of the leading players amongst others include DiscountASP.net, TeamDevCentral, Praktik Hosting…...
I was recently inspired to write on this topic after two client experiences that demonstrated serious misconceptions about the role that software architecture plays in producing quality software. After performing an assessment of a mid-sized company, it was obvious that they were in dire need of a good software architect to design and maintain the design of the application that they were in the process of planning. After making the recommendation, the CIO began to explain that they had already chosen...
Agility needs to get onto the next level – that´s what I tried to explain in my previous articles. After a reality check – what´s missing from Agile practice? –, and some general musings about how a next level of Agility could look like, here now some very tangible suggestions. Crank up the frequency Current Agile practice is suffering from too little attention to Acceptance. To change this, very, very clear Acceptance dates need to be set. Acceptance can only get into a real pulling mode, if dates...
OverviewI've been looking into a solution recently which has a series of remote nodes publishing events to a central node. The publishers have no logic, they just need to contact the central node and record that an event has happened. Off the back of that, the central node does some work inferring what the event means, and computing its relationship to a bunch of other events. Simple enough, but the solution needs to be scalable and make efficient use of its resources. I started off building it around...
Let´s get real about software development: It´s never going to be a quietly flowing river. Never. And that´s why the current approaches to software development like XP, Scrum, and Kanban will always cause pain. Their basic assumption is you should be able to isolate a team for a while to work on features. Leave it alone during an iteration or a sprint to complete a set of features, or at least sit still until the current feature is done. Certainly that´s what we all want as developers: being able...
Don’t miss out on these great session with Markus Egger in the Dallas office! Where: Microsoft Dallas Office – 7000 SR-161 (George Bush Turnpike), Dallas, TX 75039 When: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 – 1:30 – 4:30 PM Signup for this FREE event in Dallas Join Markus Egger, Microsoft RD and one of the longest running MVPs, for an afternoon of free information. CODE Magazine and EPS Software are in a unique position to share information based on real world experience in projects that are either our own...
Daytona - Iterative MapReduce on Windows Azure Overview MapReduce is a framework for processing highly distributable problems across huge datasets using a large number of compute nodes. It is a generic mechanism that comprises 2 steps: Map step: The master node takes the input, partitions it up into smaller sub-problems, and distributes them to worker nodes. The worker node processes the smaller problem, and passes the answer back to its master node. Reduce step: The master node then collects the...
Consider this article on DNS a prequel to the upcoming ADDS series. After all, any active directory implementation requires DNS integration. So what is DNS? DNS is a highly reliable, hierarchal, distributed and scalable database used for name resolution and service location. So basically it translates friendly names (www.contoso.com) in to IP addresses (11.12.13.14) allowing clients to connect to resources in the infrastructure without memorising pesky IP numbers. History of DNS When the DoD initially...
2011 has been an amazing year in which I ended up working on an exciting number of projects. SharePoint has continued to be the hottest requested technology that I deal with. At the same time Windows Phone 7 has put Microsoft back in the mobile market and I will be finishing off the year additionally writing for this platform. At the same time the old standards of WinForms and ASP.NET have not left our market space. Ultimately, the IT market is still on fire and I am looking forward to great things...
We are almost at the start of the new year. The group is currently on our December break from presentations but we are looking to return full steam in January. The Chicago Information Technology Architects Group is community driven and as such we are looking for speakers and topics to keep our community thriving. If you have a topic that you would like to present or know someone who has a topic that they love to talk about in the IT Architecture space please contact me through this blog. del.icio.us...
I presented sessions on MVC .Net and webmatrix. I covered stuff like what’s new in MVC .net and the architecture goodness of MVC pattern. I also demonstrated how MVC 3 / MVC 4 harness HTML 5 / mobile along with Jquery and Modernizr. PHP coding using MVC and Webmatrix and other advanced stuff like hosting PHP on windows or porting MYSQL Db to MSSQL is also is also part of the demo in the sessions. The slide decks are available at below link and all the demo is recorded and also shared at below link....
The software industry lives within an interesting paradox. IT in the enterprise moves slowly and cautiously, upgrading only when safe and necessary. IT interests intentionally live in the past. On the other hand, developers, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) not only want to use the latest and greatest technologies, but this constituency prides itself on gauging tech’s future, and basing its present-day strategy upon it. Normally, we as an industry manage this paradox with a shrug of the shoulder...
