Enterprise Architecture

My HealthVault account

Ahsan Alam — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:04:42 GMT

I have recently setup a personal account on Microsoft Health Vault. I haven’t had much time to play around; but it is intriguing that so many organizations are starting to adopt Health Vault. Hopefully, I’ll get deeper into it soon, and start playing with the SDK.

After the MS SOA and Business Process Conference

Ahsan Alam — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:42:14 GMT

Well, the SOA and BP conference hosted by Microsoft is over. Three of us attended the conference from our company. So, I was able to attend the majority of the sessions that I was hoping to. Naturally, as the title suggests, the theme circled around Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management; but the conference provided Microsoft and some of their partners to do the following:

Technology in Healthcare - Present and Future

Ahsan Alam — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:26:31 GMT

We all know that the global healthcare industry is simply enormous. It's a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States alone. The size of the industry and the amount of money involved varies significantly from country to country. The United States definitely leads the way in comparison to the countries around the world; however, we cannot completely ignore healthcare in other countries. The industry landscape is constantly changing around the world due to changing economic conditions. It is quite noticeable especially in the emerging markets. Despite the regional differences, one fact remains constant - every human being, regardless of income and social status, is somewhat connected to the healthcare industry.

MS SOA and Business Process Conference

Ahsan Alam — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:04:29 GMT

I will be attending the Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference at the end of this month. I'm really excited about this conference at Redmond because various tracks usually covers a lot of current as well as new things. Since there will be several tracks, it will be difficult to attend all of them. We have 3 people attending from our company. So, we will try to attend the important ones between the three of us. Hopefully, I can gain something out of this conference.

SSO - Trying to Understand the Best Practice

Ahsan Alam — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:46:23 GMT

I have started doing some preliminary planning/design work for a new web-based project. This project is extremely important for our organization since it will be the foundation for a portal that we will build in the future. In addition, this application will not only going to be used by our employees but also by some of our customers and partners. Our customers/partners will also have the option to integrate our application into their portals. That means the application will be used in many ways from both inside and outside of our domain. Hence, the need for Single Sign On (SSO).

I have been trying to do a lot of research on this subject. I have been sifting through MSDN, blogs and articles trying to find best practices. I must admit that it has not been easy. Frankly, I had expected to discover a lot more information in MSDN. In addition, I had hoped to find some tools or API or something to effectively utilize Enterprise Single Sign-On, Active Directory and possibly WCF. I guess, my research will continue, and I will have to come up with something that works for us.

An Architect's Dream vs. Reality

Ahsan Alam — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:19:20 GMT

As I gradually open my eyes, I realize that I have been transported to an unknown place. It's somewhat dark. I look around; but no one was in sight. Distant glowing lights in the form of a grid-like pattern give a faint visibility. It seems like a virtual world, as if taken from a science fiction movie. Despite some initial apprehension, I am beginning to feel at ease and starting to realize my true purpose of being here. I know now what I'm supposed to do.

ASP .NET MVC Framework

Ahsan Alam — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:43:22 GMT

Microsoft is getting very close to releasing the new ASP .NET MVC framework. (Click here for more info). When I first took a look at the preview, the first thing that popped in my head was “it’s about time”. I must admit that I haven’t spent a lot of time with this new framework. So, my knowledge is somewhat limited; however, I can’t stop thinking about the following:

1) Why stop at ASP .NET? Why not create a common MVC framework for both the Windows and Web development?

2) Can WPF coexist with MVC framework?

3) How do we continuously evaluate and utilize the best of all the options that are constantly being incorporated into .NET and Visual Studio?

In any case, I would be curious to see how the new MVC framework evolves within the coming months.

MSDN Event - LINQ, WCF & Silverlight

Ahsan Alam — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 02:02:30 GMT

I have recently attended one MSDN event that covered 3 topics - LINQ, WCF and Silverlight. I was looking forward to this event because I had hoped to gain something about WCF and LINQ. During the presentation, the speaker ended up spending a lot of time on LINQ and Silverlight; whereas, he pretty much zoomed through WCF. That was very disappointing considering my interest on Silverlight (or Microsoft's Flash) is non-existent.

In any case, I know I will be delving deeper into WCF (and possibly LINQ) in the upcoming months.

