Connected Systems Chilled Out Blog

Windows Azure Platform

How to Sort Azure Table Store results Chronologically

How to upload your Excel and CSV data to the Cloud - Blob Storage

SQL Azure Database

Notification and Job Scheduling Service for SQL Azure

SQL Azure Tutorials – Blog

SQL Azure Tutorials - Helping you with Cloud Databases

How to build a SQL Server Reporting Services report with SQL Azure?

Middleware in the cloud

SAP meet Azure Service Bus – EAI/EDI December 2011 CTP

Azure Service Bus EAI/EDI December 2011 CTP – New Mapper

Introduction to the Azure Service Bus EAI/EDI December 2011 CTP

Tell Us Once (TUO) is the award-winning, cross-government programme that lets people inform central government and local authorities just once of a birth or death. By March 2012 it will be in service in over 95% of councils in England, Scotland and Wales.

It has provided a permanent solution to the long-standing and frustrating issue of people having to notify the government multiple times. Several years ago, research showed that people had to make up to 44 contacts when reporting a death to government bodies and their local authority.

The TUO service is offered as a face-to-face interview by the local authority or by telephone to a dedicated telephony service run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). March 2012 a TUO online service will be offered via the Directgov website.

This programme is supported by innovative software developed by Solidsoft on the Microsoft stack providing a national system for the citizen coupled with cross government data distribution.

Solidsoft first became involved in the project over 4 years ago when asked to support the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (now Cabinet Office) in providing architectural guidance to a small team considering how to make it easier for the citizen to report changes of circumstance to government. This team was part of the newly formed Tell Us Once initiative lead by Lyn MacDonald.

A prototype and a high successful  pilot later the green light was finally given to deliver the national system with the first phase going life September 2011. Of course this was not without a quite bumpy path not least when a change of government caused the freezing of all projects including Tell Us Once for a number months shortly after development had started in earnest!

Today over 300 councils are providing the service with over 2,500 customer interactions taking place each day! By April 2012 this will have risen to over 400 councils and over 3,500 transactions taking place each day.

The project is one of the first cross government, citizen facing successes for a long time. It was made possible by the partnership of DWP, the stack holders (councils and government departments), AtoS and Solidsoft.

Furthermore it is an exemplar of how SME’s like Solidsoft can work to deliver solutions across government with the help of large SI’s such as AtoS.

Over the coming months we will be looking at how this was achieved and where it should go next.

This morning the director of the Tell Us Once project, Lyn McDonald appeared on BBC Breakfast television to talk about the success that the launch of Tell Us Once is bringing to both central government and local government . Furthermore she also expressed the benefit that it is providing to the citizen. Through the rest of the morning the news around TUO is being presented by Lyn and Matt Briggs across radio and TV.

Tell Us Once is the major project Solidsoft have been developing on behalf of DWP.

Tell Us Once, a new service which takes on the responsibility from loved ones of notifying relevant government departments and services of a family bereavement and for a birth. The optional and free facility will be offered by council registrars to family members at the end of a death registration appointment or birth registration process.

The Tell Us Once Service will the share relevant details with a number of central and local government organisations, giving the bereaved or new parents a much simpler way of reporting a change to their family circumstances.

By March 2012 over 95% of councils will be online with TUO providing either bereavement, birth or both to their citizens.

Solidsoft have been involved with the project for over 4 years and have not only delivered the latest release but also provided a pilot project that ran for over 2 years in 44 councils prior to the latest full release.

TUO is one of the great successes in Government IT delivery and in the future will branch out to support both the  private sector and more changes of circumstance such as Change of Address.

Windows Azure Platform

How to Sort Azure Table Store results Chronologically

How to upload your Excel and CSV data to the Cloud - Blob Storage

SQL Azure Database

Notification and Job Scheduling Service for SQL Azure

SQL Azure Tutorials – Blog

To quote Scott Hanselman….

Visual Studio 2010 is really extensible and that's allowed many folks on the team to try out new features for Web Development without having to rebuild Visual Studio itself. One of those "playground" extensions is called "Web Essentials" by Mads Kristensen. Mads handles HTML5 and CSS3 tools for our team. You might remember Mads from when we released the Web Standards Update a few months back.

Get it here: Scott Nanselman blog...

