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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Browse here to read a new interesting security blog written by Paul Vincent - he's titled it "Secure I.T or lose IT" which I particularly like.
Paul blogs about "Microsoft security and how we can stop the bad guys from stealing our stuff" - it's well worth a look
Paul is a friend of mine who contributed to the success of GetSafeOnline by getting out on street to meet the general public to teach them how to reduce the likelihood of getting compromised.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
There's a great deal of chatter on the web with regard to "a new CTP" (Community Technology Preview) of Windows Vista. Personally I'm participating in a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) community gathering - just like online there's a great deal of discussion about this build
Build 5342 IS NOT a CTP - it's purely for a small number of beta testers. CTPs go through far more testing than interim builds such as 5342.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Hmmm - I want to go to Vegas.. I REALLY want to go there. I missed MIX06 last week (too developer focused for me), and now its only 8 weeks to go to MEDC in Las Vegas too. Grrr. THere's an early bird registration option too. The early-registration price for customers of US$995 ends March 31. The regular customer price is $1195. But the conference sounds really good (apart from the fact that it's in Vegas), and I found that a couple of our guys have created these wierd little things called muglets. Mike has got one, and so has Loke Uei
Wish I had time this week to have a play and create one... add your muglet link in the comments, and make me giggle...
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Jonathan Hawkins from the Atlas/ASP.NET team just posted a nice tutorial walking through how to build a map-based mashup using the Atlas Virtual Earth control and some custom web-services that serve up mountain information (note: Jonathan is an avid hiker!). You can read and download his tutorial here. You can also learn about the great Atlas Mashup Contest here (and win a free XBox 360!).
This tutorial shows off some of the great "client-centric Ajax programming" power available with Atlas. For more on Atlas (and to see my own fun tutorial building a todo task list), check out http://atlas.asp.net. I also posted my slides+demos from an Atlas presentation I did in Amsterdam here.
Hope this helps,
Scott
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Eight new SQL Server 2005 Report Packs have been released:
- SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for SQL Server Integration Services
- SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003
- SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for Microsoft Dynamics Axapta 3.0
- SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for Microsoft Dynamics Navision 4.0
- SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains 8.0
- SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains 9.0
- SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)
- SQL Server 2005 Report Pack for Financial Reporting
These report packs will simplify your report tasks, improve your business visibility and speed your decision making.
The SQL Server 2005 Report Packs can be downloaded from two external destination sites:
The Report Packs are absolutely free :-)
The SQL Server Report Packs are NOT supported :-( ... other than via the above GDN site.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
I have to write an overview on "What is architecture" for an upcoming website that we are working on and so went out to look at some definitions. The first I remembered was one I used in an old overview of Enterprise Architecture that I wrote in 2002 which is still up on MSDN (abet very well hidden).
The definition of an architecture used in ANSI/IEEE Std 1471-2000 is: "the fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution."
Strangely enough this seemed a bit vague and limiting at the same. Over to my favourite Wikipedia which has the following different definitions:
- The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution. From ANSI/IEEE 1471-2000.
- The composite of the design architectures for products and their life cycle processes. From IEEE 1220-1998 as found at their glossary.
- A representation of a system in which there is a mapping of functionality onto hardware and software components, a mapping of the software architecture onto the hardware architecture, and human interaction with these components. From the Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute as found at its glossary.
- An allocated arrangement of physical elements which provides the design solution for a consumer product or life-cycle process intended to satisfy the requirements of the functional architecture and the requirements baseline. From The Human Engineering Home Page's Glossary.
- An architecture is the most important, pervasive, top-level, strategic inventions, decisions, and their associated rationales about the overall structure (i.e., essential elements and their relationships) and associated characteristics and behavior. From OPEN Process Framework (OPF) Repository.
- A description of the design and contents of a computer system. If documented, it may include information such as a detailed inventory of current hardware, software and networking capabilities; a description of long-range plans and priorities for future purchases, and a plan for upgrading and/or replacing dated equipment and software. From The National Center for Education Statistics glossary.
