.NET StockTrader Sample Application
An End-to-End Sample Application Illustrating Windows Communication Foundation and .NET Enterprise Technologies.
Test Results:
- .NET 3.0 hosted on IIS with an Http binding and XML encoding offers 124% better throughput than the fastest WebSphere/EJB Web Service implementation tested; and 46% better throughput than the JDBC (no entity beans) WebSphere implementation tested.
- .NET 3.0 self-hosted over Http/XML offers 225% better throughput than the fastest WebSphere/EJB Web Service implementation tested; and 113% better throughput than the JDBC WebSphere implementation tested.
- .NET 3.0 with binary encoding over a TCP binding offers 488% better throughput than the fastest WebSphere EJB Web service implementation tested; and 284% better throughput than the JDBC WebSphere implementation tested.
Summary results..
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
Surface computing - Microsoft Surface™
What is Microsoft Surface?
Microsoft Surface™, the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft Corp., turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail establishments and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live.
How does Surface work?
At a high level, Surface uses cameras to sense objects, hand gestures and touch. This user input is then processed and the result is displayed on the surface using rear projection.
What is surface computing?
Surface computing is a new way of working with computers that moves beyond the traditional mouse-and-keyboard experience. It is a natural user interface that allows people to interact with digital content the same way they have interacted with everyday items such as photos, paintbrushes and music their entire life: with their hands, with gestures and by putting real-world objects on the surface. Surface computing opens up a whole new category of products for users to interact with.
What are the key attributes of surface computing?
Surface computing has four key attributes:
· Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands and interact with content by touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
· Multi-touch contact. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger, as with a typical touch screen, but up to dozens and dozens of items at once.
· Multi-user experience. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
· Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.
How does Surface benefit consumers?
Surface breaks down the traditional barriers between people and technology, providing effortless interaction with digital content. Similar to the way ATMs changed how people got money from the bank, Microsoft is changing the way people will interact with all kinds of everyday content, including photos, music, a virtual concierge and games. Common, everyday tasks become entertaining, enjoyable and engaging, alone or face-to-face with family, friends or co-workers.
Microsoft Surface™, the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft Corp., turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail establishments and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live.
How does Surface work?
At a high level, Surface uses cameras to sense objects, hand gestures and touch. This user input is then processed and the result is displayed on the surface using rear projection.
What is surface computing?
Surface computing is a new way of working with computers that moves beyond the traditional mouse-and-keyboard experience. It is a natural user interface that allows people to interact with digital content the same way they have interacted with everyday items such as photos, paintbrushes and music their entire life: with their hands, with gestures and by putting real-world objects on the surface. Surface computing opens up a whole new category of products for users to interact with.
What are the key attributes of surface computing?
Surface computing has four key attributes:
· Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands and interact with content by touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
· Multi-touch contact. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger, as with a typical touch screen, but up to dozens and dozens of items at once.
· Multi-user experience. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
· Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.
How does Surface benefit consumers?
Surface breaks down the traditional barriers between people and technology, providing effortless interaction with digital content. Similar to the way ATMs changed how people got money from the bank, Microsoft is changing the way people will interact with all kinds of everyday content, including photos, music, a virtual concierge and games. Common, everyday tasks become entertaining, enjoyable and engaging, alone or face-to-face with family, friends or co-workers.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Microosft and MDM (Master Data Management)
- Microsoft is acquiring Stratature, a private company based in Alpharetta, GA., a provider of Master Data Management (MDM) products. This acquisition will help accelerate Microsoft’s delivery of technology in the MDM market.
- Stratature’s technology and product portfolio will become a core part of Microsoft’s product offering, and will significantly enhance the value delivered to customers to manage their important business hierarchies.
- MDM capabilities will be delivered through Microsoft Office system applications and servers on top of an infrastructure provided from SQL Server. Over time, these capabilities will become an integral part of the Microsoft Office Business Platform, benefiting our customer’s investments in our PerformancePoint, Dynamics, Project Server, and SharePoint lines of products.
- Stratature’s existing customers will continue to receive the same level of support they received from Stratature prior to the acquisition. Microsoft and Stratature will work together to ensure all customer and partner agreements are satisfied.
- Future equivalent and additional functionality will be provided through Microsoft branded products.
Here's what some analysts and industry observers had to say:
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=53834&src=site-marq
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsoft-buys-into-master-data-management/0,130061733,339278352,00.htm
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9727047-7.htmlhttp://www.amrresearch.com/Content/View.asp?pmillid=20472
- Stratature’s technology and product portfolio will become a core part of Microsoft’s product offering, and will significantly enhance the value delivered to customers to manage their important business hierarchies.
- MDM capabilities will be delivered through Microsoft Office system applications and servers on top of an infrastructure provided from SQL Server. Over time, these capabilities will become an integral part of the Microsoft Office Business Platform, benefiting our customer’s investments in our PerformancePoint, Dynamics, Project Server, and SharePoint lines of products.
- Stratature’s existing customers will continue to receive the same level of support they received from Stratature prior to the acquisition. Microsoft and Stratature will work together to ensure all customer and partner agreements are satisfied.
- Future equivalent and additional functionality will be provided through Microsoft branded products.
Here's what some analysts and industry observers had to say:
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=53834&src=site-marq
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsoft-buys-into-master-data-management/0,130061733,339278352,00.htm
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9727047-7.htmlhttp://www.amrresearch.com/Content/View.asp?pmillid=20472
Monday, June 18, 2007
Digital Collaboration in the enterprise
Folks: Today I read an amazing whitepaper written by the Ashish Kumar, CTO, Avanade on
"Digital Collaboration in the enterprise".
In this paper, Ashish talks about three areas where Avanade sees the most opportunity to create efficiency and productivity breakthroughs in how people work with information and with each other across a global enterprise.
3 Areas described in the paper are:
First, the “tagging” of people, content and physical assets with context
information (semantic keywords, presence, location, business processes et
cetera) as a mechanism to automate the discovery and usage of information and
expertise.
Second, enabling and fostering the development of user-driven content and
communities to maximize employee contributions and connection to the
organization. Transforming ideas in people’s heads and laptops into broadly used
organizational assets and harnessing the power of communities as proven by the
Internet.
Third, connecting the world of the knowledge worker with the operational view of
the enterprise and with relevant external information—i.e., integrating familiar,
easy-to-use spreadsheets, email, and virtual workspaces with information from
corporate systems like ERP/CRM and third-party services—empowering
employees with data and information that is critical to decision making but
typically not easily accessed or used in enterprises today.
Download
Great Paper [Ashish Kumar]. Hats to you.
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
"Digital Collaboration in the enterprise".
In this paper, Ashish talks about three areas where Avanade sees the most opportunity to create efficiency and productivity breakthroughs in how people work with information and with each other across a global enterprise.
3 Areas described in the paper are:
First, the “tagging” of people, content and physical assets with context
information (semantic keywords, presence, location, business processes et
cetera) as a mechanism to automate the discovery and usage of information and
expertise.
