Microsoft Articles

US Markets rise on job data

2007-10-06T21:47:00.000-05:00

The Dow and the S&P 500 surged to all-time highs on Friday after a solid employment report rekindled optimism about the US economy and corporate profits.

The economy added more jobs in September than economists had expected, while an earlier estimate of job losses in August was revised to a gain, quashing fears of recession.

Friday's record run-up cemented the market's recovery from a late summer sell-off when a credit squeeze and mounting housing market losses drove investors away from equities.

Shares of economic bellwethers, led by Caterpillar Inc, were the Dow's biggest advancers, along with the stocks of financial services companies, such as credit card issuer American Express Co and Citigroup Inc.

Technology and consumer-oriented issues also showed strength.

"From the jobs numbers that we got today, we saw that most of the economy is actually doing a lot better than people thought it was doing," said Cleveland Rueckert, market analyst at Birinyi Associates Inc, in Stamford, Connecticut.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 91.70 points, or 0.66 percent, to end at 14,066.01. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index jumped 14.75 points, or 0.96 percent, to 1,557.59 -- a record close.

The Nasdaq Composite Index finished up 46.75 points, or 1.71 percent, at 2,780.32.

During the session, the Dow reached an intraday record high of 14,124.54 and the S&P 500 hit an all-time high of 1,561.91. The Nasdaq climbed to 2,784.93, its highest level since January 2001.

On Monday, the Dow achieved its 33rd record close for 2007 by finishing at 14,087.55.

For the week, the Dow gained 1.23 percent, the S&P 500 rose 2.02 percent and the Nasdaq climbed 2.9 percent, marking the index's best weekly climb since March.

Investors also snapped up small-cap stocks, driving the Russell 2000 Index to its biggest weekly percentage gain since July 2006. The Russell 2000 shot up 1.89 percent, or 15.71 points, to end at 844.86.

On a sectoral basis, financials were the week's biggest winner, with the S&P financial index finishing up 1.2 percent. On a weekly basis, the index had its best weekly advance since March 2003 as investors bet that the worst effects of the credit market turmoil are behind Wall Street.

Transport was another stellar performer, with the Dow Jones transport average finishing up 3.3 percent, its biggest advance since Sept. 18, when the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates.

Technology also shone, powered by gains in shares of BlackBerry hand-held device maker Research In Motion Ltd, a day after it posted quarterly results that beat expectations. The stock, which was the Nasdaq's biggest gainer and hit an all-time high during the session, ended up 12.8 percent at $113.37.

Google Inc was another notable gainer after Bear Stearns set a 2008 price target of $700 on the Web search leader's stock. Google finished up 2.6 percent at $594.05.

Among industrials, shares of heavy equipment maker Caterpillar ended up 2.2 percent at $80.33 on the New York Stock Exchange, while shares of 3M, the maker of Post-it notes and other products, gained 1.7 percent to $95.85.

Shares of aluminum company Alcoa Inc, another economic bellwether, climbed 3 percent to $38.79.

Office Open XML Developer Resources

2007-08-24T00:30:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Tech Ed 2007, some of the discussions I had with ISVs revolved around Office Open XML and the current activity with the ISO standardisation process. There were basically two types of things ISVs wanted to know. The first was about the ISO standardisation process itself, why it matters, how it affects ISVs and how Office Open XML compares to existing document standards. The second common topic of discussion was around development resources and how to actually work with the Office Open XML formats. By the way, if you haven't seen the Ecma Office Open XML standard (Ecma-376) it is available on the Ecma website.

Some good information to summarise the first category of discussion is available over at Sean McBreen's blog. Sean is the Director of the group that looks after ISVs in New Zealand and has done a good job of answering some of the popular misconceptions around the Ecma Office Open XML standard; in particular around Intellectual Property Rights and why we need multiple standards. Rather than posting all the information I am going to link to the relevant posts on Sean's blog. I recommend you read them to help you understand the current interest and activity around the ISO standardisation of Office Open XML.

The post titled IPR on Ecma Office Open XML explains the three options an implementer of the standard can select from to use with their implementation of the Office Open XML format.

The post titled My top 4 questions on Ecma Office Open XML and simple answers answers the questions we hear asked most commonly.

Another thing to make clear is that Office Open XML is already a standard, an Ecma standard known as Ecma-376. All the discussion at the moment is around whether it should be an ISO standard as well. One side of the debate is of the opinion is that there is already an ISO standard document format (ODF) and we don't need another one. My top 4 questions on Ecma Office Open XML and simple answers and Why have another document standard? provide our view on why it is important to have multiple standards.

The other popular misconception is that the Office Open XML format is a Microsoft only format. While true that the initial work was done by Microsoft, the technology was first submitted to Ecma in late 2005 and since then has been through significant change based on the recommendations of the Ecma Technical Committee (which includes representatives from Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, Toshiba, and the United States Library of Congress). Actually, I noticed recently that Apple's latest version of iWork '08 mentions as one of the features that it can import Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents that use the OOXML format.

For the second category of discussion, the meat and potatoes of how to use the Office Open XML formats I can recommend the following resources.

The OpenXMLDeveloper.org web site is a great place to start:

Earlier in 2007 a series of Open XML developer workshops were run in 30 countries. The content of the workshop is available on line, including all the presentations, samples, and lab manuals. This is a great way to get up to speed fast on using Open XML formats.

There is a book called "Open XML Explained" available for download. The sample documents shown in the book are available here. The author of the book, Wouter Van Vugt, is a software development trainer/consultant who specializes in the Open XML file formats. He participates in the forums here on OpenXMLDeveloper.org, and has a blog where he covers Open XML and other .NET development topics.

There are also all sorts of interesting articles about working with Open XML in the Library section of the OpenXMLDeveloper.org website.

On MSDN there is the XML in Office Developer Portal which contains information about using Open XML and includes a link to a preview of the SDK for Open XML Formats. The SDK provides strongly-typed part classes to manipulate Open XML documents. There is also an MSDN Forum called the Microsoft SDK for Open XML Formats where you can get assistance with the SDK.

There are a bunch of videos on Channel 9 about using Open XML including this one about how MindJet (an ISV in the U.S.) are using Open XML in their latest version of MindManager Pro.

I know a number of New Zealand ISVs are already using Office Open XML to output content from their own applications for reporting, automatic document generation, document re-purposing, archiving etc. If any of you have found Open XML resources that may be useful to others, why not share them in a comment?

Additional resources for Visual Studio Express

2007-08-20T11:52:00.001-05:00

I got a number of queries from people who wanted to get information on resources for the Express Editions that could help them get started. Please note that a lot of these are for VS 2005 Express Editions and we will update them as we get to shipping VS 2008 for the latest tool set.

We are upgrading the set of video feature tours for Visual Studio Express 2008 at RTM, to walk users through downloading and installing Express, creating their first program, and introducing the user to the IDE. It also highlights the new IDE and language features that are present in Visual Studio Express 2008. We have revamped our “Getting Started” links in order to provide quick pointers to our most popular documentation topics and online resources. We have also significantly updated our in-product Guided Tours.

Beginner Developer Learning Center is our one-stop shop for novice programmers who are interested in Windows or Web Development containing videos, articles, samples, book chapters, tips and tricks. Further, through a partnership with Wiley books, we offer a set of 17 chapters from the popular “For Dummies” book series that help Web programmers understand the fundamentals behind creating Web pages and getting started with Visual Web Developer Express. In addition, we now provide easy access to samples and tutorials through the Help menu in Visual Studio Express 2008 so you never have to search for them again.

Coding4Fun Developer Kit 2008 Vol. 1 is a collection of tools that provides a set of drag ‘n drop controls and components that enable rapid development of hobbyist API.. The Facebook Developer Toolkit is a set of controls and components that provide VB and C# wrappers for the Facebook API that allow you to easily and quickly develop .NET applications that you can share with your Facebook friends. To help you get started we’ve included a suite of samples, QuickStarts and video walkthroughs.

For a more in-depth look at the 2008 Express editions, be sure to check out Dan Fernandez’s blog where he is putting together a detailed 5-part series on “What’s in Visual Studio 2008 Express Beta 2?”.

Visual Studio 2008 - MSBuild

2007-08-20T11:51:00.000-05:00

As we get down to the final lap of Visual Studio 2008, I wanted to talk about some of the new features in this release. Over the next few months, I will be blogging on different features and technologies that I’m excited about.

Today, let me start with MSBuild.

At the core of every developer’s environment is the build system. I remember my early days of Windows NT in the early 90s when I used to spend hours after hours after hours in the build lab to help get the build out knowing that the whole engineering team is waiting on a new build.

In Visual Studio 2005, we introduced a new build system called MSBuild. In Visual Studio 2008, we built on this foundation and added two new customer requested features. This release adds a new focus on reliability by allowing you to control which .Net platform you want to target for each project that you build, such as targeting a build to run on the 2.0 or 3.0 .Net Fx so customers do not have to install the latest framework to run your software. You can upgrade to VS 2008 and still have confidence that your existing projects not only build, but work without having your customers update to the .Net Fx 3.5. You can preserve as much of the Visual Studio 2005 build elements as you desire. If you want to see more details on multi-targeting, see Luke Hoban’s recent blog post.

We also added multiple core support for doing multi-threaded builds on the command line for those of you with a lot of projects and long build times. Enabling multiple core support requires only a few new properties, and MSBuild manages all of the work to schedule projects efficiently and effectively. The MSBuild team has tested this ability to scale by building some projects on a 64-CPU machine.

In Visual Studio, we integrate the entire build system for you, so there is very little that you need to do to build your projects or your software system out of the box. The underlying build system has full extensibility through not only the IDE, but through a command line and object model.

Like other things, this team is big on self-hosting. For the VS 2008 product they’ve deployed both the multi-targeting and multi-core support across the entire division - Visual Studio is built using these two features.

It is great to see MSBuild being adopted in many different ways by large and small teams. Inside Microsoft, Team Build uses MSBuild as a core building block. Other Microsoft Technologies such as WPF build using MSBuild. Also, developers are using MSDN Forums and open source projects to share customized MSBuild tasks in order to help build and deploy their products.

You can check out these new features and ask the MSBuild team questions on their blog or forum.

Independence...

2007-08-14T14:30:00.000-05:00

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

Bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action

Long way to go....

Listen to the exclusive audio composed by A.R. Rahman on the 60th Independence day of our nation.

Click on the link below to listen to the Jaya he audio track composed by A. R. Rahman.

download
http://www.freewebs.com/iamsvs/JayaHey.mp3

Atlas Project

2007-08-13T08:43:00.000-05:00

We are now well into the final RTM milestone of the ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Web Developer 2005 release. Having reached our ZBB (Zero Bug Bounce), we are now locked down on our feature set, and we’re focusing on the final quality, performance, and reliability push.

At the same time, we have started to work on our next release. One area we’ve been looking at for a while is the growing popularity of richer user experiences in browsers, through AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML)-style programming.

All of the pieces of AJAX – DHTML, JScript, and XMLHTTP – have been available in Internet Explorer for some time, and Outlook Web Access has used these techniques to deliver a great browser experience since 1998. In ASP.NET 2.0, we have also made it easier to write AJAX-style applications for any browser using asynchronous callbacks, and we use them in several of our built-in controls.

Recently, however, the technologies used by AJAX have become broadly available in all browsers, and use of this model for rich web applications has really taken flight. There are a number of high-profile new AJAX-style websites out there today, including a number by Google, as well as sites like A9 and Flickr. Microsoft will also have more sites that use this technology out there soon – check out Start.com and the MSN Virtual Earth project for examples.

The popularity of AJAX shows the growing demand for richer user experiences over the web. However, developing and debugging AJAX-style web applications is a very difficult task today. To write a rich web UI, you have to know a great deal of DHTML and JavaScript, and have a strong understanding of all the differences and design details of various browsers. There are very few tools to help your design or build these applications easily. Finally, debugging and testing these applications can be very tricky.

What we’ve set out to do is to make it dramatically easier for anyone to build AJAX-style web applications that deliver rich, interactive, and personalized experiences. Developers should be able to build these applications without great expertise in client scripting; they should be able to integrate their browser UI seamlessly with the rest of their applications; and they should be able to develop and debug these applications with ease.

For this work, we’ve been working on a new project on our team, codenamed “Atlas”. Our goal is to produce a developer preview release on top of ASP.NET 2.0 for the PDC this September, and then have a website where we can keep updating the core bits, publishing samples, and building an active community around it.

Here are some of the pieces of Atlas that we are going to be delivering over time:

Atlas Client Script Framework

The Atlas Client Script Framework is an extensible, object-oriented 100% JavaScript client framework that allows you to easily build AJAX-style browser applications with rich UI and connectivity to web services. With Atlas, you can write web applications that use a lot of DHTML, Javascript, and XMLHTTP, without having to be an expert in any of these technologies.

The Atlas Client Script Framework will work on all modern browsers, and with any web server. It also won’t require any client installation at all – to use it, you can simply include references to the right script files in your page.

The Atlas Client Script Framework will include the following components:

o An extensible core framework that adds features to JavaScript such as lifetime management, inheritance, multicast event handlers, and interfaces

o A base class library for common features such as rich string manipulation, timers, and running tasks

o A UI framework for attaching dynamic behaviors to HTML in a cross-browser way

o A network stack to simplify server connectivity and access to web services

o A set of controls for rich UI, such as auto-complete textboxes, popup panels, animation, and drag and drop

o A browser compatibility layer to address scripting behavior differences between browsers.

ASP.NET Server Controls for Atlas

For ASP.NET applications, we are planning on building a new set of AJAX-style ASP.NET Server Controls, and enhancing our existing ASP.NET page framework and controls, to support the Atlas Client Script Framework.

ASP.NET 2.0 includes a new feature, called asynchronous client callbacks, that makes it easy to build ASP.NET pages that update their content from the server without requiring a page roundtrip. Asynchronous client callbacks wrap XMLHTTP, and work on a variety of browsers. ASP.NET itself includes several controls that use callbacks, including client-side paging and sorting in the GridView and DetailsView controls, and supporting virtual lists of items in the TreeView control. You can learn more about callbacks on Bertrand Le Roy’s blog.

The Atlas Client Script Framework will fully support ASP.NET 2.0 callbacks, but we’re planning on enriching the level of integration between the browser and the server much further. For example, you will be able to data bind Atlas client controls to ASP.NET data source controls on the server, and you’ll be able to control personalization features of web parts pages asynchronously from the client.

ASP.NET Web Services Integration

Like any client application, an AJAX-style web application will usually need to access functionality on the web server. The model for connecting to the server for Atlas applications is the same as for the rest of the platform – through the use of Web services.

With ASP.NET Web Services Integration, Atlas applications will be able to access any ASP.NET-hosted ASMX or Indigo service directly through the Atlas Client Script Framework, on any browser that supports XMLHTTP. The framework will automatically handle proxy generation, and object serialization to and from script. With web services integration, you can use a single programming model to write your services, and use them in any application, from browser-based sites to full smart client applications.

ASP.NET Building Block Services for Atlas

With ASP.NET 2.0, we’ve built a rich set of building block services that make it incredibly easy to build powerful, personalized web applications. These building blocks dramatically reduce the amount of code you have to write for common web application scenarios, such as managing users, authorizing users by role, and storing profiles and personalized data.

With Atlas, we’ll make these accessible as web services that can be used from the client framework in the browser or from any client application. For example, if you are building a website that shows a list of to-do items for the user, you can use the ASP.NET Profile service to store them in the user’s profile on the server. These items will then be accessible even as the user roams from one machine to another.

Services we will provide include the following (all based on the ASP.NET V2.0 implementations):

- Profile: Store per-user data on the server.

- UI Personalization: Store personalized UI settings on the server.

- Authentication: Authenticate users.

- Roles: Authorize user tasks and show different UI based on the user’s roles.

Because these building blocks are server based, you can use the same security model as for accessing the rest of the site. These services also won’t require any client download – just reference the script proxy from the browser.

All of our ASP.NET 2.0 Building Block Services are pluggable at the back-end using a common provider model extensibility pattern. We provide built-in providers that let you use a SQL Server database or Active Directory as a store, but you can easily plug in your own. For example, if you want to store user profiles in a centralized cloud rather than on your own database server, you can simply plug in a different provider – the choice is yours.

Client Building Block Services

In addition to DHTML, JScript, and XMLHTTP, we’re looking at additional services that allow websites to harness the power of the client to deliver an enriched experience.

The local browser cache is an example of such a service. When enabled, websites can store content in that cache and later retrieve it efficiently. But there’s no API from the browser to store data in the cache, and applications like Google Maps or OWA have to go through hoops to generate unique URLs so that the browser will cache the server response. With Atlas, we plan on providing programmable access to a local store/cache, so that applications can locally cache data easily, efficiently and securely.

Integration with other applications is another new dimension of a rich web experience. For example, when a user browses an auction site and bids on an item, they can see when the auction ends, but how easily can they integrate that event into their personal calendar application? With Atlas, we are also looking to provide a set of client-side building block services, and a model for how websites can securely publish connection points for those services. When the user selects “Add to Calendar”, the browser can call the connection point to get the calendar data, and pass it onto the local calendar application. The page doesn’t get to download or run its own code or initiate the action, so it’s safer than ActiveX.

Next Steps

As we move further along, more pieces of the story will emerge. In parallel, we are already working on our next release of development and debugging tools, so that we can deliver a great development experience for these type of rich web applications.

One question you may have is how Atlas relates to Avalon and smart clients.

We see Atlas as the best way to write a whole new generation of richer, more interactive, more personalized experiences in browser applications. Avalon is the next generation presentation model for Microsoft, and will let you build the richest user experiences on the Windows platform. Avalon will deliver phenomenal graphical experiences that use the latest in media integration and hardware acceleration. And Avalon will also let you provide persistent, immersive experiences that go beyond the browser.

Of course, when you’re building Avalon applications, you can reuse the programming model investments you make today with ASP.NET and Atlas. For example, the ASP.Net Building Block Services and Client Building Block Services will also be accessible from any Avalon client. This model gives you a smooth path to the next generation of applications.