- A formal description of a system, or a detailed plan of the system at component level to guide its implementation. TOGAF
- The structure of components, their interrelationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time. TOGAF
None of these really had what I was looking for so I came up with the following short definition:
Architecture is the use of abstractions and models to simplify and communicate complex structures and processes to improve understanding and forecasting.
This seemed to wrap up all the above definitions and cover off all the bases. Interestingly it also works for all the other architecture types that are out there however, as is common with my writings is brief to the point of non comprehensibility so I wrote the following long definition:
Architecture is the use of sets of abstractions and models of a environment, problem space or domain, either physical or logical, with a set of associated views into that domain to provide:
- Simplification and management of complexity in all it's forms (structural, procedural or informational), in particular the management, understanding and integration of the business and technical domains.
- Communication and common understanding of the problem space to multiple stakeholders from widely different environments by the use of multiple domain specific views of the architectural model.
- Completeness and relationship analysis of proposed solutions in the problem space or domain by examining the models and architectures from multiple differing viewpoints for incompleteness and gaps.
- Forecasting and predicting future architectures, strategies, structures, patterns, relationships and technologies in the business and technical space by extrapolation of present abstractions and models.
I think that about covers it. Note that the whole area is self defining and recursive. I still like the short definition though.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
I passed the Microsoft Certification Exam 70-320 (Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft C# .NET) today with a score of 968.
This was about different ways of splitting an application into communicating components and getting the components to talk to one another. I'm not sure if this is the right focus. I would have thought a better exam would have been how to design components as more cohesive objects with minimal communication between them. Each time you move...
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Interesting Newsweek lead article.
I am on record as hating Web 2.0 as a term but really like the Live Web as a description. I will be using that in future.
Also its an interesting non technical and consumer oriented view of what is going on.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Microsoft is warning users about three serious security problems in its Internet Explorer browser.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Microsoft's cross-platform XAML runtime, called WPF/Everywhere, was announced at PDC last year, but little detail was available. That's now changing, following Joe Stegman's presentation at Mix06. I was briefed by Forest Key, Director of Developer Tools Product Management, and I've posted my article here:
Microsoft goes cross-platform with WPF/Everywhere
The possibility of cross-platform .NET has been there since the first, and of course there is ROTOR, but that is for academic use only, and Microsoft has seemed uninterested in deploying .NET beyond Windows. Now we have a commercial, cross-platform .NET implementation from the company. I realise that it is focused on XAML user interfaces, but even so this is a significant step and an acknowledgement that, like it or not, some people do not want to run Windows. The upside for Microsoft is that XAML adoption will be far greater if it runs cross-platform.
It's currently demoware so we can only speculate how well WPF/E will deliver, and whether Microsoft will come close to its "everywhere" objective.
Tags:
wpfe
mix06
vista
wpf
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
20th March
Installed the Adventure Works databases - these are the new sample databases for 2005.
Northwind seems to have been retired.
The samples are available here:
Link
On this page are the 'standard' SQL Server sample plus the Adventure works installs.
When running the Adventure Works install the database is created - but not attached
to the SQL server - so it is not available through the replacement for Enterprise
Manager - SQL Server Management Studio. To attach the database go to the left pane
and right click on 'Databases'. Then click on 'Attach'. This then shows a pop up 'Attach
Databases' - click on the top right pane 'add'. When another pop up is shown 'Locate
database Files'.
I found Adventure Works in the folder Program Files/Microsoft SQL Server/MSSQL.1/Data
with the two databases being AdventureWorks_Data.mdf and AdventureWorksDW.mdf. I clicked
on each one separately and then 'OK' and then was able to see them.
21st – 22nd March
Even though I am still waiting for the books I couldn't resist playing with Visual
Studio. I looked up the difference between .NET 1.1 and .Net 2.0
My favourites so far are:
The ability to change code on the fly - was in VB6, dropped in 1.x, now back!! Thank
goodness. Only drawback is that isn't supported under ASP.NET.