Second, enabling and fostering the development of user-driven content and
communities to maximize employee contributions and connection to the
organization. Transforming ideas in people’s heads and laptops into broadly used
organizational assets and harnessing the power of communities as proven by the
Internet.
Third, connecting the world of the knowledge worker with the operational view of
the enterprise and with relevant external information—i.e., integrating familiar,
easy-to-use spreadsheets, email, and virtual workspaces with information from
corporate systems like ERP/CRM and third-party services—empowering
employees with data and information that is critical to decision making but
typically not easily accessed or used in enterprises today.
Download
Great Paper [Ashish Kumar]. Hats to you.
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Hands-on Labs for Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Workflow Foundation Hands-on Labs, manuals and sample code ...
Download
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Download
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Microsoft eScrum Version 1.0
Many development teams inside Microsoft are now using the agile methodology for software development and had been looking for a way to track their daily progress. Some of the product units in Developer Division are also using this methodology.
A team within Microsoft decided to build a web based tool on top of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server for just this purpose. Seeing the excitement and adoption for this among internal teams, our services folks (Microsoft Consulting) wanted us to make this available broadly to our customers. As a result, eScrum 1.0 was released today on MSDN for external consumption.
This tool integrates with Excel and MSProject via TFS, allows interaction with TFS Team Explorer, and is a one-stop place for all Scrum artifacts such as product backlogs, sprint backlogs, task management, retrospectives, and reports.
Download link, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=55a4bde6-10a7-4c41-9938-f388c1ed15e9&displaylang=en
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
A team within Microsoft decided to build a web based tool on top of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server for just this purpose. Seeing the excitement and adoption for this among internal teams, our services folks (Microsoft Consulting) wanted us to make this available broadly to our customers. As a result, eScrum 1.0 was released today on MSDN for external consumption.
This tool integrates with Excel and MSProject via TFS, allows interaction with TFS Team Explorer, and is a one-stop place for all Scrum artifacts such as product backlogs, sprint backlogs, task management, retrospectives, and reports.
Download link, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=55a4bde6-10a7-4c41-9938-f388c1ed15e9&displaylang=en
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites
Every job role is unique and demanding. As people work to drive business outcomes, they have to balance the complexities of interacting with multiple systems, tracking goals, and relating to surrounding processes. IT organizations have been seeking role-based solutions that can provide information workers with common interfaces to access priority information.
Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites are custom templates, designed for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the My Site functionality, and tailored to address the unique needs and requirements of specific roles within an organization.
This package includes the following Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites:
- Administrative Assistant
- Controller-Financial Analyst
- Customer Service Manager
- HR Manager
- IT Manager
- Marketing Manager
- Sales Account Manager
The link, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102147321033.aspx
The link to download, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=516b95c5-9133-46c4-a01f-d7598780dc17&displaylang=en
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites are custom templates, designed for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the My Site functionality, and tailored to address the unique needs and requirements of specific roles within an organization.
This package includes the following Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites:
- Administrative Assistant
- Controller-Financial Analyst
- Customer Service Manager
- HR Manager
- IT Manager
- Marketing Manager
- Sales Account Manager
The link, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102147321033.aspx
The link to download, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=516b95c5-9133-46c4-a01f-d7598780dc17&displaylang=en
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
MOSS 2007 Receives DOD 5015.2 Certification
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has received U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2 certification. Endorsed by the National Archives and Records Administration, the 5015.2 standard on which the DoD certification is based serves as the benchmark for government and corporate organizations that manage records and documents.
Press Release
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Press Release
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Thursday, June 7, 2007
FAQ - SOA
SOA Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)?
A. SOA is a standards-based design approach to creating an integrated IT infrastructure capable of rapidly responding to changing business needs. SOA provides the principles and guidance to transform a company’s existing array of heterogeneous, distributed, complex and inflexible IT resources into integrated, simplified and highly flexible resources that can be changed and composed to more directly support business goals.
Q. What business value does SOA provide?
A. SOA enables businesses to realize greater agility in their business practices, delivering value across both application and IT infrastructure layers. From an application perspective, SOA enables the development of a new generation of dynamic or composite applications. These applications enable end-users to access information and processes across functional boundaries, and to consume them in a number of convenient ways, including through Web, rich client, and mobile presentation layers. From an infrastructure perspective, SOA enables IT to simplify application and system integration, to recombine and reuse application functionality, and to organize development work into a unified and consistent design framework. The combined business value of the SOA approach helps to lower IT costs; provides better, more rapidly accessible business information; and enables the organization to identify and respond to workflow problems more efficiently.
Q. What business problems does SOA solve?
A. SOA enables businesses to develop a new generation of dynamic applications that address a number of top-level business concerns that are central to growth and competitiveness. SOA solutions promote:
• Stronger connections with customers and suppliers. By making available dynamic applications and business services to external customers and suppliers, not only is richer collaboration possible, but customer and partner satisfaction is increased. SOA unlocks critical supply and demand chain processes—such as outsourcing of specific business tasks—from the constraints of underlying IT architectures, thereby enabling better alignment of processes with organizational strategy.
• Enhanced business decision making. By aggregating access to business services and information into a set of dynamic, composite business applications, decision makers gain more accurate and more comprehensive information, and gain the flexibility to access that information in the form and presentation factor (Web, rich client, mobile device) that meets their needs.
• Greater employee productivity. By providing streamlined access to systems and information and enabling business process improvement, businesses can drive greater employee productivity. Employees can focus their energies on addressing the important, value-added processes and on collaborative, semi-structured activities, rather than having to conform to the limitations and restrictions of the underlying IT systems.
Q. Will SOA enable alignment of business and IT?
A. SOA by itself is not sufficient to guarantee alignment of business and IT. In fact, many organizations that have attempted to roll out SOA infrastructure through a top-down approach have found that that by the time the infrastructure was delivered, it was out of sync with the needs of the business. In contrast, those customers that have driven successful alignment have started with a clear understanding of their business vision, have well-defined business initiatives and outcomes, and have chosen to incrementally deliver those “slices” of their SOA infrastructure that deliver upon these objectives. Microsoft has long advocated this approach—what we call our “real world” approach to leveraging service oriented architectures. This real world approach is focused on rapid time-to-value, and on delivering business results through iterative, incremental steps that are more closely aligned with changing business conditions. This helps enable a much tighter degree of alignment between business and IT.
Q. Is SOA a product?
A. No. SOA is not a product, but an architecture approach and set of patterns for implementing agile, loosely coupled dynamic applications. A reflection of its commitment to developing the standards, guidance, tools and technologies needed for developing cross-platform integration solutions, Microsoft has been using service orientation across its products since 1999, when the Web services model was announced and a wave of innovation began that fundamentally changed the application architecture landscape. Beginning with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, the Microsoft investments in tools, together with platform support for Web services, have helped make Service Orientation mainstream and practical.