Stay tuned here to hear more about our plans for Atlas and ASP.NET V.Next. And let us know your thoughts – Are you considering building richer AJAX-style web applications? What would you like to see in Atlas? You can post here on the blog, or send your comments to our feedback to our team alias at atlas@microsoft.com.

Thanks,

Visual C++ Futures

2007-08-09T12:01:00.000-05:00

Visual C++ Futures

I have got a number of emails and comments from some of you recently wanting to know more about the future of Visual C++.

The Visual C++ team has been looking at what they should in VC++ to ensure that the direction of the product aligns closely with customer needs and market realities. The team has the following three things top of mind as they think about the direction forward.

C++ customers mostly develop native code applications. As part of this, you would like to see renewed emphasis on tools for writing native code.
While firmly rooted in native code, many of you want to extend your applications to take advantage of managed functionality (especially WPF, WCF and workflow).
You are using C++/CLI to bridge between native and managed code.

This team will be significantly increasing support for native development tools. Central to this work is investigating ways to make C++ developers far more efficient in understanding, updating and validating the quality of large native code bases. In fact, the team is already working on a front-end rewrite that will allow for a vastly improved IntelliSense experience. This same work should pave the way for future enhancements such as refactoring and advanced source code analysis. In addition, the team intends to update the native libraries to simplify the development of rich-client user interfaces and access to underlying Windows platform innovation. The team will also work to provide “friction-free” interop between native & managed code through enhancements to C++/CLI and IJW.

The Orcas release will begin to reflect this new strategy but large changes – especially to the design time experience – will come with the version beyond that. The team is currently kicking around a number of native code & interop features planned for Orcas+1, and we are always interested in hearing from customers. If there are specific things you’d like to see in future versions of Visual C++ please let us know.

You should also check out the Channel 9 video by Bill Dunlap and Steve Teixeira on the future of Visual C++. In addition, if you want to interact directly with the VC++ team please visit their team blog.

Imagine Cup 2007 - Who's the winner?

2007-08-09T12:00:00.000-05:00

Imagine Cup 2007 - Who's the winner?

As I am sitting in my hotel room in Seoul, Korea - this is the question on my mind as well as the minds of the students who are here from around the world for the Imagine Cup 2007 finals. The good news is we will know the answer within the next 24 hours.

Winning is exciting - but is not all. The fact that 344 students from 59 different countries have come this far is just awesome. Remember, we started with over 100,000 students from over 100 countries at the beginning of this year's competition.

The theme for this year's Imagine Cup contest is "Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all".

One of my personal favorite categories in the competition is the Software Design category. This year, the 6 final teams in this category are from Austria, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, Serbia and Thailand. With applications ranging from a vritual environment to teach strudents how to drive cars with more proficiency to providing a learning solution for the deaf and the blind people to providing a graphical way for kindergarten children to learn the basics of reading and writing to educating people in the sign language - the creativity and the passion that these students have demonstrated is just awesome.

One of these teams will win tomorrow and so I wish all the very best to these teams.

I do want to take this opportunity and congratulate all the students from around the world who participated in this year's Imagine Cup tournament.

ASP.NET AJAX in .NET 3.5 and VS 2008

2007-08-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

ASP.NET AJAX in .NET 3.5 and VS 2008

In the past I've blogged about the JavaScript and AJAX improvements with VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense and VS 2008 JavaScript debugging. Below are a few notes about some of the ASP.NET AJAX runtime features coming as part of the VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 release, as well as important notes to read if you are opening existing ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 projects in VS 2008.

ASP.NET AJAX included in .NET 3.5

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 shipped as a separate download that you could install on top of ASP.NET 2.0. Starting with the .NET Framework 3.5 release, all of these features are built-in with ASP.NET, which means you no longer have to download and install a separate ASP.NET AJAX setup when building or deploying applications.

When you create a new ASP.NET application or web-site in VS 2008 that targets the .NET 3.5 framework, VS will automatically add the appropriate AJAX registrations in your web.config file and the core ASP.NET AJAX server controls will show up in your toolbox.

The version of ASP.NET AJAX that ships with .NET 3.5 has a number of nice improvements to it - including support for using UpdatePanels with WebParts, support for WCF based JSON end-points, support for using the ASP.NET Profile, Role and Login Application Services using JavaScript, and a number of bug fixes and performance improvements.

Understanding ASP.NET AJAX Versioning

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and .NET 3.5 can both be installed side-by-side on the same machine. ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is implemented in V1.0 of the System.Web.Extensions.dll assembly. The implementation of ASP.NET AJAX included with .NET 3.5 lives in V3.5 of the System.Web.Extensions.dll assembly. The V3.5 of System.Web.Extensions.dll is a fully compatible super-set of the 1.0 implementation (which means you don't need to change any code in order to use it).

Each ASP.NET application on a machine can choose which version of ASP.NET AJAX they want to build and run against. This is configured via the section in its web.config file, as well as by what System.Web.Extensions.dll assembly it is compiled against (with web-site projects these references are registered in the section of the web.config file, with web application projects they are referenced via the project file).

You will be able to use VS 2008 to target ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 applications, as well as to use the new VS 2008 multi-targeting support to build ASP.NET 2.0 applications that use ASP.NET AJAX 1.0. I cover how to-do both in the sections below.

Important Beta 2 Information

A few days before we shipped Beta2 on the web, we discovered a side-by-side issue with ASP.NET AJAX. If you read my original VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta Released blog post, you'll remember that I called out this post-install patch step to fix this issue:

You should download and run this batch file. This takes only a few seconds to run, and fixes an issue we found earlier this week with the version policy of System.Web.Extensions.dll - which is the assembly that contains ASP.NET AJAX. If you don't run this batch file, then existing ASP.NET 2.0 projects built with ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and VS 2005 will end up automatically picking up the new version of ASP.NET AJAX that ships in .NET 3.5 Beta2. This will work and run fine - but cause you to inadvertently introduce a .NET 3.5 dependency in the applications you build with VS 2005. Running the batch file will change the version binding policy of the new System.Web.Extensions.dll assembly and ensure that you only use the new .NET 3.5 ASP.NET AJAX version with projects that you are explicitly building for .NET 3.5.

The good news is that this fixes the side-by-side issue we found, and makes it safe to develop ASP.NET AJAX with both VS 2005 and VS 2008 on the same machine.

The one gotcha is that it causes VS 2008 to incorrectly detect the version of ASP.NET AJAX being used when first opening older ASP.NET 2.0 projects (specifically it can cause VS 2008 to think the project is already using .NET 3.5). This requires that you to take a few additional steps in Beta2 the first time you open existing ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 web-site projects with VS 2008 to correct this. You will not need to take these steps with the final VS 2008 release.

Upgrading ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Applications to use ASP.NET AJAX 3.5

When you use VS 2008 to open an existing ASP.NET 2.0 application that uses ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, you can optionally choose to upgrade the application to use .NET 3.5 (and the version of ASP.NET AJAX included within it).

The VS Web Tools team recently published a Upgrading ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Websites and Web Applications to .NET Framework 3.5 blog post that describes the step-by-step instructions to accomplish this using VS 2008 Beta2. The good news is that upgrading an ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 application to .NET 3.5 does not require that you change any of your code, and should take only a few minutes to complete.

As part of upgrading ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 application to .NET 3.5, you'll want to update compiled ASP.NET AJAX control libraries you might be using. The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit team is now publishing both ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and .NET 3.5 versions of the AJAX Control Toolkit that you can download here:

Details on my speaking events in London, Omaha, and Las Vegas

2007-08-09T11:58:00.000-05:00

Several people have sent me mail asking what conferences I'll be speaking at over the next few months. Below are a few events where I'll be covering ASP.NET, LINQ, VS 2008 and Silverlight content:

MIX:UK 07 Conference in London on September 11th and 12th

I'll be doing the keynote for this Microsoft event, as well as (at least) 4 technical breakout talks covering ASP.NET "Orcas", VS 2008, LINQ and Silverlight.

You can learn more and register for the event here. Please note that the early-bird registration discount ends this Friday - so sign up soon.

Heartland Developers Conference in Omaha, NE on October 18th and 19th

I'll be doing a keynote for this event, as well as 4 technical breakout talks covering ASP.NET "Orcas", VS 2008, LINQ and Silverlight.

You can learn more and signup for this event here.

Microsoft ASP.NET Connections Conference in Las Vegas from November 5th-8th

I'll be doing a keynote and several technical breakout talks on ASP.NET, LINQ, AJAX and VS 2008. If you haven't attended ASP.NET Connections before, I definitely recommend it. They put on a really high quality show with great speakers. It is co-hosted with VS Connections, SharePoint Connections, and SQL Connections, which means you can also attend great sessions on other related .NET technologies.

You can learn more and register for the event here.

Hope to see some of you in person soon!

ASP.NET AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit

2007-08-07T20:52:00.001-05:00

ASP.NET AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit

Here is the latest in my semi-regular link-listing series. Today's links are all about ASP.NET AJAX.

ASP.NET AJAX Articles

ASP.NET AJAX: Canceling an Async Postback: Matt Berseth demonstrates how to use JavaScript on the client to see if a page is in the middle of an Async Postback (using the UpdatePanel), and how you can programmatically cancel it.

Disable UpdatePanel Contents During Async Postback: Matt Berseth has a nice post on how to use JavaScript on the client to disable controls on a page while doing an Async Postback (using the UpdatePanel).

Plotting Zip-code Boundaries using ASP.NET AJAX and Microsoft Virtual Earth: Matt Berseth walks through a very cool sample that demonstrates how to superimpose zip code boundaries over a virtual earth map. Also check out Part 2 of his post.

ASP.NET AJAX: Invoke a Static Method from JavaScript: Matt Berseth demonstrates how to call back to a server from JavaScript on the client and invoke a static method on your page.

Create an AJAX File Upload: Kazi Manzur Rashid posts about a good technique you can use to handle AJAX-like file uploads using ASP.NET.

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Articles

How To: Confirm GridView Deletes with the ModalPopupExtender: Matt Berseth shows how to add AJAX confirmation dialogs to GridView controls to cleanly prompt the user when they try and delete items.

How To: Use ModalPopupExtender for Editing Rows in a GridView (Master/Detail Scenario): Matt Berseth shows how to implement the classic Master/Details scenario using ASP.NET AJAX and the ModalPopupExtender control in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.

How To: Provide a better asp:Wizard user experience: Matt Berseth demonstrates how to use the animation capabilities within the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit to provide smoother wizard navigation using the control.

How To: Rendering a Gmail-like "Loading" Indicator over a Specific ASP.NET Control: Matt Berseth has a slick approach that enables you to use the UpdatePanelAnimationExtender control to get GMail like progress indicator UI in your ASP.NET AJAX applications.

How To: Stop the ModalPopup Flicker: Matt Berseth has a good post on using the ModalPopupExtender control and how to avoid it having any flicker effect when first loading.

How To: Lazy-load TabPanels within the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit's TabContainer Control: Matt Berseth has a great post that demonstrates how to efficiently delay load non-visible tabs of data using the TabContainer control in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.

How To: Create an ASP.NET AJAX Style Folder Explorer: Matt Berseth has a nice post on how to build a tree-view explorer view of a file-system using ASP.NET AJAX.

How to: Create an Image Thumbnail Viewer using the ModalPopupExtender Control: Matt Berseth shows how to build a nice image thumbnail viewer using the ModalPopupExtender.

ASP.NET AJAX in VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Articles

Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Intellisense: A blog post by me that talks about the new Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Intellisense features - which work great with ASP.NET AJAX.

Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Debugging: A blog post by me that talks about the new Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Debugging features - which also work great with ASP.NET AJAX.

ASP.NET AJAX in .NET 3.5: A blog post by me that talks about the version of ASP.NET AJAX that is included in .NET 3.5.

Workaround for VS 2008 Beta2 Lack of JavaScript Intellisense and Colorization Bug: A blog post by the Visual Studio Web Tools team that talks about how to fix a setup bug that a few people have run into with Beta2, where JavaScript intellisense and colorization doesn't work. This blog post describes how to fix it.

Searching Your Website with Microsoft Index Service using ASP.NET

2007-08-06T20:36:00.000-05:00

Searching Your Website with Microsoft Index Service using ASP.NET

Once a website grows beyond a couple of dozen pages then it can sometimes be difficult to create a site navigation scheme that allows users to quickly find exactly what they're looking for. One way to improve site navigation is to add a search facility to the website. Adding a search facility brings major benefits to a website, making it easier for users to find information as well as adding an additional method of navigating a website. Search facilities are generally well used, and will often appear within the requested pages on a website.

There are different software solutions are available to put your own search engine on your website. Server-side search solutions available such as Microsoft's Index Server or ht://Dig. Although they allow sophisticated search facilities to be created, they generally require a high level of technical knowledge to install and configure. Also you can use the third party components for your website to do the search.

Using Microsoft Index Service it indexes your entire website quickly and generates an efficient search engine. It makes easier for your visitors to find things on your website and gives it a more professional appearance.

What is the Indexing Service?

Microsoft Indexing Service is a service that provides a means of quickly searching for files on the machine. The most familiar usage of the service is on web servers, where it provides the functionality behind site searches. It is built into Windows 2000 and 2003. It provides a straightforward way to index and search your web site.

With Index Services you can specify a specific group of documents or HTML pages to be indexed, and then create an ASP.NET page that can query this index. We'll build a simple, fast, and extensible search tool using .NET and Microsoft Indexing Services, which allows MS Indexing Services to index pages and display them in your search results.

Configuring Microsoft Indexing Services

The first step in creating an index for your search application is to configure Indexing Services on the IIS server that your Web application will be running. To do this you need access to the Web server itself. Open the Microsoft management console by clicking Start, then Run; type mmc and click Ok. Next, to open the Indexing Services snap-in, you must:

Click file,
Click Add/Remove Snap-In,

Click Add,

Select the Indexing Service Snap-In,

Click Add,
Click Finish,

Close the dialog

To create a new catalog - which is the vernacular Microsoft uses for an index - right-click on the Indexing Service node, click New and then Catalog. We need to choose a location to store the catalog file.

Once we done that, expand the catalog that you just created and click on the directories icon. Right-click on the directories folder, click new directory, and add the directory or directories that contain the content that you want to search. These directories can reside anywhere that the host computer can access, virtual directories and even UNC paths (\\Server\share) may be used. However, each directory that is indexed must either reside physically, or be included as a virtual directory, in the root of the website that you are indexing. If a directory is specified that is not in the web root via a physical folder or virtual directory, the results will be displayed in your search, but they will return broken links.

Indexing Services will effectively index HTML documents. To ensure that your required directories will be indexed you should verify that the index flag is properly set on the files and folders. We can verify this setting by right clicking on any folder or file and selecting properties. Click the "Advanced button" and make sure that the "For fast searching, allow indexing services to index this folder" checkbox is checked.

Next, you want to set the properties of this catalog so that the HTML paths can be used, and so that Indexing Services will generate abstracts for the documents as they are indexed.

To do this right-click on the catalog you just created and select Properties. On the tracking tab, you'll need to make sure that the "WWW Server:" field is set to the website that your application will be running from. This ensures that the html paths work as they should when you get to building the front-end for the search. If you want to display a short bit of each article along with your search results, then go to the Generation tab, uncheck "inherit above settings from service, then check “generate abstracts” and set the number of characters you wish to have displayed in each abstract.

Generally index will include one folder of documents or an entire website or group of websites. It's up to us to determine the breadth of the index. However, since Index Services does not crawl links like a spider, it will only catalog file system objects. Thus, the results from this search will include static files such as HTML pages, Word documents, but not any dynamically generated pages. Changes made to these static documents will be picked up by Indexing Services and will very quickly be reflected in your search results.

Searching the Index

Once the index has been created, the next step is to build a search page that allows the website visitor to search through the index. To do this, we have to create a TextBox Web control for the end user to enter search terms, and a Button Web control to initiate the search, and a Repeater control to display the results.

Add the following code in the .aspx page:

http://www.developeriq.com/articles/2007/aug/06/searching-your-website-microsoft-index-service-usi/

Save the project and run.

The fields returned from querying the index include the following information.

tags in an HTML document or the text in the title field of a word document.The title of document, which is the text between the
Filename: The physical name of the file that the result was returned from.
Vpath: The virtual path of the file where the result was returned from. This is the field you use to specify an HTML link to the file.
Rank: The relevance of the returned result.
Characterization: The abstract for the document, usually the first 320 characters.

Finally we have learnd how to use the Index server to build our Search. For any other queries you can reach me on srinivasks_08@yahoo.co.in

SQL SERVER - 2008 - July CTP Released

2007-08-03T21:04:00.000-05:00

SQL SERVER - 2008 - July CTP Released

SQL Server 2008 July Community Technology Preview has been released. With SQL Server 2008 July CTP release, customers can immediately utilize new capabilities that support their mission-critical platform and enable pervasive insight across the enterprise. SQL Server 2008 lays the groundwork for innovative policy-based management that enables administrators to reduce their time spent on maintenance tasks. SQL Server 2008 provides enhancements in the SQL Server BI platform by enabling customers to provide up-to-date information with Change Data Capture and MERGE features, and develop highly scalable analysis services cubes with new development environments. (Reference : Microsoft Connect)

Download SQL Server 2008 CTP from here.

Read SQL Server 2008 Improvement Pillars here.

Playing around w/PopFly and Facebook

2007-08-03T21:03:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, I got a chance to find out first-hand the joys of social networking. I did finally take the plunge and signed myself up for a Facebook account. If not for anything else other than to understand how my daughter could spend so much time on Facebook.

It was fun and I didn't realize I had so many friends on Facebook already that my wife had to remind me gently to spend time away from the computer.

I also used this opportunity to see my daughter use PopFly to build some mash-ups quickly and embed them in her Facebook page. It is always fun to see people use our products and technologies and see somebody close to me use PopFly to express their creativity made it all the more exciting.

Here is a quick video capture of the kinds of things that she was able to do.