Nice extra feature is the ability to hover over objects in code brings up the values
inside. Values are still available in the Autos pane. When running the application
and an error occurs then VS breaks and highlights the offending statement. An assistant
then gives hints about what is wrong. Dont ask how I found this out :-)
There are so many good new features plus the others I haven't found yet
23rd March
My wife's birthday
24th – 25nd March
It is clear that during my learning journey I am going to have far too much material
to stick in a blog - so I have created a web site where I can dump material as it
arrives - for example links, code snippets, projects, books I have read etc etc.
So I have spent some time getting a site up and running. This site is clearly in it
infancy - just a front page, but as I move on then the website will advance with me.
See the site here: My webstite
26th March
Mother's day
Phoenix
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Some cool videos from WPF demos at Mix06.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
A little late but these are my session notes from other sessions I attended
WPF\E
- WPF subset
- Customer preview\CTP in Q3 2006
- Web release first half 2007
- Device release second half 2007
- Web support, XAML inline with HTML, scripted using C# or JS. Working in firefox, Mac OSX.
- Will support Safari.
- Linux and Solaris support partnered with third party to do.
- Can take advantage of WPF tool support.
- ASPX will have WPF\E controls. Nice Orcas integration when working with these.
- WPF\E hosts an x platform .NET runtime. For Linux etc I willing to bet that the partner will be Novell\Mono :)
- XAML is compiled to IL\XAML markup for WPF\E and is packaged for delivery to the runtime.
InfoCard
- Imperative to connect
- When communicating via the wire its vital that you can identify who is who
- Lack of idenity online
- phising and fraud
- password fatigue
- Inconsistent, proprietary id mechs
- InfoCard
- Consistant user experince
- Lets you add/remove/edit your cards etc
- Helps eliminate usernames and passwords
- MS are working on a mobile device version of InfoCard
- Built on WS-*, web service security stack
- Self issued
- Stored locally
- Assertions about me
- Not corroborated
- Managed
- Provided by banks, government, clubs etc
- Stored at STS
- Private desktop
- Runs under seperate desktop and account
- Isolates InfoCard from the desktop
- Deters hacking attempts by user-mode process's
- Would have to tunnel to the Kernal from the desktop and back up to the InfoCard desktop, very differcult.
- Login with self issued card, info is packaged, encrypted and sent to site,
- Website asks for certain kind of card, infocard id's that its a managed card. InfoCard auths using a secure selection, kerbos etc.
- ID metasystem
- ID layer for the internet
- Open, inclusive, standards based model
- Built upon "The laws of ID"
- InfoCard is a client agent with the ID metasystem
- Web steps
- Assoicate a user with a card (database), Hash ID
- Create an association page
- Create loging page
- InfoCard built on .NET like the rest of the winfx stack
- WinFx will be added to windows update.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
A fire fed by a fuel leak caused the
failure of a commercial rocket seconds into its maiden launch.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Fans of Desperate Housewives will soon be able to live virtually on Wisteria Lane in a game of the show.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Microsoft is appealing against a South Korean ruling that it must unbundle its software systems.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Coming up this week on the Media Center Show
And special guest Mark Weinberg - General Manager at Microsoft's eHome group, responsible for the Media Center core features team
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Another great thing about SqlExpress is it comes with a great management tool that seems to have a much nicer UI than the evil incarnate that is SQL Server 2000's Enterprise Manager which has all those horrible modal dialogs.
The new management tool is set up much like Visual Studio with a tabbed area containing each database element that you have open. This means you can have your stored procedure and your database table definition open at the same time and actually switch between the two without having to cut and paste your stored procedure into notepad because it's not ready to save. UI genius!
One of the nicest features is it has a subfolder for each database object (like stored procedure or table) where it stores all of the system objects for that type. This is great because it means you don't have to sort through a million stored procedures and tables to find the ones that you created.
This really is impressive, particularly considering the whole package is free (Bill Gates already owns all our souls).
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Voices for Innovation is a community of voices with differing opinions and different experiences, all working for the same goal: briefing policymakers on the importance of intellectual property protection, investment in research and development, innovation and growth, and consumer welfare.
Add your voice to the community.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
I've had Sql Server Express installed on my machine since I installed VS2005 about six months ago, but I've never actually been able to get it running. Today I actually managed to get it working on my machine.