To quote Microsoft:

Businesses do not need to pay a premium for a world-class CRM solution. Today, you can get a great solution that meets your specific business needs – and save a tremendous amount of money in the process.

Until March 31, 2012, Microsoft will send qualified organizations USD $150 for each Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Subscription license. Buy 50 seats, get USD $7,500. Buy 500 seats, get USD $75,000.1

This money could be used any way you like. For example, the money can be used to accelerate your implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Whatever the case, Microsoft will send you money to help you get started fast.

In addition to this great offer, all organizations can also license Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for only USD $44/user/month! Together, the combination of a great price and offer represent a great opportunity to get started with one of the best CRM solutions in the industry.

More information can be found here or from the award winning company Solidsoft at enquiries@solidsoft.com

Well simply put - flat out on a big Government IT project. This is due to go live next month and I'll be writing a number of pieces here on it.

Built on BizTalk, WCF, Windows Foundation, MVC, Entity framework and App Fabric....

Twitter’s welsh head of development - Ebrill Ffola annouced today the setting up of a new project.

The idea is based on Twitter but restricted to humour only. “140 characters will give us some great one liners’ Ebrill announced in his launch speech. The site of course will be called Titter and users are expected to provide Titters. A spokesman for Ken Dodd has informed us that he has already signed up for the new service.

As there are a number of different unit types there are a number of links provided here:

If you wish to upgrade the Amstrad HD Box, please use this guide. How to upgrade the Hard Drive of your Amstrad HD box

If you wish to upgrade the Thomson HD Box, please use this guide. How to upgrade the Hard Drive in your Thomson HD Box.

If you wish to upgrade the Pace HD Box, please use this guide. How to upgrade the Hard Drive in your Pace HD Box

If you wish to upgrade the Samsung HD Box, please use this guide. How to upgrade the Hard Drive in your Samsung HD Box

I recommend you use a Hitachi DeskStar 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache

Today my PS3 died. The horrible ‘red flasher’ arrived. Tried the old change and reseat hard drive but feel it’s terminal!

So tomorrow I’ll contact Sony and get the full SP.

This October in the UK the showing of Ken Follet’s Mini series based on his book – Pillars of Earth will be shown. IMDB link here..

The miniseries took about a year to produce, at a cost of $40 million U.S. The project was funded by the German production company, Tandem Communications, with Muse Entertainment and Scott Free Productions. It was filmed in Austria and Hungary, from 2009. The final aerial shot is of modern day Salisbury with the cathedral altered by computer-generated imagery.

The Pillars of the Earth is set against a backdrop of war, religious strife and power struggles which tears lives and families apart. In that time, there rises a magnificent Cathedral in Kingsbridge. Against the backdrop, love-stories entwine: Tom, the master builder, Aliena, the noblewoman, the sadistic Lord William, Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge, Jack, the artist in stone work and Ellen, the woman from the forest who casts a curse and most significantly the treachery of the Catholic Bishop Waleran.  At once, this is a sensuous and enduring love story and an epic that shines with the fierce spirit of a passionate age in places darkened with a thread of incest. Follett masterfully weaves these stories through political turmoil of 12th century England, creating a relevant and viable world for today's audience and for generations to come.

Relatively close to the book and excellently adapted for TV – where changed it has improved or strengthened the plot.

The cast is excellent including Ian McShane, Matthew Macfadyen, Clive Wood and Donald Sutherland.

A Five star of 5 star rating….

What is BPOS?
BPOS is a suite of enterprise-class software that is hosted by Microsoft and delivered as a subscription service. BPOS includes:

Exchange Online, including Exchange Hosted Services, which are attached services that encompass the archiving, encryption, continuity and filtering of data

SharePoint Online for intranets and document sharing

Office Communications Online for real-time communication and presence (instant messaging and related capabilities)

Office Live Meeting for interactive Web conferencing

Let Solidsoft Help
Solidsoft is a Microsoft Online Services Partner. We can advise you on the right solution for your business, help build your business case and implement your solution so that you are able to take advantage of Microsoft’s online services, giving your business the edge. To take advantage of a 30 day no-obligation trial of BPOS please click on the image to the left.
If you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us either by using our Contact Us page or in person by phoning 01256 375 700. We’re here to help.

For more info go to : Solidsoft can help!

