Surya Prakash Jayanti

Youtube Error

2011-02-24T23:32:00.002-05:00

Rarely you get to see this.... YouTube error :-)

I am not sure , who are those team of monkeys.

TCS Website Hacked

2010-02-09T01:40:00.000-05:00

TCS Website Hacked ...the hackers posted the below message on the website...Indian top IT company is now a victim of hacker. They hacked the domain and put it for sale.

Hackers, thank you for reminding us the importance of security one more time.

MS Web Platform - SPARK

2009-10-13T23:28:00.004-04:00

This week tech bite is MS Web Platform - SPARK , develop Web application / Web site free of cost .

What it will do:
Microsoft Web platform gives you framework, web server, database and tools you need to build and run websites and applications on Windows. All these tools are free license for small companies and Individual developers.

How it Works:

You can download a free tool from Microsoft (Web Platform Installer) , which includes IIS, SQL Server Express, .net framework and Visual Web developer, Expression. It allows Microsoft to compete with open source.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx

When it is coming: It was released on Sep 24th , 2009.

What are the Features :

Easy to get and free to use

All the power of dot net free of cost. Database, MVC and many other useful tools handy for web developers.

Default templates available for blogs, forums and for generic website formats.

Google Wave

2009-10-13T23:17:00.005-04:00

This week tech bite is Google Wave , Experimental email and instant messaging from Google Australia.

What it will do:
Wave can start a message like an e-mail, and then see it become a chat or IM conversation, and then go into collaboratively editing a document . All this is possible through one medium called Google Wave. This is more of communicating and collaborating at the same time. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

How it Works:
In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it . They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. Operational Transformation (OT) is the primary algorithm that manages Google Wave. Google Wave API is open source, you can add new features by coding the API.

When it is coming: It is available in sandbox for limited users now.

What are the Features :
It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop .

Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services.

The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services .

MS Office Online

2009-09-20T21:29:00.004-04:00

This week tech bite is MS Office Web Apps Live, Store documents online and modify them in your browser.

What it will do:
It is alternative option for Google Documents. You can edit MS office products like Excel, PowerPoint, Word etc., in browser. You won't have MS Office applications like Access and Outlook though.

How it Works:
You need NOT have MS office installed in your Desktop or Laptop and no need to worry about version of MS Office. You can store documents in Windows Sky Drive (Storage space of 25 GB is free) and you can edit them over browser.

When it is coming:
It is coming in First half of 2010. Beta version is available for Windows Sky Drive users.

What are the Features :

The Office Web Apps are being certified to work in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari

Sharing and collaboration made possible though this, editing documents over online for free.

MS office web version provides close look and feel of MS office desktop based version.

Windows Home Server

2009-09-11T20:01:00.004-04:00

This week tech bite is Windows Home Server , connects more than one PC up to 10 within home on small businesses.

What it will do:
It will connect all the PC's in your home at one place and can be accessed from anywhere including internet.

How it Works:
All the PC's in your home or in your small business will be connected to Home Server. You can access the content from any PC connected to this network and most importantly you can connect from internet to your Home Server. All the PC's connected to the Home server can utilize 3 services like backup restoration, files sharing , remote access.

When it is Coming:
Its available i market for around $400 .

What are the Features :

Backup your data
Access anywhere
Expandable storage space and share.
Connect all your electronic media at one place.

Windows Phone

2009-09-08T22:40:00.003-04:00

This week tech bite is Windows Phone , mobile phone OS from Microsoft to fight with the current smart phones in the market like iPhone, BlackBerry.

What it will do:
Windows Mobile 6.5 is an Operating system for mobile phone. This version has more upgraded OS features.

How it Works:
Phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 will include phones running on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless .

When it is Coming:
Windows mobile 6.5 is coming on Oct 6, 2009.

What are the Features :
It includes features such as improved Web browsing and conversation threaded e-mail, as well as a new Windows Marketplace app store . Netflix (preview and manage), Face book, and a variety of games are also available.
Find My Phone feature helps in tracing the lost phone.

Mobile OS and Apps

2009-09-01T22:13:00.004-04:00

This week tech bite is Mobile OS . Market Share of Operating system for mobile phones .

What it will do:
Mobile Operating system controls Handheld devices like mobile phones or smart phones. This is just like windows or Linux for your PC.

How it Works:
Applications are developed on these mobile OS for running things like GPS, Wireless internet access and other user friendly applications.

Who are the Major Players:
In the market we have six major players like iPhone, Palm, RIM, Android, Symbian, and Windows. Out of this six players, 49% of Mobile OS applications developed are targeted on iPhone.

RIM - Research In Motion is OS for black berry. Android is from Google, Windows OS is from Microsoft. Symbian OS is used in Nokia, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony.

The below pie chart shows the market share of applications developed on Mobile OS Platform. YES, Apple's iPhone is dominant in the market.

Apart from Search Engine , PC OS business, smart devices , Mobile OS is the latest business arena for corporate war between Microsoft, Google and Apple.

Caffeine - Google New Search Engine

2009-08-14T20:11:00.003-04:00

This week tech bite is Caffeine , new search engine from Google.

What it will do:

This is new version of Google search engine providing better search results faster. That means search results will be more accurate. Fake sites will be de-indexed by new version.

How it Works:

The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences in speed and accuracy. There are so many technical changes underlying this new version, results will be indexed in real-time as the search engines of Twitter and Face book.

When it is Coming: Developer’s preview available at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ (When I tried it was unavailable). Full blown version will come soon.

Where is this useful: Envelope on size indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.

Hyper V

2009-08-08T18:59:00.002-04:00

This week tech bite is Hyper V. Previously codenamed Viridian , is a Virtual machine technology for Windows Server 2008.

What it will do:
Enables one or more operating systems to run simultaneously on the same physical system .

How it Works:
A core component of Hyper-V, Windows hypervisor is a thin layer of software between the hardware and the OS that allows multiple operating systems to run, unmodified, on a host computer at the same time. It provides simple partitioning functionality and is responsible for maintaining strong isolation between partitions.

When it is Coming: Available in market since Oct 2008 .

Where is this useful:
Several servers can run side by side on a single machine. Helps in server consolidation.
Development and testing environments can be consolidated to one.
Virtualization can be done from Desktop to Datacenter level.
Legacy application re-hosting. Legacy operating systems and applications can run on new hardware along with more recent operating systems and applications.

2009-07-24T19:43:00.007-04:00

This week tech bite is Windows Azure Platform. Azure is a Cloud service platform hosted in Microsoft Data Centers.

What it will do:

You need not purchase Software, Hardware. No need to worry about maintenance. You can host applications on Azure platform just the way you are using your Enterprise LAN center now. It can also be used as development environment for Application development. Connectivity, storage, uptime and data availability are promised at 99.95% in Enterprise Service Level Agreement.

How it Works:

Pricing will be based on usage , storage, transaction etc., Give a look at the pricing model comparison between three major Cloud providers, namely Microsoft Azure, Amazon, Google App. Engine.

When it is Coming: Second half of 2009, hopefully Nov 2009.

Where is this useful:
Reduces Tedious and expensive Infrastructure planning.
Additional computing & services capacity is available easily.
The services platform manages critical OS updates and management tasks.
Existing applications in other infrastructure can also be moved and maintained easily.
Happy Learning !!!

(Courtesy Infosys Blogs & Microsoft Azure websites)

2009-07-12T12:34:00.008-04:00

This week tech bite is Google Alert.

What it will do:
Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms.

How it Works:
Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts - 'News', 'Web', 'Blogs', 'Comprehensive', 'Video' and 'Groups'. We can define the frequency of the alert like 'once a day', 'once a week', 'as it happens' .
You can create up to 1000 alerts.

Where is this useful:
monitoring a developing news story
keeping current on a competitor or industry
watching for new videos that match a specific topic
keeping yourself updated about the happenings on your interested topics

2009-07-12T12:31:00.002-04:00

This week tech bite is Google Chrome OS. Till now Microsoft and Apple are the only major players in Desktop / Laptop OS, Google wants to enter this turf.

What it will do:
It will be open source like Linux . While Microsoft is trying to attack on 65% Market Capitalization of Google search with Bing, Google is trying to attack on 90% OS business domination of Microsoft with Chrome OS.

How it Works:
Google has already developed Open Source OS called Android for Mobile Phones. Chrome OS will be lightweight and just loads the browser, your OS will be present in Web(Cloud) but not on your desktop or Laptop. Browser will connect to the OS on the web and performs all OS activities. Google Claims, Chrome Operating System will be faster, smoother and lightweight.

When it is Coming:
Note books / PC's running on Chrome OS will be available by 2nd half of 2010.

Where is this useful:
Cheaper, no cost involved in buying OS for Hardware Manufacturer. They save $50 which they generally pay to Windows for its OS.
Just like all other Google applications it will be faster.
Lightweight OS, Desktop need not carry any heavy OS like Vista or Windows 7.

Microsoft Surface

2009-07-01T18:31:00.003-04:00

Take a look at the cool demo's on Microsoft Surface home page.

http://www.Microsoft.com/surface/

What it will do:
The Surface is a coffee-table-sized touch computer that can respond to natural hand gestures and real-world objects. It utilizes a vision system with five cameras to sense input. The 30-inch diagonal display allows a number of users to see the screen while surrounding the table, enabling highly collaborative experiences. The users can interact with the content by touch, "grabbing" digital information with their hands. Surface can recognize many points of contact simultaneously, not just one finger as with a typical touch screen .

How it Works:
Hardware: For Input it uses Camera-based vision system with LED infrared direct illumination. 2 GB Ram, 250 GB Hard Disk, Intel 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

Software: Microsoft surface applications can be written in Dot net WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation).

When it is arriving:It is already available in the market for purchase. Costing around $12-15 K.

Where is this useful:
It is useful in enhancing the customer experience in industries like Retail, Automotive, HealthCare, Financial Service etc.,

Apart from this you can try implementing this wherever you you require Direct Interaction, Multi touch, Multi User experience, Object Recognition.

MVC in .NET

2009-06-13T20:59:00.005-04:00

Some useful links to MVC development.
www.asp.net/mvc
www.stackoverflow.com
www.tinyurl.com/cjfbs5 (codeplex-asp.net v1.0 source )
blogs.tallan.com

MVC is out with dotnet3.5 sp1
Model - data objects
View - output
Controller - performs action

Ajax, silverlight, Flash - shifts the complexity of application development.

Models
Entity Famework
LINQ to SQL
NHibernate
.nettiers (codesmith)
LLBLGen
subsonic

Views
Depends on models, not on controller

Controller
Depends on models and calls views
Data can be returned in HTML, RSS, JSON, Javascript, text, etc.,

Routing is new feature in .net 3.5 for MVC to hide the extension in website url. It includes Controller, action and id in the url.

extension methods : new in 3.5
We can use ent library validations with MVC, logging and exception handling as well

ActionFilters:
Decorators for actions / controllers
These handle error handling, authentication and authorization.

Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

2009-06-13T20:54:00.003-04:00

Silver light is subset of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
Silver light separates UI and Business logic.
It can be hosted on desktop or webbrowser or mobile (soon).
It has visual aspects like 2d, 3d, graphics, animation, audio and video.
WPF is preferred than windows forms from VS 2008, .net 3.5 and expression blend.
WPF can run in web as well. Soon it might replace asp.net.
GDI invented in 1984. No MDI (multiple windows), No build-in datagrid.
Bubbling, tunneling and Direct are the event handlers.
Silverlight has its own CLR, it can not directly talk to .net. ex: System.data is not available, something like silverlight.data is availble.
XAML desing and http protocol.
Silverlight exentsion will install all the controls for drag and drop
All data calls in Silver light are asynchronous.
Page.XAML and page.XAML.CS are the file extensions you see.
This session i have gone through is more of code session than theory and PPT.
Visual studio project can be opened in Microsoft Expression Blend. This is editor for Silverlight.
visual studio 2008 and silverlight 3.
Vector brings lot of difference in Silverlight. Even if you zoom the image you will not loose the clarity like pixel fromat.

SQL Server 2008 New Features

2009-06-13T20:46:00.005-04:00

FILESTREAM:
Feature of SQL Server 2008, which allows storage and efficient access to BLOB data using a combination of SQL Server 2008 and the NTFS file system.
Filestream updates are part of transactions insert, update etc.,
Filestream need not be backed up along with the database. You can do it either way.
There is separate log for Filestream transactions.
Dotnet 3.5 sp1 required for for system.data.sqltypes.sqlfilestream class
Database mirroring is not possible with filestream.

Sparse column:
New way to store NULL columns or data columns
When you declare column as SPARSE it will not take up disk space for NULL column.
space is reduced for NULL columns but cost is overhead for retrieving non-NULL values.
Some columns like ntext, image etc., can not be SPARSE columns
when the column is not null SPARSE takes more space, typically 4 bytes per column.
SQL Server management can suggest you with the space it takes with each datatype column. It gives the % of space with each data type.
On million rows, if you used it for right column it might save at least 10 MB.

Filtered Index:
Which row to include in the index and which row to drop out of indexing.
You can define the rows you want to index in where clause
Must be non clustered index
Created filtered statistics for filtered indexes.

Several new data types introduced in 2008
Till now datetime is one datatype.
now we have 4, date, time, datime2 and datimeoffset
Each date variable takes 3 bytes.
Time data type stored only time on 24 hour clock
fraction of seconds is 7, instead of 3 earlier.

VSTS 2008 - Automation of Dotnet Code Build

2009-06-13T20:25:00.008-04:00

VSTS is set of tools. It contains the below list of tools
Project management tool
Reporting Tool
Design Tool
Build Automation Tool
Testing Tool
Database Tool
Visio for UML diagrams

It integrates Sql Server Reporting Service.
It has Architecture edition, DEVelopment Edition, Database edition, Testing editions.
It has sharepoint inside it. (WSS not MOSS)
Email alert system for check in, checkout kind of events. It can alert on any update activity.
5 users per license around 10 Grands. There is limitation on clients, no limit on web access. It has both client and web access tool.
Team Foundation Server has an application through which you can check on IPhone, you can monitor build results.
Security features like who can build the code etc., are present.
You can schedule build every night or on the event of every checkin.

Deep dive in to MSBuild now:
MSBuild is microsoft build engine
Independent tool for .net application.
TFS service identity is used to run the build project
Core target file contains build errors and success logs.
You can overwrite the before and after targets in the xml of build, not the core target.
We can Debug and test build project
The build process is windows service (VSTF build service), windows build agent should be enabled.
You can use command line tools to get builds on to different locations.
we can import values of properties at shad timm's blog
Create, remove etc., web directories directly.
We can ftp the website build directly to webserver remote.

MS test is test tool like NUnit.
We can add database project into build.
Team build doesnt deploy db project
Visio is integrated with VSTS.

Overall Simple things made simple, complex things made possible with this.

My experience with Code Camp

2009-06-13T20:13:00.004-04:00

Today for the I attended Microsoft Code Camp at Connecticut chapter. Its all about upcoming things in Microsoft technology. I got some cool gifts too :-)

There were nearly 30 speakers. One thing is common to all of them, passion for technology. They demonstrated their examples on the new technologies and versions that are rolling out in 2010.

We have chose between series or parallel topics and attend one, which interests you.
I attended VSTS, WPF & Silver Light, SQL Server 2008 New Features and ASP.NET with MVC.

Some of them were good, some were extra ordinary. All in all its new experience and new path. Checkout your local Microsoft chapter for these kind of events, they are really cool.

May be after my school, this is the first time I sat patiently in class room for 8 continuous hours. I will be publishing each class content as one article in the same blog. Enjoy Reading !!!

New technology is like teenage girl, its always exciting till it becomes old.

MORRO

2009-06-12T21:34:00.005-04:00

Microsoft Free Antivirus software for PC's code named MORRO (code-named after Morro de Sao Paolo beach in Brazil).

How it Works:
Morro will work by routing all of a users Internet traffic to a Microsoft datacenter, where the Morro application will process the traffic and identify and block malware in real-time, by examining all of the rerouted traffic.

What it will do:
Microsoft has said it will provide protection from several types of malicious software including viruses, spy ware, rootkits and Trojans.

When it is arriving:
In the second half of the June. Microsoft will be discontinuing its Windows Live OneCare.

Why I need this:
When used in conjunction with the ongoing security and privacy enhancements of Windows and Internet Explorer, this new solution will offer consumers a robust, no-cost security solution to help protect against the majority of online threats.

Google Wave - Going to create waves !!!

2009-06-04T21:45:00.009-04:00

Today I was introduced to something extraordinary collaborative technology called Google Wave. It redefines the collaboration and live conversations existing today.

Google wave merges Mail and Chat together with so many cool features. It is a client with Mail box kind of look and feel. Here are some cool features of it...

First of all Its open source.
Powerful things that can be done in browser with different instances are together as one product now.
This is from the developers of Google maps.
Its developed in Sydney, Australia.
It is in its early form now.
Google wave will be launched by this year end.
This is a product, platform and protocol. Three P's.
Wiki, emails, chat, social networking sites, new feed of sites, blogging sites everything at one place.
Instant messaging and mail together. We can see the every character being typed by the other party as he is typing. Need now wait for him to hit enter.
We have play back feature where , instant messages between two parties is played back as the conversation happened.
Wave client is embed in Orkut and blog spot.
It works on Mobile also.
You can use it for collaborating documents also.
Documentation source control is also available in online edit way.
N number of people can edit the same document online, while seeing the each character changed by other person as they are doing.
Its completely developed with google web tool kit for html 5.
You can inter-link wave conversations within another wave.
Automatic spell check in Wave.
Google search can be done from inside google wave, you can drag and drop the links on to wave client.
Any open source gadget can be fit inside google wave client.
You can play chess, sudoku kind of games inside Google wave collaboratively.
You can include maps inside wave client.
It can be integrated with YouTube, you can play videos inside it.
There is a gadget for translation of 40 language word by word, while you type in.
Two people from different languages can chat with each other in their own language, while the translator making the translation word by word.

There is excellent video of one hour on google wave.
http://wave.google.com/

One more miracle from the same team after google maps in 2005.

Windows 7 on Virtual PC 2007

2009-05-17T20:41:00.005-04:00

Today I experimented Windows 7 on Virtual PC 2007. Its great experience to be short.

Here is how it went.
First install Virtual PC 2007 on to your computer.
Create a new virtual machine.
Download windows 7 from Microsoft site.
Download ISO Buster to identify the image file downloaded from MS site. (Optional)
Start virtual PC 2007, make sure it has RAM not less than 1 GB.
In Virtual PC windows, go to Capture ISO image and select the downloaded file from MS.
After few minutes it will ask to reboot. Turnoff the virtual PC and start it again.
It will automatically start installing, and just go ahead with next...next options.
You may have to restart your Virtual PC one more time during the installation process.

Within a short while Windows 7 is all yours. Enjoy the new OS coming in Christmas 2009. By the way if you are interested in stock market, buy Microsoft shares. It seems after Windows 7 release share might shoot up !!!!

Some notable features :
Improved boot performance (Really short boot time). I loved this feature.
Calculator is much enhanced.
Task bar is visually bigger.
MS paint is also little differe with respect to options.
Some more things added and removed.
The most disappointing thing is Windows Movie Maker is removed.

Yet to explore other features.......

Code Digest Updates.....

2009-03-07T12:46:00.000-05:00

This month Code Digest Updates.....
                                                                   
                                                                   
                                                                   
                                           

CodeDigest For the Month 3\2009

New Articles Published
Using JQuery in ASP.Net AJAX Applications–Part 2
In Part 1, we have seen how to make AJAX calls through POST and GET method using JQuery library. , In Part 2 of this article series, we will see some of the advanced usages of JQuery with ASP.Net AJAX application. 
Search Content Sources
Part 1 of 3 part SharePoint Search Customization series by Sveta Yerpilev a SharePoint consultant and trainer for KWizCom Corporation.
Sveta gives a clear overview of SharePoint search and how to create the results you want.
How to create a website using 3 tier architecture
In this article, i will explain how to implement a website using 3-tier architecture in a beginner point of view. After reading this article, you will understand how to create a simple 3-tier based architecture project using Visual Studio 2005.
Load Your SharePoint "View" Page Faster
Roi Kolbinger, a SharePoint Consultant for KWizCom Professional Services explains how to load your SharePoint "View" page faster in this straightforward "how to" guide.
Search Scopes & Contextual Search Scopes
Part 2 of 3 part SharePoint Search Customization series by Sveta Yerpilev a SharePoint Consultant for KWzCom Professional Services..
Sveta gives a clear overview of SharePoint search and how to create the results you want.
How do I save a publishing site as a template?
Shai Petel, KWizCom's VP R&D explains how tto save a publishing site as a template
C# Constructor and its Types – A Detailed Look
IntroductionIn a simple words Constructor is nothing but a method, a special kind of method of a class, which gets executed when its (class) object is created.Now, let’s take above in broader sense, a constructor is a class method automatically executed whenever class’s object is created or whenever class is initialized. Consider following bit of code:
State Management in ASP.Net
The State or Cache Management is nothing but the way to storing the data in Client-Side and in Server-Side using preity small memory.
How to Add a web part to your web parts gallery using a feature
Igor Goldshtaub, KWizCom's VP Professional Services explains how to add a web part to your web parts gallery using a feature.

New Codes Published
Calling a Serverside Method from JavaScript in ASP.Net AJAX - PageMethods
Prevent the Page Flickering with AJAXControlToolkit Rating control using JQuery
Enable/Disable Validator controls in ASP.Net
Creating Watermark TextBox in ASP.Net using JQuery
Custom Paging Using Sql Server 2005
Get the ScriptManager Object in MasterPage from ContentPage in ASP.Net AJAX
Get the Element that raised the Asynchronous Postback in UpdatePanel in JavaScript
Open an Outlook window from JavaScript with Pre-populated Subject and Body
A Simple CAPTCHA Image Verification in C# and ASP.Net
How to Refresh a Set of Controls or DIV without Refreshing other Controls Inside UpdatePanel control in ASP.Net AJAX?
How to Add, Remove ListItems from one ListBox to Another Using JQuery?
Display Progress or Loading message without using UpdateProgress Control in ASP.Net AJAX
A VideoPlayer - Custom Control

New FAQs Published
How to Convert an Existing ASP.Net Application to ASP.Net AJAX application?
How to Configure ASP.Net Membership Providers to Use Our Own Database?
Why do some of the characters in DIV tag gets repeated in IE 6.0 ?
How to increase default File Upload size in ASP.Net ?
How to Inject a JavaScript method from CodeBehind Class in ASP.Net?
What is Windows Workflow Foundation(WWF)?