Working with other vendors such as IBM and BEA, we invested in authoring a set of specifications referred to collectively as the WS-* architecture. Shortly thereafter, in order to promote interoperability across platforms, operating systems and programming languages, Microsoft worked with IBM to develop the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I). Since it was created, WS-I has grown to roughly 150 member companies and has created Web services that address areas such as interoperability, security and the reliability of messaging.
Q. Will implementing an SOA solution require a complete overhaul of existing technologies and business processes?
A. No. The most effective approach to SOA is to build on existing investments, including legacy applications, and to take an incremental approach to integrating across diverse systems to provide specific business benefits. And because the underlying applications are accessed through an interface, the IT assets are insulated from direct change.
Q. Isn’t implementing an SOA solution a costly and complex proposition?
A. While some SOA-based solutions require a multiplicity of products to implement, increasing cost and complexity, Microsoft solutions are greatly simplified since core service orientation capabilities are built right into the Windows platform as part of the .NET framework. These core capabilities are complemented with an integrated set of development and management tools, as well as server-based solutions for composing and integrating dynamic, composite applications.
Q. Is SOA technology only for large Fortune 1000 enterprises?
A. No. The Microsoft “real world” SOA approach has been successfully adopted by organizations with very modest IT resources, since it can readily scale down to fit within their existing IT capabilities. At the same time, the Microsoft approach to SOA scales to the largest of global enterprises, supporting mission-critical processes for hundreds of thousands of employees world wide.
Q. What is the Microsoft SOA solution approach?
A. Microsoft SOA solutions help organizations access existing IT resources, assemble them into larger business processes, and make the outputs available to users in order to run their organization more effectively. This “real world” approach lets organizations begin with a focused understanding of the business problem and realize rapid success.
From a more technical standpoint, the Microsoft approach can be summarized as a three-step approach: expose, compose and consume.
1. In the expose phase, existing IT resources (such as legacy systems and line of business applications) are made available as services which can be communicated with through standardized messaging formats. The most common suite of implementation technologies is the standards-based Web services. For existing technology assets that cannot natively speak Web service protocols, interoperability is attained through the use of adapters. As the developer moves forward in deliberations about which services to expose, such decisions must be driven by clearly defined and prioritized business needs.
2. Once individual services are exposed, they must be pulled together or composed into larger business processes or workflows. The goal of the compose phase is to enable greater business flexibility and agility by allowing processes to be added or changed without being constrained by the underlying IT systems and applications.
3. In the final step of constructing an SOA solution, the dynamic (or composite) applications that consume the underlying services and processes are developed. These applications—based on Web technologies (such as portals or AJAX), rich clients, Office business applications, or mobile devices—are what drive the productivity of the end-user.
It is important to recognize that all three steps are essential parts of every incremental SOA project. Without all three elements—including the delivery of the dynamic application—the business will not realize any return on the investment.
Q. How do I get started with an SOA solution?
A. The goal of the SOA approach is to deliver a business solution that enables business agility, not to build a SOA. Reuse of services is often stated as a goal of SOA, and while it is true that reuse can be a good by-product of SOA, it is not the end goal itself. The first step in any SOA implementation, therefore, is to identify key business integration challenges or priorities. Development efforts, implemented along principles of SOA, are chosen such that they: 1) best meet the stated business needs, 2) offer the fastest time to value, and 3) best support long-term growth of the business.
Q. What are common SOA pitfalls?
A. One of the most common pitfalls is to view SOA as an end, rather than a means to an end. Developers who focus on building an SOA solution rather than solving a specific business problem are more likely to create complex, unmanageable, and unnecessary interconnections between IT resources.
Another common pitfall is to try to solve multiple problems at once, rather than solving small pieces of the problem. Taking a top-down approach—starting with major organization-wide infrastructure investments—often fails either to show results in a relevant timeframe or to offer a compelling return on investment.
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Q. What is Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)?
A. SOA is a standards-based design approach to creating an integrated IT infrastructure capable of rapidly responding to changing business needs. SOA provides the principles and guidance to transform a company’s existing array of heterogeneous, distributed, complex and inflexible IT resources into integrated, simplified and highly flexible resources that can be changed and composed to more directly support business goals.
Q. What business value does SOA provide?
A. SOA enables businesses to realize greater agility in their business practices, delivering value across both application and IT infrastructure layers. From an application perspective, SOA enables the development of a new generation of dynamic or composite applications. These applications enable end-users to access information and processes across functional boundaries, and to consume them in a number of convenient ways, including through Web, rich client, and mobile presentation layers. From an infrastructure perspective, SOA enables IT to simplify application and system integration, to recombine and reuse application functionality, and to organize development work into a unified and consistent design framework. The combined business value of the SOA approach helps to lower IT costs; provides better, more rapidly accessible business information; and enables the organization to identify and respond to workflow problems more efficiently.
Q. What business problems does SOA solve?
A. SOA enables businesses to develop a new generation of dynamic applications that address a number of top-level business concerns that are central to growth and competitiveness. SOA solutions promote:
• Stronger connections with customers and suppliers. By making available dynamic applications and business services to external customers and suppliers, not only is richer collaboration possible, but customer and partner satisfaction is increased. SOA unlocks critical supply and demand chain processes—such as outsourcing of specific business tasks—from the constraints of underlying IT architectures, thereby enabling better alignment of processes with organizational strategy.
• Enhanced business decision making. By aggregating access to business services and information into a set of dynamic, composite business applications, decision makers gain more accurate and more comprehensive information, and gain the flexibility to access that information in the form and presentation factor (Web, rich client, mobile device) that meets their needs.
• Greater employee productivity. By providing streamlined access to systems and information and enabling business process improvement, businesses can drive greater employee productivity. Employees can focus their energies on addressing the important, value-added processes and on collaborative, semi-structured activities, rather than having to conform to the limitations and restrictions of the underlying IT systems.
Q. Will SOA enable alignment of business and IT?
A. SOA by itself is not sufficient to guarantee alignment of business and IT. In fact, many organizations that have attempted to roll out SOA infrastructure through a top-down approach have found that that by the time the infrastructure was delivered, it was out of sync with the needs of the business. In contrast, those customers that have driven successful alignment have started with a clear understanding of their business vision, have well-defined business initiatives and outcomes, and have chosen to incrementally deliver those “slices” of their SOA infrastructure that deliver upon these objectives. Microsoft has long advocated this approach—what we call our “real world” approach to leveraging service oriented architectures. This real world approach is focused on rapid time-to-value, and on delivering business results through iterative, incremental steps that are more closely aligned with changing business conditions. This helps enable a much tighter degree of alignment between business and IT.
Q. Is SOA a product?
A. No. SOA is not a product, but an architecture approach and set of patterns for implementing agile, loosely coupled dynamic applications. A reflection of its commitment to developing the standards, guidance, tools and technologies needed for developing cross-platform integration solutions, Microsoft has been using service orientation across its products since 1999, when the Web services model was announced and a wave of innovation began that fundamentally changed the application architecture landscape. Beginning with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, the Microsoft investments in tools, together with platform support for Web services, have helped make Service Orientation mainstream and practical.