Here is my general guidance in regards to solutions architecture: Leverage what we have first Gather facts, not opinions when assessing solutions Avoid making early assumptions Prove that issues are real before escalating concerns Present issues or concerns within proper context If prototypes reveal concerns, consider alternative solutions...
Herve Roggero, SQL Azure MVP, has created a virtual community to focus on Azure. Here is the outline from Herve: User Group Name: Azure Florida Association Purpose: Start a virtual Florida user group that targets the Azure platform Venues: Most meetings will be virtual; however I plan to host a few physical events across Florida if possible from time to time; physical events may be a few hours long with potentially more than one speaker Possible Topics: The topics will touch Azure generally speaking,...
I am proud to announce the creation of a new virtual user group: the Azure Florida Association. The missiong of this group is to bring national and internaional speakers to the forefront of the Florida Azure community. Speakers include Microsoft employees, MVPs and senior developers that use the Azure platform extensively. How to learn about meetings and the group Go to http://www.linkedin.com/gro... First Meeting Announcement Date: January 25 2012 @4PM ET Topic: Demystifying SQL Azure...
The discovery phase of any project is both exciting and critical to the project’s success. There are several key points that you need to keep in mind as you navigate this process. The first thing you need to understand is who the players in the project are and what their motivations are for the project. Leaving out a key stakeholder in the resulting product is one of the easiest ways to doom your project to fail. The better the quality of the input you have at this early phase the better chance you...
I want to bring the Patterns and Practices group to the attention of those who have not already been exposed. I have been a fan of the P&P team since they came out with the original Application Blocks which eventually turned into the Enterprise Library. Their main purpose is to assemble guidance and tools that make it easier for all of us to build amazing solutions. I would simply suggest you spend some time exploring the information and code libraries that they have produced. Free resources...
At my current position, I’ve been doing quite a bit of Silverlight development and have also been working with TFS2010 build services to enable continuous integration. One of the critical pieces of a successful continuous build setup (and also one of the benefits of having one) is that the build system should be able to “get latest” against the source repository and immediately build with no errors. This can break down both in an automated build scenario and a “new guy” scenario when the solution...
Performance testing is almost always conducted to address one or more risks related to expense, opportunity costs, continuity, and/or corporate reputation. But not everyone thinks their application requires investment in performance testing. We presented few of our clients who were heavily focussed on functional requirements but did not care too much about the Non-functional requirements with a short questionnaire, User’s will be happy if the website loaded in <= ___ seconds. How many extra seconds...
I decided it was time to share some of my favorite tools and tricks that I use to make my time in Visual Studio more productive. Naming Standards If you do not already know the name and website IDesign.net, then I suggest you explore them and get to know them well. This is the architecture and design site started by Juval Lowy and now has such .NET architects as Michele Leroux Bustamante, Brian Noyes, Mark Michaelis, Dino Esposito, Miguel A. Castro. I had the luxury of seeing some of their presentations...
For good or bad, Microsoft’s Entity Framework (EF) has become one of the most widely used ORM tools out there. While some may state that it's not among the better ones (or that it's not even a real ORM), it’s definitely the most convenient one: its Visual Studio integration and consequently its integration with the MS SQL Server database is unparalleled. This is especially relevant to people who haven’t used the concept of object-relational mapping before - there's almost no initial learning curve...
The Distinguished Field is often seen as the weaker of the two types of Fields when handling Fields in BizTalk. After all, the Distinguished Field can’t be used as a filter on a message, and it’s slower than its big brother the Promoted Field. Well, today I’m here to dispel the myth of the wimpy Distinguished Field and place in the pantheon of power that equals, and in some ways exceeds the Promoted Field. MYTH: Getting the value of a Distinguished Field requires loading the entire message into memory....
· For the last decade, the majority of my dev work has leveraged the .NET Framework for construction of information systems. However, my interest has lain in numerical computing. · Is it possible to have an increasingly higher level of abstraction and at the same time achieve underlying high performance computing? The prevailing winds say no: C# is aimed at productivity, and C++ is for performance. Garbage collection was great, but do we still need it with the availability of smart pointers? Would...
UPDATED Dec 8th 2011: Added Kanban book by David Anderson “Send me a list of books to read” – that is what I am often asked. No more, as this list is an answer to those request! I have divided it into different subject areas, and each area hold a small number of the books I have found most appropriate and covering for that area. I do love reading books, and there are so many good ones, but the list can’t go on forever. If you feel there are books I have not listed that you feel should be on this...
Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Previously, I had created some posts about the Task Parallel Library’s Concurrent Collections – which are very efficient collections designed for concurrent use with minimal contention – but in this next series of Little Wonders posts, I’d like to explore the parts...
I cut my DBA teeth on IBM's DB2 UDB EEE (enough acronyms) back in the 90's. I have always appreciated the scalability that is available with a MPP architecture. So a couple of years ago I was excited to hear that SQL Server was going to have a MPP architecture available. Now I am at SQLPass Summit 2011 and seeing the PDW (Parallel Data Warehouse) and the hardware offerings by Dell and HP to scale that up and out. However, I was disappointed to learn that this technology does not extend to Analysis...
Error: There is a temporary failure. Please retry later. (The request failed, because you exceeded quota limits for this hour. If you experience this often, upgrade your subscription to a higher one). Additional Information : Throttling due to resource : Connections." If you Google this issue, you only find different blogs and forums where geeks discussing this issue and giving suggestion to each other. Even when I counter this issue I also review my application architecture and I re-write the Azure...
When we talk about UI Architecture, a common theme of Model-View-Something continues to come up. The question is, however, what is the something? Am I working with Model-View-Controller? Model-View-Presenter? Something else? The purpose of this blog is to explore the difference between MVC / MVP to give you an understanding of what they mean to accomplish, what are the differences and what situations best cater to each. Does it really matter? Does the difference really matter between MVC / MVP? Well,...
Very interesting article if you want to understand how the routing and the whole architecture works in MVC framework. There are a lot more post to come from Simon. An Introduction to ASP.NET MVC Extensibility...
Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT)is a governance framework widely used by many enterprises to supports information and technology assets, defining process, areas and controls to successful delivery of IT Governance practices. First Question: "What is IT Governance?" IT governance is the responsibility of executives and the board of directors, and consists of the leadership, organisational structures and processes that ensure that the enterprise’s IT sustains and...
So its been a few weeks since Microsoft’s Build conference, where they unveiled Windows 8 and shared what the developer story will be. I had blogged about Day 1 of the conference here, but I wanted to share some video I took with my colleagues Winson Woo and Jim Russell as my thoughts now that a bit of time has lapsed. So first, a video captured right after we got our hands on the Samsung tablet given to all attendees. Yes the tablet is nice, but this conference is all about the OS. Windows 8 as...
The nice thing about unintended changes is that you never think it could happen until you get bitten by a nasty change. Microsoft did publish a complete list of breaking changes here which is complete to my knowledge. But although the intentional changes are listed there are side effects which can cause you to search for hours your (non) fault. One change was to create a new GAC for .NET 4 assemblies to prevent breaking applications which rely on the structure of the GAC introduced with .NET 2.0....
Something that took me a while to learn is how to be balanced when deciding on how to architect an application. Since at my current job I was thrown into a hybrid Architect/Developer position due to the small size of the company and my team, I didn’t really have any experience with doing it. After almost a year at it I decided to look back and see what I have done and how I can learn from mistakes and successes. Remember Why You Were Hired Why did your company hire you as a developer? If you answered...
C++ is a very powerful language. Well written native C++ code can perform much better than managed languages like C# and Java due to optimizations that the managed systems are not able to perform during run-time compilation (if this is done at all, that is). This is great for developers who work on gaming technology for instance. For people concerned with game logic, performance isn’t necessarily priority number one, but productivity and the ability to express oneself without too much head banging....
All seats were taken at the September IASA Chapter meeting. I opened the meeting with a short introduction of the officers and members of the board of directors as well as mentioning the benefits and opportunities of an IASA membership. Quent Herschelman followed with an introduction of the IASA educational programs and announced the exciting news that the chapter will host an IASA core training in January 2012. You can find more details and can sign up for the training on the IASA global web page....
Matt Hidinger gave a high energy presentation around Onion Architecture for this month’s meeting. It was great seeing the history of this architectural approach including its connection to Jeffrey Palermo. Of course drinking from a fire hose takes a while to digest. Get the code and slides here. Please join us for our next meeting and get involved in the Chicago Information Architecture community. del.icio.us Tags: CITAG,Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,Jeffrey Palermo,Matt Hidinger,Onion...