Last Month Winners
Winner:Gaurav Arora
Transcend 2GB Pendrive
Contribution Done:3 Articles or 5 CodeSnippets

CodeDigest For the Month 3\2009
New Articles Published
Using JQuery in ASP.Net AJAX Applications–Part 2 In Part 1, we have seen how to make AJAX calls through POST and GET method using JQuery library. , In Part 2 of this article series, we will see some of the advanced usages of JQuery with ASP.Net AJAX application.
Search Content Sources Part 1 of 3 part SharePoint Search Customization series by Sveta Yerpilev a SharePoint consultant and trainer for KWizCom Corporation. Sveta gives a clear overview of SharePoint search and how to create the results you want.
How to create a website using 3 tier architecture In this article, i will explain how to implement a website using 3-tier architecture in a beginner point of view. After reading this article, you will understand how to create a simple 3-tier based architecture project using Visual Studio 2005.
Load Your SharePoint "View" Page Faster Roi Kolbinger, a SharePoint Consultant for KWizCom Professional Services explains how to load your SharePoint "View" page faster in this straightforward "how to" guide.
Search Scopes & Contextual Search Scopes Part 2 of 3 part SharePoint Search Customization series by Sveta Yerpilev a SharePoint Consultant for KWzCom Professional Services.. Sveta gives a clear overview of SharePoint search and how to create the results you want.
How do I save a publishing site as a template? Shai Petel, KWizCom's VP R&D explains how tto save a publishing site as a template
C# Constructor and its Types – A Detailed Look IntroductionIn a simple words Constructor is nothing but a method, a special kind of method of a class, which gets executed when its (class) object is created.Now, let’s take above in broader sense, a constructor is a class method automatically executed whenever class’s object is created or whenever class is initialized. Consider following bit of code:
State Management in ASP.Net The State or Cache Management is nothing but the way to storing the data in Client-Side and in Server-Side using preity small memory.
How to Add a web part to your web parts gallery using a feature Igor Goldshtaub, KWizCom's VP Professional Services explains how to add a web part to your web parts gallery using a feature.
New Codes Published
Calling a Serverside Method from JavaScript in ASP.Net AJAX - PageMethods
Prevent the Page Flickering with AJAXControlToolkit Rating control using JQuery
Enable/Disable Validator controls in ASP.Net
Creating Watermark TextBox in ASP.Net using JQuery
Custom Paging Using Sql Server 2005
Get the ScriptManager Object in MasterPage from ContentPage in ASP.Net AJAX
Get the Element that raised the Asynchronous Postback in UpdatePanel in JavaScript
Open an Outlook window from JavaScript with Pre-populated Subject and Body
A Simple CAPTCHA Image Verification in C# and ASP.Net
How to Refresh a Set of Controls or DIV without Refreshing other Controls Inside UpdatePanel control in ASP.Net AJAX?
How to Add, Remove ListItems from one ListBox to Another Using JQuery?
Display Progress or Loading message without using UpdateProgress Control in ASP.Net AJAX
A VideoPlayer - Custom Control
New FAQs Published
How to Convert an Existing ASP.Net Application to ASP.Net AJAX application?
How to Configure ASP.Net Membership Providers to Use Our Own Database?
Why do some of the characters in DIV tag gets repeated in IE 6.0 ?
How to increase default File Upload size in ASP.Net ?
How to Inject a JavaScript method from CodeBehind Class in ASP.Net?
What is Windows Workflow Foundation(WWF)?
Last Month Winners

Winner:Gaurav Arora Transcend 2GB Pendrive Contribution Done:3 Articles or 5 CodeSnippets

Code Digest Updates.....

2009-02-02T14:53:00.005-05:00

Here are the latest updates from code digest:

Thanks to Sateesh for introducing me to this......

New Articles Published
Using Roles in Forms Authentication in ASP.Net 2.0Authentication is one of the essential parts of any asp.net application we develop. Using authentication, our site visitors can be restricted to access private contents anonymously. Forms Authentication is one of the authentication mechanisms that can be used to authenticate users. With the introduction of 2.0 we have a handful of controls that helps in implementing role based forms authentication very easy with the primary support of Providers in ASP.Net 2.0.
ASP.NET Social Networks—Making Friends (Part 1)In this article by Andrew Siemer, we will cover the most important aspect of any community site—making friends. We will divide this article in two parts. This part starts with the discussion of Problem, that is, what we need to do to achieve success for the article's topic—finding and inviting friends to your network on a community site. It then moves to Design part where we decide on our requirements, and finally the article reaches Solution part where we begin discussing how to actually implem
ASP.NET Social Networks—Making Friends (Part 2)In the first part of this article we concentrated on two aspects Problem and Design. We started with the Problem, that is, defining what we need to implement the Friends concept, finding and inviting friends to join our network and developing an alert system. We then moved to Design wherein we actually finalized the requirements. And finally we began with the Solution, that is, actually implementing the features. In this part of the article by Andrew Siemer, we will continue with the solution pa
How to add content to SPList Item view formExcellent "how to" article written by my company VP R&D.
Custom GridView Paging with ObjectDataSource Control with ASP.Net 2.0ASP.Net is packed with many data bound control to present the data in tabular form to the users. In GridView control, we can enable the inbuilt paging by setting AllowPaging and PageSize property. In this approach, it will fetch all the records from database to display the records in any page. This will affect the performance when the number of records is really huge. It will be good, if we fetch only those records which are required to display in that particular page. This article will help us
Want to add a rating field to MOSS search results? Here's how! KWizCom's VP R&D explains how to add a rating field to MOSS search results.!
Using JQuery in ASP.Net AJAX Applications – Part 1JQuery is a light weight JavaScript library which provides fast and easy way of HTML DOM traversing and manipulation, event handling, client side animations, etc. One of the greatest features of JQuery is, it supports an efficient way to implement AJAX applications because of its light weight nature. This article series will help us understand the usages of JQuery in implementing AJAX applications.
How to import data from AD to InfoPath 2007 Form Template (code free) Excellent how to guide written by my colleague Shai Petel, KWizCom's VP R&D, explaining step by step how to import data from AD to InfoPath 2007 Form Template (code free!)
New Codes Published
Fit Popup window Size to the Image Size using JavaScript
Fire Validator Controls Before JavaScript Confirm Box Fires in ASP.Net Page
Validate For Invalid File in ASP.Net FileUpload control
String.ReplaceAll function in JavaScript
Display multiple spaces in HTML
Printing ASPX Page by Hiding Some of the Page Elements Dynamically
How to Pass Date from Calendar Pop-Up control To Parent Window in ASP.Net ?
Using the JQuery Library hosted by Google CDN (Content Distribution Network) in ASP.Net Applications
New FAQs Published
How to Host ASP.Net AJAX site on a Server that does not have ASP.Net AJAX Installed ?
What is the difference between Label and Literal Control in ASP.Net?
What is SharePoint?
What is WSS and MOSS? Explain How Sharepoint Works?
What is site and site collection in Sharepoint? And What is the main advantage of using site collections?
What is the concept of virtual path provider in sharepoint?
What is the concept of ghosting and unghosting in SharePoint?
What is the concept of safemodeparser in ASP.NET?
What is the concept of Site pages and Application pages in Sharepoint?
How should I find the temp tables are exists in database?

Happy learning..........

Powered By Cloud : Up coming seminar

2009-01-20T18:01:00.002-05:00

Folks,
Here is information about one of the rare sessions on "Cloud Computing". Its difficult to find such a great set of industry experts expressing their vision on latest technologies like Cloud Computing. This program is happening in London.

If you have a chance my advise is don't miss it. Here you can find further details about the session and registration.

http://www.poweredbycloud.com/programme/programme.aspx

Its targeting the below audience:

CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, strategy heads and senior executives of:
- cloud computing providers
- potential clients of the cloud industry
- hardware equipment and packaged software vendors
- the wider telecommunications industry
- Internet service providers
- data centres
- leading cloud-computing start ups
- private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund investors
- business and technology media

Dates of Conference :
2-3 February 2009

Thanks to Philip (philip.low@broad-group.com) for informing me about this seminar. Reach him for any discounts with my reference :-)

Happy Learning !!!

KODU - Programming Language for Gaming

2009-01-16T16:51:00.003-05:00

KODU - Design your own Video game -

How about designing the video game you imagine. This cool feature is being researched by Microsoft under name "KODU".

This is a visual programming language for creating games. Even children can develop a game under KODU and run on XBOX.

Some features of it are as below....
It is entirely Icon Based and has programming user interface.
You can design a game basing on rules, conditions and actions. You can add Vision, hearing and Time control characteristics.
Uses Xbox 360 controller for gaming input.
You don't need a Keyboard. I think the first programming language in the world which doesn't need a key board !!!!
20 different characters with different abilities.

So Game lovers, start imagining your own game, create it and play it !!! Its all yours.......

F# Language

2009-01-14T17:34:00.002-05:00

Microsoft Cambridge Research center is coming up with a new language called F#, where F stands for Functional.

I was going through Microsoft Research blogs and found this one interesting. So here are some cool things about F#:

F# is all about leveraging the benefits of both typed functional programming and .NET.

F# is Interactive with Visual Studio. This allows F# users to develop fast, accurate code using Visual Studio’s background type-checking and Intellisense.

F# lightweight syntax inspired by Haskell and Python.

F# is functional language like BASIC, simplicity is the core concept.

A good functional program is like a beautiful poem: you see the pieces of a ‘solution’ come together. - Don Syme MS Research, Cambridge.

F# really enables the .NET platform to reach out to new classes of developers, and appeal to domains where .NET is not heavily used. This is especially true in data exploration and technical computing. We’re also exploiting functional techniques in parallel programming.

Many programmers choose to explore a problem in F# because it lets them focus more on the problem domain and less on programming itself.

In his interview, he gives an example of Scientist using F# to solve his functional domain problem.
Happy Learning !!!

Microsoft Blueprint

2009-01-05T17:34:00.004-05:00

In continuation to my effort of bringing new age technologies from Microsoft, here is the latest "Microsoft Blueprint".

Microsoft is working on a new Factory based architecture that is nothing but MS Blueprint. Infosys is also partnering with MS on this new architecture development.

A software blue print is a step by step guidance and code generation capability for different layers like Data Access, Security, Smart Client etc.,

Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) is the predecessor for MS Blueprint. The basic use of this is to build guidance packages and make them available within Visual Studio Dotnet.

MS Blueprint has an advantage over GAT with versions. Whenever a new guidance package is available with GAT we have to uninstall old one and install new one. But with MS Blue Print you can get updates like RSS feed. It will check over Internet for newly available factories and makes it available integrated with Visual Studio.

Blueprint gives tight integration with windows work flow foundation. Each phase of work flow can be integrated with MS Blueprint. Guidance is build on top of the WWF.

Writing code generation logic in C# or VB.NET makes it simple than the GAT XML structure.

Infosys Work on MS Blueprint: Infosys created a silver light software factory demo, which internally contains three additional blue prints, Silver light Blueprint, WCF Blueprint, LINQ Blueprint.

Infosys Silver light blueprint gives factories/Guidance to implement logic layer of Silver light.

LINQ blueprint is for data layer. WCF Blueprint is for service interface layer.

Happy Learning !!!

Windows Live Sky Drive

2008-12-29T17:52:00.008-05:00

As part of series of cloud computing articles, i want to give a live example of cloud computing i.e Sky drive. Of course this is just tip of ice burg what cloud computing can do.

