In my opinion Internet Explorer, which is one of the worst product from Microsoft! (Sorry, no offense! its just my opinion and I guess most others feel the same who thinks browser should be more innovative in making us more productive)

How much time it takes to load the about:blank page. why Ctrl+E doesn't go to search box? sick of useless extensions/accelerators, why cant i do paste and go in address bar? why can’t i drag a tab out of tab group? does it ever pass ACID3 test ?

Does it ever pass ACID test? why does anyone look into other browsers on windows (ex: Firefox, chrome, safari), which are claimed faster than IE?!

I feel, Microsoft has a great responsibility in making IE better before they claim a part of cloud platform, where future is supposed to be!

With internet being the main platform, browser plays a vital role in rendering the content, easy to view, faster to be more productive!

Google, Firefox and even Mac made a step ahead and support the rich functionalities, extensions and moved step ahead in supporting the standards like HTML 5.0 (to some extend i heard this is supported) and they are getting creative in utilizing the cloud...

Google wave, Mozilla labs are some of the innovative things to list here where browser being main platform they are enabling the cloud…(I am not listing each and everything here)

I think its time for Microsoft to sit tight and look into future of IE, where they THINK they are doing good job by providing all live functionalities but the reality is not! I would say get more innovative and NEW!

Things I would like to see

1) FASTER means FASTER

2) THINNER means THINNER (less RAM footprint)

3) INNOVATIVE (ex: web collaboration (like Google wave), add-ons (like firefox, opera)…

I wish IE has something better than others, where others could get creative and build a healthy competition

anyways, these are just random thoughts…I am hopeful that in future I use IE for browsing even for non-Microsoft sites (currently I use only for SharePoint related sites)

And before reaching the cloud, I wish Microsoft gets ready with powerful wings (IE)!

Its been quite long time I haven't wrote much due to lot of travelling and non-core area related work (non connected systems, SOA & BPM work).

Now, I am back and the good news is I will be drinking, eating and breathing some of the buzzwords..(because of the solutions I am concentrating and architecture of current project I am in)

So, Some Buzzwords I am really gonna look/work and more deep dive areas are mentioned below…

1) SOA – Service Oriented Architecture, The most controversial Architecture name in current IT world

2) ESB – Enterprise Service Bus, One of the SOA Infrastructure Component, thinking of exploring more from Microsoft technology stack

3) BPM – Business Process Modeling, Love to see something really in BIG action…

4) EDA – Event Driven Architecture, considered to be the next generation of SOA

5) CEP – Complex Event Processing

6) Oslo – Code Name for Modeling platform from Microsoft

7) Azure – The BLUE cloud coming from Microsoft

8) Dublin – Code Name for the Forthcoming Application Server from Microsoft for WF and WCF Services hosting

9) Governance – Widely used across different technology stack like MDM, SOA etc..

10) MDM – Master Data Management, this is also one more BIG Buzz word like SOA and criticized across the industry

11) Web 2.0/RIA and beyond – Next Generation Internet/Rich Internet Applications, I started my career as a UI guy and then shifted more towards middleware. I would like to see my footprints future. so this still being one of my favorite area all time!

12) and finally SharePoint 2010 is also on my list :) (Google Wave in this list too…)

13) Android/iPhone platform – my techie gadgets are based on these two. (myTouch and iTouch).  (ChromeOS and open source are in the parking lot)

14) A.R.Rahman – my favorite music composer who just got into Hollywood and got 2 Oscars for his debut Hollywood flick (Slumdog Millionaire). I am looking forward for more of these in future..(both Oscars and compositions )

I am sure there are many more keywords/buzzwords like REST, SOAP, BI, SOI, SLAs …and hell..from the above 13 elements and beyond..

Currently thinking of stopping with this Buzz now…!

OK, now you might think of a great phrase (At least I could think of…) “Jack of all trades is master of none!”

and of course, my intensions are also not to master everything from the above list, but it is interesting to see these buzz words coming in my current projects and I really like to see them in action.

So, I am also looking forward to see some thoughts from my side through next couple of years and beyond (Don't know what BUZZ I will hear next!, fed-up with lot of stuff already :))

Recently I am working little bit more on SSRS.

Last week, we migrated from SSRS 2005 to SSRS 2008. The migration was smooth except few gotchas in Line charts.

The way we handle empty points (null values) is improved. for more information, look at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc281301.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb934424.aspx

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Coming to some tips regarding formatting date time, text etc.

1) How do you persist the date format when you export the report to Excel?

In earlier version of SSRS, when we need DateTime format to be international standard dd-MMM-yy, we used convert the datetime to varchar in the query. convert(varchar,mydate,106) which gives dd MMM yy. But when you export the generated report to excel, you can’t play with sorting of that particular date column, as it exports as a string!

SSRS 2008, provides you the flexibility of identifying the type within the report and when you export it will persist the format.

Here is the screenshot where you mention the format, without converting anything the queries…

If you do like that, when you export the report to Excel, it will retain the date format and Excel treats it as a date. If you do string operations in Report, when you export to Excel, it doesn’t treat as a date.

2) How do we custom format text in SSRS reports?

Well, SSRS uses VB syntax to format anything inside the expressions. So, we have to use VB functions to format text.

One good function available in SSRS is Replace(). you can find a character and replace it with what you want.

for example, if you want to replace space with - (hyphen) , how do you do that in SSRS?

Replace(Fields.myValue, Chr(32),Chr(45))

Here is the wiki of list of VB characters:http://www.gtwiki.org/mwiki/index.php?title=VB_Chr_Values

Are you looking for meaning to smooth, clean, lightweight installation of a software? In recent days Oslo May CTP is one of them!