Working with other vendors such as IBM and BEA, we invested in authoring a set of specifications referred to collectively as the WS-* architecture. Shortly thereafter, in order to promote interoperability across platforms, operating systems and programming languages, Microsoft worked with IBM to develop the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I). Since it was created, WS-I has grown to roughly 150 member companies and has created Web services that address areas such as interoperability, security and the reliability of messaging.
Q. Will implementing an SOA solution require a complete overhaul of existing technologies and business processes?
A. No. The most effective approach to SOA is to build on existing investments, including legacy applications, and to take an incremental approach to integrating across diverse systems to provide specific business benefits. And because the underlying applications are accessed through an interface, the IT assets are insulated from direct change.
Q. Isn’t implementing an SOA solution a costly and complex proposition?
A. While some SOA-based solutions require a multiplicity of products to implement, increasing cost and complexity, Microsoft solutions are greatly simplified since core service orientation capabilities are built right into the Windows platform as part of the .NET framework. These core capabilities are complemented with an integrated set of development and management tools, as well as server-based solutions for composing and integrating dynamic, composite applications.
Q. Is SOA technology only for large Fortune 1000 enterprises?
A. No. The Microsoft “real world” SOA approach has been successfully adopted by organizations with very modest IT resources, since it can readily scale down to fit within their existing IT capabilities. At the same time, the Microsoft approach to SOA scales to the largest of global enterprises, supporting mission-critical processes for hundreds of thousands of employees world wide.
Q. What is the Microsoft SOA solution approach?
A. Microsoft SOA solutions help organizations access existing IT resources, assemble them into larger business processes, and make the outputs available to users in order to run their organization more effectively. This “real world” approach lets organizations begin with a focused understanding of the business problem and realize rapid success.
From a more technical standpoint, the Microsoft approach can be summarized as a three-step approach: expose, compose and consume.
1. In the expose phase, existing IT resources (such as legacy systems and line of business applications) are made available as services which can be communicated with through standardized messaging formats. The most common suite of implementation technologies is the standards-based Web services. For existing technology assets that cannot natively speak Web service protocols, interoperability is attained through the use of adapters. As the developer moves forward in deliberations about which services to expose, such decisions must be driven by clearly defined and prioritized business needs.
2. Once individual services are exposed, they must be pulled together or composed into larger business processes or workflows. The goal of the compose phase is to enable greater business flexibility and agility by allowing processes to be added or changed without being constrained by the underlying IT systems and applications.
3. In the final step of constructing an SOA solution, the dynamic (or composite) applications that consume the underlying services and processes are developed. These applications—based on Web technologies (such as portals or AJAX), rich clients, Office business applications, or mobile devices—are what drive the productivity of the end-user.
It is important to recognize that all three steps are essential parts of every incremental SOA project. Without all three elements—including the delivery of the dynamic application—the business will not realize any return on the investment.
Q. How do I get started with an SOA solution?
A. The goal of the SOA approach is to deliver a business solution that enables business agility, not to build a SOA. Reuse of services is often stated as a goal of SOA, and while it is true that reuse can be a good by-product of SOA, it is not the end goal itself. The first step in any SOA implementation, therefore, is to identify key business integration challenges or priorities. Development efforts, implemented along principles of SOA, are chosen such that they: 1) best meet the stated business needs, 2) offer the fastest time to value, and 3) best support long-term growth of the business.
Q. What are common SOA pitfalls?
A. One of the most common pitfalls is to view SOA as an end, rather than a means to an end. Developers who focus on building an SOA solution rather than solving a specific business problem are more likely to create complex, unmanageable, and unnecessary interconnections between IT resources.
Another common pitfall is to try to solve multiple problems at once, rather than solving small pieces of the problem. Taking a top-down approach—starting with major organization-wide infrastructure investments—often fails either to show results in a relevant timeframe or to offer a compelling return on investment.
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Announcements
Microsoft's announcement on SQL 2008.
On June 4th at TechEd 2007 in Orlando, Microsoft made a couple of key SQL Server announcements. Specifically:
· The name for the next release of SQL Server™: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, formerly code-named SQL Server “Katmai,” and the delivery of the first SQL Server 2008 Community Technology Preview (CTP).
· The acquisition of Dundas Data Visualization Inc.’s Data Visualization products, which provide rich charting within SQL Server Reporting Services, enabling users to create information-rich reports and applications.
The first public CTP of Katmai will be available for download from: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395.
Warning: Do not attempt to download the binaries in this section until you have first registered into the SQL Server 2008 CTP program. Not doing so will result in an error “Page not found”. Registering with Connect or signing into Connect does not automatically register you into SQL Server 2008 CTP program. You must in addition register by clicking here
Please take also a view on all the following new available information sources about the highlights of the June CTP:
SQL Server 2008 Overview: On-demand webcast New!Listen to Dave Campbell's June 4th presentation at TechEd regarding SQL Server 2008 (200 level). All other SQL Server related webcasts (live and on-demand) at TechEd can be found here.
SQL Server 2008 Product Overview: Whitepaper New!Learn about the Microsoft Data Platform Vision and how SQL Server 2008 meets the needs of the next generation of data-driven applications.
Four Pillars of SQL Server 2008 (Jun 04, 2007)Learn more about the four technology themes upon which SQL Server 2008 is built.
SQL Server 2008 June CTP highlights (Jun 04, 2007)Learn more about specific improvements in the June CTP that align with the four pillars.
MSDN SQL Server ForumsHave questions? Discuss SQL Server 2008 with our developers, MVPs, and the entire SQL Server community.
SQL Server Connect FeedbackWe want to hear from you! Tell us about any bugs you find or difficulties you encounter, and what you want to see in SQL Server 2008 for this and future releases. We appreciate your feedback.
Happy Reading,Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Tenets of SOA
1) Services have explicit boundaries, that services, the only way to interact with a service or to obtain information or modify the state of the service is via the technology exposed in its out-of-boundary edge.
2) Services are autonomous. And what this means is that if I was to build an application that consumed a service that was outside of my boundary of control then I would not expect the service at the other end to implement its functionality in any particular way or manner. I wouldnt be able to influence it in any other way. I wont be able to connect my SQL Server database to directly to the SQL Server database or Oracle database or whichever inside the remote service. Im simply talking to that service through its boundary and it also automatically enforces an isolation layer between our two services. This allows us them to construct very flexible, very de-coupled applications.
3) Services share schema and contract, not class. And more accurately maybe, not objects. Services are about passing information back and forth between two entities such that those entities can communicate in a common fashion. This is not about remoting an object that actually runs on a service remote from me and controlling it from my environment because the other service maybe running on a platform completely different to mine and I may not have knowledge as to how to affect that component and how it runs in that environment. So services are all about passing information back and forth passed by a value if you will, or ratherthan by reference.
4) Services interoperate based on policy. And the policy can be information such as, for example, as a service if you want to speak to me you must support some kind of security mechanism. Or you must support TCP as a transport protocol. Orthat you must support transactions, for example. Now some of those capabilities are available today through things like COM+ or Enterprise Services in that I can mark a component as requiring transactions and if I state that transactions are required youmust interoperate with me using transactions fully supported through DTC. This isnt necessarily fully available through all technologies however and were working to make this a reality in the near future.