Expression tools update to target Silverlight 1.0 RC

2007-08-03T21:01:00.000-05:00

Our Expression Studio team released Expression Blend 2 August Preview and Media Encoder Preview update earlier today. These updates do enable Expression Blend 2 and Expression Media Encoder to work with the latest Silverlight 1.0 RC bits.

You can get Blend 2 preview from either the Expression site or the Microsoft download center.

You can get the Media Encoder preview from here.

It is nice to see the Expression team deliver updates of their tools along with Silverlight 1.0 RC to enable good tooling support that enables you to build Silverlight based applications and experiences.

Next gen SQL Server/Visual Studio both due for release in 2008

2007-07-29T22:25:00.000-05:00

Next gen SQL Server/Visual Studio both due for release in 2008

New versions of SQL Server database and Visual Studio development tool will both ship in 2008

Microsoft has confirmed that the next versions of its SQL Server database and Visual Studio development tool will both ship in 2008, having announced last week that Windows Server ‘Longhorn’ would be delayed to 2008.

A community technology preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 (codenamed ‘Katmai’) is now available for download, with a final commercial release expected mid 2008.

The product will integrate data visualisation and charting tools acquired from Dundas Data Visualisation within SQL Server Reporting Services.

It will also be the first version of SQL Server to include native support for spatial data as a first class data type with indexing. Katmai spatial will support two models: a “Flat Earth” planar data type and a “Round Earth” geodetic data type, with spatial indexes for both.

Visual Studio 2008 (codenamed Orcas) will ship at the end of 2007, said Microsoft, and focuses on web application development and supporting Vista and Office.

A second beta release featuring Visual Studio Shell, which enables developers to build and distribute customer tools built on Visual Studio IDE, is due this summer.

In addition, the Server Core Installation Option of Windows Server 2008 will include the latest version of Microsoft’s Web server, Internet Services 7.0 (IIS7), improvements to which help to boost Server Core performance by 10-20x because of its small code base, said Microsoft.

The first public beta of .NET Framework 3.5 and a CTP of BizTalk Services are intended to support Microsoft’s vision of service orientated architecture (SOA), which includes hosted applications and software as a service (SaaS).

The company also said that it will deliver release 2 (R2) of its BizTalk Server 2006 business process management product in the third quarter of this year. It will include RFID and EDI support, and improved integration with the .NET Framework 3.0, Office 2007 and Vista.

Microsoft ships 60 million Vista units

2007-07-29T22:24:00.000-05:00

Microsoft ships 60 million Vista units

Total Windows installations expected to pass the one billion mark within the next 12 months

Madeline Bennett, IT Week, 27 Jul 2007

Microsoft has revealed that 60 million units of its Vista operating system have shipped since its release. It expects the total number of Windows installations to pass the one billion mark within the next year.

At a meeting with financial analysts this week, Microsoft announced that 20 million copies of Vista have shipped in the last 75 days, adding to the 40 million previously announced at Microsoft’s Vista sales update in mid-May. The firm also outlined several current or forthcoming large-scale corporate Vista deployments, including 70,000 seats already installed at Banco Bradesco in Brazil, and 10,000 due to be rolled out by the end of 2007 at Continental Airlines.

Microsoft expects to pass the billion mark for total Windows installations within the next 12 months, according to chief executive Steve Ballmer. “If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year '08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept,” he said.

Microsoft also used the meeting to convince skeptics of Vista’s improved security. “Windows Vista is the most secure operating system we've ever released,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer. “In the first 180 days we've had far fewer high-severity vulnerabilities than XP. We've had 12 in Vista. We had 25 in XP.”

Following the financial analyst meeting, Microsoft announced that Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007, its unified messaging and presence tools, had been released to manufacturing. Both products are set for an autumn release.

The firm also released the second beta version of Visual Studio 2008, which features a Silverlight Add-in tool to let developers build rich internet applications.

“With Beta 2 we are feature complete, so now is the time to have your first look if you haven’t seen Visual Studio 2008 yet,” wrote S. Somasegar, corporate vice-president of Microsoft’s developer division in a blog post.

Elsewhere, Microsoft made available the second beta release of .NET Framework 3.5, while Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate will be available from Friday.

All three products are scheduled to be released to manufacturing before the end of 2007.

Microsoft delays Windows Server 2008

2007-07-29T22:21:00.000-05:00

Microsoft delays Windows Server 2008

Server OS joins the Microsoft parade of delays

Microsoft will not ship its Windows Server 2008 operating system until February, breaking with the previous scheduled release date of "late 2007".

The platform will be officially launched at an event in Los Angeles on 27 February, Microsoft revealed at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver.

The delay is another setback for the software vendor, which has been struggling to get Windows Vista and Office 2007 out of the door in a timely fashion.

The server operating system was formerly known by its 'Longhorn' codename. The launch will coincide with the official unveiling of Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Microsoft tried to put on a brave face about the delays. In a posting on its Windows Server blog, the company claimed that the software will still be "released to manufacturing" this year.

Although this means that server vendors will be able to start testing the code for their systems, end users will not be able to purchase or install the software.

The delay also raises questions about the release schedule of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

Microsoft has always maintained that the set of patches and updates will be released at the same time as Windows Server 2008, leading most customers to plan for a release by the end of this year.

Many businesses are holding off on installing Windows Vista and Office 2007 until the release of SP1.

If Microsoft persists in launching the two applications at the same time, that would further delay mainstream enterprise adoption of the software.

A Chat with ASP.NET and Ajax

2007-07-27T21:01:00.000-05:00

A Chat with ASP.NET and Ajax

Attachment

Introduction

This article describes how to implement a web-chat with ASP.NET and Ajax. In the first part I introduce the technologies I used for the application. Then I explain the concept of a chat and in the last part I present the main implementations.The goal of this article is to show the interested reader how to develop a chat without browser-plugins or java-applets, just pure HTML and javascript.

Which technology is used?

A web-chat is an application for which dynamically generated HTML is needed and client-server interaction. Therefore ASP.NET 2.0 has been used and for the client-server-intercation without postbacks of course Ajax. We could use Ajax.NET but to keep it simple we decided to use the Ajax-implementation from Mike Schwartz called AjaxPro.

To do all serverside calls from javascript with AjaxPro you need to do the following:

1. Add a reference to the Assembly AjaxPro.dll which you can download here.
2. Add a class to your project.
3. Add a method to that class you want to call by script and mark it with the Attribute AjaxMethod
4. Register the class in the Page_Load-handler of your aspx-page from which you want to use it. With

AjaxPro.Utility.RegisterTypeForAjax(typeof(MyAjaxClass));

That's all. Other details will be explained in the implemenation-part of the article.

The design of a Chat?

There are different kind of chats. In this example I designed a chat in which users can login with their username and password. Then they can enter the chat and send messages. The messages are visible for all other chat-users. It is a public chat, where all logged in chatters can communicate together.

Figure 1

The Session holds a CurrentChatter, a user that has just logged in. The chatter enters the chat (1) by navigating to the chat-page (Chat.aspx). After a chatter has entered, he has the possibility to send messages by typing text to a TextBox and pressing the enter-key. Then the chat-message is sent to a ChatMessageQueue (CMQ) which in our example is stored in the Application (2). Okay, now the message lies in the CMQ on the server. We have to get it from there, so that every client can see it. Therefore we have a javascript-timer running, that gets all new messages from the CMQ and displays it in an HTML-DIV for example (3).
Sounds simple, doesn't it? Here is what we need to do, to implement points 1 to 3.

(1) AddChatter (store chat-user)
Save the curent user after successful login to the Session.

(2) AddToMsgQueue
When sending a chat-message you need to store this in the CMQ. You will have to invoke this action from a javascript function. The scriptcode calls a serverside method via Ajax that has the ability to access the ASP.NET-Application.

(3) GetMsgsFromQueue
Here we need to check in a javascript-timer every n seconds, if there are new chat-messages for the client to display. So we poll the CMQ for new messages by an Ajax-method. If we have new messages, theses are transformed to a string that can be displayed as a list in a chatwindow.

The implementation

So far the theory, now the concrete coding. Here are the datatypes we need:

Figure 2

Chatter
This class has an Id to identify a chatter internally and a name for the display. The LastMsgKey is the key of the last message a chatter received. When the timer polls for new messages, this key is used to find out, if there are messages in the CMQ after that message. The messages are stored in a list in the Application. If there are messages in the list for the chatter after his LastMsgKey, these messages have to be fetched.

ChatMsg
A chat-message has a Key (Guid), the name of the chatter who sent this message and the message itself as string.

ChatMgr
The ChatMgr handles the list of all logged in chatters and the CMQ. You can add messages to the CMQ and get them back from it. It also has methods to get a list of all available chatters as Html. The code could be optimized here: The display-logic for chatters and chat-messages could be placed to another class.

The HTML-components are located on the WebForm Chat.aspx. We have

divChatBox: A DIV for all chatmessages.
divChatters: A DIV for all logged in chatters
txtMessage: A TextArea for the text that a chatter can type and send.

When the page loads, all logged in chatters and the available messages are loaded and displayed in the corresponding HTML-elements. Here is the javascript-code which is called cause we add the calls to it in the onload-handler of the Chat.aspx-page:

Attachment

Announcing the release of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET FX 3.5 Beta 2, and Silverlight 1.0 RC

2007-07-27T20:56:00.000-05:00

Announcing the release of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET FX 3.5 Beta 2, and Silverlight 1.0 RC

I am pleased to announce the release of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2, and Silverlight 1.0 RC.

You can download Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and the .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 from here. Over the next couple of days, we will make Silverlight 1.0 RC available for download as well.

The road to Beta 2 has been an exciting one for me and my team. With our focus on delivering frequent CTP’s, we really opened the door for real time feedback from the developer community, and drove the development of this product based on that feedback. With Beta 2 we are feature complete, so now is the time to have your first look if you haven’t seen Visual Studio 2008 yet, or evolve your experience if you have been using our Beta 1 or previous CTP’s. To add to this, we are also releasing a Go Live license for Visual Studio 2008, the .NET Framework 3.5, and Silverlight 1.0 to make it easier for you to start developing in our next generation of tools.

Developers can now use VS2008 and Silverlight 1.0 to build rich interactive applications for the web. With Silverlight 1.0 RC we will also be releasing a CTP for the Silverlight Add-In for Visual Studio 2008. With this add-in, developers can start building Silverlight 1.0 applications from within the Visual Studio 2008 environment and work with their designer counterparts using Expression Blend v2 preview. We expect to deliver the final version of this add-in soon after the final version of Visual Studio 2008.

Early this week Scott Guthrie and I recorded a Channel 9 video, which overviews these releases, and some of the new scenarios which we are seeing customers and partners using today. Make sure you check it out.

It has been a fun time building these great products and cool technologies and being able to bring those to you. With Silverlight 1.0, Visual Studio 2008, and the .NET Framework 3.5 all scheduled to release to manufacturing (RTM) prior to the end of the year – we are set up to have the best era of developer releases we have seen so far.

Namaste!

Hands-on Labs - A great resource for developer learning

2007-07-26T09:18:00.001-05:00

Hands-on Labs - A great resource for developer learning

Recently, I blogged about the “How Do I” set of videos that we have for different technologies to provide task based information that will help our customers.

Another way we have found that developers like to evaluate and learn is through guided tutorials that are less than 90 minutes in length. We call these tutorials Hands-On-Labs or Virtual Labs, and MSDN has a complete list of the available labs here.

No installation is required to run the labs, and with over 250 labs grouped by technology, it is easy to find, get started and learn.

Connected Systems

Data Access and Storage

Internet Information Services (IIS)

JPlusN (J+N)

Microsoft Expression

.NET Framework 3.0

SQL Server 2005 Upgrade

TechNet Virtual Labs

Visual SourceSafe

Visual Studio .NET 2003

Visual Studio 2005

Visual Studio Team System

Web Services

Windows Embedded CE 6.0

Windows Mobile

Windows Vista

Windows XP Embedded

Early look at IronRuby

2007-07-26T09:16:00.000-05:00

Early look at IronRuby

Today we shipped the first source code release of IronRuby.

Both IronRuby and IronPython, released earlier this year at MIX07, target the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). The DLR makes it easier to create high-quality, high-performance dynamic language implementations on .NET. DLR-based languages make it easy to interoperate with the .NET Framework, as well as code written in other .NET languages.

The source code for IronRuby is released under the Microsoft Permissive License. The project will be hosted on RubyForge, the central source code repository for the Ruby community. We will also be accepting external contributions to IronRuby libraries initially, and expanding that offering to the entire IronRuby compiler once the Dynamic Language Runtime reaches 1.0.

You can also find out more about this from Scott Guthrie’s blog on IronRuby.

IIS7 on Server Core

2007-07-20T20:20:00.000-05:00

IIS7 on Server Core

I'm excited to announce that a new build of IIS7 and Windows 2008 Server is available for testing by Beta testers. This build includes updates and fixes made since the Beta 3 release earlier this year, and includes the previously announced IIS7 on Server Core configuration. Important note: This build is released as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) release, and has not been tested to the degree that we test full Beta or Release Candidate builds, so use at your own risk!

In response to customer feedback and bugs reports since beta 3, we've fixed almost a thousand bugs and made several notable changes:

IIS7 on Server Core

As previously announced, IIS7 is now the seventh role available in Server Core, the low footprint OS configuration. This means you get an extremely modular, customizable Web server on a thin server OS, perfectly suited for appliance-like environments, or Web farm front-end servers where you want to blast a small, cloned image out and forget about it.

Mete, one of the senior Test leads on the team, just published a great blog post with helpful hints on how to get started with IIS7 on Server Core. We've also posted this as an article on IIS.net, titled IIS7 on Server Core, which answers basic questions about this release and gives some helpful steps for how to get IIS7 up and running.

Improved Diagnostics support for UNC paths in the UI

There is a new diagnostics option added to the UI where paths are configured (the physical paths you configure for sites, applications, virtual directories, etc.) which can help you diagnose problems with connections to these file server paths.

Kernel Caching support in the Output Caching UI

It is now possible to enable kernel caching as part of the output caching feature in the UI.

Improved support for IPv6 addresses

IIS has supported wildcard IPv6 bindings since IIS6, but with this build IIS also supports the ability to provide specific IPv6 bindings for a site or server.

Demand start threshold based on memory limit

IIS7 now supports the ability to dynamically adjust AppPool timeout values based on memory limits. This enables greater density AppPool configurations ensuring that the most active AppPools stay active, while more aggressively timing out stale AppPools when available memory becomes low.

.Net Roadshow 2007

2007-07-20T20:18:00.000-05:00

.Net Roadshow 2007...

Come join us as we tour across the country conducting .Net 3.5 training's. Registration information can be found HERE.

Who Should Attend?

Any .NET developer or architect would greatly benefit from the .NET Roadshow. Basic familiarity with C# 2.0 and system programming is recommended.

Reasons to Attend

The .NET Roadshow is your best source of training on this brand new technology.

You'll learn best practices, pitfalls, tips and design guidelines.

You'll gain the skills needed to start applying .NET Framework 3.5 to your projects right away.

You'll learn from the top industry leaders' firsthand experience and gain a profound insight into the technology and its applications.

You'll receive rich reference tools and resources that will help you with future projects.

You will take away the knowledge you need to make educated decisions on aligning your company's technology roadmap with .NET Framework 3.5 and be able to assess the benefits and advantages.

There is simply no substitute for being trained by the world's leading experts on the subject!

Where and When?

Sept 10-11, 2007 — Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Sept 11-12, 2007 — Alpharetta (Atlanta), GA
Sept 12-13, 2007 — Irving (Dallas), TX
Sept 17-18 2007 — Denver, CO
Sept 18-19, 2007 — Bloomington (Minneapolis), MN
Sept 20-21, 2007 — Boston, MA

ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Visual Studio, Silverlight and IIS7

2007-07-17T21:22:00.000-05:00

ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Visual Studio, Silverlight and IIS7

ASP.NET

ASP.NET RSSToolkit 2.0 Released: One of the cool projects for ASP.NET 2.0 that was released last year was this free RSS Toolkit - which makes consuming and exposing RSS feeds in ASP.NET super easy (you can even databind any ASP.NET control against them). The team working on the CodePlex project has recently released V2 of the RSSToolkit. You can learn all about it and download it here.

Building a Custom Database Driven Site Map Provider: Scott Mitchell has written a great article on how to implement your own site map provider for ASP.NET that is populated from a database (instead of statically from an XML file). You can learn more about the ASP.NET 2.0 SiteMap system from this older blog post of mine here.

.NET DateTime and Number Format String Cheat Sheet: If you are like me, you might have trouble remembering all of the standard format strings you can pass to the String.Format() method and/or the Eval() databinding method in ASP.NET to generate the appropriate string output from a DateTime or Numeric datatype. This PDF cheatsheet is a useful one to download and save to quickly look these format strings up. John has some other really useful .NET PDF cheatsheets he has also created that you might like to download here.

Profile Support for ASP.NET Web Application Projects: VS 2005 Web Application Projects can't directly access the strongly-typed ASP.NET "Profile" object that web site projects support. This VS add-in supports the ability to generate a strongly typed profile class to accomplish this. You can read this great series of posts to learn more about how to use the ASP.NET 2.0 Profile system. I have it on my list of tips/tricks posts to-do to cover using this VS add-on as well.

ASP.NET Photo Handler: Bertrand has posted a cool photo album HttpHandler for ASP.NET that allows you to easily drop images into a web directory and automatically generate a nice photo album of them (complete with EXIF information, stack sorting icons, etc). Might be very useful for people enjoying holidays this summer. Download the code here.

SubSonic: Auto-Generate a DAL for Class Library, Windows Applications and Web Application Projects: Rob Conery recently posted a blog entry that talks about how to use the great SubSonic project in non-website Visual Studio project types to easily generate your data access layers.

BlogEngine.NET: This is a new open source blog engine for ASP.NET that Mads Kristensen has helped start up, and which I've heard a lot of good things about. You can read about its features here, and download it here.

ASP.NET AJAX

ScriptDoc 1.0 Available: Bertrand Le Roy has published a cool ScriptDoc utility that extracts documentation from JavaScript files and packages it into XML that can be consumed by documentation building tools. A very useful tool as you start to build up your own JavaScript libraries.