It’s cleaner than the cleanest. I just downloaded it and installed on my vista business machine.

Now you can customize the installation.

The tools (iPad and Quadrant (Yes! Quadrant is available to play now)) are more self-contained and intuitive! I am liking it and going to explore it for next couple of months!

Here are the installation screens…which is much self explanatory!

When I opened, quadrant (below 2 screen shots) I got the runtime error, which you could see behind Database Session Table! This happened because, it didn’t recognize my instance name. I had to manually edit DatabaseSessions and it worked like champ. It’s clearly a way to play with your MODELS!!!

In the next screenshot you can observe that!

Welcome to the Modeling world!

That's it, the modeling journey begins NOW!

If you have created InfoPath forms for simple CRUD operations with SQL Server, have you ever wondered how to refresh the secondary data source which refresh on Submit? InfoPath form provides an action called “Refresh”, but for that you need to use an extra button in the form. The user has to click the Refresh button every time whenever they submit the form, which is not that intuitive, right?!

So, what is the alternative? How do you refresh the secondary data source, which loads the latest values which you just inserted using “Submit”? Here is a simple trick for that.

Instead of using the Database directly, go with the Rules. Here is the screenshot of submit button properties and submit options.

Now, your 1st rule is to submit the data using the main data source.

The second rule should be “Query using a data connection” action, and select the secondary data source for that action.

That’s it! you are done refreshing the secondary data source.

I just gave the numbering for the order of setting windows. yes, you need to go that deep to find that refresh guy!

I found 4 BizTalk 2009 Virtual Labs. It seems more on way (because, the virtual labs cover only the very basics of BizTalk solution).

ESB 2.0, UDDI, new B2B capabilities, Enhanced BAM capabilities are yet to come I guess.

For now, here are the 4 virtual labs

MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009 Building your first BizTalk Solution

MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009 Processing Flat Files

MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009 Working with Maps

MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009 Working with Schemas

If you haven’t installed the BizTalk 2009 RTM yet, this is good opportunity to take a first look in these virtual labs.

Atleast for beginners, these 4 labs are enough to get started with BizTalk and understand how it works in the messaging world.

Problem:

Recently, when I was trying to run an InfoPath form (.xsn file) as different user from a client vista machine, which doesn't have the SQL server database access which the InfoPath form needs.

The problem is more specific to InfoPath (as it allows only two types of authentication to SQL Server through InfoPath (NT and SQL User).So when you design InfoPath form to use NT access which is not a SQL User, it must run InfoPath natively as the NT user who have access rights on SQL User. But if you design InfoPath form to use a SQL User account, any NT user can access the SQL Server using the InfoPath.

But this solution is generic for any file (not just .exe or xsn file).

First, here is the screenshot when you try to access without using run as but enter the required user credentials using InfoPath.

so, when you use the checkbox, it takes the credentials of logged user(which will be YOU), where you/customer may not have access on the database directly.

When we don't use the checkbox, it will become a SQL authentication. If the credentials you are entering is not a SQL user on the database.it won’t authenticate.

Solutions:

So, what are the alternatives?

1) Login to the machine as the same NT user who have access

2) Use “runas” feature, which is not straight forward.

Now, I will talk about the 2nd solution which I mentioned.

Download ShellRunAs exe file from sysinternals site.

here is the commandline to open the file. You give the path of client application which opens that file type (in my case I MUST mention the path of InfoPath exe. Without that it wont work. for ex: if you are opening notepad, you must mention the notepad in the command line argument)

Then it will prompt you to enter credentials using which you will get NT user access to the Database.

so, this kind of things can be applied to any client applications, which needs actual NT authentication without switching users on your vista machine.

HTH

Look at what you get for FREE when you install Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) 2.0 Beta. There is so much you can do with these tools.

Sometimes, its hard to find these packaged items on the web/msdn which enables you to ramp up/develop rich internet web applications. For example, how many times you rambled for IIS setup when you don't have I386 folder unavailable/OS DVD is not available!

The good thing is, the installer keeps all softwares up-to date and it takes care of order of installing these softwares/tools.

Sounds interesting?! wanted these softwares for building a PoC for your customer, what are you waiting for?!

What’s bad: restarting the machine after each installation!

Consider you have a SQL Server Table with some multiline text data. And that data contains carriage return in it.

Now, if you want to display that data with carriage return in SSRS 2005 textbox, there is no direct way to display it.

Because SSRS 2005 uses VB engine to render the data, where it doesn’t understand line feed-->CHR(10) or Carriage Return -->CHR(13) characters.

So, what is the alternative?

Well, simple we need to use the Replace() function available and replace the specific characters with VbCrLf

ex:

=Replace(First(Fields!YourField.Value, "DataSource"),CHR(10),VbCrLf) –>This worked for me.

or

=Replace(First(Fields!YourField.Value, "DataSource"),CHR(13),VbCrLf)

In my case, The user was entering the data into SQL Server Database from an InfoPath form and wanted the carriage return to be persisted in the report. And in this case, CHR(10) worked instead of CHR(13).

Good to see SSRS 2008 added lot of rich text functionality, where you don't have to deal with these kind of silly things..,

Happy Reporting!

If you ever dream of attending SOA conference 2009, which happened in Seattle this January, now you should feel lucky!

More than 30 videos/Presentations are online on Windows live spaces. Check them out @ http://soaconference2009.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

Key things to observe are..

1. · BizTalk 2009
2. · ESB Guidance 2.0
3. · Oslo, Dublin and Cloud platform
4. · Some good SOA scenarios/case studies and best practices (patterns & practices) using Microsoft Application platform (Please try to adopt these if you gone through similar business cases)

The conference is basically divided into 3 tracks and you can find the slide decks here…