Primordial Ooze

Yahoo Messenger on WPF

2007-08-18T02:48:00.000+03:00

once the beta is released I guess this will be one of the best demos for WPF.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/windowsvista.php

Interview with Ray Ozzie

2007-04-06T00:06:00.000+03:00

A very interesting read, find it here

Readers' Choice Awards - TechWeb

2007-01-16T19:03:00.000+03:00

Complete article here

Readers Choice Award winners list
Best BI Suite Winner: Business Objects

Runner-Up: Cognos

Best Performance Management Suite Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: Oracle

Best Search Software Winner: Google
Runner-Up: FAST

Best Customer Analytics Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: Oracle

Best Web Analytics Winner: WebTrends
Runner-Up: TeaLeaf Technology

Best Data Mining or Statistical Analysis Winner: SAS
Runner-Up: SPSS

Best Text Mining Software Winner: IBM
Runner-Up: SAS

Best Data Visualization Software Winner: IBM
Runner-Up: Visual Insights

Best Customer Data Integration Software Winner: Oracle
Runner-Up: IBM

Best Data Quality and Profiling Software Winner: SAS DataFlux
Runner-Up: Business Objects Firstlogic

Best Metadata Management Software Winner: IBM
Runner-Up: Hyperion Solutions

Best ETL Software Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: Informatica

Best EII Software Winner: IBM
Runner-Up: Composite Software

Best Database Management System Winner: Oracle
Runner-Up: Microsoft

Best Data Warehouse/ BI Appliance Winner: NCR Teradata
Runner-Up: IBM

Best XML Database Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: Oracle

Best Business Process Management Suite Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: IBM

Best Business Rules Engine Winner: Fair Isaac
Runner-Up: Pegasystems

Best Business Activity Monitoring Software Winner: TIBCO
Runner-Up: WebMethods

Best Portal Platform Winner: IBM
Runner-Up: BEA Systems Plumtree

Best IT/Business Services Winner: IBM Global Services
Runner-Up: Accenture

Best ERP Software Winner: Oracle
Runner-Up: SAP

Best Data and Document Capture Software Winner: Adobe
Runner-Up: IBM

Best Enterprise Service Bus Winner: IBM
Runner-Up: Oracle

Best SOA Tools Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: IBM

Best Collaborative Content Management Software Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: IBM

Best CRM Suite Winner: Oracle
Runner-Up: Microsoft

Best Web Content Management Software Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: Adobe (Macromedia)

Best XML Content Publishing Software Winner: Adobe Systems
Runner-Up: Tie--Altova and HyperVision

Best Application Change Management Software Winner: BMC
Runner-Up: CA

Best Corporate Governance and Compliance Solutions Winner: Hyperion Solutions
Runner-Up: IBM

Best Enterprise Architecture/Process Modeling Software Winner: CA
Runner-Up: Proforma

Best IT Service Management Software Winner: Hewlett-Packard
Runner-Up: IBM

Best B2B Integration Software Winner: IBM
Runner-Up: Microsoft

Best Supply Chain Management System Winner: Oracle
Runner-Up: SAP

Best GIS Winner: Microsoft
Runner-Up: ESRI

Best Complex Event Processing Software Winner: TIBCO
Runner-Up: Progress Software

2007: Top Software Trends - PC World

2007-01-16T18:49:00.001+03:00

Orginal article here

Top trends in software include business solutions and productivity boosters.

Steve Ballmer Speaks Passionately about Microsoft, Leadership ... and Passion

2007-01-15T08:35:00.000+03:00

For Microsoft, 2006 was a year of new product introductions: the Windows Vista operating system, a new version of Office and the Zune music player, to name a few. For Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer -- who spoke at Wharton recently as part of the school's Leadership Lecture series -- these new products serve as a reminder of his goals: Convince customers that Microsoft's latest products are ground-breaking, transform a company with $44 billion in sales into an agile innovator, compete against new business models and recruit enough talent to keep the software giant relevant 25 years from now.

Read the full article here

YouOS

2007-01-03T19:18:00.000+03:00

Its been a while since something has really caught my interest, i must hand it to the folks at YouOS.com, they have done a marvelous job. Goto www.youos.com and give it a spin.

Prior to the Web 2.0 initiatives implementing an operating system using the web would have been unthinkable, but as with most of the applications based on Web 2.0 trend it would take more than great idea to get people to actually use the YouOS.

It was interesting to see how they managed to get so much done using basic HTML and javascript. On a related note the Microsoft intitiative of creating widgets(also referred to as gadgets) is also very interesting. See microsoftgadgets.com for details. Gadgets allow you to install the component to a page in your site seamlessly. Think of it as installing gadgets that porvide some level of service directly into you site - now thats super cool.

The Java Problem

2007-01-03T18:15:00.000+03:00

This is the internal memo sent by Sun Microsystems about the problems they were facing with java - insightful- but whats really interesting is that the problems listed in the memo are in JDK 1.3 and 1.4 and it wasnt identified to be a major problem in the orginal JDK version

The Java Problem
Author: Julian S. Taylor
Reviewed by: Steve Talley, Mark Carlson, Henry Knapp, Willy (Waikwan) Hui,
Eugene Krivopaltsev, Peter Madany, Michael Boucher

Executive Summary

While the Java language provides many advantages over C and C++, its
implementation on Solaris presents barriers to the delivery of reliable
applications. These barriers prevent general acceptance of Java for
production software within Sun. A review of the problem indicates that these
issues are not inherent to Java but instead represent implementation
oversights and inconsistencies common to projects which do not communicate
effectively with partners and users.

Within Sun, the institutional mechanism for promoting this sort of
communication between partners is the System Architecture Council codified
in the Software Development Framework (SDF). We propose that the process of
releasing our Java implementation will benefit from conformance with the
SDF.

Introduction

This document details the difficulties that keep our Solaris Java
implementation from being practical for the development of common software
applications. It represents a consensus of several senior engineers within
Sun Microsystems. We believe that our Java implementation is inappropriate
for a large number of categories of software application. We do not believe
these flaws are inherent in the Java platform but that they relate to
difficulties in our Solaris implementation.
We all agree that the Java language offers many advantages over the
alternatives. We would generally prefer to deploy our applications in Java
but the implementation provided for Solaris is inadequate to the task of
producing supportable and reliable products.
Our experience in filing bugs against Java has been to see them rapidly
closed as "will not fix". 22% of accepted non-duplicate bugs against base
Java are closed in this way as opposed to 7% for C++. Key examples include:

4246106 Large virtual memory consumption of JVM
4374713 Anonymous inner classes have incompatible serialization
4380663 Multiple bottlenecks in the JVM
4407856 RMI secure transport provider doesn't timeout SSL sessions
4460368 For jdk1.4, JTable.setCellSelectionEnabled() does not work
4460382 For Jdk1.4, the table editors for JTable do not work.
4433962 JDK1.3 HotSpot JVM crashes Sun Management Center Console
4463644 Calculation of JTable's height is different for jdk1.2 and jdk1.4
4475676 [under jdk1.3.1, new JFrame launch causes jumping]

In personal conversations with Java engineers and managers, it appears that
Solaris is not a priority and the resource issues are not viewed as serious.
Attempts to discuss this have not been productive and the message we hear
routinely from Java engineering is that new features are key and
improvements to the foundation are secondary. This is mentioned only to make
it clear that other avenues for change have been explored but without
success. Here we seek to briefly present the problem and recommend a
solution.

Defining the Java Problem

These are the problems we have observed which we believe indicate the need
for an improved implementation and a modified approach.

1. The support model seems flawed
Since Java is not a self-contained binary, every Java program depends
fundamentally upon the installed Java Runtime Environment (JRE). If that JRE
is broken, correction and relief is required. This sort of relief needs to
happen in a timely manner and needs to fix only the problem without the
likelihood of introducing additional bugs. Java Software does not provide
such relief.
Java packages are released (re-released) every four or five months,
introducing bug fixes and new features and new bugs with each release. These
releases are upgrading packages which remove all trace of the prior
installed packages and cannot be down-graded in the event of an error. The
standard release taxonomy used by the Architecture Review Committees (ARCs)
was developed for use by Solaris and our other mission-critical software
products to help solve these and many other problems.

It is impractical for a project based on Java to correct bugs in the Java
implementation. Java Software corrects bugs only by releasing an entire new
version. For that reason, projects seek to deliver their own copy of Java so
they can maintain it without fear of a future upgrade. Outside vendors, such
as TogetherJ, specify a particular release of Java for their product. The
customer must locate that release and install it. If a future product seeks
to use a different version, that version has to be installed side-by-side
with the prior version or TogetherJ may no longer function.
The ARCs commonly see project submittals requesting permission to ship their
own version of Java. The ARCs have been routinely forbidding projects to do
this even though they are aware of specific cases wherein interfaces or
their underlying behaviors have changed incompatibly across minor releases.
The threat of losing the ability to directly support such a substantial part
of their product has inhibited projects from choosing Java as their
implementation language and caused widely-discussed problems for customers
of projects that have used Java. Consider that the Java language supports
rapid development, simple testing and access to a wide variety of platforms.
Why are the shelves at CompUSA (a Linux friendly store) not crammed with
W32/Linux/etc offerings written in Java? As it stands client-side Java
remains primarily a web language partly because the Netscape platform runs
Java 1.1.5 and has not changed for years. It is buggy but very stable.

This indicates that Java must strictly enforce backward compatibility across
minor releases and must adhere to Sun release taxonomy for the
identification of releases. Further, existing releases must support some
sort of remedy akin to a patch so that existing installations can be
corrected through existing methods.

2. The JRE is very large.
The JRE is significantly larger than comparable runtime environments when
considering resident set size (memory dedicated to this specific program).
It has been seen to grow to as much as 900M. This has a drastic effect on
both performance and resource usage. It also means that multiple JREs
present critical resource constraints on the servers for such thin-client
systems as SunRays. Typical resident set requirements for Java2 programs
include:

Hello World 9M
SMC Server 38M
SLVM GUI 60M
Component Manager 160M
TogetherJ 300 - 900M

The largest program in that list is TogetherJ. From the standpoint of
resource requirements, TogetherJ does much of what Rational Rose does but
Rational Rose appears to function in less than 250M. Startup time is
effected as well. For example, on an Ultra10 TogetherJ requires 5 minutes to
load and start. SMC, Sun's flagship system admin console, takes between one
and two minutes to reach the point that it can be used.
Some of this problem appears to relate to the JRE. We do not have the time
or money to conduct a serious side-by-side study of Java vs other languages
and are therefore calling upon our personal experiences with Java
development. The fact that these experiences are hard to quantify forces us
to try to support the validity of this concern through existing research.