ASP.NET AJAX Client Control Development: Kazi Manzur Rashid from PageFlakes.com has written a great set of posts that cover building your own client-side AJAX controls using ASP.NET AJAX's client-side JavaScript libraries. Here is a post on how to build an ASP.NET AJAX Grid and Pager, and here is a post on how ASP.NET AJAX Control Development works.

Using the ASP.NET AJAX PageRequestManager to Provide Visual Feedback: Dan Wahlin - author of the fantastic new Professional ASP.NET AJAX book - has written a nice blog post that covers a technique you can use to obtain fine grain visual feedback control (above and beyond what the UpdateProgress control provides you) when doing AJAX callbacks to the server.

Visual Studio

GhostDoc 2.1.1 Released: GhostDoc is a free add-in for Visual Studio 2005 (and now 2008) that automatically generates default XML documentation comments for code you write in C# or VB. It can automatically re-use existing documentation inherited from base classes or implemented interfaces, or generate initial documentation by deducing comments from the name and type of the member signature. You can learn more about it and download it for free here.

Silverlight

Silverlight Tutorials: Michael Schwarz has a great blog where he writes regularly about Silverlight. This tutorials link points to a bunch of great Silverlight content.

Integrating Web Services and Silverlight Including Debugging: Peter Kellner has written some great blog posts covering Silverlight (as well as gotchas he has learned from). Check out this post to learn how to handle debugging web services when using Silverlight, as well as his post on Displaying Images with the Silverlight Downloader in the 1.1 Alpha.

Some keyboard input tricks for Silverlight 1.1: Jon Galloway has a nice post on handling keyboard input using the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha release. Also check out his tip on Calling an ASMX webservice from Silverlight post.

IIS 7

IIS 7.0 is now running all of Microsoft.com: One of the things we push at Microsoft is to "dogfood" our products on our high volume sites when they enter the beta cycle. As of a few weeks ago, all of the web servers running www.microsoft.com are now running on IIS7 and Windows 2008 Server Beta3. These servers host 500+ virtual roots and 350 ASP.NET applications, and handle 300,000 concurrent connections. IIS7 is going to be an awesome release.

IIS 7.0 on Server Core: Bill Staples blogs about some of the new IIS7 enhancements that appear with the June CTP of Windows 2008 Server. One of the big features that is now supported is the ability to install IIS7 on "server core" - which is a low footprint installation of Windows 2008 Server that lays down just the minimal footprint needed to boot (meaning no GUI shell). This lowers the resources required on servers, and even more importantly means that servers don't need to be updated if a patch is released for a component not installed on the server (which lowers the downtime of servers). ASP.NET and the .NET Framework aren't supported yet in server core configurations - but will be in the future.

Small Business Developer Center on MSDN

2007-07-06T21:08:00.000-05:00

Small Business Developer Center on MSDN

When I talk to developers working on projects and solutions targeted at Small Businesses, here is a set of common themes that I hear from them:
- Simplicity is the name of the game
- No spare time to learn – it is done through on-the-job research, online materials, samples, etc.
- Good enough is really good enough

This basically highlights the fact that some of the challenges that these developers face tend to be different than what developers in large enterprise development shops might face.

To help address the needs of the small business developer, we designed a web site based around the top tasks that these developers are faced with regularly: integrating data between systems, building reports, building small web and windows LOB applications. The Small Business Developer Center is focused on providing practical, actionable platform guidance for developers working with small businesses.

The site content is anchored by a small business sample application and hands-on-labs - WingTip Toys is a small toy vendor with several remote sales people. The site shows how to integrate sales data using a Windows application, build reports for both the sales people and the managers using Office and SQL Server, create a public web presence and then extend the public site with a reporting section. We also added a deployment section to help show how to get the finished solution published.

Namaste!
Filed under: Developer Division, Visual Studio

Announcing three CodePlex projects for community developed SharePoint WCM components

2007-06-29T02:30:00.001-05:00

Announcing three CodePlex projects for community developed SharePoint WCM components

There's been some buzz about the Community Kit for SharePoint during the past few days, but it's not the only exciting and useful SharePoint oriented shared source project on CodePlex. The SharePoint Governance, SharePoint Features, and SharePoint Learning Kit projects are definitely also worth a good look.

Now, a couple of SharePoint MVPs, Andrew Connell and Spencer Harbar, who are well known within the community for their expertise in the web content management capabilities of MCMS 2002 and MOSS 2007, have accepted the responsibility for adopting and enhancing the WCM field controls, web parts, and utilities donated by the Microsoft SharePoint product group and for growing the community of volunteers, who will help create even more shared source WCM components in the future.

Their SharePoint WCM projects and the currently available components are listed below:

SharePoint 2007 WCM Field Controls
A collection of sample Field Controls for use within Publishing Sites built using Office SharePoint Server 2007's Web Content Management features.
MultimediaFieldControl: Custom field type and control allowing content authors to specify a URL, width and height of a media file (SWF, PDF, WMV, MPEG, AVI, MPG, MOV) and renders the display of the control with the appropriate ActiveX control markup.

SharePoint 2007 WCM Web Parts
A collection of sample Web Parts for use within Publishing Sites built using Office SharePoint Server 2007's Web Content Management features.
FAQWebPart: Web Part that allows business users to contribute to a frequently asked questions list which is rendered with DHTML allowing users to expand/collapse each FAQ item.
RandomFlashMovieWebPart: Web Part that allows a content author to select one or more Flash movies from a SharePoint library. The Web Part will then display one of the Flash movies, at random, in display mode.
ThumbnailWebPart: Content authors can specify a SharePoint library containing images that the Web Part will generate thumbnails for. It allows content authors to specify the size, sort order and the number of thumbnails to be displayed in one row.

SharePoint 2007 WCM Utilities
A collection of useful utilities for Publishing Sites built using Office SharePoint Server 2007's Web Content Management features.
METATagsGenerator: This ASP.NET 2.0 server control renders HTML tags for each field in the current page’s content type.
PropertyBagFeature: Allows content authors to modify values within the property bag of pages… similar to the custom properties provided in MCMS 2002.
SharePointSSLHttpModule: Makes it easy for developers to SSL enable certain parts of a MOSS 2007 WCM Publishing site.

"Under the Hood" white papers for Fantastic 40 Application Templates and Splendid 7 My Site Templates now available!

2007-06-29T02:29:00.000-05:00

"Under the Hood" white papers for Fantastic 40 Application Templates and Splendid 7 My Site Templates now available!

Ever since the releases of the ”Fantastic 40” Application Templates for WSS 3.0 and “Spendid 7” Role-Based My Site Templates for MOSS 2007 during the past several months, many people have asked, “How did they build this or that?” or “Why would they build it this or that way?” So, I’m very happy to announce that the “Under the Hood” white papers for both sets of templates are now available for you to download via the hyperlinked titles below!

“Under the Hood” of the Fantastic 40 Application Templates

The purpose of this paper is to describe how Microsoft developed the application templates, identifying best practices for how to work with core capabilities within both Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Designer, with the goal of empowering customers and partners to create their own applications. The paper is not a substitute for the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SDK, nor is it primarily a developer resource. Developers should use the SDK for understanding generally how to extend Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

This paper is meant to be a resource for a new breed of site designers. Because Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Designer make it possible to build so much application functionality through the UI, advanced development skills are not required to build rich applications. To be sure, this paper does describe some custom code implementations for particularly tricky design patterns, but the overall methodology should be accessible to non-developers and is presented with that audience in mind. Developers may want to quickly read through the early sections on tools and methodology and pay more attention to the description of the design patterns and the specific examples of how to implement those design patterns

When you finish this paper, you should have a good understanding of how to design and architect an application, how to begin by building a site directly in Windows SharePoint Services, including building linked lists, custom columns, libraries, workflows, and so on, how to then open the site in SharePoint Designer to make further customizations, create custom forms, add custom code to change certain behaviors, create custom workflows, and so on, and, finally, how to create the application template itself and deploy it for usage.

“Under the Hood” of the Splendid 7 My Site Templates

This paper discusses the strategy for building the role-based My Site templates and takes an in-depth look at the common features and Web Parts that make up each of the templates. The paper also provides guidelines for branding, extending, and deploying the My Site Templates and covers a comprehensive set of scenarios that include collaboration, business process management, reporting, document lifecycle management, and project management.

25 web sites to watch

2007-06-21T00:47:00.000-05:00

25 web sites to watch

Think that all of the great Web sites have already been invented? Think again. The Internet is evolving in new and inventive ways thanks to mashups that pull data from all over the Web and to AJAX-based interfaces that give sites the same degree of interactivity and responsiveness that desktop apps possess.

To keep you ahead of the curve, we've rounded up 25 innovative Web sites and services that are well worth watching. Some of them help you design your own personalized Web site mashups; others enable you to create video mixes, build wikis, share personal obsessions, and more. But take note: A number of these sites are works in progress, and user-generated sites depend on developing a critical mass of content, which doesn't happen right away. With that in mind, check out the following dot-com destinations. One of them may become the next big Web hit.

In an article that came out today, PCWorld lists Microsoft Popfly as one of the 25 Websites to Watch – their way of picking out cool services and sites that could potentially be the next big Web hits.

It is great to see the tremendous enthusiasm from the community in Popfly. We already have several thousand pieces of user created content that we are hosting. I love the creativity that we are seeing here with a number of fun projects.

For example, there is a block called “ScribbleCanvas” where you can take an existing picture and use your creativity by adding hats, funny glasses, and other accessories. My team has already tried this out on a picture of me, which I conveniently decided not to post here.

Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Professionals

2007-06-21T00:42:00.000-05:00

Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Professionals

Historically, we have always been focused on improving the individual developer productivity with every release of VS. When we introduced Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) as part of Visual Studio 2005 late last year, we expanded our focus to significantly enhance software team productivity with an integrated set of tools that enable team members to work together in a collaborative fashion. We are now ready to take the next big step forward in that evolution.

I’m excited to announce today a new addition to the VSTS family – Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals.

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals is a great example of the innovation we are bringing to the application lifecycle management (ALM) market. It’s a market-shifting database development product designed to manage database changes, improve software quality through database testing and bring the benefits of Visual Studio Team System and life cycle development to the database professional (such as database architects, database developers and database administrators).

You can find out more about it and get access to early community technology previews here.

We’re making Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals part of the Visual Studio Team Suite, so you’ll get this product for free when we RTM this edition if you are a Visual Studio Team Suite subscriber through MSDN.

We’re in the midst of planning for the next version of Visual Studio Team System and I’ll post more details as we make more progress.Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the CTP (to be released at TechEd the week of June 11th) and look forward to your feedback on this product.

Security Track in TechMela 2007

2007-06-16T07:32:00.000-05:00

Security Track in TechMela 2007

Another track which I am eagerly looking forward is the security track. This time the theme of the security track is around security products. Today Microsoft has a wide range of products in the security domain. These products include client side antivirus, antivirus for messaging and collaboration servers, application layer firewall, network hygiene technologies and identity management. These products are the results of heavy investments made by Microsoft in the security space in terms of research, development and acquisition. Security experts from different organizations within Microsoft are going to deliver sessions in this track. For detailed information on sessions and speakers click here The security track is on June 16^th.

Ok, now I don't have much time left to write about all the track details. In the next few blog posts I am going to discuss in detail the sessions I am going to deliver in this year's TechMela. I am a speaker in the Enterprise mobility track. This is on June 16^th .

Windows Mobile 6 and Exchange Server 2007

2007-06-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Windows Mobile 6 and Exchange Server 2007

This is one of the sessions I am going to deliver in TechMela 2007. Last year also during TechEd I presented a session on mobile messaging. But the world of mobile messaging has changed a lot in the past one year. While WM 5 and Exchange 2003 were the products of interest last year, this year I am going to talk more about the new enhancements in Exchange server 2007 and Windows mobile 6.

New features are there in both Windows mobile as well as Exchange server. So to reap the complete benefit of the latest technologies, the ideal combination one should be using is Exchange Server 2007 on the server side and Windows Mobile 6 on the client end.

The architecture of Exchange has considerably changed in its latest version. Exchange Server 2007 has multiple server roles. It is the client access server (CAS) role that is most relevant to Windows mobile clients. The configuration of mobile devices and access to the Exchange Server system are done at the CAS. My session will have the details of the deployment architecture and security best practices around the same. In fact I am covering the security part very much in detail. In short the security features include

Secure deployment
Protecting the data while it is transmitted between the Exchange server and the Windows mobile device
Protecting the data residing in the device
Policy enforcement
Information rights management (IRM)

I will be demoing the policy enforcement feature using the mini lab I have set up in my laptop J.While writing this blog I am still exploring the options to demo the IRM feature. Hope I will be able to manage that demo too.

After talking about security features, I will be spending few slides on the manageability part of the mobile messaging system. OWA self-support is the key demo I am going to include in this section.

And I will conclude the session with a couple slides as well as demos on Outlook Mobile features.

Script# + Reflector

2007-06-15T09:11:00.000-05:00

Script# + Reflector

One of the benefits of using Script# that I've alluded to multiple times now, is the ability to use a standard class browser like .NET Reflector against your code. If you're using Reflector, you probably want to browse your Script# assemblies separate from the .NET Framework assemblies because of their overlap (eg. both of them contain a definition of System.Object and other basic classes such as String, Int32 etc.). In fact Reflector has the notion of assembly lists so you can already create interesting groups of assemblies and open/browse them as a set.

I've been asking Lutz for a feature to enable defining and storing an assembly set into a file, and then launching reflector.exe with an assembly list file. He has added that functionality as of version 5.0.21.0, so if you don't have the latest version (you probably do, given the auto-update functionality) go and download it now.

Essentially you can now have .reflector files with a plain list of assembly paths. You'll need to run reflector.exe /register once so that file association is created. Once you've done that, you can download ScriptSharp.reflector (the set of Script# assemblies and ScriptFX script framework), and ScriptSharpAtlas.reflector (the set of Script# assemblies usable against Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX). Caveat: For these standalone files, I've assumed the default install path, so you may need to edit them depending on your particular setup. This will be cleaned up in the future once the Script# installer creates these files and places shortcuts into the start menu.

The screenshot below shows browsing against the ASP.NET AJAX assemblies along with documentation. As most users of reflector will know, the tool picks up the same doc-comments stored in xml files alongside their associated assemblies that are used to drive intellisense inside Visual Studio.

The Script# readme describes all the assemblies in more detail. So there you have it ... class-browser support and some initial documentation... enjoy!

ASP.NET Futures

2007-06-15T09:03:00.000-05:00

ASP.NET Futures

We recently put out the Microsoft ASP.NET Futures May 2007 release. This release includes an early developer preview of features currently being considered for future versions of ASP.NET and the .NET Framework. This showcases a number of innovative solutions that further drive up developer productivity and help create better user experiences. Features include:

ASP.NET AJAX - New functionality includes CSS selector APIs, navigation history support (Back button support), and more.

Silverlight Controls for ASP.NET - Enables the ability to integrate rich interactive application scenarios and add media (video, audio), vector graphics, and animations with new, powerful ASP.NET server controls – XAML and Media sever control.

Dynamic Data Controls for ASP.NET - Introduces a set of data controls that provide a simple, intuitive user interface for data-driven Web pages.

ASP.NET Application Services - Offers new application services to make AJAX and Silverlight Web applications more discoverable from search engines and easily searchable from within the site. Additional services help you gather and analyze data about client errors.

Dynamic Languages support in ASP.NET - Provides support for both IronPython and Managed Jscript, as well as the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) - extending the language choice for developers and brings the benefits of dynamic languages to the entire .NET platform from client to server. With the DLR you can use those same languages on the Server for ASP.NET Web applications, Web Services, and more.

The product teams truly value the feedback they receive from the developer community as it influences decisions for subsequent releases, so I encourage you check out the ASP.NET Futures May 2007 release.

TFS Project Server Connector

2007-06-15T08:52:00.000-05:00

TFS Project Server Connector

Last week nearly 13,000 people gathered in Orlando for TechEd 2007. We heard lots of excitement around Visual Studio 2008 (yes we announced the actual name for “Orcas”), the Visual Studio Shell (ideal for ISV partners and enterprise customers who want to leverage the power of Visual Studio as a platform to build their own applications), and that IIS will be part of the Windows Server Core edition for Windows Server 2008. In one attendee’s own words “Even after 15 years of programming, I felt like butterfly trying to hang-on the hood of a Ferrari on the Autobahn”.

TechEd is a great opportunity for the product team and the community to get a chance to interact face-to-face. My team always comes back with great new comments, ideas and passion to ensure we meet the needs of our developer and designer community.

One great example of this is the TFS Project Server Connector which was released today. Our internal VSTS gurus (dubbed the VSTS Rangers), worked hand in hand with community developers using Codeplex to plan and develop the integration between Team Foundation Server and Project Server.

Although TFS already integrates into Project Standard and Professional, we received a lot of customer feedback that they would like the same integration seamlessly with Project Server. This connector will provide more effective Enterprise Resource Management across development projects, better project management, improved status management and automated updates. As of today, you can now download and use this product. We have also posted the final version also back to Codeplex as shared source for developers to also extend this to their exact business requirements.

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents - Final Part

2007-06-14T07:51:00.000-05:00

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents

So sue me!

Through this calculated move to declare that GNU/Linux infringes on its patents, Microsoft may be trying to take the shock and awe game to the next level. There is a possibility that Microsoft might now get into low-profile talks with industry players and convince them to sign cross-licensing deals. To push its agenda ahead, Microsoft might even try to slap some lawsuits against competitive companies. Even if the court rejects appeals relating to the first round of patents, Microsoft would be ready with another set. It has enough resources to drag a legal dispute. In a situation like this, the defending company would be forced into an out-of-court settlement. And that translates into one thing: crosslicensing and royalties.

''It seems unlikely that they would go after the Linux companies initially, who have everything to lose and so would fight to the end. It's much more likely that they would first go after a company whose use of Linux or open source is incidental, so Microsoft could reasonably force them to switch back to MS software or to pay a small fee to settle. But the history of SCO trying to do the same thing is probably discouraging Microsoft from going any further than they are today,'' says Behlendorf.