Are you still there or disappeared :-) ? Do you like pizza? How many times a week you call for a pizza? Come, well try to understand these four tenets through pizza delivery process.
1) Services have explicit boundaries: There is no specific technical definition for this tenet. Lets try to understand it this way; you called up pizza corner in kormangala, but you stay in Jayanagar. When you tell pizza corner that you are calling from Jayanagar and wants pizza to be delivered there, then pizza corner representative may divert your call to Jayanagar branch or may express his inability to deliver pizza to there door step. Why so? He cant, because cost of delivering pizza from kormangala to jayanagar will exceed his benefit. The same lies with Services. Any service has its own boundary and it is assumed to be expensive to traverse.To balance this behavior service calls should chunky not chatty. Based on you should decide on what can be made as Service? Whether it would be a good candidate to make it as service? Does it do some good amount of processing that will equate the expense occurred due to traversing across boundary? At this point, we can alter first tenet of SOA to Services have explicit boundaries and are assumed to be expensive to traverse in order to make it more understandable and expressive.
2) Services are autonomous (I do, what I need to do): This is quite easy to understand. This means, I should not bother how one particular service did its job. My job is to just pass a messageand get back a message. I have explained it earlier also a bit. Suppose today pizza corner has only one phone line to receive your orders. But it doesnt matter to you. Right? Tomorrow due to satisfy he increases the no. of phone lines through internal extension or whatever for that sake. This way you are decoupled from implementation of this component or say service. Now that service may gradually enhance its implementation, but it doesnt affect you by any means. This is one beauty of Service Orientation.
3) Services share schema and contract not class: Again come pizza corner. They let you know what kind of pizzas do they have and how many people that particular pizza serves up to. This is your schema that what kind of pizza do they have. Based on this you decide whether to continue your talk further or not? Same way you will decide based on particular services schema, whether it is useful to you or not? Telephone no. of pizza corner is the contract between you and their service. Service says, you call me on such and such no. and I will let you know my services, yet it doesnt give you out its implementation.
4) Services interoperate based on policy: This is the last point. You may be well versed with this. Have you noticed that after taking your order for pizza that pizza corner girl asks you, Sir, would you like to pay cash or through card? This is policy. In case of pizza corner, human factor and hospitality is coming into picture that is why they asked about policy at the last. But in case of accessing any service both the points have to come to one consent that how they will talk to each other.Whether they will talk over TCP or HTTP? Whether their will be any kind of security implementation like handshaking or other kind of security implementation. These are the policies.
Hope you liked the pizza corner example :-), Happy journey to Service Orientation!
Useful links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/01/Indigo/default.aspx
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
2) Services are autonomous. And what this means is that if I was to build an application that consumed a service that was outside of my boundary of control then I would not expect the service at the other end to implement its functionality in any particular way or manner. I wouldnt be able to influence it in any other way. I wont be able to connect my SQL Server database to directly to the SQL Server database or Oracle database or whichever inside the remote service. Im simply talking to that service through its boundary and it also automatically enforces an isolation layer between our two services. This allows us them to construct very flexible, very de-coupled applications.
3) Services share schema and contract, not class. And more accurately maybe, not objects. Services are about passing information back and forth between two entities such that those entities can communicate in a common fashion. This is not about remoting an object that actually runs on a service remote from me and controlling it from my environment because the other service maybe running on a platform completely different to mine and I may not have knowledge as to how to affect that component and how it runs in that environment. So services are all about passing information back and forth passed by a value if you will, or ratherthan by reference.
4) Services interoperate based on policy. And the policy can be information such as, for example, as a service if you want to speak to me you must support some kind of security mechanism. Or you must support TCP as a transport protocol. Orthat you must support transactions, for example. Now some of those capabilities are available today through things like COM+ or Enterprise Services in that I can mark a component as requiring transactions and if I state that transactions are required youmust interoperate with me using transactions fully supported through DTC. This isnt necessarily fully available through all technologies however and were working to make this a reality in the near future.
Are you still there or disappeared :-) ? Do you like pizza? How many times a week you call for a pizza? Come, well try to understand these four tenets through pizza delivery process.
1) Services have explicit boundaries: There is no specific technical definition for this tenet. Lets try to understand it this way; you called up pizza corner in kormangala, but you stay in Jayanagar. When you tell pizza corner that you are calling from Jayanagar and wants pizza to be delivered there, then pizza corner representative may divert your call to Jayanagar branch or may express his inability to deliver pizza to there door step. Why so? He cant, because cost of delivering pizza from kormangala to jayanagar will exceed his benefit. The same lies with Services. Any service has its own boundary and it is assumed to be expensive to traverse.To balance this behavior service calls should chunky not chatty. Based on you should decide on what can be made as Service? Whether it would be a good candidate to make it as service? Does it do some good amount of processing that will equate the expense occurred due to traversing across boundary? At this point, we can alter first tenet of SOA to Services have explicit boundaries and are assumed to be expensive to traverse in order to make it more understandable and expressive.
2) Services are autonomous (I do, what I need to do): This is quite easy to understand. This means, I should not bother how one particular service did its job. My job is to just pass a messageand get back a message. I have explained it earlier also a bit. Suppose today pizza corner has only one phone line to receive your orders. But it doesnt matter to you. Right? Tomorrow due to satisfy he increases the no. of phone lines through internal extension or whatever for that sake. This way you are decoupled from implementation of this component or say service. Now that service may gradually enhance its implementation, but it doesnt affect you by any means. This is one beauty of Service Orientation.
3) Services share schema and contract not class: Again come pizza corner. They let you know what kind of pizzas do they have and how many people that particular pizza serves up to. This is your schema that what kind of pizza do they have. Based on this you decide whether to continue your talk further or not? Same way you will decide based on particular services schema, whether it is useful to you or not? Telephone no. of pizza corner is the contract between you and their service. Service says, you call me on such and such no. and I will let you know my services, yet it doesnt give you out its implementation.
4) Services interoperate based on policy: This is the last point. You may be well versed with this. Have you noticed that after taking your order for pizza that pizza corner girl asks you, Sir, would you like to pay cash or through card? This is policy. In case of pizza corner, human factor and hospitality is coming into picture that is why they asked about policy at the last. But in case of accessing any service both the points have to come to one consent that how they will talk to each other.Whether they will talk over TCP or HTTP? Whether their will be any kind of security implementation like handshaking or other kind of security implementation. These are the policies.
Hope you liked the pizza corner example :-), Happy journey to Service Orientation!
Useful links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/01/Indigo/default.aspx
Regards, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Web Service Software Factory
The Service Factory provides guidance that addresses many of the challenges associated with building ASP.NET (ASMX) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web services and the components of a distributed application.
This could be your tool to developing distributed apps using WCF.
Visit http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480534.aspx for more information.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
This could be your tool to developing distributed apps using WCF.