A study performed by an outside team appears to indicate a rough parity in
performance between Java and a common implementation of another OO language
called Python (see IEEE Computing, October 2000, "An Empirical Comparison of
Seven Programming Languages" by Lutz Prechelt of the University of
Karlsruhe). Both platforms are Object Oriented, support web applications,
serialization, internet connections and native interfaces. The key
difference is that Python is a scripting language. This means there is no
compilation to byte code so the Python runtime environment has to do two
things in addition to what the Java runtime environment does. It has to
perform syntax checks and it must parse the ascii text provided by the
programmer. Both of those tasks are performed at compile time by Java and so
that capability does not have to be in the JRE.
Given this data, it appears that the JRE can actually be simpler than the
Python RE since Java does at least some of this work at compile time. The
example above of "Hello World" is a good method for getting an idea of the
minimum support code required at runtime. This support code includes garbage
collector, byte code interpreter, exception processor and the like. Hello
World written in Java2 requires 9M for this most basic support
infrastructure. By comparison, this is slightly larger than automountd on
Solaris8. The Python runtime required to execute Hello World is roughly
1.6M.

Further examples of what is possible include the compiling OO languages
Eiffel and Sather which fit their garbage collector, exception processor and
other infrastructure into roughly 400K of resident set. While the Java VM
(as demonstrated above) grows rapidly as more complex code is executed, the
Python VM grows quite slowly. Indeed, an inventory control program written
entirely in Python having a SQL database, a curses UI, and network
connectivity requires only 1.7M of resident set. This seems to indicate that
the resident set requirements of the JRE could be reduced by at least 80%.

Imagine what happens if our current implementation of Java were ubiquitous
and all 150 users on a SunRay server were running one and only one Java
program equivalent to Component Manager above. The twenty-four gigabytes of
RAM the server would have to supply exclusively to these users is well
beyond the typical configuration. RAM is cheap but performance is what we
sell, all customers on that SunRay server would see significant performance
degradation even with the maximum amount of RAM installed as all other
processes were forced to reside on swap.
The resident set size required by the JRE makes it impractical to run Java
in an initial Solaris install environment. It is impractical to run it as a
non-terminating daemon. A Java daemon could be started from inetd run long
enough to do its job and then quit but the rpc protocol required to pass the
socket port to the daemon is very complex and not Java-friendly. Java
applications cannot be executed at boot time since the loading of the VM
introduces an unacceptable performance degradation. If the Java runtime were
as small as that of Python, it is likely that the Java daemon would become
popular and could provide basic services to applications written in any
number of languages.

3. Extensions do not support modularity.

As new extensions are introduced, they are released separately under their
own names and distributed generally. Each one may go through several
revisions as separate modules. At some point, they are then folded into base
Java, tying base Java's version to the versions of dozens of smaller yet
distinct functionalities. These functionalities are then restricted to a
draconian backward-compatibility rule since once folded in, they are no
longer selectable modules. Examples include modules that used to be called
Swing, RTI, IDL, JSSE and JAAS. These are all good things that should be
part of Java. Our concern is that these are not separable modules which can
evolve as requirements change.
The Java system for evolving the interface (deprecation) does not serve
production software very well. Once the interface disappears, the product
just breaks. If the Java base were simpler and the more advanced features
(those most likely to be deprecated) were delivered as versioned modules, it
would be possible for a commercial product to retain it's older modules on
the system and survive a large number of Java upgrades.
Production quality programs written in Java, like TogetherJ, indicate a
specific Java version which must be installed before the program is run. If
another program is installed, requiring a higher Java version, the user may
be forced to decide which program stays and which goes away. Alternatively,
the other Java version could be installed to a different base directory but
this requires considerable sophistication on the part of the user,
complicates administration and violates the ARC big rule that common
software must be shared.

4. It is not backward-compatible across minor releases.

Among the various incompatibilities across minor releases are:
a) In JDK 1.1 Class.fields() returns only public variables. In 1.2,
protected and private variables are returned.
b) Swing table sizing calculation changed from Java 1.3 to 1.4.
c) Swing JFrame launch behavior changed significantly from Java 1.2.2 to
Java 1.3.1.

Each of these examples is simple, but they demonstrate the general problem
that people cannot program for a particular release of Java and expect that
their programs will continue to run. This is a serious problem now, but has
the potential to become a show-stopper as technology such as auto-update
advances.

What is perhaps more important is that the perception of Java as an unstable
platform is widespread. This perception is restated with every Java-based
project to come to ARC. Within Sun, Java is not viewed as a satisfactory
language for the construction of commercial applications. This perception
and the record require addressing.

The Java Problem is Recognized Internally

That our Java implementation is perceived as inappropriate for many uses is
supported by internal documents and policies. For example:

1. SOESC AI - 092501.2 Java Dependencies for Deployment

In this document provided to SOESC, John Perry describes the concerns
regarding the Solaris "JVM dependencies for deployment". Following is an
excerpt:
-------
- Large footprint of applications when run on Solaris. A simple application
("hello world" type) has a total footprint of 35-40 megs on Solaris 9 (build
48, using Java 1.4 build 82) on both Intel and Sparc machines. Sparc
machines, by far, have a much higher resident footprint then Intel machines
(~30 megs, compared to ~11 megs). The same program run on a Windows machine
has a footprint of ~5 megs, resident footprint being ~3.5 megs

- Slow start up times prevents Java applications from being started while
Solaris is booting up and during mini-root time. This requires applications
which are written in Java to have some kind of mechanism to start-up after
the OS has been fully started.

- Instability of Native code (JNI) which can cause the entire VM to crash.
-------

2. Teams Are Looking for Options

The CIMOM (supporting WBEM) is a Java daemon. It initially occupies around
40M of RSS but grows from there. In order to address this problem, at least
one Sun Engineer, Peter Madany, has been doing research to determine Java
daemon memory utilization when running on a currently unsupported J2ME VM on
Solaris. In other words, we are looking into demonstrating that resource
exhaustion on Solaris Servers could be avoided by using some of the
techniques used in an edition of Java intended for very small systems.

3. New Projects Explain Why They Are Not Using Java

Quoting from the recently submitted Nile case (SARC/2001/617) now under
review:
-------
These libraries should be commercial implementations and must be in native
platform code (ie not Java or Perl). Native code is a requirement because
one of the core requirements for the proxy is for minimum impact on the
target host. Java has too large a footprint (both memory and disk image) and
may not be installed on the customer's host.
-------

4. ARCs Include the Java Problem in Rejection Reasoning

Quoting from the recently rejected SunMC PMA case (LSARC/2000/457):
-------
The CLI interpreter is implemented in Java, and the overhead of starting a
JVM for each command execution is prohibitive. At least one of the votes to
reject was related to this inappropriate use of Java. The Solaris
implementation of Java is slow and very large. While this project did not
provide a measurement of resident set for their CLI, the minimum RSS for the
JVM is known to be 9MB and the typical RSS for a similar Java program is 30
to 40MB, and takes up to 15 seconds to start. The project team admitted in
the review that this CLI may be used on a daily basis. For such a CLI, the
delays and resource requirements of the Solaris Java implementation are
unacceptable.
-------

5. Customers and Field Engineers Are Noticing the Problem

Following is an excerpt from Kevin Tay's e-mail to three Java aliases
regarding a customer installation of a third-party product written in Java
called Vitria. We see typical very large RSS numbers compared to a WinNT
implementation combined with increased resource usage from Solaris7 to
Solaris8:
-------
Customer said they have something like 450+ container servers and 80+
automator server for the Vitria system. So the estimation for the hardware
RAM is around 9GB for USII machine and 14-15GB for the USIII machine.
Questions:

1. Why is Sun systems using so much more memory?
2. Why is the UltraSPARC III/Solaris 8 system using a lot more memory than a
UltraSPARC II/Solaris 7 system (with every other thing being equal)?
3. How can I reduce the memory utilization of the UltraSPARC III system?
-------
NOTE: The response to this e-mail was to suggest moving to a different build
of Java 1.2.2 since the indicated build on Solaris 8 had a known bug; it
should be noted, however, that the 9GB memory footprint for Solaris7 is
still unusually large.

6. Close Call in Solaris9
Bug ID 4526853 describes a bug in Core Java which used to be an external
module called JSSE. Among other products, PatchPro and PatchManager depend
on the JSSE. As long as the module could be used, the JSSE interface could
be trusted to remain stable despite extensive changes in core Java. Now the
Java architecture makes it impossible to use the module. This bug in core
Java completely disables PatchPro and PatchManager. It was introduced in
build 83 of Java 1.4. It was detected and corrected before the final build
of Solaris9. If it had not been detected before the final build, it would
have shipped with Solaris9 FCS.

For those products that depend upon JSSE and operate on multiple OSs, there
would have been no recourse except to deliver with their product an entire
new Java distribution. This distribution would have to upgrade the existing
Java installation. The fact that various products depend upon specific
versions would mean that such an upgrade would carry the risk of breaking
other Java-based software on the target system.

Correcting the Java Problem

We strongly recommend that management require Java to conform to the
Software Development Framework especially from the standpoint of ARCreview.
We believe that the next release of the Sun Java implementation should be
brought to ARC while still in the prototype phase. Both PSARC and LSARC have
dealt with the Java issues peripherally, recognizing numerous problems but
unable to effect change in the underlying source of the difficulties -
namely Java. By bringing the Sun Java implementation through ARC, these
issues can be resolved.