Many industry experts feel that it would be a poor idea for Microsoft to scare GNU/Linux users through patent infringement threats because almost every company has a mixed environment. Along with the open source solutions they use Microsoft products as well. It would make no sense for Microsoft to alienate its customers. Besides, some governments are also major users of proprietary software, even as they advocate open source software. It's nearly impossible to sue a government.

Will Microsoft sue the larger supporters of GNU/Linux, such as Sun (which pays many OpenOffice.org developers), IBM or Red Hat?

Wasserman believes that, ''It would be a bad idea for them to sue people or companies. SCO has spent six years trying to pursue similar claims against IBM with no success. IBM is very well prepared to fight Microsoft on this issue, and Microsoft might well lose many of the patents that it claims as its own. I would also note that IBM has recently stated that it would not pursue claims on many patents that it holds, effectively giving them to the open source community. Finally, the stock price of Red Hat has not changed significantly since the Microsoft announcement, an indication that the investment community does not view the claims as a significant potential threat to Red Hat's business.''

There is another reason why Microsoft might not want to take some companies to court for patent infringement. In a recent high-profile dispute, involving Microsoft and AT&T, the US Supreme Court sided with Microsoft rejecting AT&T's claims that Microsoft infringed on its patents. In a separate case, judges also made it clear that courts should be more flexible in the way they interpret the standards governing whether patents are valid or merely obvious' combinations of previous inventions.

''I'm not a lawyer, but I did understand that decision to make it tougher to litigate internationally on software patents. The US Supreme Court, in another recent decision, also seemed to raise the bar for obviousness of patents by invalidating one patent that was a mere combination of two prior innovations. Microsoft has actually been fighting to limit the power of patents in some of these cases, and supports the patent reform bill currently in front of the US Congress. It makes sense -- remember the Eolas decision? Bad patents, and bad patent law and precedent are just as dangerous to Microsoft as they are to open source -- perhaps more so,'' says Behlendorf.

May the force be with you

It has been made abundantly clear that big companies are in a much stronger position to counter Microsoft's shock and awe game. But, there is some element of fear amongst small developers or start-ups that want to stick to GNU/Linux. Who would come to the rescue of small players if Microsoft decides to go after them?

''We are engaged in improving software patents, as well, through our Open Source as Prior Art Program. Also, as I stated before, with our members' backing, the Linux Foundation has created a legal defence fund to defend users or developers of open source software against malicious attack. Organisations like the Linux Foundation exist to defend the community in cases like this. In addition, when you take on a single member of this community, you take on everyone. That is a powerful force,'' declares Zemlin with passion and conviction.

These words very well address the fear, if there was any!

Republished with Permission :
More Details http://efytimes.com/archive/preview.asp?articleid=14

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents - part 3

2007-06-13T07:34:00.000-05:00

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents

Shock and awe

There are many players who rely on GNU/Linux, and here was a possibility to use a shock and awe strategy to intimidate them. Observers feel that this move might scare those players, forcing them to sign cross-licensing deals with Microsoft. The best thing Microsoft could come out with was fresh claims that GNU/Linux infringes on its patents. Only this time, it gave a number as well -- 235.

But the GNU/Linux community seems unaffected. ''There are collective industry groups like the Open Innovation Network and our own legal programmes at the Linux Foundation that aggregate patents against predatory patent trolls. With our members' backing, the Linux Foundation has created a legal defence fund to protect users or developers of open source software against malicious attack. While we don't expect to, we will invoke this fund, if needed, to defend Linux,'' avers Zemlin.

The confidence in organisations like OIN is deeply rooted within the FOSS community. ''I sleep pretty well at night without a concern that there is some time bomb that Microsoft could set off that would overnight remove my ability to use critical open source software. I do not plan to have to pay Microsoft any money; at worst, I might have to give up a feature here or there that has to have a workaround because none of the above approaches work. Despite that, it's worth worrying enough about the issue to make sure we have strong legal institutions in open source -- the non-profits around major foundations, the Software Freedom Law Centre, the Open Innovation Network, etc,'' says Behlendorf.

In the wake of these allegations, Rosenthal decided to shoulder the task of building trust and a sense of security amongst GNU/Linux players, by stating, ''This is not the first time that unsubstantiated claims of patent infringement have been levelled at Linux. Moreover, just as in the past, these claims are made without disclosing any evidence. It's time to stop the accusations and show the evidence.''

Name it to claim it

Microsoft has not yet revealed the specific infringements, although it has described the areas. "Out of the 235 patents it claims to have been violated by GNU/Linux, 42 are said to be part of the Linux kernel, about 45 are part of OpenOffice.org, and about 65 are related to the graphical user interfaces (in GNOME and KDE, for example),'' says Tony Wasserman, executive director, Centre for Open Source Investigation, and director, the Software Management programme, Carnegie Mellon West.

According to Lachal, ''Microsoft has been claiming that open source software infringes on its patents for some time but had so far declined to give any details. Microsoft is still refusing to specify which patents are being infringed (a common stance among IP holders: it is not in their interest to divulge their IP cards until it becomes legally necessary).''

''It's important to note that the US Patents and Trademarks Office has very little expertise in the area of software, which makes it possible for someone to patent almost anything. It's hard to know if Microsoft's patent claims would be upheld if they were challenged and reviewed,'' adds Wasserman.

Behlendorf, too, is not buying any of Microsoft's claims, ''Until they reveal specifics about which patents they feel conflicted, there's really no way to determine how concrete their claims are.''

Defending the company's claims, Horacio Gutierrez, vice president of intellectual property and licensing, Microsoft, says, ''Even the founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, noted last year that Linux infringes well over 200 patents from multiple companies. The real question is not whether The real question is not whether there exist substantial patent infringement issues, but what to do about them. Microsoft and Novell have already developed a solution that meets the needs of customers, furthers interoperability, and advances the interests of the industry as a whole. Any customer that is concerned about Linux IP issues needs only to obtain their open source subscriptions from Novell.''

Ironically, even Microsoft's closest ally in the open source world, Novell, doesn't seem happy with the allegations made by Microsoft. Bruce Lowry, director, global public relations corporate services, Novell, writes on the Novell Open PR, ''There's an article out in Fortune Magazine talking about Microsoft, intellectual property and open source. Because of our interoperability agreement with Microsoft, which includes a patent element, Novell is featured in the story. We've received a number of inquiries about the story, in which Microsoft lays out the specific number of patents it claims are violated in Linux and other open source projects. While providing numbers is new, the claims that violations exist are not new. In response to similar Microsoft claims back in November, we put out an open letter from our CEO, Ron Hovsepian, which states our position on this issue. That position hasn't changed.''

Hovsepian wrote in that open letter, ''We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patents. Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.''

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents - part 2

2007-06-12T09:15:00.000-05:00

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents

Get them before they get you

The industry seemed to be well aware of Microsoft's intentions. There was a remote fear within the industry that Microsoft might use its patent portfolio to scare other companies and force them to sign cross licensing deals. Biggies like IBM, with larger patent portfolios than Microsoft, would be well prepared to counter Microsoft in court, but no one else would want to wrestle with the legal team of one of the world's biggest companies. So, some of the giants -- IBM, Novell, NEC, Sony, Red Hat and Philips -- came together and erected a firewall, Open Invention Network (OIN), as a shield against Microsoft's possible threats. Under the leadership of Jerry Rosenthal, ex-vice president, intellectual property and licensing business, IBM, OIN is committed to providing security to its members against any licensing threat posed by proprietary giants like Microsoft.

Jerry Rosenthal, as the chief executive officer of OIN, set out to acquire patent after patent, creating a pool for the open source community and corporate world. This pool of patents was to be used for cross-licensing purposes to defend the GNU/Linux environment, as well as to make these available to support GNU/ Linux by licensing them on a royaltyfree basis.

Microsoft exploits GPL's zero day vulnerability

The creation of OIN seemed to have thwarted Microsoft's plans to a great extent, but it couldn't let go of the lucrative open source market so easily. Microsoft succeeded in getting one of the GNU/Linux players, Novell, into its camp. On 2nd November 2006, Novell and Microsoft signed a pretty controversial deal. On the face of it, the deal was projected as an effort to smoothen interoperability between the two platforms, but there was surely something lurking behind the smokescreen. And it was pretty visible in the press release issued by the two companies: ''The patent cooperation agreement enables Microsoft and Novell to give customers assurance of protection against patent infringement claims. It gives customers confidence that the technologies they use and deploy in their environments are compliant with the two companies' patents.'' Through this deal, Microsoft not only got access to OSS, but also sent an indirect message that GNU/ Linux infringes on some of its patents. Thus, those who use Novell would remain immune to any lawsuit Microsoft may file against those who violate its patents.

This was a wake up call for the GNU/Linux community. The Free Software Foundation immediately got into the act and started discussions to revise and update the GNU GPL; to patch the holes that Microsoft had exploited to sign the deal with Novell.

Releasing the third discussion draft for GNU GPL version 3, on 28th March 2007, Richard Stallman, president of the FSF and principal author of the GNU GPL, wrote on the FSF website, ''The GPL was designed to ensure that all users of a program receive the four essential freedoms that define free software. These freedoms allow you to run the program as you see fit, study and adapt it for your own purposes, redistribute copies to help your neighbour and release your improvements to the public. The recent patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell aims to undermine these freedoms. In this draft, we have worked hard to prevent such deals from making a mockery of free software.''

However, even if the doors to exploit the 'zero day vulnerability' in GNU GPL were shut, there still seemed scope for Microsoft to not only make money out of the deal, but also re-enforce its claim that GNU/ Linux infringes on its patents. Microsoft then did something that infuriated the open source community even more. In the months of March and April, it signed controversial cross-licensing deals with Fuji Xerox and Samsung Electronics Co. It was made clear in the press release issued by Fuji Xerox that it ''will obtain access to Microsoft's patents for Fuji Xerox's existing and future product lines, including products that incorporate proprietary source and open source software, such open source software, such as Linux.'' Whereas the Samsung-Microsoft deal announcement read, ''...Samsung will also obtain coverage from Microsoft for its customers' use of certain Linux-based products.''

Experts believe that Microsoft has accomplished what it wanted to achieve. According to Laurent Lachal, director, open source research, Ovum, an independent research firm, ''It seems to work. Following the open source-specific patent agreement with Novell (which does not prevent Novell from suing Microsoft should the latter become too overly confident), the company has signed IP deals with Fuji Xerox and Samsung that cover both closed and open source software.''

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents

2007-06-11T06:39:00.000-05:00

The Conspiracy Theory:

Linux Violates Microsoft's Patents

The penetration of GNU/Linux had increased and Microsoft just couldn't sit back and see its potential clients move out of its camp. It wanted to make money out of GNU/Linux, and it did!

By Swapnil Bhartiya, assistant editor, EFYTimes.com

Run! Hide! Surrender! That's the reaction Microsoft probably expected from the open source community when, in a high profile interview, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez told Fortune magazine that GNU/Linux infringes on at least 235 of its patents. But it seems Microsoft missed the bull's eye not by inches, but by a few feet. And we are still not sure as to what Microsoft wanted to achieve with its shenanigans.

One would doubt that this is something Microsoft had thought of overnight - simply because it's one of those companies that plan strategies far ahead, after analysing market trends. The company might have noticed some trends upsetting its dominance in the global market. Most of its online properties werenot performing well. Hotmail, a name that was once synonymous with email, seemed to be losing ground to Yahoo! And people were not even searching for something called MSN Search in Google, let alone using it. Meanwhile, GNU/Linux was trespassing heavily into its core territory -- the desktop market.

Apart from that, while OpenOffice.org was offering strong competition to Microsoft Office, Google was reshaping the computing world by taking desktop-based applications to a virtual online world, with its Google Docs and other applications.

Linux was dominating the server market, and there was little space for Microsoft to fight that with its closed model when enterprises wanted transparency. Desktop-oriented GNU/ Linux operating systems were getting glossier and more user friendly. And distributions like Ubuntu had started to replace Windows as the preferred OS.

Adding insult to injury, Microsoft's much-hyped Windows Vista turned out to be a jobless prodigal son. IT managers, after looking at the cost of transition, the limited number of device drivers for Vista, the incompatibility of file formats and the restraining issues, had made the decision to not switch to the 'new' thing. The only Vista buyers were those who were getting it preinstalled with new PCs. Even new users had started demanding XP instead of Vista (refer to They Want XP back, published in the June issue of 'i.t.' magazine, page 22). This same pattern was repeated with office suites -- only a few had moved from Office 2003 to Office 2007. In a nutshell, nothing seemed to be working in favour of Microsoft.

''In the time it will probably take your readers to go through this article, Microsoft will have made $500,000 in net profit. It's instructive to note that the majority of that profit comes from its Windows and Office lines of business; not coincidently, the two lines of business most threatened by Linux and OpenOffice.org (also, these are the primary technologies whose intellectual property Microsoft claims are being infringed on). Given the high stakes involved, it's not surprising that Microsoft would take steps to protect its turf,'' says Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation.

.

The hidden agenda

The software industry saw a major trend emerge when software patents started getting recognition in the United States. Most companies started piling up stacks of patents. Microsoft picked up the trend, though a little late, and began filing for new patents. In this heap of patents, Microsoft might have seen a very promising revenue generation model -- envisaging that it could make money from the markets it had no direct presence in. The company started signing cross-licensing deals with other companies, en masse. The rule of cross licensing is simple: 'I will pay you for the 10 licences you hold, and you will pay me for the 20 licences I have.' The company that holds greater value in their licences ends up getting royalties for them.

Microsoft, being the company it is, would have been aware that the increasing penetration of GNU/Linux had started burning a hole in its pocket. Red Hat and Novell were enjoying the lion's share of the Linux server market. Microsoft seemed to be getting nothing out of this lucrative market. Also, the corporate open source world was posing direct competition to Microsoft's products. The Redmond giant needed a plan to take on the market. So it did what anyone else would have done -- it started tapping open source companies for cross-licensing deals.

''They want to put a tax on open source -- even though they had nothing to do with its development. Their modus operandi is to seek a fee from every computer user in the world, and they can't imagine someone using a computer without becoming a licensee of Microsoft. It feels like 'free money' to them, so why not? They're only acting in their shareholders' interests, which they are legally required to do,'' says Brian Behlendorf, CTO, CollabNet.

To be continue.........

Silverlight With Java Script Tutorial 01

2007-06-09T23:30:00.000-05:00

Silverlight With Java Script Tutorial 01

Purpose of this Series

On the Silverlight.Net Forums, I see repeated questions arise, and after a "Web Developer Conference" this morning, I realized that there really still are a lot of developers out there that have not actually tried their hand at Silverlight yet because of the perceived complexity involved.

Couple that with the fact that many of the existing 'Tutorials' seem to want to jump right into Visual Studio and AJAX, I thought I'd take a shot at simplifying this all even further.

This first Tutorial

The purpose of this tutorial is to show how simple it is to Silverlight-enhance a web page. Everything necessary to do so with the exception of the bits from the SDK are included on this page, and a link to the SDK is given along with instructions, so within just a few minutes, you should have your first Siverlight web page running!

It is normally my intent to explain everything in detail, but I'm breaking with that tradition on this page. Because I want you to be able to get a page up quickly, I'm going to bypass delving into some of the syntax this time in favor of product-to-browser.

The Bottom Line

The 'Bottom Line' on putting up your first web page containing a Silverlight canvas is that you don't need AJAX, and you don't need Visual Studio! Worst-case scenario is notepad... if you have a good color-coded templated code editor, that's great as well, but also not necessary.

The minimum need for a Silverlight-enhanced web page is 3 things:

The html file for your page data
The Silverlight.js file provided in the SDK (described below)
An XML file in the form of Silverlight XAML to specify the canvas

Of course, if you're using external css, or have any graphic elements, those would need to be included, but for now, lets ignore those.

To get the hard part out of the way first, go to the
Silverlight.net Getting Started Page, scroll down to the section heading "Software Development Kit", and take the link to download "Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 Beta Software Development Kit (SDK)".
Unzip all that to someplace that you'll find easily. There's lots of good stuff in there to look at, but the one thing we're interested in right now is Silverlight.js

You'll need to have Silverlight.js somewhere in your development area that can be easily reached by your code, and easily updated when a new release is made. I think it's fairly standard to have a js folder that contains this and other Java Scripts you may use. I'm going to assume that this is the case for the following discussions.

The HTML file

You now have everything you need to get started with Silverlight using Java Script! So let's take a look at what our html page might look like:

........................THE BLOGGER NOT SUPPORT HTML CODE................................
........................
.................PLEASE DON'T MISTAKEN ME, I GIVE THE LINKS FOR THIS ARTICALS...........PLEASE VISIT...
........................http://www.freewebs.com/1code/............................

That's IT!

Very simple... if you already have a web page you want to add a Silverlight canvas on, you only need to add a link to the Silverlight.js file, add in the control-holder div tag and script to instantiate it and put your xaml file where your code can find it.
It doesn't get much simpler than that!

What next

I think next time it would be good to discuss all the bits not discussed this time: The instantiation of the control and the TextBlock.Feel free to write if you have questions or problems, and most definitely if you have ideas of something you'd like to see discussed!

QuickStart

While you're waiting for me to do the next page in this series, it would be well worth your time to go to where you installed all the Silverlight Beta 1 files and start looking at the file "WPFE.chm" which is the Beta 01 SDK, and you should also extract the QuickStart. There are many great examples and good instruction in that file set.

More Details:

http://www.freewebs.com/1code/

Microsoft Exam Insurance

2007-06-09T23:24:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Exam Insurance

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You'll receive a 25 percent discount on any future Microsoft Certification exam. With each additional Microsoft Certification that you earn, you'll be further along the path to getting the recognition you deserve.