Visit http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480534.aspx for more information.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
SOA Workshop Series for Architects
SOA Overview
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
Learn how the Microsoft Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) vision and technology can help you realize a more agile and connected enterprise by using an IT infrastructure that can help streamline business processes, increase customer responsiveness, and improve interactions with key partners.
Presenters: Kris Horrocks and Yumay Chang, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818538
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Messaging & Communications
Friday, June 15, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
Applications commonly communicate with other applications, both inside and outside the organization. Modern applications also must often fit into a service-oriented architecture (SOA), exposing some of their functionality as interoperable services accessible by other software. Achieving these goals requires support for service-oriented applications to communicate with other services. In this session we’ll share with you the technology Microsoft provides to build web services that support the latest WS-* standards endorsed by all major vendors. In addition, we’ll tie it in with the previous discussion around Software Factories and show how Microsoft supports rapid development of these services through tooling support.
Presenters: Steve Swartz and Don Smith, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818539
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Business Process & Workflow
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
In this session we will discuss the Business Process and Workflow capabilities necessary in service oriented architecture and provide guidance for selecting the most appropriate technology from Microsoft’s portfolio. We will discuss the requirements for service composition in client applications, composite services, service intermediaries, and line of business applications. In addition, we will examine the differences between general purpose workflow platforms, domain specific workflow products, and cross organization business process concerns.
Presenters: Kris Horrocks, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818540
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Tools & Modelling
Friday, June 22, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
The advance in tooling has allowed business to drive down the cost of development by over 100% in the last 10 years. However, in the same period of time the number of successful projects has not increased significantly. In fact it has consistently run at right around 30% of projects are deemed successful. Software development, as currently practiced, is slow, expensive and error prone, often yielding products with large numbers of defects, causing serious problems of usability, reliability, performance, security and other qualities of service.
This talk addresses how to identify typical customer pains in software development and shows how Microsoft tools offer a solution that enables collaboration across the extended team of project managers, architects, developers, testers, and business stakeholders and allows new solutions to be developed faster, cheaper and better though industrialization of software development.
Presenters: Erik Gunvaldson, Don Smith, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818541
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
User Experience
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
Usability is critical to the success of a application. Well-designed applications give users a greater sense of trust in the application, improve customer satisfaction and reduce support and training costs. If an application is not easy to use, then the user will not be productive with the software. For companies that rely on their web presence to drive business, an attractive website instills customer confidence whereas an unattractive UI can prove costly when competitors are only a mouse click away.
In this session we’ll look at how Microsoft technology enables the development of attractive software and website through the use of styles and templates and how to share common design elements across your application through the use of resources.
Presenter: Brett Johnson, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818542
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
SOA Workshop Series: Enterprise Service Bus
Friday, June 29, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
This webcast explores the service oriented capabilities necessary to support mediated service communication and our guidance for implementing an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform. In addition, we will discuss the increasing need for broadly available service bus capabilities beyond the edges of the enterprise.
Presenter: Kris Horrocks, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834394
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Federated Data
Friday, July 6, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
The data is a constant in any SOA project, and SOA project that ignores data issues is likely to fail. In this section of the course, we will discuss the issues that should be considered when architecting the data portion of your SOA project. Top issues include scalability, where if your new service becomes wildly successful, the database may not be able to handle the increased load. Availability, where transform tightly coupled systems into a set of loosely coupled services that can be reused across the enterprise may actually cause the system as a whole to be more fragile. Data consistency, where using services to break data silos can expose and exacerbate issues with inconsistent and duplicate data.
This talk shows how to solve each of these issues on the Microsoft platform. In particular we will talk about Microsoft database technology scale-up/scale-out, in asynchronous messaging support and how to do Master Data Management so that your SOA project has access to a consistent view of data.
Presenter: Roger Wolter, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818543
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
SOA Workshop for Architects: Identity and Access
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
The main reason that identity is now such a hot topic is based upon the fact that there is more opportunity to connect. High bandwidth communications via the Internet are now almost ubiquitous and span a broad range of scenario within organizations, between organizations, at home and elsewhere This has resulted in a rapid increase in the adoption of products and services available via the internet, and many of these services require some form of user authentication, but with the proliferation of phishing schemes there is no safe way to say who you are on the internet.
In this session we will show you Microsoft’s solution on identity and access can addresses these common concerns presented by the web, and how through identity federation a user can access services that require a different set of credentials in a transparent fashion.
Presenter: Kim Cameron, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834536
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
SOA Workshop for Architects: Governance and Management
Friday, July 13, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
As companies grow, their IT infrastructures grow along with them. But more often than not, the pace of that growth is uneven. As applications, functionalities and people are added across the board at various points in time, the complexity of the enterprise multiplies and the harder it can be to manage and, more importantly, to keep secure.
A dynamic system is Microsoft’s vision for what an agile business looks like—where IT works closely with business in order to meet the demands of a rapidly changing and adaptable environment. Come hear about Microsoft’s technology strategy for products and solutions that help businesses enhance the dynamic capability of its people, process, and IT infrastructure using technology.
Presenter: Jeff Johnson, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834551
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
Learn how the Microsoft Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) vision and technology can help you realize a more agile and connected enterprise by using an IT infrastructure that can help streamline business processes, increase customer responsiveness, and improve interactions with key partners.
Presenters: Kris Horrocks and Yumay Chang, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818538
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Messaging & Communications
Friday, June 15, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
Applications commonly communicate with other applications, both inside and outside the organization. Modern applications also must often fit into a service-oriented architecture (SOA), exposing some of their functionality as interoperable services accessible by other software. Achieving these goals requires support for service-oriented applications to communicate with other services. In this session we’ll share with you the technology Microsoft provides to build web services that support the latest WS-* standards endorsed by all major vendors. In addition, we’ll tie it in with the previous discussion around Software Factories and show how Microsoft supports rapid development of these services through tooling support.
Presenters: Steve Swartz and Don Smith, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818539
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Business Process & Workflow
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
In this session we will discuss the Business Process and Workflow capabilities necessary in service oriented architecture and provide guidance for selecting the most appropriate technology from Microsoft’s portfolio. We will discuss the requirements for service composition in client applications, composite services, service intermediaries, and line of business applications. In addition, we will examine the differences between general purpose workflow platforms, domain specific workflow products, and cross organization business process concerns.
Presenters: Kris Horrocks, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818540
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Tools & Modelling
Friday, June 22, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
The advance in tooling has allowed business to drive down the cost of development by over 100% in the last 10 years. However, in the same period of time the number of successful projects has not increased significantly. In fact it has consistently run at right around 30% of projects are deemed successful. Software development, as currently practiced, is slow, expensive and error prone, often yielding products with large numbers of defects, causing serious problems of usability, reliability, performance, security and other qualities of service.
This talk addresses how to identify typical customer pains in software development and shows how Microsoft tools offer a solution that enables collaboration across the extended team of project managers, architects, developers, testers, and business stakeholders and allows new solutions to be developed faster, cheaper and better though industrialization of software development.