Java loosing ground

2007-01-03T18:10:00.000+03:00

Orginal article here

Quotes

2007-01-02T18:15:00.000+03:00

"The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man."
- Richard Feynman

"The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act."
- Tara Ploughman

"We're even wrong about which mistakes we're making."
- Carl Winfeld

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."
- Abelson & Sussman, SICP, preface to the first edition

"Your twenties are always an apprenticeship, but you don't always know what for."
- Jan Houtema

"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture

"Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay

"But the audience is right. They're always, always right. You hear directors complain that the advertising was lousy, the distribution is no good, the date was wrong to open the film. I don't believe that. The audience is never wrong. Never."
- William Friedkin, in a NYT interview

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
- Brandeis

"The best writing is rewriting."
- E. B. White

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming."
- Donald Knuth

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- Yeats, The Second Coming

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."
- Einstein

"The path from good to evil goes through bogus."
- Tara Ploughman

"Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people."
- G. M. Trevelyan, "Bias in History"

"The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases."
- Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
- J. K. Galbraith, Letter to Kennedy, 1962

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
- Mark Twain

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word."
- Stephen King

"However little television you watch, watch less."
- David McCullough

"As all these results were obtained, not by any heroic method, but by patient and detailed reasoning, I began to think it probable that philosophy had erred in adopting heroic remedies for intellectual difficulties, and that solutions were to be found merely by greater care and accuracy. This view I have come to hold more and more strongly as time went on, and it has led me to doubt whether philosophy, as a study distinct from science and possessed of a method of its own, is anything more than an unfortunate legacy from theology."
- Bertrand Russell, "Logical Atomism"

How to start a startup

2007-01-02T17:21:00.001+03:00

Awesome article on creating a startup company(techie startup)

orginal article here

Time's Person of the Year: You

2007-01-02T13:15:00.000+03:00

Time's Person of the Year: You
In 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter (orginal article by By LEV GROSSMAN here

Site for Startups

2007-01-02T12:34:00.000+03:00

http://www.smallbusiness20.com/
http://www.bplans.com/ - business plans

Entrepreneurial Proverbs

2006-12-28T10:15:00.000+03:00

Good article at http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/03/entrepreneurial_proverbs.html

Steve Jobs @ Stanford

2006-12-22T08:59:00.000+03:00

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005 'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address at stanford college by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

SAP BW

2006-12-18T13:39:00.000+03:00

SAP NetWeaver: Demos
http://www.sap.com/platform/netweaver/demos/index.epx

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bi-elearning

Psycholinguistics

2006-12-18T09:26:00.000+03:00

Scholars who study how words affect our minds and emotions are called psycholinguists, words often carry emotional meanings that extend beyond their dictionary definitions

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
— Philip K. Dick

"There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it."
— Dale Carnegie

"When you hear the word ‘save,’ it is usually the beginning of an advertisement designed to make you spend money."
— René Pierre-Gosset

"Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can make your blood boil."
— Cullen Hightower

"Words, like eye glasses, blur everything that they do not make more clear."
— Joseph Joubert

The sixteen words that really sell

benefit
guarantee
money
results

easy
health
new
safe

free
how to
now
save

fun
love
proven
you/your

Persuasion Pointers

2006-12-15T14:06:00.000+03:00

Persuasion Pointers
Always make sure your body language matches your verbal communication. When your body language and words clash, your body language will have the greater impact.

You rarely get a second chance to make a favorable impression. It only takes four minutes to lock in a negative impression.

To create rapport using body language, face the other person, assume an open posture, lean forward, maintain eye contact, and shake hands.

Always present yourself in the most advantageous way possible. Dress to communicate authority, competence, and professionalism.

To deepen rapport, mirror the other person's posture, language, and rate of speech.

Control your tone of voice, speed of delivery, pitch, and volume to project confidence and authority. Use pauses for impact.

To detect deceit, look for contradictions and verbal mistakes. Watch for clashes between the verbal and nonverbal messages.

Thought for the day

2006-12-15T10:16:00.000+03:00

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity."
- DALE CARNEGIE

"The object of oratory is not truth but persuasion."
— Thomas Babington Macaulay

"Agreement is brought about by changing people's minds - other people's."
— S. I. Hayakawa

"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please."
-MARK TWAIN

"To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. To be credible, we must be truthful."
— Edward R. Murrow

"The truth isn't the truth until people believe you."
— Bill Bernbach

Trust + Expertise = Credibility

Winston Churchill once asked Cockran(his mentor): "Bourke, what is the secret of eloquence?" Bourke replied: "Believing in what you are talking about." Cockran summed it up: "Sincerity — never speak what you don't believe"

"One of the most effective ways to get into a prospect's mind is to first admit a negative and then twist it into a positive."

"The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly."

"The law of candor must be used with great skill. First your negative must be widely perceived as a negative. It has to trigger instant agreement with your prospect's mind. Next you have to shift quickly to the positive. The purpose of candor is not to apologize. The purpose of candor is to set up a benefit that will convince your prospect."

Never assume that people trust you. Take every opportunity to prove that your word is your bond

"You don't get a second chance to make a first impression"

Mirroring Language
One of the best ways to build rapport through mirroring is to use the specialist vocabulary or jargon of the person whom you are trying to influence. Most great sellers consciously use their client's vocabulary or jargon when presenting.

Here are examples of a stockbroker selling to an accountant and to an architect; notice how the stockbroker weaves the vocabulary of her client into the conversation:

Example one: Selling stocks to an accountant. "I've analyzed your portfolio and think you should consider selling some stocks. The figures show that some of your holdings are weak. When you add up my ideas I'm sure you'll agree."

Example two: Selling stocks to an architect. "I've analyzed your holdings and see some need to change the structure of your portfolio of stocks. I've a few ideas that will give you a better foundation and better support. As you review the blueprint, I'm sure you'll agree."[30]

Dos and Don'ts for Entrepreneurs, from Those Who Have Actually Done It

2006-12-15T06:51:00.000+03:00

Good article on entrepreneurship : funding your business and getting ideas for business

On SOA

2006-08-18T21:53:00.000+03:00

What is SOA
Architectural Style
Business Alignment
Reduced assumptions (loose coupling)
Builds on ideas from component software, distributed objects, and MOM
Message based communication
A service is a program you interact with via message exchanges
-Services are built to last
-Encompass a business perspective
-Stability and robustness are critical
A system is a set of deployed services cooperating in a given task
-Systems are built to change
-Adapt to new services after deployment

On Architecture

2006-08-18T21:42:00.000+03:00

What’s Architecture

“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”. (IEEE 1471)

Architecture defines major components ,
Architecture defines component relationships (structures) and interactions,
Architecture defines the rationale behind the components and the structure
Architecture is not a single structure -- no single structure is the architecture
Architecture represents the set of earliest design decisions
-Hardest to change
-Most critical to get right
Architecture is the first design artifact where a system’s quality attributes are addressed

Architecture serves as the blueprint for the system but also the project:
-Team structure
-Documentation organization
-Work breakdown structure
-Scheduling, planning, budgeting
-Unit testing, integration
Architecture establishes the communication and coordination mechanisms among components

Architecture is important
-it should be analyzed
Architecture can be prescribed
-decisions should be analyzed
Architecture is central for communicating
-it should be documented
Architecture is expensive to change
-it is cheaper to analyze early
Architecture affects the entire project
-many stakeholders should be involved
Requirements can be understood early
-architecture should be designed to meet them

Different view points

End user view:
Performance
Availability
Usability
Security

Developer’s view:
Maintainability
Portability
Reusability
Testability

Business user view
Time To Market
Cost and Benefits
Projected life time
Targeted Market
Integration with Legacy System
Roll back Schedule

DSL Links

2006-08-15T10:57:00.000+03:00

Good PPTs on DSL
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/architecture/solution/default.mspx

The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing

2006-08-05T22:25:00.000+03:00

The Eight Fallacies of
Distributed Computing
Peter Deutsch
Essentially everyone, when they first build a distributed application, makes the following eight assumptions. All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences.
1. The network is reliable
2. Latency is zero
3. Bandwidth is infinite
4. The network is secure
5. Topology doesn't change
6. There is one administrator
7. Transport cost is zero
8. The network is homogeneous

Stats : MSN Spaces

2006-08-01T16:11:00.000+03:00

The service sports 123 million unique users, with roughly 3 million users visiting MSN Spaces every second. Users upload six million photos to the service every day, requiring 1TB of additional storage every nine days. To put these numbers in perspective, it took MSN Messenger six years to reach 160 million users: MSN Spaces will reach 130 million users in only 18 months

BizTalk Web Resources

2006-06-08T18:17:00.000+03:00

BizTalk Web Resources
The product site: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/default.mspx
The developer center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/biztalk/
The tech center: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/biztalk/default.mspx
BizTalk 2004 White Papers: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/techinfo/whitepapers/2004/default.mspx
BizTalk 2006 White Papers: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/2006/prodinfo/whitepapers.mspx
Application Integration and Web Services Patterns and Practices: http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/apptype/appinteg/default.aspx
Integration Patterns: http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/apptype/appinteg/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnpag/html/intpatt.asp
Architecture for BizTalk Server 2004: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/techinfo/whitepapers/2004/architecture.mspx
SOA in the Enterprise: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/techinfo/whitepapers/2004/infopath.mspx
Download for BizTalk 2004 trial software: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/trial/default.mspx
Download for BizTalk 2006 Beta 2: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/bts2006beta.mspx
What’s New in BizTalk 2006: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/2006/prodinfo/whatsnew.mspx
The Blogger’s Guide to BizTalk (lot’s of articles from BizTalk blogs, good article on how to learn BizTalk): http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=0dfb4f4e-d241-4bc8-8418-2c385d8e3eaa
Virtual Labs for BizTalk: http://msdn.microsoft.com/virtuallabs/biztalk/
GotDotNet: http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/wsserver
BizTalk 2004 Power Toys: http://blogs.msdn.com/luke/articles/365678.aspx
BizTalk Performance Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalkperformance/
BizTalk Core Engine Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/Biztalk%5FCore%5FEngine/
BizTalk Customer Response Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/BPIDCustomerResponseTeam/
Scott Woodgate’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/scottwoo/
Kris Horrocks’ blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/krisho/
Jon Flanders’ blog: http://masteringbiztalk.com/blogs/jon/default.aspx
Luke Nyswonger’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/luke/default.aspx
Eldar Musayev’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/eldarm/
Owen Allen’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/oallen/
Marty Wasznicky’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/martywaz/
Kevin Smith’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/kevinsmi/

Linus 1st mail announcing Linux

2006-05-02T11:01:00.000+03:00

The article quotes the famous newsgroup posting in which Linus Torvalds first announced his operating system project to the world, he sure did underestimate the potential of his OS

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40),and
things seem to work.This implies that I'll get something practical within a
few months, andI'd like to know what features most people would want. Any
suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's
all I have :-(.