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More Deatils:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/insurance/default.mspx

Side by Side In Process CLRs Start with Silverlight

2007-06-07T02:24:00.000-05:00

Side by Side In Process CLRs Start with Silverlight

When we started working on managed code for Silverlight one scenario I wanted to see working was the ability to create a new browser or shell in managed code that could still browse to and execute rich web content. We spent (endless) time debating if this scenario should simply target the desktop CLR if it were installed and just use one CLR. In the end my main concern about that solution was ensuring 100% behavior compatibility. We strive really hard to reach this on the desktop already, and at some point just being able to execute what you wrote against is the best solution. So instead we went down the road of creating a separately factored CLR which could run side by side in the same process. To test this, I wrote a small managed application which hosted shdocvw.dll (IE’s core browser engine) and browsed to a Silverlight enabled web site. The first few times this was not a pretty experience , but that was quickly fixed.

Enabling side by side CLRs in the same process not only enables this scenario, but it removes a long standing complaint from developers trying to write applications that implement add-in models for extensibility. In these cases, you often want to load and bind to the version of the CLR your add-in was built for. Previously one had to roll forward to the latest and greatest version to pull this off. It does work, but can be a little painful.

There are a few things to notice in this diagram:
· There is no retroactive change to Versions 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0 of the CLR. Only one of these may be in the process at the same time. The diagram shows V2.0 (3.0 and “3.5” are built on top if used).
· Silverlight can run side by side with any one of the V1.0, V1.1, or V2.0 CLRs.
· Future versions of the CLR (which are under development already) will run side by side with the original desktop CLR instances and Silverlight.

Now that we have this feature, you may ask why it wasn’t there from the beginning. There were always two main considerations we had historically for not going down this road. The first is thread suspension. You need to ensure that if two CLRs are suspending threads to do a GC they don’t suspend each other in the process (there are some XML dlls out there today which do a poor job of this). The second consideration is the performance of the resulting process. Each CLR has its own GC heap and loaded code; they do not share data with each other (any interop between them must be done through unmanaged code / COM).

Given all of this, it is still our recommendation that if you are designing a new extensibility API for your application, try to make it work well with the add-in running out-of-process. This really does provide the cleanest way to isolate 3rd party code and keep the best possible compatibility. However if you are using an existing API extensibility model (sidebar, browser, etc) that was not designed for this, this new feature does simplify your life a lot.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (Codename Katmai)

2007-06-05T07:43:00.000-05:00

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (Codename Katmai)

Do you have passion for technology? Do you want to make a difference? Then try out a SQL Server 2008 Community Technology Preview (CTP). The SQL Server development team uses your feedback from CTPs to help refine and enhance product features.

E D L E H M A N'S P O S T I N G

This coming Monday, June 4, we will release the June CTP of Katmai. We will also announce the official naming of Katmai as SQL Server 2008. Download links will be live on http://connect.microsoft.com/sqlserver Monday morning at 8:30am EST.

Among the 27 improvements included in the CTP are:

Declarative Management Framework (DMF) is a new policy-based management framework for the SQL Server Database Engine that delivers the following benefits:

. Ensure compliance with policies for system configuration . Prevent/monitor changes to the system by authoring policies for the desired configuration . Reduce total cost of ownership by simplifying administration tasks

Change Data Capture (CDC). Change Data Capture (CDC) is a generic component that will track database changes asynchronously and expose the changes through a relational interface which can be consumed easily.

. Through this interface, consumers can very easily track changes based on their specific requirements and consume the change data using T-SQL or other data access methods.

MERGE SQL Statement. Common data warehouse scenarios require developers to either insert information or update information. SQL Server 2008 will provide new statements within the SQL language to enable developers to provide this functionality with a single statement.

Star Join Query Optimizations. For improved query performance for common data warehouse scenarios, Star Join Query optimizations reduce query response time by recognizing data warehouse join patterns.

AS Dimension Design: Improved Supportability and Integration of Best Practices . Enhance UI for creating and editing dimensions to guide users toward designs that follow best practices.

. These include: Finish Attribute Relationship Designer, Dimension structure (presentation of attribute relationships), modification to wizards to align output with best practices, simplifying creation of composite keys, and AMO warnings (spanning all objects, not just dimensions)

Table Value Parameters. In many customer scenarios, it is necessary to pass a set of table structured values (rows) to a stored procedure/function on the server. These values may be used for populating/updating a table directly or for more complex manipulation of data for business logic purpose. Table valued parameter will provide an easier way to define a table type as well as allow applications to create, populate and pass table structured parameters to stored procedures and functions

Another important accomplishment is taking the first steps for the new setup architecture with the enablement of side-by-side installations with Yukon SP2.

Along with the release of the first Katmai CTP, we're implementing a new approach for SQL Server Samples and Community projects on Codeplex (http://www.codeplex.com/SqlServerSamples), Microsoft's open source project hosting site. Customers will now have direct access to all Microsoft SQL Server product sample source code without the need to install anything. Addressing a long-standing customer ask, customers can also install samples for specific SQL technologies from Codeplex rather having to use a single monolithic install of all samples. Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples released on Codeplex will be aligned to and tested with specific releases.

We have also started to release Community sample projects on Codeplex, which include groups of samples contributed outside of our regular product release cycle by SQL Server MVPs, Microsoft employees, or other members of the community.

The Codeplex SQL Portal page serves as a common entry point for these and other SQL Server-related projects on Codeplex. The Katmai version of SQL Server Management Studio and BI Dev Studio include a "Samples and Community Projects" link on the Community Menu that will redirect customers to the portal page.

With this approach to samples and community projects, we bring together a much broader body of code for our customers from a wide variety of sources. This new approach also enables us to take much more of a cross-product approach aligned to customer needs than the single-product focused approach we have taken in the past.

Along with the June CTP, we will be opening New MSDN Forums dedicated to Katmai located at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=428&SiteID=1 (won't work until Monday). We are also expanding a pilot that's been working very well in the SSIS forum. Any known MVP poster can now flag replies to forum threads that need to be escalated to the Microsoft SQL team for follow-up. Member of the SQL team will be notified daily of any escalated threads. In order to flag any reply to a forum thread, just place the text [Microsoft follow-up] (including the brackets) in your reply. As always, if you have any problems with this new capability, please let me know.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/futureversion/default.mspx for additional info on Katmai.

What is Silverlight?

2007-06-04T09:25:00.000-05:00

Microsoft's Silverlight technology, launched at the NAB conference two weeks ago and pitched hard to developers at the Mix '07 conference this week, is being taken as a competitor to Adobe's Flash. Since it is a framework for providing rich applications to the Internet browser, it is indeed that. But though Silverlight and Flash are competing technologies, Microsoft's offering is different from Adobe's in key ways.

More than just a platform

Silverlight is being pushed side-by-side with Microsoft's Live services for developers. Microsoft is opening up APIs (application program interfaces) for its search engine, for Virtual Earth, for its instant messaging service, and for other services, under generous, but not unlimited, licensing terms. These services will allow the creation of interesting online applications that take advantage of existing Microsoft networks and resources. For example, Match.com today demoed a new version of its service that can connect directly to other Match.com subscribers who are MSN Messenger users. Mash-ups are nothing new, of course, but it is important that Microsoft is giving developers access to its computing resources as well as its user base.

Silverlight supports the display of high-definition video files, and importantly, Microsoft will do the heavy lifting of sending them over the Net. Streaming large media files is expensive, but Microsoft will (optionally) host Silverlight media files and applications. This will enable smaller developers to deliver large and high-definition files quickly and reliably, without paying content distribution network fees. Microsoft is promising reliable 700kbps throughput for media files, and free distribution of all content on its network for one year. After that, distribution will continue to be free up to 1 million streamed minutes a month. Fees after that have not been set.

Also, Silverlight applications are delivered to a browser in a text-based markup language called XAML. That's no big deal for Web users once they land on a site. But search engines, like Google, can scan XAML. They can't dive into compiled Flash applications. Flash-heavy sites do often wrap their applications in Web code that search engines can crawl, although it's extra work for developers and designers to do it, and may not yield search results that are as good as they would be if the search engine was indexing the actual application instead of keywords tacked on after the fact. Silverlight applications will be more findable.

One thing Silverlight isn't though, is a competitor to Apollo (hands-on), Adobe's technology that lets developers take their online applications and make them into standalone desktop apps. Apollo developers will be able to take advantage of capabilities that make applications behave properly whether they are online or not. Silverlight does not yet offer those capabilities, although I heard that apps written in Silverlight will be able to modify the "chrome" or basic user interface of a browser while they are running, to further obscure the difference between a browser-based app and traditional software.

But what's in it for me?

Windows users probably won't care whether the rich Web app they are visiting is using Silverlight or Flash. Both technologies require a small plug-in (as of IE7, Flash is no longer bundled with the browser) and once installed, both are invisible until the user hits a page that requires their services.

Web developers will care about which technology they choose, though. Publishers and developers want their apps to run on as many platforms as possible, and while Silverlight apps will run on both major Windows browsers as well as on Safari and Firefox on a Mac, Microsoft does not have a sterling track record in delivering ongoing support for Mac apps and platforms. Nonetheless, the developer community seems to have given Silverlight a thumbs-up, so expect to see interesting new Web apps coming out that use it.

Already, Microsoft has done a good job of lining up top-tier developers. At the launch of the conference, we saw demos from Netflix (video), Major League Baseball (video), and CBS. All showed applications that combined very impressive user interaction, streaming video, and interesting community features. Netflix, for example, lets two users sync their videos so they're both watching the same movie together. MLB lets one person send another a clip of an in-game event, which displays in a picture-in-picture view on their game display.

It looks like Silverlight is not just solid technology, but that Microsoft has also put together an infrastructure of supporting services offered at can't-say-no prices. The Web was hardly hurting for innovation up to now, but Silverlight will likely encourage even more of it.

To download the Silverlight plug-in and check out the Silverlight demos, go to Microsoft's Silverlight site.

Microsoft TechMela 2007

2007-06-03T22:07:00.000-05:00

Microsoft TechMela 2007

TechMela –The fusion of the latest technologies, technical expertise, and structured learning experiences.

TechMela is an evolution of the erstwhile TechEd, Mobile and Embedded Developer Conference, MIX, and IT Professionals' Conference. TechMela is the definitive confluence of technologists and business professionals.

Creating many pathways to knowledge exchange, TechMela comprises of technology presentations, scenario showcases, experience zones and discussion forums under two broad events:

Develop Next Gen Web Applications Using ASP.NET AJAX

2007-06-01T00:53:00.000-05:00

Develop Next Gen Web Applications Using ASP.NET AJAX

The Ultimate Online Training Environment - With the Developer Virtual Classrooms, you'll enjoy the benefits of live human interaction from the comforts of your desktop.

And with the virtual classroom's interactive functionality participants can:
• Gain valuable knowledge quickly and easily through a combination of lecture and demonstrations presented by a technical expert.
• Take online course evaluations.
• Based on a 80% correctness in your evaluation score, you stand to earn yourself a certificate of participation from Microsoft.

Develop Next Gen Web Applications Using ASP.NET AJAX

This classroom will take you through the key concepts in ASP.NET AJAX. By attending this classroom you would be able to create better, faster and more user friendly web applications. The instructor will also take you through live demos to ensure a better understanding of the technology.

Classrooms Details

Date & Time Title

June 04, 072:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET AJAXThis session introduces the concept of partial page updates. It provides an introduction to AJAX and also overview of Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX which consists of different components that help in quickly developing AJAX Enabled Applications.

June 05, 072:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Chapter 2: Microsoft AJAX LibraryThe Microsoft AJAX Library includes a rich framework to simplify client programming. This sessions talks on the Microsoft AJAX Library namespaces and how you can utilize the rich client library for Ajax enabling web applications.

June 06, 072:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Chapter 3: ASP.NET AJAX ExtensionsASP.NET AJAX Extensions provide some of the robust controls such as the UpdatePanel, Update Progress and other server side controls which can provide a seamless way of enabling partial page updates for your web applications.

June 07, 072:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Chapter 4: ASP.NET AJAX ExtensibilityThis session talks about the ASP.NET AJAX Extensibility, the Application Services as well as how you can interact with Web Services and retrieve data using the AJAX Library scripts.

June 08, 072:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Chapter 5: AJAX Control ToolkitThe AJAX Control Toolkit is a comprehensive set of controls which can be handy while providing extender features for the existing client controls. It provides more than 30 useful controls which help in adding behaviours to existing server controls to provide rich user experience.

Speaker: Harish Ranganathan

All timings are in IST (Indian Standard Time).

Limited seats available. Please join 15 minutes prior to the scheduled time to ensure your participation.

SILVERLIGHT Part-I

2007-05-31T11:30:00.000-05:00

SILVERLIGHT

Get Started Building A Deeper Experience Across The Web

This article discusses:

An introduction to Silverlight and XAML
Building a simple Silverlight app
Generating Silverlight apps dynamically on the server
Creating a XAML service

A key component in the Microsoft strategy for next-generation Web development is a new technology named Microsoft^® Silverlight™, formerly code-named "WPF/E." Designed to bring the Windows^® Presentation Foundation experience to the Web, Silverlight provides rich, immersive content that fits seamlessly with the rest of the Web development environment, including ASP.NET AJAX.

To reach the Web community at large, Silverlight needs to run successfully on a number of popular operating systems and in the most popular browsers. As a result, the first release supports the Firefox and Safari browsers running on Mac OS X as well as Firefox and Internet Explorer^® running on Windows. More operating systems and browsers should be supported as the product evolves. In addition to these capabilities, Silverlight is also completely self-contained and has no dependencies on other products such as Windows Media^® Player for video playback or the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 for XAML parsing.

In this article, you get a high-level overview of the architecture of Silverlight, and get hands-on experience building several Silverlight applications, starting with a basic Hello World application. I then walk you through building a simple media player. You also see how, while Silverlight is a client-side technology, it fits into a larger server-oriented picture, including the ability to be used on servers running PHP or Java.

Introducing Silverlight

At its core, Silverlight is a browser plug-in that renders XAML, exposing its internal Document Object Model (DOM) and event model to the browser in a scriptable manner. Thus, a designer can put together a XAML document containing graphics, animations, and timelines and a developer can hook these up to code in a page to implement functionality. As XAML is based on XML, the document defining the UI that gets downloaded to the client is text-based and thus friendly to search engines and firewalls. In addition, the XAML may be assembled and emitted at run time by a server application, providing not only a rich graphical experience, but also a highly customizable and dynamic one.

The anatomy of a simple Silverlight application, using a static XAML file defining its UI and JavaScript for event handling, is shown in Figure 1. The browser instantiates the plug-in and, as part of this process, loads the XAML file. Events within this file, such as clicking on a button, are captured by the browser and processed by JavaScript. As the DOM of the Silverlight content is exposed, the JavaScript code can also dynamically update the Silverlight contents, changing the state of the rendered content.

Figure 1 Sample App

The architecture that supports the Silverlight application is shown in Figure 2. The main programming interface is the JavaScript DOM API. This allows you to respond to events raised within the Silverlight XAML (such as when content has finished loading or when an animation is complete). You can also call methods to manipulate the presentation (such as starting an animation or pausing video playback). Underneath this is the XAML parsing engine. The parser creates the in-memory XAML DOM for use by the presentation core, which handles the rendering of the graphics and animations defined by the XAML. In addition, the runtime contains the codecs necessary for playback of WMV, WMA, and MP3 multimedia content.

Figure 2 Silverlight Architecture

Finally, the runtime contains the presentation core, which manages the rendering process. This presentation runtime is built into a browser plug-in that supports several flavors of Windows as well as Mac OS X, using any of several browsers as discussed previously. The end result is a self-contained graphics and media rendering engine that may be plugged into the browser and scripted via JavaScript.

XAML Overview

XAML is an XML-based language that may be used to define graphical assets, user interfaces, behaviors, animations, and more. It was introduced by Microsoft as the markup language used in Windows Presentation Foundation, a desktop-oriented technology that is part of the .NET Framework 3.0. It was designed to help bridge the work between designers and developers in creating applications.

Traditionally, designers used one suite of tools and resources for creating an application, and developers used their own separate tools. The mismatch between toolsets had the potential to adversely affect the resulting application. Microsoft introduced the new Expression suite of tools, particularly Microsoft Expression^® Design and Microsoft Expression Blend, to allow design professionals to put together graphical artifacts and user interfaces respectively, expressing the end result as XAML, which a developer can then take and build an application from.

The XAML used by the first release of Silverlight differs from that used by Windows Presentation Foundation in that the former is a Web-oriented subset of the full XAML available for the desktop. As such, if you are familiar with Windows Presentation Foundation XAML, you’ll notice some things missing such as the tag, page resources, data binding, and the rich control model.

In XAML you define elements using XML tags. At the root level of every Silverlight document is a Canvas tag, which defines the space on which UI elements will be drawn. This Canvas should contain the XML namespace declarations that Silverlight needs.

A Canvas can have one or more children, including child Canvases that can create their own children. Children of a Canvas have relative positions to their parent Canvas, not to the root Canvas. Here’s an example of a Canvas containing a Rectangle, and the rectangle is placed 25 pixels from the top-left corner of its parent.

Inside the XAML

Silverlight XAML supports a number of shapes that can be orchestrated into complex objects. The basic supported shapes are Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Polygon, PolyLine, and Path. Most of these are self-explanatory. PolyLine allows you to define a series of joined line segments. Path allows you to define a nonlinear path (like a scribble) across the Canvas.

Brushes determine how objects are painted on the screen. Their contents are painted using a Fill and their outlines are painted using a Stroke. There are solid-color brushes, gradient brushes, and image brushes. Solid color brushes are implemented using either a fixed color on the fill attribute (such as Fill="Black" used in the previous example) or using SolidColorBrush as an attached property like this:

 Colors can be defined by name (141 named colors are supported) or by hex RGB definition.