My problem was I was getting error messages whenever I tried to connect to it. The first error I got when trying to access a SqlExpress database file was:
"Service did not start due to logon failure".
I googled the error message and found the solution in this blog post.
The solution was to go to the SqlExpress configuration and make sure that the login details for the SqlExpress service were valid. This is how I did it on my computer (slightly different from the blog entry):
1. Open the services admin tool (Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services)
2. Right click on the SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) service and choose Properties
3. Go to the Log On tab
4. Make sure the username and password that it's using is valid
The second error I got was:
"Failed to open a connection to the database"
"An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)"
I wasn't really sure how to enable SqlExpress for remote connections, but I found another blog entry with some really great instructions.
The solution this time was to open the Sql Server Configuration Manager that's installed with SqlExpress, enable the "named pipes" protocol and then enable access through your network card.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
We are finishing up the final week of work on the feature-complete build of the VS 2005 Web Application Project option. This build has a ton of new features and functionality, and fixes all of the bugs reported with the last preview. We are in the process of verifying the build with a number of private beta testers now, and will make it available for everyone to download early next week.
One cool new feature that I’ve been playing around with tonight, and that I think people will really like, is the new “Publish” feature that this new build of VS 2005 Web Application Projects will enable. This provides a really easy way to deploy a VS 2005 Web Application Project, and is much improved from the support in VS 2003.
To use it, all you now need to-do is choose the Build->Publish menu item to launch the publish dialog for the web project or solution you are working on:
You now have the option of doing incremental file deployments for your web application – where only new and changed files in the project are updated on a server (so if you make a modification to a page, only its .aspx and the .dll in the \bin directory are copied). It allows you to optionally omit deploying app_data directory files (so you can deploy a SQL Express database once, and not overwrite it on updates unless you want to). It supports FTP, HTTP, and File-System based deployments (so you can point directly at your remote FTP server if you want). And it supports copying and deploying files in the background asynchronously for large web solutions (so you don’t have to block on waiting for all the files to be copied). You can optionally choose to monitor the deployment progress via the output window in VS:
For even richer deployment customization, you can also obviously attach a VS Web Deployment Project and/or VS Web Setup Project (and even chain the three projects together, so that the output of one feeds the next one in the chain).
But for the most common scenarios, though, everything is now built-in to the VS 2005 Web Application Project type and allows super fast deployments and updates.
Hope this helps,
Scott
P.S. One of the other cool feature additions in the new VS 2005 Web Application drop is better support for building a single web-application composed of multiple web projects (where each web project makes up part of the single site or application). I’ll blog about this feature shortly and some of the cool new things you can do with it that you can’t in VS 2003.
P.P.S. This new build also support auto-upgrading of VS 2003 web projects. So if you have the VS 2005 Web Application Project installed, and doing an Open Project on a VS 2003 Web Application it can automatically convert it to a VS 2005 Web Application Project -- without you having to modify the project file at all (which is the current workaround with the February VS 2005 Web Application build).
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
The BizTalk Server 2006 Product Team have pulled together a new centralised blog which you can find here, this is the central place for information direct from the product team and looks like it will be a good resource already.
Remember to check there (and here of course) tomorrow for some news!
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
A quick correction on my earlier BAM posting, there are actually four EventStreams in BizTalk Server 2006, there is the MessagingEventStream which operates in the same way as the OrchestrationEventStream in that it's transactionally consistent with the pipeline execution "transaction" and should be used within a custom pipeline.
Thanks to Keith Lim for spotting my mistake, who by the way has a great BAM focused blog which is great to see!
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
There are some excellent web-casts scheduled over the next few weeks that you should consider watching and joining (registration and attendence is free). Some of them are being held by senior engineers on Microsoft.com, who will share tips and tricks about hosting one of the most heavily visited web-sites in the world. You can learn more about the web-cast topics and register here.
Below is a summary of a few of the sessions (note: the first one is later today -- Monday, March 27th):
Microsoft.com Operations Introduces Real World Debugging: Determining When You Have a Problem and Beginning the Initial Debugging (Level 300)
Live Webcast, Mon, 27 Mar 2006 19:30:00 GMT
It is not always easy to know you have a problem, nor is it always easy to begin the debugging process. Join a senior systems engineer from the Microsoft.com Operations Debug team for an overview of monitoring and analysis tools, followed by a presentation...