MSDN Multimedia WebCasts

2006-04-23T09:34:00.000+03:00

Multimedia Quick training materials are available for various .net topics. Its gives a quick insight and a jump start to the development, especially if it is a new technology.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/learning/learn/newtodevelopment/#Multimedia

SOA Trends and Market

2006-04-23T09:28:00.000+03:00

By 2006-end, more than 60 % of the $527 billion market for IT professional services will be based on Web services standards and technology. Frost & Sullivan
Nearly two-thirds of the 612 IT professionals surveyed in the Computerworld / CIO Magazine are training existing staff to meet the new requirements for implementing and close to half will bring in consultants. 41% say they already have trained staff in place. 19% will outsource key segments. When asked about their primary strategy for meeting staffing requirements for SOA, 40 % of the IT executives reiterated that they would train their current staff. CIO.com
Reports Reveal SOA is Top of Business and Software Trends of the Year

Sand Hill Group, in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, released the findings from their first CIO Insight Survey and the Software 2006 Industry Report. The CIO Insight survey revealed that the two leading software trends are software-as-a-service and SOA. Business Wire

SOA May Be an Early Hit in the Midmarket

A lot of service-oriented architecture (SOA) talk today is about which industries are embracing it first—namely financial services and telecommunications—and how it will affect large enterprises. Often overlooked is the opportunity for SOA in the midmarket, where companies often lag large enterprises when it comes to technology. But SOA might level the playing field, making it quicker and less expensive for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) to assemble and maintain innovative software that provides competitive advantage.

Akamai Sets Records for Total Web Content Delivered and Simultaneous Video Streams Served

2006-03-29T22:26:00.000+03:00

Read more here

HP, IBM and Akamai Bring Web Services to Grid Computing

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_14/b3675036.htm

http://www.akamai.com/en/html/about/facts_figures.html

http://xent.com/aug00/0958.html

Google and Akamai: Distributed Computing Platforms

2006-03-29T22:10:00.000+03:00

Technology Review article discusses the commonalities in the distributed computing platform both Google and Akamai have built, and at the same time contrasts their different culture: Google's "cult of secrecy" and Akamai's "kingdom of openness."

Google buys the cheapest computers that it can find and crams them in racks and racks in its six (or more) data centers. ?PCs are reasonably reliable, but if you have a thousand of them, one is going to fail every day,? said Google's vice president of engineering Urs Hoelzle . ?So if you can just buy 10 percent extra, it?s still cheaper than buying a more reliable machine.? Working at Google, an engineer told me recently, is the nearest you can get to having an unlimited amount of computing power at your disposal.

There is another company that has perfected the art of running massive numbers of computers with a comparatively tiny staff. That company is Akamai.

Akamai?s network operates on the same complexity scale as Google?s. Although Akamai has only 14,000 machines, those servers are located in 2,500 different locations scattered around the globe. The servers are used by companies like CNN and Microsoft to deliver Web pages. Just as Google?s servers are used by practically everyone on the Internet today, so are Akamai?s.

Because of their scale, both Akamai and Google have had to develop tools and techniques for managing these machines, debugging performance problems, and handling errors. This isn?t software that a company can buy off the shelf?they require laborious in-house development. It is, in fact, software that is one of Akamai's key competitive advantages.

To be fair, there are important differences between Google and Akamai?differences that assure that Google won?t be breaking into Akamai?s business anytime soon, nor Akamai moving into Google?s. Both companies have developed infrastructure for running massively parallel systems, but the applications that they are running on top of those systems are different. Google?s primary application is a search engine. Akamai, by contrast, has developed a system for delivering Web pages, streaming media, and a variety of other standard Internet protocols.

Looking forward, a few business opportunities have obvious appeal to both Google and Akamai. For example, both companies could take their experience in building large-scale distributed clusters to create a massive backup system for small businesses and home PC users. Or they could take over management of home PCs, turning them into smart terminals running applications on remote servers. This would let PC users escape the drudgery of administering their own machines, installing new applications, and keeping anti-virus programs up to date.

Ted Schadler, a vice president at the market research firm Forrester, says that it?s possible to envision the two companies competing because they are both going after the same opportunity in massive, distributed computing. ?In that sense, they have the same vision. They have to build out a lot of the same technology because it doesn?t exist. They are having to learn lots of the same lessons and develop lots of the same technologies and business models.?

Schadler says Akamai and Google are both examples of what he calls ?programmable Internet business channels.? These channels are companies that offer large infrastructure that can offer high quality services on the Internet to hundreds of millions of users at the flick of a switch. Google and Akamai are such companies, but so are Amazon.com, eBay and even Yahoo!. ?They are all services that enable business activity?foundation services that [can be] scaled securely,? Schadler says.

?If I were a betting man,? Schadler adds, ?I would say that Google is much more interested in serving the customer and Akamai is more interested in provide the infrastructure?it?s retail versus wholesale. There will be lots and lots of these retail-oriented services.?

Types of architect roles

2006-03-19T08:23:00.000+03:00

Good article differentiating the types of architects mainly enterprise architect, Solutions Architect and Infrastructure architects
Find the article here

A more detailed article on the different roles can be found here

Ruby On Rails

2006-03-19T08:15:00.000+03:00

The buzztalk on the web these days ..ROR, read more at http://www.rubyonrails.com/

Heres what other industry pundits have to say about ruby on rails:
“Rails is the most well thought-out web development framework I’ve ever used.
And that’s in a decade of doing web applications for a living. I’ve built my
own frameworks, helped develop the Servlet API, and have created more than
a few web servers from scratch. Nobody has done it like this before.”
-James Duncan Davidson, Creator of Tomcat and Ant

“Ruby on Rails is a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to programming.
Powerful web applications that formerly might have taken weeks or months
to develop can be produced in a matter of days.”
-Tim O'Reilly, Founder of O'Reilly Media

“It is impossible not to notice Ruby on Rails. It has had a huge effect both in
and outside the Ruby community... Rails has become a standard to which even
well-established tools are comparing themselves to.”
-Martin Fowler, Author of Refactoring, PoEAA, XP Explained

“What sets this framework apart from all of the others is the preference for
convention over configuration making applications easier
to develop and understand.”
-Sam Ruby, ASF board of directors

“Before Ruby on Rails, web programming required a lot of verbiage, steps and time.
Now, web designers and software engineers can develop a website
much faster and more simply, enabling them to be more productive
and effective in their work.”
-Bruce Perens, Open Source Luminary

“After researching the market, Ruby on Rails stood out as the best choice.
We have been very happy with that decision. We will continue
building on Rails and consider it a key business advantage.”
-Evan Williams, Creator of Blogger and ODEO

“Ruby on Rails is astounding. Using it is like watching a kung-fu movie,
where a dozen bad-ass frameworks prepare to beat up the little newcomer
only to be handed their asses in a variety of imaginative ways.”
-Nathan Torkington, O'Reilly Program Chair for OSCON

“Rails is the killer app for Ruby.”
Yukihiro Matsumoto, Creator of Ruby

Cracking the Code: Breaking Down the Software Development Roles

2006-03-19T08:10:00.000+03:00

Good article explaining the various roles in any IT development environment, find the article here

Architecture Humor

2006-03-12T21:51:00.000+03:00

* Beware, the difference between vision and hallucination is a credible migration plan followed by superb execution!

What can architects learn from history? Think big, start small, be deliberate, with hustle, move early, stay lean, innovate often, reward stake holders, shun bureaucracy, have fun!

What can architecture learn from Charles Darwin?
It's not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change!
Mutation and natural selection of the past and the present are the path to the future!

Principles of Service Design: Service Patterns and Anti-Patterns

2006-03-12T17:21:00.000+03:00

Good article explaining the basic tenets of SOA and about the patterns and anti patterns involved in SOA approach. Find the article here

Developing Distributed Services

2006-03-12T17:11:00.000+03:00

Good article covering the various distributed computing features in .NET( WebService, WSE, Enterprise Service/COM+, Remoting) and other servers like SQL Server and BizTalk Server, also covers how the Indigo framework is going to incorporate with existing technologies, find the article here

Biztalk Sites/Blogs

2006-03-05T15:00:00.000+03:00

http://biztalkblogs.com/
list of Biztalk webcast from microsoft here
Biztalk Server Virtual labs here

Biztalk Whitepapers @ Microsoft.com

Shift to Service Orientation

2006-03-05T14:54:00.000+03:00

Traditional Systems Vs Service Orientation
-----------------------------------------------
Connection = cost Vs Connection = value
Function Oriendted Vs Process Oriented
Build to last Vs Build for change
Prolonged development Vs Incrementally deployed
Application silos Vs Orchestrated solutions
Tightly coupled Vs Loosely coupled
Object Oriented Vs Message oriented

Biztalk interview questions

2006-03-04T18:11:00.000+03:00

BTS interview questions here

Tons of Free Ebooks !!!

2006-03-04T18:10:00.000+03:00

Mega list of free ebooks on IT subjects.
here

Rules engine using SQL Server

2006-03-02T06:59:00.000+03:00

Interesting article on building a rules engine using SQL server, lot of practical purposes. Many a time the actual values are determined from the Business Layer and passed through the DAL and eventually to the sprocs , these business layers may make several database calls to identify the right query/sproc/parameters to be called, alternatively the entire processing would be done in the stored procs by using dynamic query building .... get enlightned here

Interesting site on .net and design patterns + architecture

2006-02-28T21:06:00.000+03:00

http://www.designpatternsfor.net/

Good link ..old is gold.

2006-02-28T20:37:00.000+03:00

A document that describes several of the architectural approaches that one could follow when developing N tiered applications in .net

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/designnetapp.asp

Sun starts thinking about the Next Java. Microsoft delivers it.

2006-02-27T20:16:00.001+03:00

interesting blogg http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000330.html

Great ASP.NET 2.0 Tutorial Videos Online

2006-02-27T20:16:00.000+03:00

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/02/26/439088.aspx

Last week we published a series of great ASP.NET 2.0 “How do I?” videos on MSDN. These videos are code-focused videos (no slides or marketing at all – pure code) that walkthrough using some of the new features in ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Web Developer (which is free).