Gradient brushes are implemented by defining a gradient range and a number of gradient stops across a normalized space. For example, say you wanted a linear gradient to move from right to left, changing from black to white through the shades of gray as you go. You would specify a gradient stop at 0 (the beginning of a normalized line) that is black, and a gradient stop at 1 (the end of a normalized line) that is white. Silverlight will then paint the gradient for you. Gradients may also be painted in two dimensional space, with a normalized rectangle defining the space (0,0 is top-left and 1,1 is bottom-right). So to define a rectangle filled with a 2D gradient with red in the top-left, black in the bottom-right, and a smooth gradient between them, you would use XAML like this:

Objects may also be painted using ImageBrushes, and the image will be clipped or stretched as appropriate. So, for example, you can specify to fill an Ellipse using an ImageBrush with XAML like this:

Text can be rendered in XAML using the TextBlock tag. This gives you control over aspects of the text such as content, font, size, wrapping and more. Here are some examples:

In addition, Silverlight supports keyboard events that can be used to implement text input. You can define a keyboard event (KeyDown or KeyUp) on the root element, and use the event arguments to derive which key was pressed.

5 Reasons to Love VSTO 2005 Second Edition

2007-05-24T02:25:00.000-05:00

There are many things to like about VSTO 2005 Second Edition. But there are 5 things to love about it.

You can create managed add-ins that work for both Office 2003 and Office 2007. I can create a single add-in for both Office platforms or I can create targeted add-ins that takes advantage of the features of each version of Office.
You can create add-ins for the Office applications that you use most: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, InfoPath and Visio. This just about covers all of the scenarios around Office applications in the enterprise. If you think we are missing one let us know.
You can create custom Ribbons, application level task panes, and Outlook form regions. You can take advantage of the cool new features of Office 2007.
You can install it in Visual Studio Professional or above. I no longer need to buy a separate VS sku to do Office development.
All of your existing VSTO 2005 applications continue to just work in Office 2007. I don’t have time to rewrite everything; my apps should just continue to work.
It’s FREE. Finally a price I can afford. No more excuses not to jump into the world of Office development.

Ok, so that is 6 things to love about VSTO 2005 Second Edition. Even though this a targeted release between the major ship cycles of VSTO 2005 and the next version, code named VS Orcas, there is so many features crammed into this release. There are many more nuggets of information that I haven’t been able to blog about yet but hope to get to.

Tell me what you love about VSTO Second Edition.

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas"

2007-05-10T22:02:00.000-05:00

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas"

Visual Studio Product Roadmap

Microsoft® Visual Studio® code name “Orcas” delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality rich user experiences. With Visual Studio code name “Orcas”, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information so that they can make effective business decisions. Visual Studio code name “Orcas” enables any size organization to rapidly create more secure, manageable & reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system.

Visual Studio code name “Orcas” delivers key advances for developers in three primary pillars:

Improve Developer Productivity
In Visual Studio code name “Orcas”, developer productivity doesn’t end with the code editor and wizards. By extending this concept to application architectures and the underlying platform, Visual Studio code name “Orcas” delivers not only a productive development tool but also enables developers to tackle new business problems while decreasing the total cost of solution construction. In Visual Studio code name “Orcas”, developers, designers and database professionals will see new tools and frameworks become available to simplify their tasks.
Manage the IT Life Cycle
Visual Studio code name “Orcas” enhances the end-to-end value of Visual Studio Team System by increasing its role-based coverage and delivering enhanced traceability throughout the software development life cycle. With deep integration across roles in the software life cycle and the Team Foundation Server, Team System enables customers to amplify the impact of their teams and improve software quality.
Employ the Latest Technologies
As users look for new ways of comprehending and retaining information developers must still grapple with basic desktop and application security. Visual Studio, Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system enable you to deliver a safe, robust and compelling user experience in any type of application.

Visual Studio code name “Orcas” achieves these key advances through a wide array of innovative product improvements, such as:

Handle Data More Smoothly
With the introduction for Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and improvements to ADO.NET, developers can now deal with data using a consistent programmatic way and with new design surfaces and support for the occasionally connected design pattern.
Enable New Web Experiences
Beyond the secure, reliable & extensible infrastructure of IIS, developers can easily create Web applications with more interactive, more responsive and more efficient client-side execution using the seamless integration and familiar programming model of ASP.NET AJAX and other extensions & enhancements.
Improve Application Life-cycle Management (ALM)
Visual Studio code name “Orcas” provides great support for not only managing the entire software development life cycle, but also the critical interaction with the final end users and managers of an enterprise application.
Target Windows Vista and .NET Framework 3.0 Development
Developers will be easily able to leverage new platform technologies and deliver more compelling applications to their customers by effortlessly incorporating new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) features into both existing Windows Forms applications and new applications.
Create Microsoft Office Applications
Visual Studio Tools for Office is now fully integrated into Visual Studio code name “Orcas” Professional Edition enables developers to customize any Office application, from Outlook to PowerPoint, to improve end user productivity and significantly improving deployment.

visual studio 2005

2007-05-03T11:05:00.000-05:00

video studio 2005 video

Microsoft Certified

2007-04-28T03:34:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Certified System Administrator (MCSA) with Specialization in Security

Whether you like it or not, Microsoft is the biggest software maker. And they are hence hot on certifications too. And not surprisingly one of the Microsoft certifications is in the second spot in our list of surveys. Actually, an MCSE where E stands for Engineer, used to be the hottest till some time back.However, the job of planning and designing computer systems and networks have fallen to more specialized folks in organisations, in the past two years or so. Another reason is that when it comes to planning and designing, years of experience is considered more important than certificates.For the same reason, the role of managing and maintaining an IT infrastructure is a job where certificates play a role. Since this job is largely been outsourced, there are number of opportunities to maintain the IT infrastructure across the globe. So MCSA is in!

However, unlike the CCIE certification MCSAs are not exactly paid big bucks. But, what it assures is a very high chance of securing a job. MCSA is meant for developers looking for their first break rather than moving into the big league, and every month there are thousands of jobs being created too. The Security Certification Specialization is something, which has added that extra edge to the program. Since Microsoft products have been the favourite target of hackers globally, many recruiters have started asking for Security specialization.

An MCSA certification costs approximately Rs 24,000. Current salaries offered for MCSA professionals seen in public domains in United States starts as low as $ 50,000 but ranges to $ 78,000. For a starter, that is pretty decent. In India, it starts from Rs 12,000 and above.

Web Link:http://www.microsoft.com/traincert/mcp/mcsa/default.asp

Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD)

This is the only certification we have in this list that is a true developer certification. All the other certifications were more on managing a product, or administering or maintaining it. But for pure software skills, and actually developing on a development tool, you have to checkout MCSD. MCSD is a certification that has evolved over many years. And as a developer, if you are looking at getting certified for skill-sets on Visual Studio.net or on .Net then MCSD is the best bet! MCSD is currently going through a face-lift and Microsoft website tells us that there are some new announcements in the pipeline. While you talk about MCSE, it is important to point out that Microsoft also has MCAD, which is targeted at Application Developers. MCAD is not exactly hot on the job listings searches, but it may be the dark horse that may figure in the list next time we do this survey. In the case of Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) for Microsoft .NET, candidates are required to pass four core exams and one elective exam.
Web Link-
http://www.microsoft.com/traincert/mcp/mcsd/default.asp

Visual Studio Unit Testing Extends

2007-04-15T20:56:00.000-05:00

Visual Studio Unit Testing Extends to Visual Studio Professional in OrcasIf you haven't heard the news yet, Visual Studio Unit Testing, which was only available in some Team System products in Visual Studio 2005, will be available in the Professional Edition of Visual Studio code name "Orcas".

Ten Technology Trends for 2007

2007-04-08T10:47:00.000-05:00

Ten Technology Trends for 2007

Ruby on Rails and Django will move mainstream

The dynamic language pack is hot! And they are moving mainstream very fast. PHP is already there. But it is not yet recommended for cutting edge stuff. Ruby is the hottest programming language around. Every developer who wants to make name for himself, is learning Ruby or at least following the language. There are more than thirty Ruby books being written or is already hit the bookstores.

Last time a language gained mind share so fast was a decade back when Java was launched. And this time around Sun is already doing their share, by pushing JRuby.

But not everyone is going Ruby way. Django, a little know Python framework is catching up and is regarded better of the two for 90% of web applications. There are already a few thousand web sites including your own Developeriq.com running Django.

The next year will see serious application development on both Ruby and Django. Already Google has one project ported on Django which may go live in 2007. This will mean that Django will slowly get recognition.

Flex -Ajax tango

The Ajax hype reached a zenith in mid 2006. Everyone was talking Ajax, whether they had a reason to use it. Or for that matter they know how to use it! However the hype will now be replaced with one brewing on Flex. It is just that open source community has not yet got into the Flex mode yet, but it is slowly happening.

Problem with Ajax is that it has peaked too early. There are some nice applications about but at the end of the day it's a Web page with some very fancy JavaScript. And there are too many toolkits around. Moreover, JavaScript is not yet standardized.

However the very fact that it is built on the very fabric that drives Internet, is a reason enough for Ajax to succeed. At the client side you need not install anything new.

Flex SDK though free is not Open Source. Many Open Source programmers do not like this fact. However, the vst majority who likes to get the work done their way, will look at Flex if it makes sense to them. And a huge per cent of web developers are currently moving to Mac or Linux, away from Windows, because of the advantages offered by these platforms - sleekness and freedom.

The impact of Java going Open Source will be low

There are (or were) two bipolar opinions about Java going open source. The positive one was that lots of Open Source developers will embrace Java. The negative point was Java losing its sheen and the large enterprises getting worried about Java being un-standardized.

Both are unlikely to happen. The number of Open Source developers launching Java projects during 2007 is likely to be low. At the same time, the enterprise customers will back Java to the hilt and continue investing in Java applications.

Internet Explorer 7 will be hot

The Internet Explorer 7.0 is definitely the best of the lot that Microsoft has shipped or will ship in the coming months. It might have a few bugs, but the product is robust and will wean away many users from going for FireFox. The adoption curve will be faster than previous versions of Internet Explorer.

Vista sales will be slow in the first half

As we write this Microsoft is gearing to release Vista worldwide. Unlike the super success of some of the previous platforms, Vista adoption curve will be slower in the first few months.

There is too much of a negative hype surrounding Vista that many large users will be putting off migration plans till they are absolutely sure that everything is OK with it. The bad press which Microsoft is receiving is not helping the cause.

However, the Microsoft marketing machine will win this war, and you will see slow but steady migration and adoption towards end of the year.

SOA hype will reduce

We are almost six years into SOA. The hype is died down and reality is stark naked. SOA implementation will be more RESTful. Meanwhile companies will look at some of the ideas from web 2.0 space and use that for implementing SOA projects.

Enterprise will look at hosted applications seriously

The ASP model will be back, but in new avatar. Enterprises will look at ASP model for hosting applications. They might not give it out to a third party unless it is a recognized player. But they might do so themselves. . The success of AJAX drives traditional software back to the drawing boards. With the ability to finally provide dynamic rich content and applications over the Web, traditional software vendors will find that they need new products to play in this new world. Indeed, as Google Mail is giving Microsoft fits, so will other more innovative Web-delivered applications leveraging rich client technology such as AJAX. Entire interfaces will have to be rewritten to support AJAX, and end users will demand that we move away from traditional pump-and-pull HTTP programming.

More Open Source products on the way
Open Source Everywhere - More and more companies will open source legacy products and launch new ones under open source licenses. Database vendor Ingres is going to set the standard that other more conservative infrastructure vendors will follow. Look for new open source initiatives from major infrastructure vendors like BMC, VMware, and even Microsoft.

Notebooks sales will cross 35% mark

PC buyers are buying more notebooks every quarter and sometime in 2007 the number of shipping notebooks will match the number of desktop PCs or come very close at least in North America and Europe. Forresterr predicts the numbers to be on a 35:65 ratio and we tend to agree with that observation.

AJAX enabled IDEs will exist

Soon you will have hosted IDEs build on Ajax. And it might be a lot cheaper for companies to host such IDEs on a few servers, rather than loading it up heavily on clients.A good start is www.devsquare.com or www.code4jobs.com.

Server Virtualization will happen sooner than later

Server virtualization is just getting started, and will really make itself known in the coming year. Once we start seeing the quad core CPU architectures as a part of standard infrastructure, it really starts making a lot of sense to start deploying and managing servers and applications as virtual entities rather than specific pieces of hardware. This helps manage the cost and pain of software configuration management, take advantage of being able to process many tasks simultaneously because of hardware support, as well as allows legacy hardware to be retired in favor of applications running on virtual servers.

Grid Computing will be a reality

Container-based hosting is the new kid on the block, and will also start making its presence known in the upcoming year. Commonly labeled as "grid" hosting (which is a technical misnomer if you understand distributed computing), it essentially claims to be an infinitely scalable hosting platform. This technology still seems to be half-baked at the moment, but you could have said the same thing about Linux ten years ago.

Linux explorations will be high

People who normally wouldn't use Linux start to explore it and even replace Windows with it permanently. With Vista, Microsoft seems to be moving to a model in which the Windows operating system is a method to police users with DRM and other nonsense rather than provide developers with a good platform on which to use hardware, which is what operating systems are really supposed to be. A lot more consumers who haven't noticed this happening in the past will stand up and notice this year.

Better UIs will be in store

Declarative user interfaces will enable rich user experiences that can be easily modified or extended with simple mechanisms like XSLT. Familiar business applications like Office provide the user interface to back-end line-of-business systems. The line between AJAX-based UIs and rich desktop UIs will blur, enabling users to enjoy both connected and occasionally-connected experiences. Tools and guidance will make building, testing and deploying these composite UI experiences much easier.

BPM will get web enabled

BPM is about improving performance by optimizing key processes. Web 2.0 is about capturing the wisdom of crowds (or as O'Reilly puts it, the architecture of participation). The convergence of BPM and Web 2.0 enables collaborative development and tagging of sub-processes, establishing a "process folksonomy" where the best processes can evolve organically. Collaboration can occur over simple but highly scalable pub/sub mechanisms (like Atom or SSE). Lightweight tools will enable users to model or reuse sub-processes using a broad set of metadata. While this is an exciting opportunity, there are several technical and non-technical issues that must be addressed before this convergence becomes a reality.

Good developers will still be in demand

Skilled programmers and extremely skilled programmers will not come in cheaply and will continue to be `hard to find'. There may be an excess of unskilled labour. But skilled programmers will still be hard to find.

Outsourcing will continue to grow

Companies will continue to outsource software development and IT Services and there seems to be no sign of it stopping. See Gartner's prediction for more details.

Gartner, Inc. released 10 key predictions that showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business and IT in 2007 and beyond.

These predictions are for general technology areas rather than specific to industries or roles within an organization. The predictions are intended to compel high-tech companies and IT professionals within enterprises to action and position themselves to take advantage of the coming changes, and not be damaged by them.

Through 2009, market share for the top 10 IT outsourcers will decline to 40.0% (from 43.5% now), equaling a revenue shift of $5.4 billion. As market share declines, some key outsourcing vendors will cease to exist in their current named form. The reduced number of large contracts, increased amount of competition and reduction in contract sizes have placed great pressure on outsourcers, which will have to "sink or swim" based on support for selective outsourcing and disciplined multisourcing competencies.

Only one Asia/Pacific-based service provider will make the global top 20 through 2010. The number of global players in consulting that come from Asia is relatively small. This will limit the ability of the Asian juggernaut to grow revenue streams rapidly and become global leaders.

Blogging and community contributors will peak in the first half of 2007. Given the trend in the average life span of a blogger and the current growth rate of blogs, there are already more than 200 million ex-bloggers. Consequently, the peak number of bloggers will be around 100 million at some point in the first half of 2007.

By 2009, corporate social responsibility (CSR) will be a higher board- and executive-level priority than regulatory compliance. Regulation has become a key issue for government and the corporate world, with the aim of ensuring more-responsible behavior. However, the need for companies to be socially responsible to their employees, customers and shareholders is growing as well. The future will see corporate boards and executives make this social dynamic a more-critical priority.

By the end of 2007, 75% of enterprises will be infected with undetected, financially motivated, targeted malware that evaded their traditional perimeter and host defenses. The threat environment is changing \u2014 financially motivated, targeted attacks are increasing, and automated malware-generation kits allow simple creation of thousands of variants quickly \u2014 but our security processes and technologies haven't kept up.

Vistawill be the last major release of Microsoft Windows. The next generation of operating environments will be more modular and will be updated incrementally. The era of monolithic deployments of software releases is nearing an end. Microsoft will be a visible player in this movement, and the result will be more-flexible updates to Windows and a new focus on quality overall.

By 2010, the average total cost of ownership (TCO) of new PCs will fall by 50%. The growing importance and focus on manageability, automation and reliability will provide a welcome means of differentiating PCs in a market that is increasingly commoditized. Many of the manageability and support tools will be broadly available across multiple vendors. However, vendors that can leverage these tools further and can graduate from claims of "goodness" to concrete examples of cost savings will have a market advantage.

By 2010, 60% of the worldwide cellular population will be "trackable" via an emerging "follow-me Internet." Local regulations have arisen to protect users' privacy, but growing demands for national safety and civil protection are relaxing some of the initial privacy limitations. Marketing incentives will also push users to forgo privacy concerns, and many other scenarios will enable outsiders to track their users.

Through 2011, enterprises will waste $100 billion buying the wrong networking technologies and services. Enterprises are missing out on opportunities to build a network that would put them at a competitive advantage. Instead, they follow outdated design practices and collectively will waste at least $100 billion in the next five years.

By 2008, nearly 50% of data centers worldwide will lack the necessary power and cooling capacity to support high-density equipment. With higher densities of processors proliferating, problems in this area continue to grow. Although the power and cooling challenge of high-density computer equipment will persist in the short term, a convergence of innovative technologies will begin to mitigate the problem by 2010.

visit
http://www.developeriq.com/articles/2007/apr/07/ten-technology-trends-2007/

ASP Runner .NET ver.3.0.89

2007-03-20T10:18:00.000-06:00

ASPRunner .NET ver.3.0.89 | 4,5 MB
ASPRunner.NET creates a set of ASP.NET pages to access and modify Oracle, SQL Server, MS Access, MySQL. Easy to follow wizard-like interface will walk you through the steps of building the pages in just 15 minutes. Generated ASP.NET code is very robust and easy to modify.