Windows Sky drive is part of the windows live initiatives. It offers you 25 GB free space.
The Sky Drive files can save near about 1,000 songs or 30,000 digital photos. Sky Drive allows up to 30 folders and any number of sub-folders to be created by its members. It was first introduced in August 2007. It is absolutely free and reliable. Look and feel will give you explorer like view.

All you need to have is MSN or Hotmail id to log in and start using. You need not install anything also.

So why cant we make use of our rightful 25GB space over Internet :-)

once you upload your content you will see url as below

http://cid-8abf63fabcdef.skydrive.live.com/home.aspx

Happy learning !!!!

Tips and Tricks of Dotnet - III

2008-12-07T11:11:00.008-05:00

This is the third in sequence, refer to the below link for earlier Tips and Tricks of Dotnet

http://suryaprakashj.blogspot.com/2008/11/tips-and-tricks-of-dotnet-ii.html

Continued...

Batch updates for Dataset in ado.net 2.0 increased the performance. Earlier DS used to do round trip for each updated row in dataset. From ado.net 2.0 onwards, datatables also have serialization.

Avoid openxml method on large xml documents, this method tries to open in DOM model, if the document is large it will use memory and resources.

Use XMLTextreader for large documents.

Security in Dotnet:

Refer to the ASP.NET security diagram below.

ASP.NET security settings are by default stored in web.config or machine.config.

In IIS message digest authentication password is sent in MD5 encryption key and value is mapped with password list stored on server. This is better than IIS basic authentication. For any of these two options it is suggested to use SSL, though it slows down the performance.

Check the below IIS authentication comparison table. Dont confuse them with ASP.net security options windows, forms, passport.

These are IIS Security options in general.

Database Tuning:

Higher throughput and lower response time are the criteria of better performance.

Response time = service time + wait time

Throughput = Amount of work / Amount of Time

DataWarehouse projects response time is more important

OLTP projects thoughput (concurrency) is more important.

Aggregate functinos in DB are performance blocks, if there are high number of rows or unidexed data.

DataWarehouse projects response time is more importantOLTP projects thoughput (concurrency) is more important.

If there are more insert, update and delete then throughput need to be considered, if there are more select then response time need to be measured.

Health Insurance Domain in a Nutshell - II

2008-12-07T11:06:00.002-05:00

Refer to the below article for Health Insurance Domain in a Nutshell

http://suryaprakashj.blogspot.com/2008/09/health-insurance-domain-in-nutshell.html

Continued....
Medicare: person above 65 and other with certain disabilities.

Medicaid: Certain categories of medically needy.

StateWorkersCompensationProgram: workers suffered at work

Military Programs: active service, veterans and the dependents of both.

109 Life insurance companies and 51 property & Casualty insurance companies operating out of Canada. 105K people working in Insurance domain in Canada. Assets of Canadian Insurance companies is above 227 Billion $.

Canada has higher Mutual Insurance companies proportion to Stock companies when compared to US.

Mutual companies are difficult to take over, so Canada encouraged these type of companies to avoid take over from foreign companies.

Deductibles: the first X $ amount paid by insurer. Two kinds of deductible All cause deductibles, per cause deductibles.Corridor Deductibles: first deductibles, then basic coverage and then supplement coverage in order.

Coinsurance: EX:80% by insurance company, 20% by insurer.
Deductibles, coinsurance, co payment (fixed $ amount for every visit.)

Two types of prescription drug plan: Reimbursement, service plan (pays only copay amount shop will claim from insurance company.)

Happy Learning !!!

Dotnet Enterprise Library

2008-11-24T16:20:00.001-05:00

Enterprise Library has 8 parts namely,Data Access Application blocks, caching application blocks, logging application blocks, Exception handling application blocks, security application blocks, cryptography application block, validation application block, policy injection application block.

It is not a pattern, it is not part of dot net framework, Its not an application framework. This is not a Microsoft framework, it is community project with source code.

Choose DataAccessApplicationBlocks when DB operations are standard and doesn't need any customization, need an easy way to switch between databases, portable code for multiple data sources.

Exception shielding in Exception Blocks helps prevent web service from disclosing internal information in case of errors.

Download latest enterprise library from below location.

You can use more then one application blocks with combination.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=90DE37E0-7B42-4044-99BE-F8ECFBBC5B65&displaylang=en

you can find all the releases of enterprise library in the below link
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc467894.aspx

Consistency, easy of use, extensibility and integration are the main goal features of Enterprise Libraries.

Refer to below excellent article on application blocks, consider reading this before implementing.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc816060.aspx

Happy Learning !!!

Tips and Tricks of Dotnet II

2008-11-24T16:05:00.006-05:00

Continued from part I, refer to part I below....

http://suryaprakashj.blogspot.com/2008/11/tips-and-tricks-of-dotnet.html

The TraceSwitch class provides a switch that allows you to control tracing and debugging output of a .Net application without recompiling the code. You can use the switch to change trace options simply by using the config file.

The invariant culture is a culture-neutral storage format.

Web user controls can only be shared by copying their files into each application that you want to use the control in.

A web garden is basically just a single computer with multiple processors. The advantage of a web garden is that you can add additional processors to this single computer to boost the power and speed of your web application.

DataList is the only one which allows you to display two columns.

The FileStream class allows for byte-by-byte input or output

The StandardTab property should be set to True to move the focus to the next control in the tab order rather than move focus to the next cell in the DataGridView

Use a TableLayoutPanel and create the desired rows and columns. It can change dynamically as the application environment changes hence adjusting the controls contained within it.

Tips and Tricks of Dotnet

2008-11-23T21:34:00.004-05:00

If you are implementing atleast 10 of the below tricks / tips in your code, you are giving performance oriented to your client. This is a collection from my previous experience or my reading on internet.

System.io.compression namespace has the objects useful for zipping and unzipping files in .net 2.0 onwards. Sharpzip is also a opensource option.

To remove the dupliacates in an arraylist simply copy it into hashset (hashes eliminate duplicates) and copy that back into arraylist.

Databinder.eval has same syntax for vb.net and c#.net, it might be a performance block because it uses runtime reflection to convert the object (int,object,byte,string) into a string. Better use Databinder.datarow[i]......

using the WebRequest class, you can screen scrape web pages, and pass the resulting Html string to the MailMessage object. Mail will look like your html page.

How many TPS (Transactions Per Second) you want to your application to handle.

Perfromance Objectives are Throughput, Response time, Resource utilization, work load (data , users, transactions)

Coupling cohesion, communication, concurrency, resource, caching, state management, Datastructures and algorithms.

If your image has fewere colors use GIF format, if your image has more colors use JPEG.

Arraylist, sortedlist, Namedvalue collection --->sort

Hashtable, stringdictionary, listdictionary ---> search

Don't use Array list for storing strings, use it for custom objects and where you have insert and delete operations frequently.

use string collection to store strings. Use hash table for frequently queried data, with key pair combination. Use hybrid Dictionary for frequently queried data , low size.

use queue for FIFO kind of purposes and stack for LIFO kind of purposes. Use Sorted list for fast object retrieval (don't use it for large amount of data). In case of large data use array list and use sort method.

Hybrid Dictionary uses List dictionary for small size data and uses hash table for large data. List dictionary is useful for 10 or less key value players.

Use for loop instead of Foreach , because of enumeration in foreach loop performance will be hit.

StringCollection is strongly typed arraylist of strings.

StringDictionary is a hash table with the key strongly typed to be a string rather than an object.

Early binding allows the compiler to identify the specific type required and perform optimizations that
are used at run time. Late binding defers the type identification process until run time and requires
extra processing instructions to allow type identification and initialization. (TypeOf, GetType, and IsInstanceOfType)

each time you are using string concatination, new string is created. so use string builder instead of string if you want to do concatination.

always use page.ispostback == false for first time initializations

Use server.transfer than response.redirect, ensure debug is set to false, clientside validations

Don't mix multiple languages in the same directory.

pages having server control, datagrid will increase load of viewstate. Avoid server controls when not needed, like no need to retain across postbacks (labels), readonly data.

Use caching on asp.net page, it uses LRU(least recently used) algo to clear the content. you can expire the cache with timer also. put infrequently modified data like headers in cache.

If you want to store user specific data use session instead of caching.

Use cookies, hiddencontrol, querystring for lightweight data and not needed much security.

Response.write, string builder, htmltextwriter are good for performance.

From asp.net 2.0 onwards you can take advantage of 64 bit servers.

use System.data.sqlclient for sql 7.0 onwards (as it uses TDS - Tabular Data Stream protocol). System.data.oledb for sqlserver 6.5

when using datareader specify commandbehaviour.close connection.

use executenonquery for commands that doesnt return any data. dont use select *, specify columns you need. Set NO COUNT ON in stored proc.

Outlook Add - in with Dotnet

2008-11-21T17:38:00.002-05:00

Do you know we have separate tool kit in Visual studio 2008 for creating Add-ins for outlook, Word , Excel etc., You can use it for specific business flows as well.

Let me explain how it will be useful in a typical business scenario. You can develop add-in called Purchase Order Processor to your outlook.

Whenever some one want to place a purchase Order, he will clik on the add-in it will open a windows form. He will enter all the details and it will submit the form for the approver with a mail. Once approver opens the mail he will get the details of that order, he can approver or Deny it. If he approves the order mail request will be sent to vendor, if he denys the order mail will be sent to requester.

You can achieve all functionalities like connecting to Database, reports, download of excel, pdf's. In short you can automize business workflow simply from outlook.
Lets see the technically options for implementation.

Options
1. Developing COM add in VBA: In outlook go to Tools --> Forms --> Design Form --> select library from Look in. You have variety of standard library's from which you can select. You have to write code in VBA.
Pro:
Quick development.
Con:
Old fashioned development. Customization, scalability is limited.

2. Developing using Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO): You can develop using VB.net or C#.net add-in for Outlook for 2003 or 2007. If you have visual studio 2005, you have to download VSTO from here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa718674.aspx
If you are using Visual Studio 2008 it comes in built in.

Advantage of VSTO option:
A solution structure that includes both the add-in project itself and a setup project to ease deployment
Simple Start up and Shutdown events where developers start adding their code
A run time component
An add-in loader that creates the add-In's App Domain and handles security and some other add-in essentials
Not to mention better debugging and error handling.

You can select "Extensibility Projects" in "Other projects" in Visual Studio templates. You have to select add-in project specific for word, excel, outlook etc.,
You can handle all events in the IDTExtensibility2 class, Like On add-in start, update, on add-in connection, disconnection, close etc.,

You can implement windows form to create and submit custom Forms.

For deployment you can make use of click once deployment by Microsoft or simply copy the DLL and manifest to user computer office add-In's folder. When he starts the application (word, excel, outlook ) the add-in will be automatically detected.
Happy Learning.

Software Productivity, Quality and Innovations

2008-11-12T17:56:00.003-05:00

--This article is compilation from different source embedded with my views.--

In old days programs are written in C and C++ (you can imagine how hard it must be) of course for controlling systems, Defense applications and automatic logic inside tools and appliances. Now the purpose of software crawled to new heights. Most of the development is happening on WEB or client applications. We have very good editors for programming languages, good tools for testing, source control, deployment etc., still Quality and Productivity in Software industry is a question. WHY ???