The “How do I?” videos are each about 10-15 minutes long, and are a great way to quickly come up to speed with some of the new features. I highly recommend setting some time aside to watch them. Here is the current listing of them:

Data Access – Create a new database from scratch, define a table, populate it with data, create a strongly typed DAL TableAdapter to work against it, and then build a filtered master/detail set of ASP.NET pages with data sorting, paging and editing support against it.

Master Pages and Site Navigation – Create a consistent master page layout for a site using the new ASP.NET Master Pages Feature. Then create a site navigation menu using site navigation and the new TreeView control.

Membership and Roles – Add an authentication and authorization system to a site from scratch, and implement login, create user, change password, password reset, and role based security in a secure way.

Profiles and Themes – Enable per-user profile personalization on a site. Then use this together with the new Themes/Skins feature to allow a visiting user to customize and personalize the look and feel of a site.

Web Parts and Personalization – Enable customizable drag/drop portal UI within web-pages, and allow visiting users to customize the information experience they see.

Output Caching and SQL Cache Invalidation – Learn how to use the output caching feature in ASP.NET, as well as the new SQL Cache Invalidation support to build super efficient output cached pages that stay in sync with the data within your database.

Partial Page Caching – Learn how to use the Partial Page output caching with ASP.NET to enable regions of a page to be cached, while also allowing other portions of the page to stay dynamic.

Localization – Learn how to build culture-aware and locale specific applications using ASP.NET 2.0.

Wizard and Validation Controls – Build a canonical form data registration page using the new ASP.NET 2.0 Wizard control and validation control features.

Tips and Tricks – This video highlights a number of cool new features in ASP.NET 2.0, including: cross-page postback support, file uploading, the MultiView control, encrypting web.config settings, and more.

Windows Surpasses UNIX in Server Market

2006-02-27T07:14:00.000+03:00

Windows Server sales surpassed those of UNIX-based servers for the first time ever in 2005, according to IDC. The company reports that vendors sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows Server-based servers last year, compared with
$17.5 billion worth of UNIX servers and $5.3 billion worth of Linux servers. The overall server market grew 4.4 percent during this time period, IDC says. If these figures are true, I have to assume that the slow climb of Windows in the server market can be pinned at least partially on Linux, which gave UNIX users a UNIX-like system that runs on industry-standard PC server hardware. Otherwise, I suspect we would have seen Windows Server squash UNIX like a bug a long time ago.

Good list of MS Webcasts

2006-02-26T10:00:00.000+03:00

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdneventsdcc.mspx

.NET 2.0 vs. IBM WebSphere 6.0

2006-02-21T07:27:00.000+03:00

http://www.theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=NET2BMNovember
The goal of this paper is to present a comparison of Web application servers: the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 running on Windows Server 2003, and the latest release of IBM WebSphere Application Server, version 6.0.2.3. According to a recent IDC study from October of 2005, roughly 78% of mission critical application projects under development worldwide use an application server. In this study, IDC also found that the combination of .NET and Windows Server 2003 is now the most commonly used application server for mission critical applications, exceeding IBM WebSphere usage with 37% usage for .NET/Windows Server vs. 12% usage for IBM WebSphere
This paper presents the results of a new benchmark that compares the performance of those two application servers. The benchmark is based on the PlantsByWebSphere sample application, the primary sample application included with WebSphere 6. For this benchmark, we implemented a functionally equivalent .NET application (DotNetGardens), and also made several performance optimizations to the IBM application code base to ensure a fair comparison of performance for data-driven Web applications.

Build a Data Access Layer with the Visual Studio 2005 DataSet Designer

2006-02-21T07:25:00.000+03:00

http://www.theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=DataSetDesigner

Quote

2006-02-21T07:23:00.000+03:00

Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried

Model Driven Architecture(MDA)

2006-02-20T21:27:00.000+03:00

http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=5
http://www.pacificspirit.com/blog/2004/03/03/model_driven_architecture_thoughts_its_hard

Use case driven architecture

2006-02-19T18:38:00.000+03:00

http://www.rgoarchitects.com/blog/content/binary/uc.pdf

Interesting blog on architecture

2006-02-19T18:32:00.000+03:00

http://www.rgoarchitects.com/blog/default.aspx

Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Blog

2005-11-18T13:46:00.000+03:00

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/

Awesome site .. SQL techie guys dream site! an extract of what it contains

Hello SQL Server Community! My name is Mark Souza and I work on the SQL Server product team and manage all customer programs. One exciting team that I manage is called the SQL Server Customer Advisory team (SQLCAT). This team spends 75% of their time away from the halls of Redmond, Washington working directly with the largest and most challenging SQL Server implementations across the world. We have implemented several systems 10TB+ in size, high volume banking systems as well as trading systems. Many of the deployments we’ve worked on were on hardware with 32-64 processors, large amounts of memory and on the most sophisticated SAN solutions. When SQL Server or any database management system is stressed at these levels you learn a lot about the internals of the product and what it can and can not do. The SQL CAT team objectives are three fold:

a) Provide quality assurance to ensure success of these enterprise systems.

b) Drive the enterprise feature requirements back into the product

c) Create Best practices from our learnings

This blog will be about these learnings and best practices. It will be technical and targeted mostly at the enterprise customer space. We welcome comments, questions, dialog from anyone at anytime, but remember we bring a deep technical knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server so leave the licensing questions for the marketing guys J

The Customer Advisory Team Members who will be posting:

Mark Souza – 23+ years working on RDBMS technology with 12+ on Microsoft SQL Server. I get to manage these database geeks

Tom Davidson – 25+ years database technology with 10+ Microsoft SQL Server specializing in Performance and Tuning

Prem Mehra – 35+ years in the database industry specializing in IO technologies and High Availability

Bren Newman – 12+ years Microsoft SQL Server and former member of the Replication development team.

Stuart Ozer – 25+ years database experience. Has built more TB+ data warehouses than I can count.

Prakash Sundaresan – 7+ years on the SQL Server Engine development team. Knows the Query Processor inside and out.

Kevin Cox – New member to the SQLCAT unit but brings 25 years of industry experience and strong SSIS and OLTP skills

Howard Yin – Another newbie SQLCAT guy. Comes from Oracle originally but we let him join us anyway. All around great skills with the product.

Lubor Kollar – 17+ years database engine development, 9+ with SQL Server. Currently member of SQLCAT with ongoing background responsibility as Group Program Manager on the Engine development team.

Gert Drapers – Has recently moved to Visual Studio team creating cool database development tools but is allowed lifelong membership to SQLCAT. Also the best SQL Server developer in the world.

Starting in September, we will be posting often. Let us know if there is a specific area of interest and we would be happy to blog about it. Enjoy!

History's Worst Software Bugs

2005-11-15T11:08:00.000+03:00

Last month automaker Toyota announced a recall of 160,000 of its Prius hybrid vehicles following reports of vehicle warning lights illuminating for no reason, and cars' gasoline engines stalling unexpectedly. But unlike the large-scale auto recalls of years past, the root of the Prius issue wasn't a hardware problem -- it was a programming error in the smart car's embedded code. The Prius had a software bug.

With that recall, the Pruis joined the ranks of the buggy computer -- a club that began in 1947 when engineers found a moth in Panel F, Relay #70 of the Harvard Mark 1 system. The computer was running a test of its multiplier and adder when the engineers noticed something was wrong. The moth was trapped, removed and taped into the computer's logbook with the words: "first actual case of a bug being found."

Sixty years later, computer bugs are still with us, and show no sign of going extinct. As the line between software and hardware blurs, coding errors are increasingly playing tricks on our daily lives. Bugs don't just inhabit our operating systems and applications -- today they lurk within our cell phones and our pacemakers, our power plants and medical equipment. And now, in our cars.

But which are the worst?

It's all too easy to come up with a list of bugs that have wreaked havoc. It's harder to rate their severity. Which is worse -- a security vulnerability that's exploited by a computer worm to shut down the internet for a few days or a typo that triggers a day-long crash of the nation's phone system? The answer depends on whether you want to make a phone call or check your e-mail.

Many people believe the worst bugs are those that cause fatalities. To be sure, there haven't been many, but cases like the Therac-25 are widely seen as warnings against the widespread deployment of software in safety critical applications. Experts who study such systems, though, warn that even though the software might kill a few people, focusing on these fatalities risks inhibiting the migration of technology into areas where smarter processing is sorely needed. In the end, they say, the lack of software might kill more people than the inevitable bugs.

What seems certain is that bugs are here to stay. Here, in chronological order, is the Wired News list of the 10 worst software bugs of all time … so far.

July 28, 1962 -- Mariner I space probe. A bug in the flight software for the Mariner 1 causes the rocket to divert from its intended path on launch. Mission control destroys the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. The investigation into the accident discovers that a formula written on paper in pencil was improperly transcribed into computer code, causing the computer to miscalculate the rocket's trajectory.

1982 -- Soviet gas pipeline. Operatives working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency allegedly (.pdf) plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history.

1985-1987 -- Therac-25 medical accelerator. A radiation therapy device malfunctions and delivers lethal radiation doses at several medical facilities. Based upon a previous design, the Therac-25 was an "improved" therapy system that could deliver two different kinds of radiation: either a low-power electron beam (beta particles) or X-rays. The Therac-25's X-rays were generated by smashing high-power electrons into a metal target positioned between the electron gun and the patient. A second "improvement" was the replacement of the older Therac-20's electromechanical safety interlocks with software control, a decision made because software was perceived to be more reliable.

What engineers didn't know was that both the 20 and the 25 were built upon an operating system that had been kludged together by a programmer with no formal training. Because of a subtle bug called a "race condition," a quick-fingered typist could accidentally configure the Therac-25 so the electron beam would fire in high-power mode but with the metal X-ray target out of position. At least five patients die; others are seriously injured.

1988 -- Buffer overflow in Berkeley Unix finger daemon. The first internet worm (the so-called Morris Worm) infects between 2,000 and 6,000 computers in less than a day by taking advantage of a buffer overflow. The specific code is a function in the standard input/output library routine called gets() designed to get a line of text over the network. Unfortunately, gets() has no provision to limit its input, and an overly large input allows the worm to take over any machine to which it can connect.

Programmers respond by attempting to stamp out the gets() function in working code, but they refuse to remove it from the C programming language's standard input/output library, where it remains to this day.