Features:

Easy to use wizard-like interface.
Number of search modes, advanced search.
Add, edit and delete pages, sort data.
Database images displaying and upload.
Password protected access to your database.
Master-detail tables relationship support.
Create ASP.NET code for multiple tables simultaneously.
Single login page and menu page for all tables.

Benefits of using ASPRunner.NET are:

Can save you time and money.
Improve functionality of your web site.
Create robust, easy to modify code.
Easy to use, you can generate your first ASP.NET web site in just ten minutes.
No programming required.

Web Service Testing in a Service-Oriented Architecture

2007-03-16T00:57:00.000-06:00

Web Service Testing in a Service-Oriented Architecture

Web services form the topmost layer of a service oriented architecture (SOA) and expose the SOA capabilities to the customer. For the end user, the exposed web service is representative of the whole enterprise behind. So, the full array of SOA capabilities is rendered useless if the web service fails to perform at the expected level. In addition, the quality of the web service is often indicative of the health of the SOA as every major component can be related to the exposed web service. These are some of the reasons why web services need to be tested and monitored thoroughly and systematically in a SOA.
Aim of this Article

In this work, I shall discuss the various aspects of testing a web service in a service-oriented architecture. I shall stress upon the musts in testing the web service, the interoperability of web services, and quality of service and recovery in case of a service disruption. I shall conclude with mentioning some of the best practices in SOA.
SOA and Web Service Testing

Click here for a larger image.

Figure 1: Service Oriented Architecture

Service-oriented architecture adds value and exposure to the business at the cost of complexity. The interconnected implementation of a SOA is difficult to manage, with complexity increasing exponentially at the introduction of a single new service. Hence, the processes needed to develop, test, and operate a SOA need to be drastically different from the standard processes of software development. For example, in a SOA scenario where the services are interdependent, the contract of a service may need to be in place even before the underlying functionality is developed, thus emulating the real service. The conventional methodologies of 'design, develop, and then test' give way to more proactive and intuitive processes that implement testing at every stage of the lifecycle of a service.

The various aspects of testing a web service in SOA can be classified as the following:

* Interoperability
* Quality
* Recovery

Interoperability

Web services define a new architectural paradigm for software applications. A web service is defined as a loosely coupled standards-based software component exposed over the web for programmatic consumption. The various standards used are for XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI.

Interoperability is the most important aspect of the distributed loosely coupled architecture of web services. To define a standard for interoperability, the Web Services Interoperability Organization (http://ws-i.org) has delivered ws-i basic profiles (version 1.0 is most widely used) that define a set of conformance rules. These rules comprise of the general specifications of XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI and define how to use these technologies to describe, develop, and consume a web service. Ws-i basic profiles are now universally adopted by the industry as a standard measure for interoperability.

The web service must be tested for a ws-i basic profile. On the website, the Web Services Interoperability Organization exposes its own free testing tools for testing the implementation of a web service for conformance to basic profile.

The ws-i site for testing tools: http://www.ws-i.org/deliverables/workinggroup.aspx?wg=testingtools

Testing tool for J2EE web services: http://www.ws-i.org/Testing/Tools/2005/06/WSI_Test_Java_Final_1.1.zip
Quality

As the number of web services grows, chances are that many web services will compete with each other to provide the same type of functionality. In that case, one of the differentiating parameters between two such web services will be the quality of service. The various quality requirements from a web service in a SOA are given below:
1. Availability

The web service should be up and running within the stipulated hours. If the web service is meant to be used over the Internet, availability throughout 24 hours will increase the chances of the consumption of the service. High availability of the web service indicates that the SOA is scalable and robust.
2. Accuracy in functionality

The functionality exposed by the web service should be accurate. So, the underlying service in SOA should be thoroughly tested. Unit testing, as well as functionality testing, should be done on the service at an early stage of developing the SOA because later in the lifecycle, changing implementation in SOA is very difficult.
3. Accessibility

The web service should be able to handle a web service request and thus can be consumed by clients built on different platforms by different technologies such as J2EE, .NET, and so forth.
4. Reliability

Reliability of the web service is a measure of how well the service can maintain its quality over a sustained period of time. To ascertain the stability in the functional behavior, the web service needs to be monitored for regression while in production. Reliability is often measured in failures per day/month.
5. Seamless integration

Web services hide the complex mesh of services and layers in SOA and only expose the relevant functionality. To optimize the utilization of the capabilities of SOA, the seamless integration between various layers should be tested thoroughly. Integration is best tested by successfully implementing a real-world scenario by web service orchestration where various web services from the SOA can be involved. To avoid duplication of implementation effort as well as changing implementation, service emulation, as discussed earlier, is used to test the integration of the SOA from an early stage of development.
6. Performance under load

Performance of a web service is one of the most critical requirements for an enterprise. Performance is normally measured as how quickly the web service responds as the number of users is increased. If there is an unacceptable change in performance, the SOA needs to be investigated for performance bottlenecks that can exist anywhere, starting from the hardware.

The performance of a web service depends on the time required to access the web service as well as the time required to execute the functionality. One way to improve performance is to cache the web service results wherever possible.
7. Ease in discovering services

Visibility is one of the main concerns in SOA. The web service should be easily discoverable in the UDDI registry. In the UDDI, the web service is exposed as a business service that is associated with taxonomies, categories, keywords, and other search criteria. These search criteria should be chosen judiciously so that the service is readily found in an appropriate search.
8. Security

Web services interactions are often exposed to the Internet and can be corrupted. To counter this, the web services security specification (ws-security) provides a set of mechanisms to help developers secure SOAP message exchanges. These basic mechanisms can be used to build a wide variety of security models using different cryptographic technologies. Ws-security also provides a way of encoding and associating security tokens—such as username tokens and SAML tokens—with messages as well as helps preserving message integrity and confidentiality by XML signature and XML encryption respectively, along with security tokes.

The web service should be tested for compliance with ws-security standards as well as various common security loopholes like SQL injection, XML bombing, malformed or large XML, cross site scripting, and so forth.
Recovery

Before going into production, the web service should be tested for recovery from failure owing to any common cause such as an infrastructure failure, large traffic, and the like. First of all, a proper backup strategy should be in place. Ideally, the web service call should be automatically routed to an alternate endpoint while the actual web service is offline for maintenance. After the service is updated, the new information needs to be updated in the UDDI so that the applications that were consuming the service can get the latest binding information from the Registry.
Conclusion

You have seen the basics of web service testing in a SOA. Technologies around SOA and web services are fast evolving and yet to reach the maturity to be fully reliable and generic. Hence, the SOA developer should monitor the performance of the service at various points of the lifecycle and develop customized strategies and best practices for each SOA. Some of the common best practices are to have clear service level agreements for various quality aspects, to choose the appropriate XML parser judiciously and to use coarse grained web services where a lot of data can be retrieved in a single call.

References

* http://ws-i.org
* J2EE Web Services, by Richard Monson-Haefel
* Developing Enterprise Web Services, Sandeep Chatterjee and James Webber

ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 - Live Scores, Watch Online Videos, Match Schedules on Google Desktop

2007-03-14T20:54:00.000-06:00

ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 - Live Scores, Watch Online Videos, Match Schedules on Google Desktop

The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 is bigger than ever, with a total of 16 teams contesting 51 matches, over a period of 47 days.

Millions of cricket fans worldwide are hooked to internet for free match video recordings on YouTube, live cricket scores, ball by ball news updates and streaming audio commentary / podcasts on cricket websites.

Google is also trying to cash in on the cricket fever that has gripped the whole world. It is however very unlikely that you will get to watch live video of World Cup cricket matches on Google Video or Youtube since Indya is the official online partner.

» The Official Website of Cricket World Cup 2007 is located at indya.com, a News Corporation internet property.

» World Cup Anthem - Download the official song of Cricket World Cup 2007 ("The Game of Love and Unity") at indya.com

» The Cricket World Cup 2007 Logo displays a Caribbean setting with a palm tree, a red human figure, and a bat and ball forming the trunk and fruit. The logo of 2007 Cricket World Cup depicts the passion for the game of cricket in Caribbean.

» The tickets of World Cup 2007 Cricket Matches can be purchased online from the official website here. You must have a valid email address and an international Visa or Mastercard.

» The Official Mascot of ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 is Mello, a teenager. Because Mello is conscious of the growing HIV problem around the world he wears a red ribbon to show his support for the ICC and United Nations AIDS initiative.

MSDN Virtual Labs - Experience Microsoft Products Online free

2007-03-04T09:59:00.000-06:00

MSDN Virtual Labs - Experience Microsoft Products Online free

link is : http://www.microsoft.com/india/virtuallabs//

http://www.virtuallabs.in/

Differences between ASP and ASP.NET

2007-01-29T00:03:00.000-06:00

ASP is a Script Language (like VBScript), where as ASP.NET is a the web formulation of a Compiled Language (i.e. Visual Basic, C#, J#, C++.Net)

Asp control events for the text buttion can be handled at client javascript only where as in asp.net,since we have server controls events can handle at server side

ASP.NET has better language support than ASP and also it has a large set of new controls and XML based components, and better user authentication.

By running compiled code,ASP .NET provides increased performance.

With ASP,ASP .NET code is not fully backward compatible.

New in ASP .NET

It is not fully ASP compatible
It has better language support
It has its ownProgrammable controls
It has event-driven programming
It has XML-based components
It has user authentication, with accounts and roles
It has higher scalability
It has capability to increased performance - Compiled code
It has easier configuration and deployment

Language Support ASP .NET Controls

ASP .NET supports full of Visual Basic, not VBScript.

ASP .NET supports C# (C sharp) and C++.

ASP .NET uses new ADO .NET.

ASP .NET supports JScript as before.

ASP .NET contains a large set of HTML controls and almost all HTML elements on a page can be defined as ASP .NET control objects that can be controlled by scripts.

ASP .NET also contains a new set of object oriented input controls, like validation controls and programmable list boxes.

A new data grid control supports sorting, data paging, and everything that you expect from a dataset control.

Event Aware Controls

All ASP .NET objects on a Web page that can expose events that can be processed by ASP .NET code.

Load, Click and Change events handled by code makes coding much better and much simpler organized.

ASP .NET Components

ASP .NET components are heavily based on XML and like the new AD Rotator, that uses XML to store advertisement information and configuration.

User Authentication

ASP .NET supports forms-based user authentication, including automatic redirecting and cookie management of unauthorized logins.

User Accounts and Roles

ASP .NET allows for user accounts and roles, to give each user (with a given role) access to different executables and server code.

High Scalability

ASP .NET also provides greater scalability.

To scale an application over several servers,server to server communication has been greatly enhanced.One example of this is the ability to run XSL transformations ,XML parsers,and even resource hungry session objects on other servers.

Compiled Code

The first request for an ASP .NET page on the server will compile the ASP .NET code and keep a cached copy in memory and the result of this is greatly increased performance.

Easy Configuration

Configuration of ASP .NET is done with plain text files and configuration files can be uploaded or changed while the application is running. No need to restart the server and no more metabase or registry puzzle.

Easy Deployment

No more server restart to replace or deploy compiled code. ASP .NET simply redirects all new requests to the new code.

Compatibility

ASP .NET is not fully compatible with earlier versions of ASP, so most of the old ASP code will need some changes to run under ASP .NET and to overcome this problem, ASP .NET uses a new file extension ".aspx". This will make ASP .NET applications able to run side by side with standard ASP applications on the same server.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 RC Feature Matrix

2006-12-21T21:50:00.000-06:00

ASP.NET AJAX has been factored into two separate downloads in preparation for the scheduled v1.0 release in January:

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 — Provides the core ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions and Microsoft AJAX Library for creating AJAX-style applications with either server-centric or client-centric development models. At final release, this package will be fully supported by Microsoft Premier Support Services.
ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Futures December CTP — Provides features that extend the core ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 platform with additional functionality that remains under development. This package enhances the depth and breadth of the platform and introduces new ideas and concepts. Each release of this package is supported by the vibrant ASP.NET AJAX developer community and includes a Go-Live license for use in production environments.

For more details about changes and assistance migrating from the earlier CTP releases to the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 RC, see the Changes between the ASP.NET AJAX (“Atlas”) CTP and the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 RC whitepaper (also available as a Word document and a PDF document).

Feature	ASP.NET AJAX 1.0	ASP.NET AJAX CTP
Server features
Asynchronous client-to-server networking	X
Authentication as a Web service	X
AutoCompleteExtender class		X
ControlExtender class	X
Cross-browser Web Parts drag-and-drop		X
DragOverlayExtender control		X
PopupExtender class		X
Profile as a Web service	X
ScriptManager and ScriptManagerProxy controls	X
Static page methods as Web services	X
Timer control	X
UpdatePanel control	X
UpdateProgress control	X
Client Features
Actions components		X
Authentication for JavaScript	X
AutoCompleteBehavior class		X
BatchResponse class		X
Behavior class	X
Binding component		X
Button control		X
Calling .asmx Web services from JavaScript	X
Checkbox control		X
Click behavior		X
Component class	X
Control class	X
Counter class		X
Cross-browser Web Parts		X
Data control		X
Debug class	X
DragDropList control		X
DragDropManager component		X
DraggableListItem control		X
FadeAnimation component		X
Floating behavior	X
Hover behavior		X
Hyperlink control		X
Image control		X
Input control		X
JavaScript Array type extensions	X
JavaScript Boolean type extensions	X
JavaScript Error type extensions	X
JavaScript Number type extensions	X
JavaScript Object type extensions	X
JavaScript String type extensions	X
JavaScript localization	X
JavaScript globalization	X
JSON serialization	X
Label control		X
Layout behavior		X
Opacity behavior		X
Popup behavior		X
Profile for JavaScript	X
Selector control		X
ServiceMethodRequest class		X
Sys.Data and Sys.UI.Data namespaces		X
Textbox control		X
Timer control		X
Trace class	X
Validator controls		X
xml-script support		X

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Released

2006-12-18T19:53:00.000-06:00

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Released

Visual Studio shipped the final release of VS 2005 SP1 yesterday. It is available for immediate download in all 10 languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and both traditional and simplified Chinese). You can download and install it here.

This SP release is a pretty major service pack, and incorporates a lot of bug-fixes and feedback from customers. Included built-in with the service pack is support for VS 2005 Web Application Projects (which we also made available as a separate download back in May). It also contains a number of design-time performance optimizations and fixes across the product.

Some Suggestions on Installing the Service Pack

The service pack itself is a fairly large download (431Mb), and can take 30-90 minutes to update your Visual Studio 2005 installation depending on which versions of VS you have installed, and what features are enabled. So you should plan ahead and not expect it to be a few second operation (note: it is a good task to kick off before lunch or in the evening).

A few suggestions/comments on the setup process:

1) Before starting the SP1 upgrade make sure you first uninstall the standalone VS 2005 Web Application Project download if you've installed that on your system. You'll no longer need this as support for it is built-in to SP1, and the SP1 installer will block and make you uninstall it if you have it installed. Your existing web application project files will continue to work just fine - so you won't need to-do anything to update them to work with SP1.

2) SP1 will run the upgrade patching process on each copy of Visual Studio 2005 it finds on your system. So if you have VS 2005 Professional, Visual Web Developer Express, and Visual Basic Express on your system, it will run the patching process 3 times (since each of these installs have separate copies of some files). If you aren't using all of these versions on your system, you might want to uninstall some of them - both to save yourself some disk space as well as to speed up the SP1 install process.

3) SP1 will patch/update all files/features in VS 2005 that you have installed. Sometimes I just click "install everything" when I setup VS 2005, in which case I get a lot of features that I often don't use (for example: some of the C++ header/lib sources for ATL, MFC, etc). What I've seen on my personal system is that when I only have the features I use installed, the SP1 upgrade process takes about 15 minutes end to end. But with everything it can take closer to 45-50 minutes. You might want to consider unchecking certain features of VS if you aren't using them and want to both save some disk space as well as speed up the SP1 install process.

One last built performance suggestion

SP1 does include a number of build performance improvements (for both VB and C#). For suggestions on how to optimize Web Site and Web Project build performance with VS 2005, I also highly recommend you check out my optimizing build performance blog post here. This will help you optimize your build times significantly for both RTM and SP1 systems.

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. Some people have noticed that my pictures and sample downloads on my site are missing at the moment. Unfortunately the Puget Sound region was hit by a really bad storm last night, and all electrical power was knocked out in the area shortly before 1am (exactly 3 minutes after I finished my ASP.NET AJAX RC post last night - I hit submit just in time ). Both my house and the Microsoft campus are without power at the moment, which means the server hosting my pictures/downloads is not running. They are hoping to get us power again in the next few days, at which time my server will (fingers crossed) come back up. Until then I'm hanging out in a very crowded Starbucks for heat/light and will also be sporadic on email. Sorry in advance for any delays.

Destination Microsoft !!!

2006-12-14T23:53:00.000-06:00

Destination Microsoft !!!

So, where have I been all these days? I know I have been putting up some posts with regard to IndiMix, .NET Framework 3.0 etc., but havent been much active in this blog of late.Well, October 2006, I joined the blue ocean. Yes, I joined Microsoft Corporation, India. I have paved my career all these days on the Microsoft Technologies and have worked for companies ranging from start-ups, mid size to enterprise Top Tier companies, but working for Microsoft has been my dream all these years.I remember, winking at the Microsoft logo at their offices (notice that I have put it slanting as they do) whenever I happen to visit their offices while I was a vendor, an MVP and for various other reasons.So, what do I do at Microsoft?I work as a Developer Evangelist, talking about technology to the developer community. My primary job is to work with the Web Community and help them unleash the Next Generation Web Technologies from Microsoft.What does this mean for you?Well, I am excited to be able to share with you all the latest information and get more authoritative information than I used to do all these days.I am available still for your queries, emails and If you manage to drop by the Microsoft Office, in Hyderabad, just pull me so that we can catch up.Before I conclude, wanted to mention that I am super excited about my path ahead. Though the post title says "Destination Microsoft", its still only a beginning of my journey in this "Blue Ocean" and I hope to help the community better for a long time to come.Moral of the postIf you have the dreams and aspirations, catching them up is just a matter of time.Cheers !!!