Presenters: Erik Gunvaldson, Don Smith, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818541
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
User Experience
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
Usability is critical to the success of a application. Well-designed applications give users a greater sense of trust in the application, improve customer satisfaction and reduce support and training costs. If an application is not easy to use, then the user will not be productive with the software. For companies that rely on their web presence to drive business, an attractive website instills customer confidence whereas an unattractive UI can prove costly when competitors are only a mouse click away.
In this session we’ll look at how Microsoft technology enables the development of attractive software and website through the use of styles and templates and how to share common design elements across your application through the use of resources.
Presenter: Brett Johnson, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818542
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
SOA Workshop Series: Enterprise Service Bus
Friday, June 29, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
This webcast explores the service oriented capabilities necessary to support mediated service communication and our guidance for implementing an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform. In addition, we will discuss the increasing need for broadly available service bus capabilities beyond the edges of the enterprise.
Presenter: Kris Horrocks, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834394
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Federated Data
Friday, July 6, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
The data is a constant in any SOA project, and SOA project that ignores data issues is likely to fail. In this section of the course, we will discuss the issues that should be considered when architecting the data portion of your SOA project. Top issues include scalability, where if your new service becomes wildly successful, the database may not be able to handle the increased load. Availability, where transform tightly coupled systems into a set of loosely coupled services that can be reused across the enterprise may actually cause the system as a whole to be more fragile. Data consistency, where using services to break data silos can expose and exacerbate issues with inconsistent and duplicate data.
This talk shows how to solve each of these issues on the Microsoft platform. In particular we will talk about Microsoft database technology scale-up/scale-out, in asynchronous messaging support and how to do Master Data Management so that your SOA project has access to a consistent view of data.
Presenter: Roger Wolter, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818543
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
SOA Workshop for Architects: Identity and Access
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
The main reason that identity is now such a hot topic is based upon the fact that there is more opportunity to connect. High bandwidth communications via the Internet are now almost ubiquitous and span a broad range of scenario within organizations, between organizations, at home and elsewhere This has resulted in a rapid increase in the adoption of products and services available via the internet, and many of these services require some form of user authentication, but with the proliferation of phishing schemes there is no safe way to say who you are on the internet.
In this session we will show you Microsoft’s solution on identity and access can addresses these common concerns presented by the web, and how through identity federation a user can access services that require a different set of credentials in a transparent fashion.
Presenter: Kim Cameron, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834536
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
SOA Workshop for Architects: Governance and Management
Friday, July 13, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),Language: English-American
As companies grow, their IT infrastructures grow along with them. But more often than not, the pace of that growth is uneven. As applications, functionalities and people are added across the board at various points in time, the complexity of the enterprise multiplies and the harder it can be to manage and, more importantly, to keep secure.
A dynamic system is Microsoft’s vision for what an agile business looks like—where IT works closely with business in order to meet the demands of a rapidly changing and adaptable environment. Come hear about Microsoft’s technology strategy for products and solutions that help businesses enhance the dynamic capability of its people, process, and IT infrastructure using technology.
Presenter: Jeff Johnson, Microsoft Corporation
To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834551
2. Click the button marked “register”. Confirm your registration details and click the button marked “Continue.”
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Friday, June 1, 2007
Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map
The Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map - A gr8 application for getting latest updates on various MS technologies and a good showcase of appln built using WPF.
The Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that helps developers visualize the different programs, servers, services, and tools that will help them build solutions. It allows them to drill down to each product and technology and learn about new features, objects, Web services, namespaces, and schemas required to extend Microsoft Office and build custom Office Business Applications (OBAs).
Visit links:
For what, why, features: http://blogs.msdn.com/erikaehrli/archive/2007/05/30/MicrosoftOfficeInteractiveDeveloperMapBuiltWithWpf.aspx
For download:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb497969.aspx
The Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that helps developers visualize the different programs, servers, services, and tools that will help them build solutions. It allows them to drill down to each product and technology and learn about new features, objects, Web services, namespaces, and schemas required to extend Microsoft Office and build custom Office Business Applications (OBAs).
Visit links:
For what, why, features: http://blogs.msdn.com/erikaehrli/archive/2007/05/30/MicrosoftOfficeInteractiveDeveloperMapBuiltWithWpf.aspx
For download:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb497969.aspx
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Make it a habit
I started blogging a month ago and never ever thought that i would be posting 10 posts this month.
I made it a practice/habit of sharing my good readings/work on my blog with others, i kept practising that over the month and now i have 10 posts this month. Thats a good nos.
By praticing and by making it a habit helps you to achieve this which you think you can't.
SIMPLE e.g. For people who daily read news paper from childhood, still keep continuing till date.
Therefore Practice, Practice, Pratice...............................or try making it a habit.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
I made it a practice/habit of sharing my good readings/work on my blog with others, i kept practising that over the month and now i have 10 posts this month. Thats a good nos.
By praticing and by making it a habit helps you to achieve this which you think you can't.
SIMPLE e.g. For people who daily read news paper from childhood, still keep continuing till date.
Therefore Practice, Practice, Pratice...............................or try making it a habit.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Monday, May 28, 2007
Accenture at Microsoft Tech Mela 2007
Microsoft TechMela is a event held by Microsoft brought in partnership with key strategic Industry Partners and various Microsoft Product Teams. You can make the most of your TechMela experience by attending the Partner Sessions and visiting Partner Exhibit Booths to test-drive the latest technologies and solutions for Developers, IT Professionals, Architects and Designers.
Accenture is the Platinum Sponsor for this event
W.r.t Accenture's Microsoft Capability (Avanade Account Group) would be presenting 1 Key note address on the subject "Our Technology Vision" and 3 breakout sessions on subjects like
- SOA & SOA Factory,
- Microsoft Dynamics & BI Convergence and
- BI using Microsoft Performance Point Server (PPS).
30-min Keynote Session: 15th June, 2007 0930-1000
60-min Breakout Session: 14th June, 2007 1210-1310
60-min Breakout Session: 15th June, 2007 1510-1610
60-min Breakout Session: 16th June, 2007 1620-1720
Get ready to catch Accenture Live and Be Sure to visit the Accenture Booth for a demo on "Next Generation Workplace" and Avanade.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Accenture is the Platinum Sponsor for this event
W.r.t Accenture's Microsoft Capability (Avanade Account Group) would be presenting 1 Key note address on the subject "Our Technology Vision" and 3 breakout sessions on subjects like
- SOA & SOA Factory,
- Microsoft Dynamics & BI Convergence and
- BI using Microsoft Performance Point Server (PPS).
30-min Keynote Session: 15th June, 2007 0930-1000
60-min Breakout Session: 14th June, 2007 1210-1310
60-min Breakout Session: 15th June, 2007 1510-1610
60-min Breakout Session: 16th June, 2007 1620-1720
Get ready to catch Accenture Live and Be Sure to visit the Accenture Booth for a demo on "Next Generation Workplace" and Avanade.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Event: Microsoft Tech Mela 2007 (formely TechEd)
TechMela (formely TechEd) –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: Tech Mela BUSINESS (Business & Technology Decision Makers) and Tech Mela TECHNOLOGY (Architects, Developers).