1988-1996 -- Kerberos Random Number Generator. The authors of the Kerberos security system neglect to properly "seed" the program's random number generator with a truly random seed. As a result, for eight years it is possible to trivially break into any computer that relies on Kerberos for authentication. It is unknown if this bug was ever actually exploited.

January 15, 1990 -- AT&T Network Outage. A bug in a new release of the software that controls AT&T's #4ESS long distance switches causes these mammoth computers to crash when they receive a specific message from one of their neighboring machines -- a message that the neighbors send out when they recover from a crash.

One day a switch in New York crashes and reboots, causing its neighboring switches to crash, then their neighbors' neighbors, and so on. Soon, 114 switches are crashing and rebooting every six seconds, leaving an estimated 60 thousand people without long distance service for nine hours. The fix: engineers load the previous software release.

1993 -- Intel Pentium floating point divide. A silicon error causes Intel's highly-promoted Pentium chip to make mistakeswhen dividing floating-point numbers that occur within a specific range. For example, dividing 4195835.0/3145727.0 yields 1.33374 instead of 1.33382, an error of 0.006 percent. Although the bug affects few users, it becomes a public relations nightmare. With an estimated 3 to 5 million defective chips in circulation, at first Intel only offers to replace Pentium chips for consumers who can prove that they need high accuracy; eventually the company relents and agrees to replace the chips for anyone who complains. The bug ultimately costs Intel $475 million.

1995/1996 -- The Ping of Death. A lack of sanity checks and error handling in the IP fragmentation reassembly code makes it possible to crash a wide variety of operating systems by sending a malformed "ping" packet from anywhere on the internet. Most obviously affected are computers running Windows, which lock up and display the so-called "blue screen of death" when they receive these packets. But the attack also affects many Macintosh and Unix systems as well.

June 4, 1996 -- Ariane 5 Flight 501. Working code for the Ariane 4 rocket is reused in the Ariane 5, but the Ariane 5's faster engines trigger a bug in an arithmetic routine inside the rocket's flight computer. The error is in the code that converts a 64-bit floating-point number to a 16-bit signed integer. The faster engines cause the 64-bit numbers to be larger in the Ariane 5 than in the Ariane 4, triggering an overflow condition that results in the flight computer crashing.

First Flight 501's backup computer crashes, followed 0.05 seconds later by a crash of the primary computer. As a result of these crashed computers, the rocket's primary processor overpowers the rocket's engines and causes the rocket to disintegrate 40 seconds after launch.

November 2000 -- National Cancer Institute, Panama City. In a series of accidents, therapy planning software created by Multidata Systems International, a U.S. firm, miscalculates the proper dosage of radiation for patients undergoing radiation therapy.

Multidata's software allows a radiation therapist to draw on a computer screen the placement of metal shields called "blocks" designed to protect healthy tissue from the radiation. But the software will only allow technicians to use four shielding blocks, and the Panamanian doctors wish to use five.

The doctors discover that they can trick the software by drawing all five blocks as a single large block with a hole in the middle. What the doctors don't realize is that the Multidata software gives different answers in this configuration depending on how the hole is drawn: draw it in one direction and the correct dose is calculated, draw in another direction and the software recommends twice the necessary exposure.

At least eight patients die, while another 20 receive overdoses likely to cause significant health problems. The physicians, who were legally required to double-check the computer's calculations by hand, are indicted for murder.

Cyclomatic Code Complexity Analysis ( Microsoft.NET Applications )

2005-09-22T20:55:00.000+03:00

Guys,

There are two key areas that we focus on when choosing code for review:
Functionality that is important to the proper operation of the system (e.g. core frameworks, unique algorithms, performance-critical code, etc.).
Code that has a high complexity
As an example, most of our data types inherit from a base type that provides a lot of common functionality. Because of its placement in the hierarchy, it is important that our base type functions in a consistent, reliable, and expected manner. Example of core functionality that is required for correct system operation. For other code, we need to rely on code complexity measurements.
Having said that how do we analyse code complexity and how its going to be one of the objective of the code review process?
If this is the question on your mind, here is one of the way you can opt for.

Cyclomatic Code Complexity Analysis ( Microsoft.NET Applications )

There are several ways to measuring complexity (data complexity, module coupling, algorithmic complexity, calls-to and called-by, etc.. ). Although these other methods are effective in the right context, it seems to be generally accepted that control flow is one of the most useful measurements of complexity, and high complexity scores have been shown to be a strong indicator of low reliability and frequent errors.
Cyclomatic Code Complexity is based on the Tom McCabe's work and is defined by the codes control flow.
Start with 1 for the straight path through the routine
Add 1 for each of the following keywords or their equivalents: if, while, repeat, for, and, or
Add 1 for each case in a case statement
So, if we have this C# example:
while (nextPage != true)
{
if ((lineCount <= linesPerPage) && (status != Status.Cancelled) && (morePages == true))
{
// ...
}
}
In the code above, we start with 1 for the routine, add 1 for the while, add 1 for the if, and add 1 for each && for a total calculated complexity of 5. Anything with a greater complexity than 10 or so is an excellent candidate for simplification and refactoring. Minimizing complexity is a great goal for writing high-quality, maintainable code.
Some advantages of McCabe's Cyclomatic Complexity include:
It is very easy to compute, as illustrated in the example
Can be computed immediately in the development lifecycle (which makes it friendly)
It provides a good indicator of the ease of code maintenance
It can help focus testing efforts
It makes it easy to find complex code for formal review
It is important to note that a high complexity score does not automatically mean that code is bad. However, it does highlight areas of the code that have the potential for error. The more complex a method is, the more likely it is to contain errors, and the more difficult it is to completely test. Now check the Project/SEI risk assessment matrix for value of code , and decide which code needs refactoring.

Good luck and hope this works for you and your team.

Source: Fowler, Martin. 1999. Refactoring: Improving the Design of the Existing Code Boston: Addison-Wesley. (refer this book for more details)

Microsoft in AOL Talks

2005-09-16T00:47:00.000+03:00

Microsoft is talking to Time Warner about buying a stake in America Online, a deal that could also include AOL's using Microsoft's search engine. That would be bad news for Google, which currently provides search service for AOL, its single biggest revenue source last year. The deal, first reported by the New York Post, is still in preliminary stages. That Microsoft is talking about joining forces with AOL, once its bitter rival, shows just how badly it wants to catch up to Google in the battle for online advertising dollars. Shares of Time Warner, which have never recovered from the company's disastrous merger with AOL five years ago, rose 3% today.

Google now has search for blogs

2005-09-15T01:16:00.001+03:00

Google the largets web search engine now has a search feature thats searches results of blog entries. Find it here

Something to ponder

2005-09-09T06:47:00.000+03:00

What if fine wasnt good enough ... what if i wanted extraordinary ?

Something to ponder

2005-09-09T01:13:00.000+03:00

I'm not in denial, I'm just selective about the reality I choose to accept.
-Calvin and Hobbes

Life is a sexually transmitted disease, and it's 100% fatal.

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
-Ashleigh Brilliant

In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
-Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties."
Jules Renard

"Everything that exists in your life, does so because of two things: something you did or something you didn't do."
-Albert Einstien

I am an old man and have known many troubles, but most of them never happened. -Mark Twain

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
- General George Patton

Pray, n:. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
- Ambrose Bierce

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -William James

Paranoia is just a higher form of awareness. -Charles Manson

Good people will do good things. Evil people will do evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. -Steven Weinberg

Steve Jobs Speaks at Stanford Commencement

2005-09-08T01:05:00.000+03:00

Find the awesome speach by Steve jobs at Stanford.
Both Text and audio available here

Key lines
* Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice
* Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become

Speech Transcript:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky Ð I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me Ð I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything Ð all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Something to ponder

2005-09-07T19:34:00.000+03:00

Fear knocked on my door and faith answered
When i went to open the door, there was no one there.

We should act in spite of fear and not because of fear.

Something to keep in mind

2005-09-02T19:25:00.000+03:00

Only if you have been in the deepest valley you can know how magnificent it is to be on the tallest mountain.

Email in the Enterprise

2005-08-09T20:50:00.000+03:00

Email is much more critical than previously imagined,Your business goes down when your email goes down; it's not just an application. Everything you do is in there, so it's also a smoking gun for liability. Email is basically your corporate memory.

First Windows Vista Virus Appears

2005-08-05T20:16:00.000+03:00

Just a week after Microsoft shipped Vista Beta 1 to the world, the fledgling OS has been blessed with its first virus. OK, maybe blessed isn't the right word. (Come on, Paul. Think, then write.) An Austrian hacker has released a virus that uses Vista Beta 1's new command shell (code-named Monad) and actually includes a tutorial about writing other Monad-based viruses. "Monad will be like Linux's BASH [shell]," the hacker noted. "We will be able to make as huge and complex scripts as we do in Linux." The virus is categorized as proof-of-concept only and doesn't do anything harmful. But it raises some interesting concerns.

In another place

2005-07-06T00:05:00.000+03:00

In another place ... seems like another time .. woe is me ...

2005-06-26T17:43:00.000+03:00

Some good blog search engines:
Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex, Popdex
Popdex Citations
Blogarama

2005-06-25T15:27:00.000+03:00

Stored Procedure Invocation Code Generator for VB, C# and JScript.NET:

A great tool that can cut development time multifold, by creating the a sample xml document and defining the name of the stored procedure and its parameters, then assiciate the XML to the custom tool (as part of the install), it will automatically generate the code to call the stored procedure as though it was a class. Download the software and code here

The only disadvantage i have found(dont claim that ive read the entire document /source code to check for bypass) is that we have to specify the DB server name in the XML document. So once we move to a staging server or deployment server then we will have to modify the server name again. I guess you can overcome the limitation by modifying the source code.

All in all *great tool*, will post additional details once i try out the software, can save your project loads of time.

2005-06-25T15:08:00.000+03:00

Open Source .NET Projects:
All the projects here are written in c#

NunitForms - a NUnit extension that can track all the UI interactions, save it and execute the steps as in a Unit text context. Find details here

2005-06-19T17:49:00.000+03:00

2005-06-17T08:44:00.000+03:00

BILL GATES :

Why do you think, in this time of great technological advancement, people are still working harder and not smarter?

One of the greatest opportunities today is for software to more closely mirror the way people want to work, so they can focus on getting things done rather than managing all the technology in their lives, searching for the information they need, or adapting how they work to how their computer works. I believe the productivity breakthroughs we’ll see in the next decade will be as significant as those we’ve achieved in the past quarter-century.

