.Net
There really is only two ways to integrate a companies applications: Custom coding Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)Tools Custom Coding The default for any small or midsized organisation facing an integration project between large numbers of applications is to write the data transformation and mapping code from scratch using Java or .Net based languages. However, writing custom code may create problems like: Code reusability Visibility into structure of the integration transactions Scalability, ......
With Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 about to hit the streets I ask are you paying too much for your EAI solution? Every organisation in the world is forced to evaluate every £ spent. Have you looked at how much you spend on your EAI/Middleware Server/platform and associated services to deliver it? At Solidsoft we know how to make every £ count. By using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006/2009 combined with the best EAI architects and solution developers in the business we can help make those pounds count ......
Have a look at the following investigation by Sam Allen..... "The author developed a program to snapshot memory usage per process every 3 seconds on Windows. Using this he recorded 3 hours of memory usage for five different browsers under real-world usage scenarios: Safari 3.1, Firefox 3, Flock 1.2 (a browser based on Firefox 2), Opera 9.5, and Internet Explorer 8. A million data points indicate that Firefox 3 has a surprising advantage over the other browsers tested. These are real-world tests and ......
Microsoft is releasing on Wednesday a technology preview of its Volta Web developer toolset, which is intended to make it easier to build multitier Web applications, including applications useful in SaaS (software as a service) environments. With Volta, developers can use C#, Visual Basic, IronPython, or other .Net languages that utilize .Net libraries and tools, Microsoft said. But taking advantage of Volta requires the newly released Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 toolset because Volta will not work ......
At Teched 2007 in Barcelona, Spain S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division, announced that Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 will be released at the end of November. It's the first major update to Visual Studio, Microsoft's flagship integrated development environment (IDE), since 2005. Some of the key features in VS 2008 include: LINQ. Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is the most-anticipated new feature of Microsoft's next IDE. LINQ will make access to databases ......
RC1 is now available for download from all the usual places!
Thats the good news...
Bad news is that MS hints that Vista may be delayed in Europe because of all the issues with the EU :-)
Previously posted at blog.Solidsoft.com
To achieve cross-blogging the target blog must be Metablog API enabled. Its then a simple case of setting up the target URL in my case it would be: http://www.geekswithblogs.n... and then adding username and password. This is all done in the Ping & Cross-posting section of My Blog in Community Server. Previously posted at blog.Solidsoft.com ......
Having set up the company blog site the problm is do I move my old site across or do I maintain two sites?
We are using community server that seems to allow Cross-posting.In attempt to keep the 'old' blog running I intend to cross-post. This posting is the first attempted. If it works my next post will explain how!
Previously posted at blog.Solidsoft.com
More: BizTalk 2006 R2 - RFID Support The Microsoft RFID Infrastructure Services in BizTalk 2006 R2 provide device abstraction and manageability to RFID-based solutions. An integrated engine for rich data filtering, enrichment, and transformation allows for sophisticated applications for different automation scenarios. Application developers can also integrate with advance technologies such the as the Business Rules Engine, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows Communication Framework to create ......
Quote Threats and Countermeasures: Improve Your Web Application Security This guide gives you a solid foundation for designing, building, and configuring secure ASP.NET Web applications. Whether you have existing applications or are building new ones, this guide is for you. Minor Ad: Great DVD rental offer! ......
Amazon's Mechanical Turk Project In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen’s "Turk" was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet’s doors to ......
To quote Microsoft: The Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Community Technology Preview - Development Tools for WinFX® (CTP) provides developers with support for building WinFX applications using the final released version of Visual Studio 2005. This support includes XAML Intellisense support through schema extensions for the editor, project templates for the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code named “Avalon”) and the Windows Communication Foundation (formerly code named “Indigo”), ......
I will survive: 1. Hardware firewall. For small-office Wi-Fi networking, the most affordable secure firewall is the Linksys Wireless-G WRT54G router (left, about $60 USD street), which also offers four ports for wired Ethernet. If you wish to install third-party Linux firmware, get the WRT54GL ($70). To cover more than a few adjacent rooms, consider the Linksys WRT54GX ($160), which doubles the usual "g" range. Be sure to enable WPA or WPA2, either of which provide strong Wi-Fi security. The WRT54G ......