Visit TechMela at http://www.techmela.com/index.htm
Event Dates: 13, 14,15, 16 Jun 2007
Event Venue: Renaissance, Powai, Mumbai.
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: Tech Mela BUSINESS (Business & Technology Decision Makers) and Tech Mela TECHNOLOGY (Architects, Developers).
Visit TechMela at http://www.techmela.com/index.htm
Event Dates: 13, 14,15, 16 Jun 2007
Event Venue: Renaissance, Powai, Mumbai.
Copying large files (in GBs) over Network
I was struggling to copy a large file (16 GB) over a network using Windows Standard File-Copy process, It use to take me more than a day to copy 16 GB, more ever there was no gurantee, sometimes there were network errors and the copy process use to terminate.
My colleague [Rajesh Gala] suggested a robocopy utility which helps to copy file faster and with resume options.
Mail me if you need this utility.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
My colleague [Rajesh Gala] suggested a robocopy utility which helps to copy file faster and with resume options.
Mail me if you need this utility.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Sunday, May 27, 2007
SOA wiki: What is SOA?, Why SOA?.......
Recently someone from our/Accenture marketing team asked me a question.
What is SOA? Why SOA? How does it help a person/ Business?
The answer to all these questions was the SOA wiki at link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture
Your jumpstart to SOA.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
What is SOA? Why SOA? How does it help a person/ Business?
The answer to all these questions was the SOA wiki at link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture
Your jumpstart to SOA.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Friday, May 25, 2007
SharePoint Products Team Blog
In search of some latest News on SharePoint (MOSS), i came accross the SharePoint Products Team Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/) that can help one stay accquinted with latest Technical Articles, Visual How-to Screencasts, and their accompanying downloads published over the last couple of weeks on MSDN.
Was a good fruitful reading :-)
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Was a good fruitful reading :-)
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
WCF - Training, Videos, Samples, Blogs
I recently had to give a presentation on SOA factory asset from Avanade and wanted to understand WCF (Windows Communication Foundation).
The site http://wcf.netfx3.com/ provides a lot of useful information such as Training, Videos, Samples, Blogs, etc.
Rescources section on the site provide HOL, Videos, Whitepapers, chat talks, etc.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
The site http://wcf.netfx3.com/ provides a lot of useful information such as Training, Videos, Samples, Blogs, etc.
Rescources section on the site provide HOL, Videos, Whitepapers, chat talks, etc.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
MOSS products comparison
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 products comparison is available for download from link http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101978031033.aspx
Included is a complete breakdown of the features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and a comparison between the different 2007 server editions and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Included is a complete breakdown of the features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and a comparison between the different 2007 server editions and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Microsoft Virtual Classrooms
Microsoft Virtual Classrooms
http://www.microsoft.com/india/virtualclassrooms/default.aspx
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.
The link, http://www.microsoft.com/india/virtualclassrooms/default.aspx
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
http://www.microsoft.com/india/virtualclassrooms/default.aspx
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.
The link, http://www.microsoft.com/india/virtualclassrooms/default.aspx
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Monday, May 7, 2007
SharePoint Server 2007 Presentations: Enterprise Search Deep Dives
A good download that has 6 detailed presentations and videos on Enterprise Search in MOSS some of you may be interested in.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2751d5cd-8690-44b5-ae5c-d2769b227929&displaylang=en&tm#filelist
Overview
This download presents packaged presentations and videos of the following conference sessions:
· Enterprise Search Strategy and Opportunities (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveA.exe) This session starts with an overview of Microsoft's enterprise search strategy, reviews the various products that it affects, and outlines what is new in SharePoint Search for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Lastly, it discusses opportunities for partners building on the platform.
· SharePoint Search Extensibility (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveB.exe) This session addresses the core extensibility scenarios in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search, such as customizing the user interface, custom search using client applications, and crawling new repositories, including line-of-business data. It also covers the administration object model.
· Protocol Handlers and IFilters (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveC.exe) Learn about the overall architecture of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search. Protocol Handlers and iFilter interfaces are described in detail with code examples.
· Customizing and Extending Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007 (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveD.exe) Learn how to customize Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search user interface and build search based applications in this session. Branding, Web parts and extending search using the object model and Web services are discussed.
· Business Data Search (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveE.exe) The Business Data Catalog (BDC) enables search to reach into line-of-business repositories and provide integrated search results. Learn about the Business Data Catalog including the design motivations, scenarios, and the apis.
· SharePoint Search Deployment Scenarios(SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveF.exe) This session reviews both Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 search topologies, and various deployment scenarios such as a collaboration environment, enterprise portals, and internet facing portals.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2751d5cd-8690-44b5-ae5c-d2769b227929&displaylang=en&tm#filelist
Overview
This download presents packaged presentations and videos of the following conference sessions:
· Enterprise Search Strategy and Opportunities (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveA.exe) This session starts with an overview of Microsoft's enterprise search strategy, reviews the various products that it affects, and outlines what is new in SharePoint Search for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Lastly, it discusses opportunities for partners building on the platform.
· SharePoint Search Extensibility (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveB.exe) This session addresses the core extensibility scenarios in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search, such as customizing the user interface, custom search using client applications, and crawling new repositories, including line-of-business data. It also covers the administration object model.
· Protocol Handlers and IFilters (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveC.exe) Learn about the overall architecture of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search. Protocol Handlers and iFilter interfaces are described in detail with code examples.
· Customizing and Extending Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007 (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveD.exe) Learn how to customize Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) search user interface and build search based applications in this session. Branding, Web parts and extending search using the object model and Web services are discussed.
· Business Data Search (SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveE.exe) The Business Data Catalog (BDC) enables search to reach into line-of-business repositories and provide integrated search results. Learn about the Business Data Catalog including the design motivations, scenarios, and the apis.
· SharePoint Search Deployment Scenarios(SharePointServer2007SearchDeepDiveF.exe) This session reviews both Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 search topologies, and various deployment scenarios such as a collaboration environment, enterprise portals, and internet facing portals.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
Friday, May 4, 2007
Knowledge Sharing
In my first post, I would like to share with the community my thoughts on "Knowledge Sharing".
I had always been in grained by my parents that "by Sharing knowledge with others you learn more". I started the same at an early age and see a lot of benefits in doing so.
- I shared my learnings with my classmates in school and thereby i improved my knowledge on the subject.
- I taught computers to friends, family and relatives and thereby improved my knowledge.
- my first job at NIIT even before i got my gradution was about teaching computers to people of different age groups and thereby i mastered the art of teaching.
- In the time frame of 2002- till date, we see in the IT industry there is so much importance on Knowledge Sharing.
Examples: Messengers, Online Communities, Online Forums, Collaborative applications, Information worker, blogs, wikis, etc.
Online communities where people post their queries and people from all over the world repond with their ideas/suggestions.
Come on friends, Lets share and learn from one and all.
Cheers, ~Neville (http://nevilledubash.blogspot.com/)
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