How do you feel about competing open source platforms such as Unix and Linux?

The software ecosystem can accommodate many different development models, and healthy competition is what produces new innovations and drives technology forward. We focus our efforts on developing products based on the commercial model, which we believe produces the best possible software for our customers.

2005-06-16T07:18:00.000+03:00

What is XP:
eXtreme Programming is a lightweight methodology (see other lightweigh methodologies here), XP is a methodology that is used to delivery software to your customers needs when its needed. XP empowers your developers to confidently respond to changing customer requirements, even late in the life cycle.XP implements a simple, yet effective way to enable groupware style development. XP is a disciplined approach to developing software. XP is successful because it stresses on customer satisfaction.
The methodology emphasizes on team work, from the developers , managers and the client. XP was intended for small project groups but there are examples of projects of 100 members that have used XP eg Though Works. The methodology is a collection of rules, each rule supporting the other rules.

The tenets of XP:
1. Simplicity
2. Communication
3. Feedback
4. Courage

Role of a developer:
One of the key tasks of a developer is refactoring ie thats a task that the client and the managers cannot enforce , only the developer/designer can do so. The programmer is also reasponsible for creating high quality code by
a) pair programming approach
b) refactoring
c) creating test cases before creating code.

XP has 4 phases :
1) Planning
2) Designing
3) Coding
4) Testing

Planning Phase:
User stories: It serves multiple purposes, it can be used instead of a requirement document , the IT integrator can use the document as an estimator and use it for release planning, the document is written by the client in non -technology terms, the client can use the document to derive the user acceptance tests. Once the big picture is created the individual developers go to the client and then get the details of the sub stories and document the same as user requirements, if a user story takes more than 3 weeks then a new story is created

XP uses iterative development process so that the project can get the agility of a change process.

2005-06-16T07:15:00.000+03:00

Refactoring: (interesting bit)
A caterpillar is perfectly designed to eat vast amounts of foliage but he can't find a mate, he must refactor himself into a butterfly before he is designed to search the sky for others of his own kind. Let go of your notions of what the system should or should not be and try to see the the new design as it emerges before you
- Kent Beck

2005-06-12T05:28:00.000+03:00

Taking the human out of the loop:
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, lets face it in a fast moving economy and dog -eat -dog world .. the weakest link to any enterprise is its workforce. Humans are good decission makes, only if they have the will and interest to make an optimal decission and considering that they cannot make decessions 24x7, wouldnt it be better for an Enterprise to hand that job to a machine ? Evolution ! in the way that the enterprise works, the enterprise now can be a 24x7 money making, decession conscious entity that can work optimally. The system doesnt require sleep, it doesnt have to be out of the office .. doenst have to do the laundry ;) and it doesnt require a raise in the pay cheque :D.
Business could really be "business at the speed of thought" well this time that of a machine, and for thought that can be a simple programmed decission well and machine can defanitely beat any carbon based lifeform.

2005-06-12T05:22:00.000+03:00

Business process integration:

In the present times when IT system have evolved from basic Mainframe technologies sitting in an isolated room to Grid networks ... IT has defanitely come a long way in a short time (no pun intended there ) but then we have islands of data .. islands every where .. there is no single version of the truth , different systems different data - a different view of the truth, its a bird ... no its a plane... not its DataWarehousing to the rescue !!! well even data level integration doesnt seem to work these days ... we need another means to look at an enterprise level in a holistic view and the answer to that is Business process integration, using Integration techologies. BPI .. the wave of the future.

2005-06-04T16:49:00.000+03:00

Ajax.NET:
A neat .NET utility that lets you call JavaScript asynchronously using XmlHttp. Find details here

2005-05-27T11:26:00.000+03:00

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw

2005-05-27T10:00:00.000+03:00

Autocomment your code:
Dont you feel that commenting you code(particularly before the review) is a tedious/redundant job and we have advanced so much that the system should actually infer the comment automatically.... gosh the day has just arrived !!
Installed GhostDoc yesterday download it here. Amazing product.
If you follow the right naming conventions the add-in will automatically (and accurately) add comments for you. ...really cool !!

2005-05-27T09:56:00.000+03:00

Something to ponder :
One of the differences between building
architecture and software architecture is
that a lot of decisions about a building
are hard to change. It is hard to go back
and change your basement, though it is
possible.
There is no theoretical reason that anything
is hard to change about software.
If you pick any one aspect of software
then you can make it easy to change,
but we don’t know how to make everything
easy to change. Making something
easy to change makes the overall system
a little more complex, and making
everything easy to change makes the entire
system very complex. Complexity is
what makes software hard to change.

2005-05-27T09:54:00.000+03:00

Software is not limited by physics, like
buildings are. It is limited by imagination,
by design, by organization. In
short, it is limited by properties of people,
not by properties of the world. “We
have met the enemy, and he is us.”

2005-05-16T20:30:00.000+03:00

BizTalk 2004: Free tutorials for Biztalk 2004, links to BizTalk 2004, BTS 2004 documents., Integration patterns using BizTalk 2004(BTS 2004)
Extract from a blog :

BizTalk Overview
Books
BizTalk Server 2004Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Developer's Guide by Scott Woodgate, et al. Integration Patterns PAG (architecture guidance group at Microsoft) - FREE!
BizTalk Server 2002BizTalk Server 2002 Design and Implementation by Xin Chen. One sample chapter is available.Biztalk Unleashed (for 2002) by Susie Adams, et al. Two sample chapters are available.
General B2B and EAIEnterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions by Gregor Hohpe, Bobby Woolf. One sample chapter is available. There is also a paper on the author's web site on using these patterns with BizTalk Server!Integration Patterns guidance from Microsoft.

Microsoft Web sites
BizTalk home BizTalk Server downloads BizTalk Server on MSDN BizTalk Server on Technet BizTalk Server Documentation BizTalk Server Code Samples BizTalk Server White Papers
GotDotNet has a page on Microsoft server products, including BizTalk.

Third-party Web sites
UsingBiztalk - your one stop shop for BizTalk Server.
TopXML has a great section on Learn B2B, BizTalk and XML. Lots of articles, presentations, and downloads.
TopXML also has some great BizTalk utilities for both 2002 and 2004.
Only4Gurus has a BizTalk Server category which has BizTalk presentations, articles, and downloads too.
Christoph has a post on BizTalk Baby Steps, to help get you up and running quickly.

Important Downloads2004BizTalk Server 2004 Product DocumentationDownload the updated product documentation Help file to have new content for BizTalk Server 2004 on your desktop. The production documentation is updated on a quarterly basis. Or view the BizTalk Server 2004 Documentation online.
BizTalk Server 2004 SDK RefreshThe BizTalk Server 2004 SDK Refresh contains updates and additions to samples, utilities, headers, and other developer artifacts to aide in the development of BizTalk Server 2004 applications.
BizTalk Server 2004 Installation GuideLearn how to install BizTalk Server 2004 on a single computer or on multiple computers, with the information in this document.
Orchestration Designer for Business AnalystsVisio Add-In that enables Business Analysts to create business orchestrations that can be implemented using BizTalk Server 2004.
BizTalk 2004 TutorialThe BizTalk Server Tutorial contains detailed information about how Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 can be used within your company to facilitate Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and among business partners to automate business-to-business processes.
BizTalk Server 2004 Performance Characteristics
BizTalk Server 2004 Technical Deployment Guide for Security
BizTalk Server 2004 Migration
BizTalk Server 2004 Multi-Box Install
BizTalk Adapter Development Guide
2002Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Publish-Subscribe ToolkitThe Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Publish-Subscribe Toolkit is an abstraction layer built upon the standard BizTalk objects (also called "artifacts"), such as receive functions, channels, ports, documents, and organizations.
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Toolkit for Microsoft .NET With the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Toolkit for Microsoft .NET, developers can build complete BizTalk projects using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and orchestrate ASP.NET XML Web services.
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Service Pack 1BTS 2002 SP1 contains a collection of hotfixes and security fixes, as well as support for Windows Server 2003. Before installing BizTalk Server 2002 SP1, it is strongly recommended that you carefully review the documentation located in the Related Resources section to the right.

GotDotNet Workspaces
BizTalk Server 2004 Generic Adapter SampleMicrosoft® BizTalk® 2004 enables connectivity to external systems through an extension API called the Adapter Framework. Adapters in BizTalk are the main carriers for messages (either into the BizTalk messaging repository, called the "message box" or out of it). Out of the box, BizTalk 2004 comes with adapters for open protocols such as file, http, soap, ftp and others. System-specific adapters for SAP and MQSeries are also available. The adapter framework, while being versatile and enabling extension point for writing adapters for everything you can think of, are non trivial to implement and require thorough understanding of the interface with the BizTalk runtime. This document describes a "generic adapter" (its code is accompanied), which serves as an abstraction layer and enables writing "custom adapters" quickly and easily.
BizTalk Server Adapter for SharePoint LibrariesThis article describes a Microsoft® BizTalk® Server adapter that facilitates end-to-end communication between front-end Microsoft Office System 2003 applications and back-end enterprise systems. SharePoint libraries store Office System XML data while BizTalk Server orchestration provides services for integrating that data with back-end systems. This adapter makes SharePoint libraries accessible to BizTalk Server 2004 to provide an end-to-end integration path from the Office System 2003 applications to back-end enterprise systems
BizTalk Server 2004 Beta – Request BrokerThe Request Broker scenario sample for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Beta demonstrates how you can use BizTalk Server 2004 to implement a uniform request handler solution. The sample is intended to demonstrate development best practices to be used when building applications on BizTalk Server 2004. Annotated source code is included for review to help you understand how the application was archtected and built.
BizTalk Server 2004 Beta – Request for QuotationThe Request for Quotation for Biz Talk 2004 Beta demonstrates how you can use BizTalk Server 2004 to implement a RFQ solution. The sample is intended to demonstrate development best practices to be used when building applications on BizTalk Server 2004. Annotated source code is included for review to help you understand how the application was architected and built. Documentation is also provided which explains the scenario in detail including instructions for setting it up and running it.
BizTalk Server Fail Fast Tutorial and sample AICFail fast process is the process where Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 shuts down an XLANG schedule instance even if it is not completed. In the fail fast process, the DTC transaction rolls back and the XLANG schedule shuts down without calling any On Failure or Compensate code. In highly sensible systems this can force the developer to create a tracking mechanism to make sure all instances completed, and re-try if not. To make this process easier, we replaced the Generic AIC with our own AIC which sends a Message Queuing message to a tracking queue and only then send it to the original private queue.