Besides maintaining quality and productivity how many major innovations happened in Software. Few of the impressive innovations are email, search engine, messengers, social community sites, ecommerce, TV on Internet, etc.,
Microsoft is working closely with a innovative firm in India to develop software for a robot, which can unharvest coconut from coconut trees. Research is going on. If it succeeds it will be a millions of dollars business and raises curtain for billions of innovations.
I strongly believe Universities are the places where the seed of innovation starts. we need to encourage R&D at universities especially in India. Though 30%+ employees in Microsoft are Indians no Indian entrepreneur was able to capture this market !!!

How many options are available at different stages software development:
the software industry has more than 600 programming languages in use. We
have more than 40 different methods of designing applications. We have 38 different
kinds of size metrics. We have some 26 named development methods. There are about
25 international standards that affect software. There are at least 18 different kinds of
testing, and four different kinds of review and inspection method.

How many methodologies Software has:
Agile development, the capability maturity model (CMM), the
capability maturity model integration (CMMI), CASE tools, clean-room development,
CRYSTAL development approach, dynamic system development method (DSDM),
extreme programming (XP), incremental development, ISO 9000-9004 standards,
iterative development, object-oriented development, pattern-based development, personal
software process (PSP), rapid application development (RAD), reusability, SCRUM, six sigma
for software, spiral development, team structured process (TSP), total quality
management (TQM), and the unified modeling language (UML).

Software Engineering Issues that have stayed constant over years
Initial requirements are seldom more than 50% complete.
Requirements grow at about 2% per calendar month during development.
About 20% of initial requirements are delayed until a second release.
Finding and fixing bugs is the most expensive software activity.
Creating paper documents is the second most expensive software activity.
Coding is the third most expensive software activity.
Meetings and discussions are the fourth most expensive activity.
Most forms of testing are less than 30% efficient in finding bugs.
Most forms of testing touch less than 50% of the code being tested.
There are more defects in requirements and design than in source code.
There are more defects in test cases than in the software itself.
Defects in requirements, design, and code average 5.0 per function point.
Total defect removal efficiency before release averages only about 85%.
About 15% of software defects are delivered to customers.
About 5% of modules in applications will contain 50% of all defects.
About 7% of all defect repairs will accidentally inject new defects.
About 5% of software outsource contracts end up in litigation.
About 35% of projects > 10,000 function points will be cancelled.
About 50% of projects > 10,000 function points will be one year late.
Development costs about $1200 per function point in the U.S.
Maintenance costs about $150 per function point per calendar year.
After delivery applications grow at about 7% per calendar year during use.
Programmers need about 10 days of annual training to stay current.

Hope you had fun !!!

SOA through WCF in Dotnet

2008-11-06T17:58:00.001-05:00

SOA came into picture in late 1990's and early 2000's. Microsoft also introduced this in their 1.1 dot net framework through webservices, which was released in 2001. Before this companies were using Vitria middle ware. Other ways of implementing SOA are Remoting, DCOM, MSMQ etc.,

After all this there is a need to write code irrespective of implementation details whether it is webservice, DCOM, MSMQ or Remoting. This requirement is the birth of WCF. Microsfot released WCF in Fall 2006 as part of Dotnet Framework 3.0.

WCF supposed to work interoperably irrespective of enterprise servers.

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/paytonbyrd/wcf-and-soa-getting-there-from-here-18438

you can find some nice tips here as well.http://weblogs.asp.net/socratees/archive/2007/11/03/wcf-and-soa-cool-tips.aspx

SOA gives us new option to refactor the existing architecture aliging to todays needs and promising tomorrow's scalability. Reusability makes the SOA great, it is one of the core pillar. The core factors of WCF are simple, secure, reliable, interoperable.

WCF with combination of WF (Workflow Foundation) promise to bridge the gap between technology and business. WF defines the business workflow while WCF promises scalable mode to the businss using the existing legacy systems for tomorrow needs.

You will be building WCF in .net 3.0 by selecting new template from visual studio which WCF template.
After adding "Hello World" kind of program, publish the site using Tools menu.
Add Service reference (this is 3rd option after "add reference" and "web reference") by selecting the SVC extention file url.

If you would like to have code and want to explore all the functionalities check the workshopt links below

http://www.sheltonblog.com/archive/2007/10/06/all-6-parts-of-the-soa-development-with-windows-communications.aspx

WCF is more than a web service in .net, it can handle other than HTTP interfaces, which web service can not do. WCF can handle MSMQ, TCP interface inputs as well.

Please keep in mind SOA will never be as quick as client application or database solution.

Happy Learning.......

Microsoft Solution Framework

2008-11-03T19:24:00.005-05:00

While i was going through some of the articles on Microsoft methodologies. I found this new buzz word Microsoft Solution Framework.

This is a solution framework from Microsoft, targets a different approach than regular software methodologies and enables rapid applicaiton development.
Generally S/W development is basing on Water fall model or spiral model. MSF (Microsft Solution Framework) tried to get you best of both the worlds.

The main elements of solution are as below

Documentation
Selected technologies and custom code
Communications
Training
Support

Give a look at the diagramatic representation of this methodology.

This model explains the relationship between key elements of S/W deliverables namely Resources, Schedule and Feature. This is named as Trade off Triangle. You can fix one of these three and you can adust the other two components as per your convenience.

It provides people and process guidance from Team perspective. So as you can expect it is part of MSTS. It brings in Milestone based approach as well.

Find more details about this at the below article.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/msf/default.mspx

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/7/7/777104c9-506e-47c9-9da4-9e23138be493/MSF%20Process%20Model%20v.%203.1.pdf

If you are looking for a text book definition, here it is from Wikipedia. You can find the interesting version history also here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Solutions_Framework

So following atleast one methodology will mitigate the risk of "COWBOY CODING" (Team member do whatever they feel is right)

Happy Learning !!!

Microsoft User Group Meeting

2008-10-28T21:59:00.003-04:00

Hi Friends, this article shares my experience with Microsoft user group meeting.

I attended my First Microsoft meeting here in Heartford, speaker was CTO of Tallan systems Mario. He is an expert in Biztalk and the interesting fact is, he is part of Microsoft Virtual Tech Specialists.

see his profile below.
http://www.tallan.com/aboutus/pages/ExecutiveProfile.aspx?profileID=11

He gave good overview of Biztalk, usage, applicability and .net integration. Believe me coding is on his finger tips.

Some points i learned in the meeting.

Microsoft changed its logo recently. Interesting right!!! check the new logo here
http://weblogs.asp.net/pgielens/archive/2004/01/20/60813.aspx

In biztalk you can integrate with all other applications through concept of adapters.
Basically, it is competition for IBM message queue server
we have some cool features like single sign on, WCF adapter SDK etc.,
We can define our own adapters by defining Source and destination XSD's, pipeline, map, functiods. Don't get scared with these words, they are really simple with Biztalk editor, which looks similar to visual studio editor.
License is around 30K for Enterprise edition it seems.
There is a concept called Orchestration, dont ask me what it is :-) i may have to dive deep to understand it more clearly.

He explained a realworld example where it can be useful and then coded a simple application to get the feel of the biztalk development.

The most interesting and stunning part of it is , the next version is again pointing to Oslo (microsof model based development - yet to release) and Cloud computing.

Microsoft is counting big on these two. It would be separate article if i start writing about Oslo, Cloud Computing and Azure......you can find it soon in my blog though.......

Dont worry.....Thirst for knowledge never killed any body in the history......

Install / Uninstall / start / stop Windows Service Programmatically

2008-10-21T20:35:00.002-04:00

Necessity is mother of inventions one of my requirements turned out to be a blog entry again........

How to Install / Uninstall / start / stop Windows Service Programmatically
Sometimes you may want to install / Uninstall a Windows Service programmatically, but the target machine does not have InstallUtil.exe.

Install / Unistall:

To install/Uninstall a Windows Service programmatically, you can build an application to install that Windows Service.

Add a reference to System.Configuration.Install

Use this code: public static void InstallService(string ExeFilename)
{
System.Configuration.Install.AssemblyInstaller Installer = new System.Configuration.Install.AssemblyInstaller(ExeFilename);
Installer.UseNewContext = true;
Installer.Install(null);
Installer.Commit(null);
}
To uninstall:public static void UninstallService(string ExeFilename)
{
System.Configuration.Install.AssemblyInstaller Installer = new System.Configuration.Install.AssemblyInstaller(ExeFilename);
Installer.UseNewContext = true;
Installer.Uninstall(null);
}

Check for the service's startup type if disable. Keep it either Automatic or Manual.

Start and Stop of service

using System.ServiceProcess;
ServiceController controller = new ServiceController();
controller.MachineName = ".";
controller.ServiceName = "IISADMIN";
string status = controller.Status.ToString();
// Stop the servicecontroller.Stop();
// Start the servicecontroller.Start();

Happy Coding!!!!!

Windows HotFixes and updates, How they work???

2008-10-21T20:26:00.005-04:00

I will try to keep this blog simple and precise.

Updates and Security Updates: They frequently contain security fixes. These are also known as GDR, General Distribution Release.
Hotfixes: Individual customer reported bugs will be fixed. These are also known as LDR, Limited Distribution Release.
Service Pack: The service pack is a major update in the life of an OS.

GDR VS LDR:

As described earlier GDR is General Distribution Release and LDR is Limited Distribution Release.

the below diagram explains how the flow work for each Service Pack.

MVC Pattern in ASP.NET

2008-10-20T18:39:00.002-04:00

All of us are famous with MVC pattern. Model, View and Controller framework is in now introduced in ASP.NET. Please remember its not a replacement for ASP.NET, its an alternative only.

The major advantage with this is Testability. It gives boost to test driven approach. You can use NUnit to do the testing.

See how you can implement ASP.NET in MVC pattern
Model: datagrid
View: aspx, ascx or windows UI
Control: asp.net code behind.

In the ASP.NET Web Forms model, the input goes into the page (the View ASP.NET page), and the view is responsible for both handling the input and generating the output. When it comes to MVC, on the other hand, the responsibilities are separated.

In MVC model ASP.NET page that is VIEW is responsible for generation of output. Model (ex: datagrid) will handle the Input and controller (ASP.NET code behind) controls the business logic.
you can view half an hour video on Asp.net MVC building from start to end at below link

http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc-videos/video-395.aspx

you have more tutorials below ....

http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc/

Happy Learning!!!!!!!!!!

Health check in Dotnet applications

2008-10-15T23:12:00.001-04:00

Introduction: The purpose of this article is to automize some of the activities that are done manually to monitor the health of the Dot net application.

This means writing VBScript program to eliminate some of the below manual activities:

To check the count of rows in some critical tables of DB, this can cause problem if they grow large over the time.
Checking IIS is running or not
Checking specific process is running on the server or not
Checking the application pool status
Check status of taskschduler
Take list of task schedulers on the server

Code:

please reach me for code. I can not post my source code here :-0

Explanation:

At a high level I will explain each function achieving the points mentioned in Introduction.

SendMailCDO (toaddress, subject, body):
This Function sends a mail to specified addresses (it can send mail to more than one mail id) with the row count of tables or with the specific errors you are looking in the table.

CheckPoolHealth(Computer): This function will query the IISPoolsettings through vbscript and displays the status as Starting, Running, Stopped etc.,

GetServers(Webserver1): Checks the Task Scheduler service on the server. This function queries the Win32 service and checks whether Task Scheduler Service is running on the server or not.

Function GetStatus(Computer): Checks IIS Status on the server. It queries “microsoftiisv2" on the IISWebserver to know the state of IIS Server.