Last week I attended Build Windows conference and have been spending a considerable amount of time thinking how things have changed for developers. The initial reaction from most people was “Oh My God” with all the focus on WinRT and Metro UI and little mention of .Net, Silverlight, WPF, etc. You could almost feel the equal parts panic and excitement racing through the crowd. I was fortunate enough to have brought along my “Keep Calm and Carry On” T-Shirt to Anaheim. I wore it on Wednesday as it...
Last week, Microsoft held their long awaited Build Windows (or simply "Build") conference in Anaheim CA. About 5000 people packed the convention center to discover the latest version of the Windows operation system: Windows 8. This is a very major iteration (much more than the Windows Vista –> Windows 7 transition) (and also, it is an early preview so it is quite unfinished ;) As such, we will definitely need a bit more time to play with it before we can express a truly informed opinion. Of course...
Technorati Tags: Windows 8 Just like many thousands of geeks around the world I downloaded the Windows 8 preview from Microsoft’s website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/e... and spent some time playing with it. Being an embedded developer I don’t have any powerful machine lying unused in my office, so I installed Windows 8 on a very low-spec machine, a 1.6GHz Atom with 1GB of RAM and a 120GB HD (taken from an old mac). First of all I must say that I’m pretty impressed by the responsiveness...
Anyone that’s managing an enterprise IT with aging or outdated client/server systems is starting to feel the heat. Soon, their systems and applications will be obsolete and unsupported. At the same time, the industry as whole is seeking the fastest gateway to the latest .NET, HTML5 and mobile deployments including SaaS models. Right about now, there will be a knock on your door with team members offering their advice as to what you should do to ‘keep up’ with the latest trends and supported architectures....
What is Tulsa TechFest? It is a technical conference with currently the broadest topics in the United States, maybe the world. There are tracks covering everything enterprise architecture, software/web development, databases, project management, data security and this year for the first time - End Users, Social Media, Mobile, Enterpreneurs, Managers, BI & Reporting, Virtualization and Mentoring. It's primary focus is to provide training/teaching sessions that are immediately benefical to the...
I was recently discussing some common flaws in application architecture with David Adsit (codeobsession.blogspot.com/) about wisdom in development. Have you ever looked at a system and seen somethings done that were either technically or procedurally difficult, and thought, "wow, it must have taken a lot of work and a lot of proficiency to get that done" but then said to yourself, "but doing it was a bad idea". One of the things that experience teaches that you don't get to pick up from simply gaining...
In the world of custom web application development a critical component of our success is the hosting environment and services. We can choose to deploy our web applications using 3rd party hosting providers such as GoDaddy.com, Rackspace, DiscountASP.NET, or another provider, or we can choose to deploy to on premise servers either virtual or physical. In either case the web application must be serviced up to consumers by a web server software such as Internet Information Service (IIS), which is included...
Just recently there was a great talk held by Herb Sutter at the C++ and Beyond conference. You can see the whole presentation at Channel 9. So why does C++ really matter anymore? All this time we’ve been talking about managed languages (Java, C#, Visual Basic.NET, the list goes on) increasing the productivity of development and being really the holy grail of computing where we don’t have to focus on memory allocation or really knowing anything about the underlying platform, for that matter. All this...
We are getting rolling for the fall at the Chicago IT Architects Group. This month we will have Matt Hidinger presenting on the topic of Onion Architecture. Please join us as we discuss the decomposition of architectures by registering below. Register here del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Matt Hidinger...
This post describes the TFS ALM architecture strategy: Model Driven Architecture and top-down design, how to leverage UML diagrams and the Model Explorer tool, and how to use the Architecture Explorer for application analysis. MDA + Top-down Design Overview This topic describes MDA, UML visual design goals and capabilities, and UML / DSL support in TFS ALM & VSTS. · UML vs. DSL · 4 aims of UML visual design: visualize, communicate, skeleton code, document decisions · Limits – round tripping,...
My Epiphany – Part 1 After reading Continuous Delivery, by Jez Humble and David Farley, I couldn’t help but think “wow! this is the key to becoming truly agile!”. I submit that may be a little overstated, but nonetheless by minor epiphany has grown into an outright passion for enabling rapid development AND delivery of small bite-sized pieces of applications. As we’re all well immersed into the Agile way these days (or, at least, we’re all trying!!), our common goal should be to provide customers...