Walking on the moon: Developing a solid foundation for delivering transaction services Andy James, Chief Technology Officer, describes Solidsoft’s approach to delivering a common architecture for creating end-to-end business processes – the Solidsoft Solution Foundation http://www.valuefromitingov... ......
This is a great piece of work by one of my team mates. A must read…. The forthcoming release next year of Visual Studio Foundation Server will include two methodology templates for the next version of MSF (the Microsoft Solution Framework). These are MSF for Agile Software Development (MSF Agile) and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement (MSF4CMMI). Here is an amended version of a report he recently wrote. http://geekswithblogs.net/c... ......
I've been doing a lot of research lately around these two and come to some sort of thoughts about them. There seems to be a huge amount of confusion particularly that Workflow is BPEL and BPEL is Workflow - that’s just not true. For my part I think its best if I give you my definition of BPEL: What is BPEL BPEL standards for Business Process Execution Language. It is an XML standard for defining the composition of Web Services into new services (web services) In some quarters it is seen as one of ......
Well as we all know SQL 2005, Viz Studio 2005 are now released and BizTalk 2004 2006 is launched (sic). Go to the good old MS beta site and you can get the RTM compatible CTP download of BTS 2006. So is the wait worth it? Well most cetainly for both SQL 2005 and Viz Studio. BTS 2006 is a point release but still offers some goodies. SQL has now become a grown up ETL product and add some cute 'integration features'. Viz Studio has just built on itsd already excellent code base ......
Indigo and Avalon are dead long live
Indigo = Windows Communication Foundation
Avalon = Windows Presentation Foundation
Over the last 5 years I have been involved in a lot of different projects where Identity Management or IDM has become more and more important. Any work with local or natinal government now has this as a key element so I thought it might be time to blog a little on the topic... What is it? Simply put Identity management (ID management) is a broad administrative area that deals with identifying individuals in a system (such as a country, a network, or an enterprise) and controlling their access to ......
In the recesses of your computer, 20-30 invisible processes run silently in the background. Some hog system resources, turning your PC into a sluggish computer. Worse yet, other useless processes harbour spyware and Trojans - violating your privacy and giving hackers free reign on your computer. WWW.ProcessLibrary.com is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to know the exact purpose of every single process
Have a look at this it makes intresting reading.... To quote the article: "Discovery is one of the most important features required by all SOA based technologies. In the Web Services environments there are several technologies to provide discovery support like: WSIL, WS-Discovery and, one of the most popular, UDDI. UDDI is typically associated with Web Services; however its data model permits to represent almost any kind of information. Some technology providers uses UDDI to, for example, discover ......
The W3C have spent a considerable part of their last meeting discussing how to speed up XML - see http://techrepublic.com.com... The main protagonists seem to be going for a 'Binary' for of XML. This seems at odds with the purpose of a 'Markup' format. Futhrermore the stable door may being shut too late with various 'solutions' already in production. Looks like we may be back to multiple formats again. ......
Microsoft really has a great road map for the next 18 months nad then on to Longhorn...
We've got:
Visual Studio 2005
Team Services for above
SQL 2005
Indigo
BTS 2006
and a couple I can't metion yet!!!
So watch this space!
Having just attended the RFID PAC it would have been nice to have done a piece on what MS are doing - unfortunately NDA's prevent me. So have a look here:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1766050,00.asp
I will fill in more information as and when I can.
At last how to network together multiple VPC's - hope over to Simon Guest's site : http://blogs.msdn.com/smguest/archive/2005/02/10/370861.aspx
Mark Harrison of Microsoft UK posted:
George Tsiokos wrote to me about a service he put together and is offering for free (under the MIT Licence). You enter an RSS feed URL on his page and he'll generate a DWP file you can upload directly as a Web Part onto your SharePoint Web Part Page.