Function GetProcessStatus (processName, ServerName): Displays the status of the process and memory utilization from the specified server. Mircorsoft provides tools to monitor process information on the server. You can download one of such tools from below url
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896682.aspx

This tool will check the processes running on that particular server.

Checkout the command it is using to do so

pslist -s \\ServerName ProcessName

PSLIST: This is the tool
-S: Run in task-manager mode, for optional seconds specified. Press Escape to abort. If no number is specified it runs continuously.
ServerName: Specify server name on which this process need to be checked
ProcessName: Specify the process name which needs to be monitored

SQL Server 2005 - Selecting the Correct SQL Server 2005 Edition

2008-10-09T00:22:00.001-04:00

Microsoft Corporations long-awaited SQL Server 2005 represents significant change for administrators—the database server includes several new features that add capability and improved performance, but they increase complexity as well.

Many organizations who already have their applications in SQL Server 2000, I would strongly recommend migrating to SQL Server 2005 as it would bring an additional management interface, improved performance and additional support for XML which made the management of the database more easy and more suitable for our applications.

Scenario: Business have decided to upgrade their database version from SQL Server 2000 - SQL Server 2005

Either migrating the existing database version to 2005 or setting up a new application with SQL 2005 as back-end database we need to be careful at each and every step we take in
performing the activity.
First step is "Selecting the Correct SQL Server 2005 Edition" understanding the different SQL Server editions and the features and functionality of each of these editions is a key to select the edition as per user requirements.

Following are the different SQL Server 2005 Editions:
1. SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (32-bit and 64-bit) : Enterprise Edition is designed to support the largest enterprise online transaction processing (OLTP) environments, highly complex data-analysis requirements, data-warehousing systems, and active Web sites. DBAs designing large database installations should consider only Enterprise Edition

2. SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (32-bit and 64-bit) : Standard Edition includes the essential functionality needed for e-commerce, data warehousing, and lineof business solutions that most small- and medium-sized organizations use. Organizations with databases that will contain large amounts of data but do not need installations with all the features of Enterprise Edition might consider Standard Edition.

3. SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition (32-bit only) : Workgroup Edition is the datamanagement solution for small organizations that need a database that has no limits on size or number of users and has the capability to serve as a back end to small Web servers and departmental or branch-office operations. DBAs working with small amounts of data on smaller servers might want to consider using Workgroup Edition.

4. SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition (32-bit and 64-bit) : Developer Edition includes all the functionality of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, but it is licensed only for use as a development and test system, not as a production server. Developer Edition is suited for developers in larger companies who need to develop applications that will use Enterprise Edition but who do not want to install Enterprise Edition on development or test servers.

5. SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (32-bit only) : SQL Server Express is a free, easyto-use, and simple-to-manage database that can be redistributed to function as the client database as well as a basic server database. Express Edition is usually suited only for very small data sets. Developers who are developing applications that require a small data store should consider using Express Edition.

Lets discuss the infrastructure requirements in the next item....Thanks for reading soo patiently :-)

View and Modify SQL* Plus system variables

2008-10-04T17:30:00.004-04:00

There are variables which control the behavior of SQL* PLUS. We can view these variables by SHOW command. ALL is used to view all the system variables. Thus to view all the SQL* PLUS system variable type:

SQL> SHOW ALL

To view the value for a single system variable use:

SHOW [Variable Name]

Example:
SQL> SHOW SUFFIX
suffix “sql”

How to change the default file extension in SQL*PLUS

The variable SUFFIX displays the default extension of the file created/edited or saved through SQL* PLUS. To set a system variable use SET command like
SQL> SET SUFFIX txt

Thus the default extension of files for the current SQL* PLUS session is set as txt. Thus when we use SAVE command followed by a file name without providing an extension file will be created as “.txt” file. Change in the system variable will be applicable only for the current session.
SQL> SHOW SUFFIX
suffix “txt”

IBM Rational Clear Case

2008-10-03T21:14:00.003-04:00

ClearCase:
Introduction
ClearCase is multi-dimensional database. True to the database model all interaction with files are performed using database views.
Files and directories are base elements. It got its terminology from Unix.
usage

VOB: versioned object base
09 in the below diagram is folder. The rest are files. Dots represent the history of the file. Filesystem will always have one main stream. look at the dots connected by lines.

Check the below content in Wiki for interesting history of it.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ClearCase

you can download clearCase from below link
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/clearcase/support/download.html

lot of help about clear case and other products is availble at below IBM site
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/products/clearcase/

Find some interesting discussion on VSTS VS Rational Clear Case in the below link
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1795308&SiteID=1

You can find more about VSTS in the below link. You can find some interesting real time case studies also.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/search.aspx?ProTaxID=2671

ClearCase has its origins and words usage common with Eclipse project......To know what is eclipse project check the below link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)

Just like VSS, ClearCase is also integrated with Visual Studio. It is tightly integrated with other application like NetBeans, Eclipse IDE

Remember to put check-in and check-out comments in Quickbase.

If you compare two .RPT files in ClearCase you will get they are identical even though they are not. Because it compares the compressed binary files.

You can have as many views you want on a stream. Views are called Snapshot Views. These are created at creation time and as the view is updated or files checked in.

There are two categories basically, Base ClearCase, which is like plain Configuration management tool. Second model is UCM (Unified Change Management). In this model you can tie Config Management to project plans.

You can always check how many views you have on a particular stream. Make a clear naming convention to identify who is using that particular view in the stream.

CMMI recommends ClearCase for configuration management.

Dotnet Framework 4.0 / Visual Studiod 2010 / VSTS 2010

2008-10-01T22:14:00.009-04:00

Dotnet Framework 4.0 / Visual Studiod 2010 / VSTS 2010 :

Next version of Dotnet is Visual Studio 2010 and Dotne Framwork 4.0.

What will be NEW: Microsof is focusing on below new 5 areas for Dotnet Framework 4.0 / VisualStudio 2010

PlatformWave: We have to wait and see what it is!!!!!
Developer Delight: As always developers can expect much more fancy, easy to use development environments from Microsft.
Departmental Applications: Sounds like domain specific solutions will be provided as default tools or packages (my assumption)
Cloud Computing: I expected this already, i wrote an article on this couple of days back in my blog. Checkout my blog for more details on cloud computing
http://suryaprakashj.blogspot.com/2008/09/cloud-computing.html

ALM: Application life cycle management. May be more stuff like Visual studio team server!!!!!!

VSTS 2010 will have more features as expected.
Modeling Tools: Graphically collaborative modeling tools for both technical and non technical users. Includes "Oslo" repository, tools and language.
Check here if you would like to know SOA product OSLO of microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/soa/products/oslo.aspx

Improved testing features, Scalability for agile development.

VSTS 2010 will provide a unified development and DB product!!!! Do you expect anything other than .net and SQL server in it??????

you can expect to see more about Dotnet 4.0 in the coming months.

check the announcement from Sr. VP of Development division Microsoft, ha ha ha he is Indian
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/News/MS_reveals_Visual_Studio_2010_/articleshow/3548271.cms

What Happens to the .NET Code You Write

2008-09-30T22:26:00.004-04:00

What Happens to the .NET Code You Write?

Ever wondered what happens to your code on compilation and execution?

Suppose you write a code like this:

static void Main(string[] args)

{

TestClass testClass = new TestClass();

}

The managed language compiler builds it into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) like this:

.method private hidebysig static void Main(string[] args) cil managed{ .entrypoint .maxstack 1 .locals init ( [0] class DotNetCodeToMachineCode.TestClass testClass) L_0000: nop L_0001: newobj instance void DotNetCodeToMachineCode.TestClass::.ctor() L_0006: stloc.0 L_0007: ret }
On execution, CLR’s JIT compiler will convert this to assembly language like this (for a 32 bit x86 processor):

//static void Main(string[] args)

//{

00000000 push ebp

00000001 mov ebp,esp

00000003 push edi

00000004 push esi

00000005 push ebx

00000006 sub esp,34h

00000009 xor eax,eax

0000000b mov dword ptr [ebp-10h],eax

0000000e xor eax,eax

00000010 mov dword ptr [ebp-1Ch],eax

00000013 mov dword ptr [ebp-3Ch],ecx

00000016 cmp dword ptr ds:[0091856Ch],0

0000001d je 00000024

0000001f call 794C717F

00000024 xor edi,edi

00000026 nop

//TestClass testClass = new TestClass();

00000027 mov ecx,3450248h

0000002c call FFCA0E54

00000031 mov esi,eax

00000033 mov ecx,esi

00000035 call FFCBB3C0

0000003a mov edi,esi

//}

Note: Here - ebp, esp, eax, esi, edi etc are the general purpose registers of the x86 processor.

The assembly will be converted to machine language (binaries) before loading into the instruction area of the RAM. The Hex representation of machine code is given below:

//static void Main(string[] args)

//{

00000000 55 //push ebp

00000001 8B EC //mov ebp,esp

00000003 57 //push edi

00000004 56 //push esi

00000005 53 //push ebx

00000006 83 EC 34 //sub esp,34h

00000009 33 C0 //xor eax,eax

0000000b 89 45 F0 //mov dword ptr [ebp-10h],eax

0000000e 33 C0 //xor eax,eax

00000010 89 45 E4 //mov dword ptr [ebp-1Ch],eax

00000013 89 4D C4 //mov dword ptr [ebp-3Ch],ecx

00000016 83 3D 6C 85 91 00 00 //cmp dword ptr ds:[0091856Ch],0

0000001d 74 05 //je 00000024

0000001f E8 5B 71 4C 79 //call 794C717F

00000024 33 FF //xor edi,edi

00000026 90 //nop

//TestClass testClass = new TestClass();

00000027 B9 48 02 45 03 //mov ecx,3450248h

0000002c E8 23 0E CA FF //call FFCA0E54

00000031 8B F0 //mov esi,eax

00000033 8B CE //mov ecx,esi

00000035 E8 86 B3 CB FF //call FFCBB3C0

0000003a 8B FE //mov edi,esi

//}

But remember that in RAM it will be saved as pure binaries like this:

//static void Main(string[] args)

//{

00000000 01010101 //push ebp

00000001 10001011 11101100 //mov ebp,esp

00000003 01010111 //push edi

00000004 01010110 //push esi

00000005 01010011 //push ebx

00000006 10000011 11101100 00110100 //sub esp,34h

00000009 00110011 11000000 //xor eax,eax

0000000b 10001001 01000101 11110000 //mov dword ptr [ebp-10h],eax

0000000e 00110011 11000000 //xor eax,eax

00000010 10001001 01000101 11100100 //mov dword ptr [ebp-1Ch],eax

00000013 10001001 01001101 11000100 //mov dword ptr [ebp-3Ch],ecx

00000016 10000011 00111101 01101100 10000101 10010001 00000000 00000000 //cmp dword ptr ds:[0091856Ch],0

0000001d 01110100 00000101 //je 00000024

0000001f 11101000 01011011 01110001 01001100 01111001 //call 794C717F

00000024 00110011 11111111 //xor edi,edi

00000026 10010000 //nop

//TestClass testClass = new TestClass();

00000027 10111001 01001000 00000010 01000101 00000011 //mov ecx,3450248h

0000002c 11101000 00100011 00001110 11001010 11111111 //call FFCA0E54

00000031 10001011 11110000 //mov esi,eax

00000033 10001011 11001110 //mov ecx,esi

00000035 11101000 10000110 10110011 11001011 11111111 //call FFCBB3C0

0000003a 10001011 11111110 //mov edi,esi

//}

Before executing the method [“Main()” in this case], the starting address of that method is pushed onto the “Call Stack” along with it’s parameters and local variables. The reference variables (object pointers) will also be placed on the stack. These references will be pointing to their objects residing on the heap area of the RAM.