This is a problem discovered by my colleague  Dave Robinson at Solidsoft:

This is more something to be aware of. I would not necessarily say it was a bug but it’s interesting none the less. We have a map which wants to create an output based on

- One field existing AND

- One field NOT existing

Based on the screen shot below, you can see the “&” functoid forms the creation of the ContactPhones. Behind the scenes the creation of the ContactPhones is done via a for loop “<xsl:for-each select="InputMessagePart_1/Details/Contacts">”

For this instance our output record was created successfully

In the second case where our output was not created, I was scratching my head for a few moments. Basically the map was the same but the order of the inputs into the “&” functoid is the other way round, i.e. the NOT was first. In this case the creation of the ContactPhones is done via the following for loop “<xsl:for-each select="InputMessagePart_0/ns0:FWTOrganisation/ContactPhones">”. In this case, this record does not exist so our output is never going to be created.

So if you are doing something like this, you need to ensure that the first input into the “&” is the field which you want to exist. Otherwise you will not get the expected output.

So far this has proved fun to use and also very, very frustrating!! I would very much like the addition of intellisense, support in Visual Studio and Expression!!

First help just about completed….

Nationwide, the world’s largest building society realised the benefits of Faster Payments with the help of Microsoft Services and interestingly enough a team of BizTalk experts from Solidsoft.

For a number of years Solidsoft has provided senior software consultants expert in Microsoft  BizTalk server and many other Microsoft products support of Microsoft Service led developments. The Nationwide project has proved no different with Solidsoft providing a team of 6 to support the successful development  of the Faster Payments system.

The case study can be viewed here: http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/Nationwide-runs-highperforming-FPS/5236/Default.aspx

Liverpool striker Fernando Torres' surname was the most popular to feature on replica Premier League shirts printed worldwide last season.

It is the second successive season the Spaniard has been top, while Anfield team-mate Steven Gerrard was second in the top 10 list compiled by SportingiD.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8876682.stm

Extensions are a great way for you to add new features to Safari 5.0.1. Built by developers, Safari Extensions use the latest HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript web technologies. And they’re digitally signed and sandboxed for improved security. You can install extensions with one click — no need to restart Safari.

http://extensions.apple.com/#productivity

Sir David Varney headed a review into Transformational Government in 2006 . Among its recommendations was one particular one that had been driven by the amount of contact points a citizen had to make with government for a Change of Life event such as birth and death.

It gave one example of where a citizen had to make 44 separate contacts to government departments following the premature death of her husband.  At this emotional time, this kind of experience adds an unnecessary burden on the customer which is rightly seen as unacceptable.  The report's recommendations included developing a change of circumstances service starting with bereavement, birth and change of address by 2010, so that citizens didn't have to notify multiple public services. The Tell Us Once programme was setup shortly afterwards to investigate how to progress this recommendation.

‘Tell us Once’ is a major programme, being led by DWP on behalf Government as a whole, to transform the way in which people can tell Government (central and local) about changes to their circumstances. At its heart –as it says on the tin –is the proposition that people should only have to tell us things –like a birth or death –once and we will make sure that information reaches all the Government Departments and Agencies that need to know. That sounds an utterly obvious thing to do –and it is –but making it a reality is very challenging.” 

Sir Leigh Lewis, Permanent Secretary Department for Work and Pensions

Solidsoft have been involved with this project almost since the start so much so the work delivered in support of the Tell Us Once pilot has been recognised by Microsoft.  On the 23rd June it was announced Solidsoft had been selected as a finalist for the Microsoft Partner Awards in the Custom Development Solutions, Application Infrastructure Development Partner of the Year award category.

“It’s a pleasure and a privilege to receive this nomination, particularly in such a highly competitive field. The Solidsoft Tell Us Once Team has created a great Pathfinder Application for the United Kingdom, which both saves the taxpayer money and makes it easier for citizens to interact with their Government. Not only is the application a success in the eyes of Microsoft, the customer feedback on their experience has been outstanding. We look forward to continuing to deliver innovative solutions on the Microsoft Application Platform to both public and private sector customers.”

Solidsoft – www.solidsoft.com

Moving forward the Solidsoft Tell Us Once development team is delivering the full national solution to meet the Varney desire of having Tell Us Once in place for 2010.

This blog will track the progress of a Government IT project that delivers tangible results for the citizen.