More : The Service
My previous blog gave a teaser to the concept of Microsoft and Open Source. This had more than an air of poetic license about it as what is happening is the Governments have realized that they are having to pay for the same bespoke work over and over again when really they should pay once and then only pay a small service charge for repeats of the same. In the UK this is particularly obvious around the NHS project where multiple Hospital trusts are paying for what is basically the same integration ......
Enterprise Library is the next generation of the patterns & practices Application Blocks.
Read here http://www.microsoft.com/resources/practices/comingsoon.mspx for more info
Is right to select a non-Micorosoft product simply because its not a 'Microsoft' product? In the UK in the public sector a product called LGOL-Net is being stalked as a BizTalk 2004 replacemnet as it can do everything BizTalk 2004 can. Furthermore its also being billed as free. Now I'm all for open source and I'm all for competion but in this case the challenge is based on two lies. Firstly LGOL does not offer half the features of BizTalk and secondly the support and TCO for the product are far from ......
New XML Tools in Visual Studio 2005 (by Ken Levy) To make sure subscribers of the VS Data team blog don't miss it, I just made a detailed entry in my blog. I copied here here so those who subscribe to this blog don't miss it. The VS Data team in the Visual Studio group sponsors the XML tools being created by the WebData team in the SQL Server group. We are seeking feedback on the features and experiences with the XML tools in beta 1 of Visual Studio 2005, please send us feedback. There is a new An ......
Welcome to the .NET Browser, brought to you by Code Architects and the 2TheMax Team. Use this browser to explore all the assemblies, namespaces, types, and members in version 1.1 and 2.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework; quickly determine which items have been added, removed, or modified from previous version; explore the .NET class library with search criteria that more flexible than those offered by the Visual Studio .NET object browser; learn more about each item by hovering the mouse on it. Notice ......
Passing large amount of data through web services can become a huge bottle-neck in WAN application architecture (i.e., server is on the web), and in any case a real load on the network traffic. This is one solution for downsizing the network costs. Nice topic by DaberElay read it at http://www.codeproject.com/... ......
This is a very interesting article @ THeSeverSide.Net.
Daniel Cazzulino compares the features and functionality of EIF (Enterprise Instrumentation Framework) to that of the Open Source port of log4j called log4net. It’s a close fight but log4net wins out based on its simplicity and extensibility.
http://www.theserverside.net/news/thread.tss?thread_id=27317
Behold WSE 2.0: Removing Another Layer of WS-Pain Reporting Strictly for Developers: Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services 10 Ways to Make Your Code More Testable ......
My muse for the week is simple...now BizTalk 2004 has come of age (16 not yet 21) and the major growing pains are over we now have a situation where the product is not just about EAI and B2B. We have a set of tools that facilitate the rapid deployment of Business process using .Net technologies. So what do I mean by that? Well lets start using BizTalk 2004 in application solutions. Orchestration has come of age, the plumbing issue has been cracked and we now have a stonking Rules Engine. This means ......
Interesting stuff on pulling data from Lotus Notes:
Gary Devendorf Blog
An interesting couple of articles around auto-code generation:
Auto Stored Proc Generation
The Microsoft Enterprise Instrumentation framework (EIF) enables applications built on the .NET Framework to be instrumented for manageability in a production environment. This framework provides an extensible event schema and unified API which leverages existing eventing, logging and tracing mechanisms built into Windows, including WMI, the Windows Event Log, and Windows Event Tracing. This framework plays a key part in a number of the Microsoft application blocks particulary the Exception block. ......
OK so its over to the 'Dark Side' web site for a rather interesting offering..... The .NET Framework Data Provider for DB2 Universal Database® (UDB) for iSeries in the iSeries Access for Windows product The iSeries Access for Windows beta includes a new .NET Framework Data Provider for DB2 Universal Database® (UDB) for iSeries in the iSeries Access for Windows product. There are many other enhancements in iSeries Navigator; in the data access components, like OLE DB, ODBC, Data Transfer; ......
An unusual use of RSS - Event log monitoring!!!
See here : Event Logs from RSS