Instruction binaries will be moved to the processor from the RAM (normally chunks of this will be buffered in the L1/L2 cache of the processor for speedy access) and will be executed one by one. Intermediate results, flags and certain pointers (stack pointer, program counter etc) will be saved in the processor registers. Result binaries will be saved back to the RAM. As and when the method is completed, the binaries those were “pushed to” for that method execution get “popped out”(top most items) and removed from the stack. This cycle repeats for the rest of the methods as well.

You don’t have to worry about all these steps while you “JIT and Run”. But it would be interesting to think that you are juggling with thousands of binaries while writing a few lines of code!! Hope you enjoyed it!

Cloud Computing

2008-09-30T21:00:00.004-04:00

Cloud Cmputing / Platform As A Service (PAAS) / On-Demand Platform / Software As A Service (SAAS):

According to the IEEE Computer Society "It is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, etc"

Definition: Cloud computing describes a system where users can connect to a vast network of computing resources, data and servers that reside somewhere "out there," usually on the Internet, rather than on a local machine or a LAN or in a data center. Cloud computing can give on- demand access to supercomputer-level power, even from a thin client or mobile device such as a smart phone or laptop.

The cloud computing "revolution" is being driven by providers including Amazon, Google, Salesforce and Yahoo! as well as traditional vendors including Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and SAP and adopted by users from individuals through large enterprises including General Electric, L'Oréal, Procter & Gamble and Valeo.

The Roles and Responsibilities involved in it are:
Provider: A cloud computing provider or cloud computing service provider owns and operates live cloud computing systems to deliver service to third parties.
User: A user is a consumer of cloud computing.
Vendor: A vendor sells products and services that facilitate the delivery, adoption and use of cloud computing.
EX:
Computer hardware (Dell, HP, IBM) : Storage provided by (3PAR, EMC)
Computer software (3tera, Hadoop): Operating systems (Linux including Red Hat[49]) , Platform virtualisation (Citrix, Microsoft, VMware)

Cloud services can be grouped into Three broad categories: (Please refer to the diagram)

SAAS: (Software As A Service): A SaaS application runs entirely in the cloud (that is, on servers at an Internet-accessible service provider). The on-premises client is typically a browser or some other simple client. The most well-known example of a SaaS application today is probably Salesforce.com, but many, many others are also available.

Attached services: Every on-premises application provides useful functions on its own. An application can sometimes enhance these by accessing application-specific services provided in the cloud. EX: ITunes, Micorsoft based spam filtering, archiving services.

Cloud platforms: A cloud platform provides cloud-based services for creating applications. The direct users of a cloud platform are developers, not end users

Real World Example:
Amazon.com offers a couple of cloud services. Web service developers can use its Simple Storage Service (S3) to store any amount of data. And developers can use Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to set up a virtual server in minutes, with none of the maintenance of buying and installing server hardware and software. Both services are offered on a pay-per-use basis.
you can get some more details at wiki about cloud computing history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

if you want description about each feature of cloud computing refer the below article, it gives the internals.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/07/15FE-cloud-computing-reality_1.html

Dotnet Framework / Visual Studio Versions

2008-09-30T20:49:00.001-04:00

All about .NET Framework versioning

There has been a lot of confusion around the .NET Framework version numbers and it's implications to applications as well as the development environment. This page will attempt to explain it all and clear up any outstanding confusion.

.NET Framework v1.0
The original version of the .NET Framework (early 2001). This has it's own set of assemblies in C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705 - this includes the core functionality such as "mscorlib.dll" and "System.dll". Development for .NET 1.0 will not be supported on Vista.

.NET Framework v1.1
This was the enhancement release for .NET 1.0 and is an entirely new release - although it can and often is installed side-by-side with .NET 1.0 with no conflicts. These components exist independantly in C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322 - this includes NEW versions of mscorlib and System.dll. Development for .NET 1.1 will not be supported on Vista.

.NET Framework v2.0
This was a fundamentally significant release where many aspects of the framework changed. These components exist independantly in C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 and include a new mscorlib and System.dll. Development for .NET 2.0 will be supported on Vista.

.NET Framework v3.0
This is where the confusion begins. This is NOT a release or update to the core framework. This was instead a release of several .dlls to supplement the .NET 2.0 Framework. .NET 3.0 functionality means that the application is in essence a .NET 2.0 application but supports some new features such as WCF, WF or WPF. These few add-on files mostly exist in C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.0. Development for .NET 3.0 will be supported on Vista.

.NET Framework v3.5
Unfortunately, the confusion continues here. Version 3.5 is ALSO NOT a release or update to the core framework. There is no 3.0 nor 3.5 version of mscorlib or System.dll. Instead, the 3.5 release put significant core changes into a file called System.Core.dll - and also included several new assemblies. This is a pretty significant release - but it is still fundamentally .NET 2.0 - with some .NET 3.5 assemblies added on. The files for these add-on assemblies are mostly in C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5. Also, the installer for .NET 3.5 also installs the .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0 framework files. Development for .NET 3.5 will be supported on Vista.

-------------------------

Visual Studio .NET 2002 (codename: Rainier)
This was the the first version of Visual Studio that Microsoft released back in February 2002 introducing the concept of managed code for the first time. This version of Visual Studio was based on .NET Framework 1.0. Along with this release Microsoft also introduced the new programming language C# (C-sharp). This IDE is not supported on Vista by Microsoft nor Aetna.

Visual Studio .NET 2003 (codename: Everett)
This was the second release of the development IDE for .NET development. This supports .NET 1.1 only. It also came with built-in support for developing programs for mobile devices, using either ASP.NET or the .NET Compact Framework. This IDE is not supported on Vista by Microsoft nor Aetna.

Visual Studio 2005 (codename: Whidbey)
This is what is currently supported at Aetna on the XP 6.2.1 and Vista 7.1.1. desktop image. Visual Studio 2005 can only reasonably create .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0 applications. Although a developer can technically use functionalty from .NET 3.5, much of the new functionality in .NET 3.5 is based around new features that are available in Visual Studio 2008.

Visual Studio 2008 (codename: Orcas)
At some point in 2009, we will likely get Visual Studio 2008 - which has significant feature improvements for the development environment. Visual Studio 2008 has the ability to "target" version 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5 of the .NET Framework too.

You can find some more useful information about Dotnet 3.5 here....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework

to get indetail view about every new topic in Dotnet 3.5 view check this out....
http://www.aspsociety.com/Framework-history.aspx

To find each and every new feature in 3.5 refer to nice blog below, it has user comments as well.....
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-2008-and-net-3-5-released.aspx

Dotnet 3.5 New Features

2008-09-26T21:49:00.007-04:00

.net 3.5 features:
LINQ: Language integrated query
Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) in .net3.5, can query from XML, SQL etc.,

Improved ASP.NET ajax support: This improves UI page efficiency.
partial page refresh updates are possible. Calling webservice methods from client scripts is made easy.

Find the ASP.NET and AJAX architecture diagram below

WCF: windows communication foundation: Microsft recomended approach for communication between applications.
Windows Workflow foundation (WF): Workflow is common with any domain or business problems. Most of the business solutions go like a workflow. so the improved workflow in dotnet 3.5 should help in building seamless workflows for business problems.
Windows Presentation Foundation: support for videos, animation, 2 & 3 D graphics
windows Cardspace Windows card space is a form of improved identity.

troubleshooting two versions on .net

2008-09-17T21:02:00.001-04:00

you can try some of the options below

Try running aspnet_regiis.exe -lk to see what version of asp.net is associated with the application
Make sure you have separate application pools for 1.1 and 2.0
Make sure default.aspx is on top in the default document tab in IIS

How to prevent your PEN drive from VIRUS

2008-09-15T21:17:00.001-04:00

Friends many of your PC/laptop's normally gets virus because of Pen Drives or USB devices (Even PC's who are not connected to network ). Some Virus like Ravmon Virus , Heap41a worm which are not detected by anti virus normally spreads mostly by the Pen Drives . In such a case what can you do to prevent your PC from getting infected with Virus that spreads through USB devices or Pen Drives ?

You can protect your PC by just following the simple steps below . It won't take much time.

Connect your Pen Drive or USB drive to your computer .

Now a dialogue window will popup asking you to choose among the options as shown in the

figure.

Don't choose any of them , Just simply click Cancel.

*Now go to Start--> Run and type cmd to open the Command Prompt window ..
*Now go to My Computer and Check the Drive letter of your USB drive or Pen Drive. ( E.g. If it is written Kingston (I:) , then I: will be the drive letter ..)
*In the Command Window ( cmd ) , type the drive letter: and Hit Enter ..
*Now type dir/w/o/a/p and Hit Enter
*You will get a list of files . In the list , search if anyone of the following do exist
1. Autorun.inf
2. New Folder.exe
3. Bha.vbs
4. Iexplore.vbs
5. Info.exe
6. New_Folder.exe
7. Ravmon.exe
8. RVHost.exe or any other files with .exe Extension .

If you find any one of the files above , Run the command attrib -h -r -s -a *.* and Hit Enter.
Now Delete each File using the following Command del filename ( E.g del autorun.inf ) .
That's it . Now just scan your USB drive with the anti virus you have to ensure that you made your Pen Drive free of Virus .

Hi Friends...
This virus is very very common now...
To know whether ur system is infected just type C:\heap41a in the address bar...
if there is a folder named heap41a, then ur system is infected...
(AVAST antivirus is the best solution for this worm...) symantec also works.

Health Insurance Domain in a Nutshell

2008-09-15T21:10:00.004-04:00

Insurance industry in statistics

More than 70% of the population had private health insurance in US.
950 companies are competing in health insurance
3000 companies provide property insurance in US.
1500 Life insurance companies
Current assets of Life and health insurance industry is $2.5 Trillions. These assets are invested in real estate, govt securities, coroprate bonds etc.,
2.2 Million people in US are working in Insurance industy out of that 900K work in Life and health insurance industry
Employees in insurance industy are earning $122.7 Millions as wages/slaries. $12.1 Millions earned by self employees.
To start an insurance company in US minimum capital is $100 K to $1000K

What is Insurance Industry.....

Four Approaches of dealing with risk
1. Own the risk
2. Dont do that task at all - not possible in some cases (dont ride , because there is threat of accident)
3. Reduce the risk by taking some preventive actions (burglur alarm.)
4. Transfer some or whole part of Risk - INSURANCE

Insurer: Generally the company who pays in the event of loss
Coverage: Contractual agreement that insurer will pay insured in case of pre agreed incidents.
Insured: The person whol transfers the risk to insurer with small premiums paid periodically.
Claim: Demand by insurer for payment of benefit
Benefit: Amount paid by insurer to insured as a compensation to risk
Premiums: Insured pays insurer periodically for coverage of risk.

PRINCIPLES OF INSURANCE:
1. Uncertainity of loss: No self damages and deliberate cause
2. Measurability of loss: Loss should be able to be measured in currency value
3. Large Number of Insureds:
4. significant size of potential Loss:
5. Equitable sharing.
6. Speculative risk (share market), Pure risk (fire accident)

Category of insurance
1. Individual (person insures himself and his family)
2. Group (company insurers for employee)

Types of Insurance
A) LIFE INSURANCE
1. Whole life insurance Or permanent insurance
2. Term life insurance (covers for a specific period)
3. Credit Life insurance (pay the remaining debts of the insurer in case of his discontinuity due to unfortunate incident)
4. Annuity Contracts (paying the beneficiary dependents for a specific period.)