An interesting ‘rant’ by my fellow Solidsoft buddy Russell Smith:

Thought you chaps would be interested in this after hearing my rantings yesterday about the WCF-SQL adapter and notification issues.

I got to the bottom of the issue, it wasn’t the adapter in the end it was the database and not the adapter at all.  This was a database supplied by PICT that was restored onto my image.  Apparently in order for the notification mechanism to work there are some strict requirements on the database SET options and in the select queries that can be used.  I finally found a decent article at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181122.aspx

A quick summary is that the DB must have the following options set:

• ANSI_NULLS ON
• ANSI_PADDING ON
• ANSI_WARNINGS ON
• CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL ON
• QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
• NUMERIC_ROUNDABORT OFF
• ARITHABORT ON

And the select statement must conform to:

• The projected columns in the SELECT statement must be explicitly stated, and table names must be qualified with two-part names. Notice that this means that all tables referenced in the statement must be in the same database.
• The statement may not use the asterisk (*) or table_name.* syntax to specify columns.
• The statement may not use unnamed columns or duplicate column names.
• The statement must reference a base table.
• The statement must not reference tables with computed columns.
• The projected columns in the SELECT statement may not contain aggregate expressions unless the statement uses a GROUP BY expression. When a GROUP BY expression is provided, the select list may contain the aggregate functions COUNT_BIG() or SUM(). However, SUM() may not be specified for a nullable column. The statement may not specify HAVING, CUBE, or ROLLUP.
• A projected column in the SELECT statement that is used as a simple expression must not appear more than once.
• The statement must not include PIVOT or UNPIVOT operators.
• The statement must not include the UNION, INTERSECT, or EXCEPT operators.
• The statement must not reference a view.
• The statement must not contain any of the following: DISTINCT, COMPUTE or COMPUTE BY, or INTO.
• The statement must not reference server global variables (@@variable_name).
• The statement must not reference derived tables, temporary tables, or table variables.
• The statement must not reference tables or views from other databases or servers.
• The statement must not contain subqueries, outer joins, or self-joins.
• The statement must not reference the large object types: text, ntext, and image.
• The statement must not use the CONTAINS or FREETEXT full-text predicates.
• The statement must not use rowset functions, including OPENROWSET and OPENQUERY.
• The statement must not use any of the following aggregate functions: AVG, COUNT(*), MAX, MIN, STDEV, STDEVP, VAR, or VARP.
• The statement must not use any nondeterministic functions, including ranking and windowing functions.
• The statement must not contain user-defined aggregates.
• The statement must not reference system tables or views, including catalog views and dynamic management views.
• The statement must not include FOR BROWSE information.
• The statement must not reference a queue.
• The statement must not contain conditional statements that cannot change and cannot return results (for example, WHERE 1=0).
• The statement can not specify READPAST locking hint.
• The statement must not reference any Service Broker QUEUE.
• The statement must not reference synonyms.
• The statement must not have comparison or expression based on double/real data types.
• The statement must not use the TOP expression.

I think however the main reason this is likely to be a no go in a production environment is the following permissions and alter statements also have to be run:

ALTER DATABASE [Biztalk_saafmdb] SET NEW_BROKER with rollback immediate

ALTER DATABASE [Biztalk_saafmdb] SET ENABLE_BROKER

CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'password1#'

select is_broker_enabled from sys.databases where name = 'Biztalk_saafmdb'

use Biztalk_saafmdb

GRANT CREATE PROCEDURE TO [BTS2009-RUSSELL\BizTalk Application Users]

GRANT CREATE QUEUE TO [BTS2009-RUSSELL\BizTalk Application Users]

GRANT CREATE SERVICE TO [BTS2009-RUSSELL\BizTalk Application Users]

GRANT SUBSCRIBE QUERY NOTIFICATIONS TO [BTS2009-RUSSELL\BizTalk Application Users]

GRANT SELECT ON OBJECT::Biztalk_saafmdb.dbo.bts_MembersRetired TO [BTS2009-RUSSELL\BizTalk Application Users]

GRANT RECEIVE ON QueryNotificationErrorsQueue TO [BTS2009-RUSSELL\BizTalk Application Users]

And yes these permissions do need to be maintained at run time, there is a generated stored procedure that gets created on various events, not got to the bottom of this completely but it appears to be when the receive location is started and stopped.