Microsoft.com Operations Introduces Real World Debugging: Debugging CLR Internals (Level 100)
Live Webcast, Tue, 28 Mar 2006 17:30:00 GMT
Do you ever wonder what happens in garbage collection and exception handling that slows down the performance of your Web site? Join a senior systems engineer from the Microsoft.com Debug team to dig into the inner workings of these two critical pieces of t...
Microsoft.com Operations Introduces Real World Debugging: Diagnosing Memory Leaks in ASP.NET Applications (Level 300)
Live Webcast, Wed, 29 Mar 2006 16:00:00 GMT
Do you ever wonder what happens in garbage collection and exception handling that slows down the performance of your Web site? Join a senior systems engineer from the Microsoft.com Debug team to dig into the inner workings of these two critical pieces of t...
Microsoft.com Operations Introduces Real World Debugging: How to Tackle Problems in Dynamically Generated Assemblies (Level 300)
Live Webcast, Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:30:00 GMT
Join this webcast to get the inside scoop on how Microsoft.com senior systems engineers run through live debugging sessions that tackle dynamically generated assembly issues in a clustered Web site environment. We also feature an inside look at some poorly...
Microsoft.com Operations Introduces Real World Debugging: Debugging Without the Debugger in IIS and ASP.NET (Level 300)
Live Webcast, Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:00:00 GMT
You can gain lot of valuable information about the state of the internet information services (IIS) and the applications running in its worker processes by using Event Tracing for Windows (ETW), which enables you to trace data without attaching a debugger....
IIS Logs and SQL Reporting Services IIS Log Pack: Digging into Your Data One Step at a Time! (Level 200)
Live Webcast, Tue, 11 Apr 2006 19:30:00 GMT
On servers running Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0 or 6.0, it can be difficult to obtain details about how clients use a Web site. This webcast explains how to mine your site’s log files and react accordingly. Focusing on the Microsoft SQL ...
Managing IIS 6.0 Servers in an Enterprise Environment: A Handful of Tips and Tricks (Level 200)
Live Webcast, Thu, 27 Apr 2006 19:30:00 GMT
As an IT professional, you just received distress signals from your company’s Human Resources (HR) and Purchasing departments: HR's Web-based application is hanging, and Purchasing needs to deploy 3.3 bits to their 28 servers in four Virtual IPs (VIPs). Wh...
Rapid Deployment of Large SharePoint Intranets and Extranets on IIS 6.0 (Level 300)
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services is now included with Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 as an additional server role. This webcast presents the best practices for implementing Windows SharePoint Services solutions of any size on IIS 6.0. Join us for a deep dive into how to install, build, deploy, secure, and manage your Windows Server System intranet or extranet solution. We cover how to manage and configure your deployment with the STSADM command-line handlers and how to make best use of reverse proxies in your deployment. We conclude with what to expect from the highly anticipated version three of Windows SharePoint Services.
Efficient Deployment and Management of ASP.NET 2.0 Applications on IIS 6.0 (Level 300)
Because Windows Server 2003 R2 includes Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, every Web administrator should be prepared to support Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 applications. In this webcast, we help you manage ASP.NET 2.0 applications on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 efficiently. In addition, we also cover key concepts such as the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), Web.config settings, and the ASP.NET 2.0 Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in for IIS Manager. Join us to also learn how to use temporary ASP.NET files with the aspnet_regiis.exe command-line utility and how to simultaneously support different versions of the .NET Framework. Finally, we show what to expect from deploying these ASP.NET 2.0 solutions on a 64-bit Web platform.
Hope this helps,
Scott
P.S. You can subscribe to future IIS web-cast notifications via RSS from this feed.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
An anonymous blog by a woman in Iraq is nominated for a non-fiction prize worth £30,000.
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Published on 27 Mar 2006 from
Cases of malpractice detected by exam boards in England rose by more than 25% last summer, figures show.