B) HEALTH INSURANCE: Medical, dental, surgical coverage
C) PROPERTY INSURANCE :
1. Direct: Loss of actual damage
2. Indirect: loss due to no rent, loss of profits, temporary shifting of house.
D) CASUALITY INSURANCE
liable for an accident and has to pay the damage by insurer is covered by insurance company.

Types of Insurance Organizations:

Stock Insurance Comapnies: Stock holders are the owners of the company.
Mutual Insurance Companies: Policy holders are the owners of the company.

Demutualization: Shifting from Mutual company to Stock company.
Benefits:
Large capital source
Ability to acquire other companies
Tax reduction in US
Attracting top level employees: can offer stocks to top executives.

MORE TO FOLLOW...

Troubleshoot Error/Messages in DOCUMENTUM Technology

2008-09-15T21:02:00.005-04:00

Troubleshoot Error/Messages in MS Word document (opening through IE browser or MS Word) In DOCUMENTUM

BY SAMTA JAIN

A) “The disk is full”:

When you try to save a document using File àSave or CTRL+S, you may receive following error:

It’s generally found when you open a document using IE or any application or program which display a document in IE browser. This issue could be due to missing reference in the document.

What shall you do then?

a) Open the document.

b) Press ALT+F11

c) Click ToolsàReferences

d) See if it shows something like Missing: xxxx.dot, if you find such option selected, deselect it.

e) Click on FileàClose and Return to Microsoft Word (ALT+Q)

f) Save the document.

Now open the document in IE and save it, it should get saved without any problem.

B) “Update Table of Contents”:

When you try to print a document using File àPrint or CTRL+P, you may receive following message:

Now this is generally seen for a document which has table of contents and before printing a document may prompt for updating the table of Content.

If you are getting this message every time you print a document, you can:

a) Go to Tools à Option in your document.

b) Click on the Print Tab

c) Under ‘Printing Options’ uncheck ‘Update Fields’.

d) Now try to print the document, no ‘Update Table of Contents’ message will be prompted.

Note: This setting is stored at the system level and will impact all the documents. So if you still need the prompt for other documents ensure that you keep the field ‘Update Fields’ checked.

You Can reach the author at samtatheone@yahoo.co.in

Migration from VB 6.0 to VB.NET

2008-09-12T18:10:00.004-04:00

Advantages of Migration:

Visual Basic .NET is the next version of Visual Basic. Rather than simply adding some new features to Visual Basic 6.0, Microsoft has reengineered the product to make it easier than ever before to write distributed applications such as Web and enterprise n-tier systems. Visual Basic .NET has two new forms packages (Windows Forms and Web Forms); a new version of ADO for accessing disconnected data sources; and streamlined language, removing legacy keywords, improving type safety.

Visual Basic .NET is now fully integrated with the other Microsoft Visual Studio .NET languages. Not only can you develop application components in different programming languages, your classes also can now inherit from classes written in other languages using cross-language inheritance. With the unified debugger, you can now debug multiple language applications, irrespective of whether they are running locally or on remote computers. Finally, whatever language you use, the Microsoft .NET Framework provides a rich set of APIs for Microsoft Windows® and the Internet.
Visual Basic is now a true object-oriented language; some unintuitive and inconsistent features such as GoSub/Return and DefInt have been removed from the language.
Error handling in VB.NET has considerably increased the efficiency of the applications and free threading is a plus point as against to single threading in Visual Basic

Problems in Migration:

The following features in VB projects are not supported in the VB.NET environment:
OLE Container Control
Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)
DAO or RDO Data Binding
Visual Basic 5.0 Controls
DHTML Applications
ActiveX Documents
Property Pages

While migrating from VB to VB.NET you should not use late binding and lines and shapes are not supported in VB.NET. Instead you can make use of images. Moreover, in VB.NET you have to use only Zero-Bound array.

Strategy of Migration:

Migration Wizard / tool:

I) Use the microsfot assessment tool to analyze the migration effort.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/library/en-us/dnpag2/html/VB6ToVBNetUpgrade.asp
Please find attached Migration Strategy diagram

II) Migration through Visual Studio IDE Wizard:
Visual Studio IDE has a menu item to bring up a wizard needed for migrating either VB or Java programs to .NET World. Everything in VB may not go to VB.net
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/vb/Migration.aspx

Fresh Design:

Redesign the entire applicationt to dotnet. you can use below techniques

1. Do a UML design of your whole application (if it is not available earlier)

2. Identify the functions/Subs in VB 6.0 which can be grouped as classes and components, identified in UML. If your team has done a better coding by following std. coding practice then forming components can be easily done.

3. Wrap the classes by providing appropriate access specifiers which will give way for covering security aspect of your project

4. Try to fit in your application in any of the standard patterns, this may require code change. But the benefit you get is easy maintainance and better effort estimation. Atleast follow a 2-tier architecture

5. Once the basic steps are done, then you can start replacing the code by .Net featured code (like string manipulation, multi-threaeding, security protocol, delegation, remoting etc)

successfully migrated solution!

How to get the path for "My Documents" and other system folders in DotNET

2008-09-05T22:10:00.000-04:00

Use the GetFolderPath method of the System.Environment class to retrieve this information.

MessageBox.Show( Environment.GetFolderPath( Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal ) );

SOFTWARE COMPANY'S BUSINESS END TO END

2008-09-04T19:39:00.011-04:00

(All the below information is my personal opinion and understanding of the IT business , need not be apt in all case all sense scenarios)

About Myself: I worked with two of the top 4 Indian MNC software companies and 2 of top Fortune 100 clients. Here I would like to share my experience about how Software Business is generated and how it flows.
What I am going to cover: The journey of Software Industry business from end to end and broader perspective of the software business at industry level.
Interesting Facts and Figures:
Total revenue of IT industry in 2008 will be $87 billion dollars.
IT exports account for 35% of total exports of India.
Indian IT export breakdown by Region Wise:
U.S. 61%
U.K. 18%
Continental Europe 12%
Others 8%

Indian IT export breakdown by Industry Wise:
Financial Services 40%; (Includes Banking and Insurance)
Technology & Telecom 19%;
Manufacturing 15%;
Retail 8%; and
Others 18%.

Some of the top companies (industry wise) generating large source of income for IT companies:
Worlds top 10 companies generating lots of revenue to IT companies are as below.
1. Wal-Mart Stores
2. Exxon Mobil
3. Royal Dutch Shell
4. BP
5. Toyota Motor
6. Chevron
7. ING Group
8. Total
9. General Motors
10. ConocoPhillips

Worlds Top Air Line companies:
Air France-KLM Group
Lufthansa Group
AMRUAL
Japan Airlines
Delta Air Lines
British Airways

Worlds Top Banking Companies

ING Group
Fortis
Citigroup
Dexia Group
HSBC Holdings

Worlds Top Health care and Insurance companies:
United Health Care
WellPoint
Aetna
Humana
Cigna

Worlds Top Petroleum Refining Companies:
Exxon Mobil
Royal Dutch Shell
BP
Chevron
Total
ConocoPhillips

Worlds Top Telecommunication companies
AT&T
Verizon Communications
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone
Deutsche Telekom
Telefónica France Télécom
Vodafone

How does client companies operate (from Software company perspective):
Client Company for a software business works in its own business model, it differs from industry to industry, company to company from country to country.

Live Examples: BP is one of the US top oil major company. It operates in almost all the countries of the world. It will have different internal business units like Refining, Retail, Pipeline, E&P, Supporting units like HR, legal etc.,

I know one such company generating 5 Billion dollars of income for software companies over 5 year period!!!!!!

Signa is one of the US top health insurance company it operates through out US in different divisions like Claims, Disbursement, Underwriting (giving an insurance quote), Customer support, Vendors (generally companies opted for XYZ insurance for their employees ), Doctors (authorized doctors/hospitals for this insurance company).

I know one such company which is operating in different locations of US east coast generating more than 300 million dollars per year business for software companies!!!!

Target is one of the Worlds largest company in retail, it will have its branches all over world. It will operate in different divisions like Billing, purchasing, marketing & advertising, customer support etc.,
I know one such company operating from Minneapolis in a 35 floored building full of software employees to support its business!!!

IT Divisions: Each client company will have its own IT department to support its IT needs. It will be headed by CTO (Chief Technology Officer). It will provide budget for each division and those respective division heads will chalk out a plan to spend it on different projects.

Customers / End users will play a major role by providing their IT needs for the year ahead, IT division then will facilitate those projects with Software companies

Bids: Bidding happen for two kind of projects. Developing New project: Client company will invite the software companies they are interested to send proposals and due diligence will be done by client company. Maintaining existing project: It might be migrating from one software vendor to the other.

Preferred Vendors:Some top companies have Accenture and IBM as their preferred vendors. All the server, system administration, network support and firewall support is provided by such companies. There will be no competition. Interesting part is they take a broad band or private line lease from companies like AT&T to support internet connections of the client company.

Partners / Business Transformers: Client companies will identify some software vendors as their partners or business transformers. They will take their help in shaping up their business with the experience of software vendor.

Product Vendors: Some companies like Banking will purchase an existing proven product to serve their customers.
Iflex, Infosys have some good banking solutions.
ESS , ESP and Wipro has proven Compliance and legal solutions.
PLAN VIEW has pre dominant time tracking and reporting tools.
NCR is specialized in ATM software and it has more than 70% of the business world wide.

Staff Augmentation: Some client companies carry on the projects on their own, by taking staff augmentation to deliver project. Like they will hire Software company or outside contractors to deliver the projects.These days Client Companies are preferring to out source their Project Management, Development, Support and Architchturing of applications to software companies rather than maintaining employees within its own company.

How does Software companies operate:

OFFSHORE: Project is executed from countries like India, China and Malaysia. Major economical advantage for client company, but communication and coordination is a problem.
ONSITE: Project will be executed from the same place of the client. Might be Costly for client company, but advantage face to face interaction and better assessment of situation. Less Risk.
ONSITE - OFFSHORE MODEL Project will be executed by some people being at onsite and some people will be in offshore supporting onsite folks.
NEAR SHORE: New trend !!! project will be executed from different country than that of client but will be in the same geographical region. EX: Project in America will be executed from Canada and Mexico. Travel and communications are easier and less expensive, Some commonality of language and culture.

Foreign based MNC Companies Like IBM they operate in different mode like for a project in Netherlands, IBM Netherlands will interact with client and IBM India will be the outsourcing company for IBM Netherlands.
The above categorization is from generalized view, These kind of exceptions will always be there.

If you have your own company you can customize this in more meaning full way to you and your client may be !!!

Internal Structure of Software Company: Software companies generally operate in Horizontal and Vertical Slicing model. Banking, Insurance, Manufacturing, Retail, Energy and Utilities etc., will be vertical domains. Horizontal units will support the vertical units in delivery. Like Data Base Administration, SAP, ERP, Testing will be horizontal units will come and serve the vertical business unit as needed. Marketing division of Software company will be responsible for brand building and Sales department will be responsible for bringing projects, Pre Sales department for sending proposals to clients for new projects, Account management for handling issues at client level and finally delivery units will deliver the Development or Maintenance projects. Learning divisions, HR, Finance, Immigration, Travel desks, Network and Security desks will support the entire company for seamless business.