Code Generation from XSD

Ahsan Alam — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:41:00 GMT

Whenever, I have created XML schemas, I didn’t want to go through the pain of creating classes from the XSDs. Maybe, I am lazy; but if something can automatically generate codes and in turn reduces my work, I am all for it.

In the beginning, I have used xsd.exe to generate codes from XML schemas. It comes standard with Visual Studio. This command line utility served its purpose despite some issues with complex schemas. Then I had come across XSDObjectGen. I found this downloadable tool in MSDN, and it definitely was a huge improvement from xsd.exe. This tool handled complex schemas fairly well. There were some issues every now and then; but those issues were manageable. However, something was still missing. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the structure of the generated code; but I lived with it.

Finally, I came across CodeXS. I have been impressed with whatever I have tested so far. It generates codes from fairly complex schemas without any problem. I even like the structure of the code that CodeXS generates. Most importantly, it’s a web-based tool (you can also download the sourec code from the site after registration). So, no need to download, install and re-install if the tool gets upgraded. It’s been good so far.

I will be using CodeXS going forward; but I’ll definitely notify the creator(s) of CodeXS if I find any bugs in the tool.

Every End Is A New Beginning

Ahsan Alam — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:30:00 GMT

It's been a while since I blogged. Last few months have been a transition period for me. I've quit my previous job a few weeks ago, and moved on with something new. So, I've been busy trying to understand the inner workings of BizTalk and come up with a good design for EDI. I am finding a few gotchas within BizTalk and VS2005. I'll surely be blogging about those soon.

Singleton - Traditional way vs. .NET way

Ahsan Alam — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 19:09:00 GMT

Whenever we want to implement a Singleton Pattern, we can always find examples by picking up a book on Design Patterns or by searching through the internet. Most of these implementations are very similar, and have been in use for some time. I have shown one such implementation that is traditionally being practiced in a multi-threaded environment.

Singleton the Traditional way:

public sealed class Singleton
{
private static volatile Singleton instance = null;
private static object syncRoot = new Object();

private Singleton() { } // Private constructor – cannot be instantiated

      public static Singleton Instance()
      {
            if (instance == null)  // Double check locking pattern
            {
                  lock (syncRoot)
                  {
                       if (instance == null)
                       {
                           instance = new Singleton();
                       }
                  }
            }
            return instance;
      }
}

Microsoft, on the other hand, has dramatically simplified the implementation of Singleton Pattern with enriched features in .NET. Please see below:

Singleton the .NET way:

public sealed class Singleton
{
      // Private constructor – cannot be instantiated
      private Singleton() { }

      // .NET will initialize static property only during first call
      // Framework guarantees thread safety on static type initialization
      // Readonly keyword prevents Instance from being
      // modified after initialization

public static readonly Singleton Instance = new Singleton();
}

I got one thing to say – “.Net Rocks”!!!!

Haven't blogged in a while

Ahsan Alam — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 01:40:00 GMT

It's been a while since I've blogged. I've just been so busy. I'm planning to rant about a few things soon.

Few Observation with Integrated Development in V.S. 2005

Ahsan Alam — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:10:00 GMT

Since the time Integrated Development became reliable in Visual Studio, it evolved into a necessity in application development. Coding today without Integrated Development especially where 2 or more developers are involved is almost unthinkable.

Have you heard of DDD?

Ahsan Alam — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 03:57:00 GMT

Many people have heard about TDD (Test Driven Development); but have you heard of DDD? It’s called Defect Driven Development. Where the heck did this terminology come from?

It all started at one of my recent clients. Some of us started wondering about the highly aggressive application development schedule set by the management. We are also wondering if we even have enough time to complete all our work during the development phase. A colleague and I started discussing that we might be able to complete our development with “minor” defects. Some of these defects might just be stubbed out methods with “not so well written code”. Consequently, when the defects are found during application/product testing, the developers will fix those “minor” defects. Hence we have an emergence of a new concept called DDD (Defect Driven Development). My colleague threw the term DDD while we were discussing; so, the credit goes to him. My recommendation to him is to write a book about it; he could make millions!!

Continuous Testing in an Agile Environment

Ahsan Alam — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:22:00 GMT

I went to a Forum on 10/4/2006. It was conducted by an organization called C-SPIN, and the presenter covered a topic about “Continuous Testing in an Agile Environment”. The presenter seems to have observed a tremendous success in her organization (Macrovision) by applying some type of Agile environment.