BizTalk Bloggers
Owen Allen has a BizTalk Server category on his blog. His blog covers Microsoft E-Business Technologies including Content Management Server and Commerce Server as well as BizTalk Server.
Scott Woodgate's E-Business OutBursts blog is all about BizTalk Server (he also wrote Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Developer's Guide and is on the BizTalk team).
Sylvain Duford has a blog on Enterprise Integration with a lot of BizTalk Server content.
Kevin B Smith was a developer on the BizTalk core engine.
Speaking of BizTalk Core Engine, they have a blog too!
Scott Colestock’s blog is on BizTalk Server, business process automation, and service-orientation.
Jan Tielens has a BizTalk category on his blog.
Darren Jefford has a BizTalk category on his blog.
Paul Brown, the "BizTalk Hacker", has a BizTalk Server 2004 blog.
Laurence Timms has a BizTalk-focused blog.
Lamont Harrington has a BizTalk category on his blog.
Charles Young has a BizTalk category on his blog.
The BizTalk Visionary has a BizTalk-focused blog.
I have a BizTalk category on this blog too.
Christof Claessens' WebLog.
Jeff Lynch is a BizTalk Enthusiast.
Martijn has a blog on E-Commerce, EAI, BizTalk and .NET.
Gilles' Weblog has lots of good BizTalk 2004 information.
Eldar Musayev has a BizTalk blog.

Webcasts
MSDN Webcast: Getting up to speed with BizTalk Server 2004 for the Visual Studio .NET Developer
MSDN Webcast: Biztalk Server 2004 Orchestration for the Visual Studio .NET Developer
MSDN Webcast: Biztalk Server 2004 Architecture
MSDN Webcast: BizTalk Server 2004 Performance and Early Adopter Experiences
MSDN Webcast: Using Web Services with BizTalk Server 2004
MSDN Webcast: BizTalk Server 2004 Business Rules for the Visual Studio .NET Developer
MSDN Webcast: Integrating BizTalk Server 2004 with SharePoint
MSDN Webcast: Extending Mainframe Applications using BizTalk Server 2004 and Host Integration 2004
MSDN Webcast: Business Workflow and BizTalk
MSDN Webcast: Adding Business Activity Monitoring your BizTalk Server 2004 Projects
MSDN Webcast: Real-World BizTalk Server 2004 Editing and Mapping Techniques
MSDN Webcast: Building on BizTalk Server 2004 Human Workflow Services for the Visual Studio .NET developer
MSDN Webcast: BizTalk Server 2004 EDI with and without the Covast Accelerator
MSDN Webcast: InfoPath SP1 and BizTalk Server
MSDN Webcast: Migrating from BizTalk Server 2002 to 2004
MSDN Webcast: Building BizTalk Server 2004 Adapters for the Visual Studio .NET Developer
MSDN Webcast: Advanced Orchestration Concepts in BizTalk Server 2004
MSDN Webcast: Extending Mainframe Applications using BizTalk Server 2004 and Host Integration 2004
MSDN Webcast: BizTalk Server 2004 Adapters for the Visual Studio .NET Developer

Newsgroups (Microsoft-sponsored)
Topic
Web-based client
Newsreader
Administration
HTML
NNTP
Application integration
HTML
NNTP
Framework
HTML
NNTP
General
HTML
NNTP
Library
HTML
NNTP
Non-XML
HTML
NNTP
Orchestration
HTML
NNTP
SDK
HTML
NNTP
Server
HTML
NNTP
Setup
HTML
NNTP
Tools
HTML
NNTP
Financial Services
HTML
NNTP
HIPAA
HTML
NNTP
HL7
HTML (GotDotNet Community)
RosettaNet
HTML
NNTP

MSN Groups
BizTalk Server Stuff

Tips and Tricks
Deployment - tips for deploying BizTalk Server 2000.Development - tips for BizTalk Editor.Development - tips for BizTalk Mapper.Development - tips for BizTalk Orchestration Designer.

Articles
Database Integration with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002By Scott Woodgate, Microsoft Corporation
Business-to-business data processing requires data interchange that uses XML as the ubiquitous, extensible, and platform-independent transform format. The challenge is how to reconcile the requirements of relational data stores and hierarchical XML data. This article focuses on providing reusable samples and techniques for integrating Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 and databases, with specific reference to leveraging Microsoft SQL Server 2000.
Orchestrate Web Services with BizTalk Server 2002By Randy Holloway
BizTalk Server supports the defining and changing of business processes through BizTalk Orchestration, which enables messaging and the integration of application components. Randy explains how to use BizTalk Orchestration and Web services integration.
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 First LookBy Hitesh Seth
The author takes a quick look at BizTalk Server, including a useful image showing the BizTalk architecture.
BizTalk Server 2004: Harnessing Data and ContentBy Jame Healy
.NETDJ Guest Editor Jame Healy recently interviewed Microsoft's Scott Woodgate, lead product manager for Microsoft's E-Business Servers group. In this exclusive interview, Woodgate talks about the history of BizTalk Server, the process of developing a new BizTalk Server version, and bridging the gap between developers and business analysts.
A Basic Introduction to Messaging with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004By Christof Claessens
BizTalk Server 2004 has just been released and a lot of people are planning to hit the road with it. While BizTalk Server 2004 has lot to offer, this article focuses on the core workings of this brand new server, more in particular: messaging.
BizTalk Baby StepsBy Christoph Schittko
The lack of BizTalk developer documentation however, is making it very hard to take your first baby steps with BizTalk. You feel like a toddler with the urge to run, but you first have to master taking simple steps first. I had quite a few moments where I just wanted to plop on my butt an cry until my mommy comes and makes it all go away ... I hope this article will help some people to get past the baby step phase quicker and get them running in no time.

2005-05-14T21:15:00.000+03:00

BizTalk Links
Links taken from http://pluralsight.com/wiki/default.aspx/Aaron/TheBiztalkWiki.html

MSDN Sites
BizTalk Server Developer Center
BizTalk Server Community
Biztalk Webcasts
MSDNTV
Developing for Biztalk Server 2004 Inside Visual Studio .NET
Building Your First Business Process
WSE 2.0 Adapter for Biztalk Server 2004
Advanced Orchestration Concepts in Biztalk Server 2004 - Convoy Processing
BizTalk Server and 'Indigo'
Installation Guides
Microsoft BTS 2004 Installation Guide
The Quickstart Guide to Installing & Configuring BTS 2004 for Windows Server 2003
The Quickstart Guide - Multi-Box
BizTalk Installation Troubleshooting
Updating a VPC Biztalk Install
Extra Downloads / Utilities
Official Product Updates (SP1, ODBA, updated documentation, SDK refresh, etc)
BTS 2004 Adapter for Web Services Enhancement 2.0
BTS 2004 Adapter for MSMQ v2.0
BizTalk Partner Adapters
BizTalk Assembly Viewer
BizTalk 2004 Management Tool
BizTalk Server 2004 Performance Tool
Samples
Enhanced Validator Sample
Jon Flander's Samples
Whitepaper Listings
Microsoft Whitepapers - Published
Microsoft Whitepapers for Community Review - MSN Groups
Recommended Whitepapers / Articles
Understanding BTS 2004
Developing a BTS Solution
BTS 2004 Internals (awesome stuff)
BTS 2004 Web Services
Using XML Schema in BizTalk
Security in BTS 2004
What is BPEL?
Implementing Process Integration - PAG
Developing Integration Solutions with BTS 2004
Authoring Adapters
BizTalk Server 2004 Performance Characteristics
BizTalk Server 2004 Technical Guide for High Availability
BizTalk Server 2004 Convoy Deep Dives
Microsoft Biztalk Blogs
The Blogger's Guide to Biztalk (an aggregation of numerous blogs)
Microsoft Community Blogs
Scott Woodgate
Michael Woods
Biztalk Core Engine Weblog
BizTalk Server Performance
BizTalk Chalk Talk
Biztalk Customer Response Team's Blog
MSDN Webcasts Weblog
David Hurtado's Integration Traces
Darren Jefford
Kevin Smith
Stephen Kaufman
Recommended Blog Entries
How messages work in BTS 2004 Orchestrations
Constructing BTS 2004 XML Messages
BizTalk's Pub/Sub
Receive Pipelines
Promoting schema properties into message context
MSMQT Testing / MSMQ Acks
EAI Using MSMQ, .NET, and BTS 2004
BizTalk 2004 Flat File Schema Tutorial 1
Remote HAT
Create an Encryption Functoid
Deployment Framework for Biz Talk 2004 Applications - based on NAnt
DTC Transactions in an Orchestration

2005-04-19T11:45:00.000+03:00

In the business world the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield
-Warren Buffett

2005-04-19T08:26:00.000+03:00

.NET vs J2EE
December 2004 column in SD Times, Allen Holub, a Java expert and one of its staunchest defenders, questioned the relevance of the JCP, saying, "Just look at created-by-committee junk like EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans Technology) and JSF (JavaServer Faces). I personally believe that EJB has been responsible for the failure of more companies than almost any other single technology. EJB is too expensive at every level."
(extract taken from https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40009708)

2005-04-19T07:49:00.000+03:00

TOP STORY
Adobe agreed to buy Macromedia for $3.4 billion in stock, in a deal that would create a software company with broad ability to distribute media to PCs, cellphones and hand-held devices.

Acquisitions are on the rise and the order of the day is to acquire your competitor and get his market share. Though the compaq taker over was not very successful for HP.. it was due to the fact that the products of the merger was not strategically aligned by HP. Whereas Macromedia take over appears to be promising for Adobe. In time we will know.

2005-04-14T10:34:00.000+03:00

Courage is worth nothing if the gods withhold their aid
-Euripides

2005-04-13T08:24:00.000+03:00

Answers of life:

Life gives Answers in Three ways,
It says YES and gives Whatever u Want,
It says NO and gives u Something Better
It says Wait and gives u the Best

2005-04-05T07:56:00.000+03:00

There are two primary components to IT... the design/development of services, and the opertaion/delivery of services.
"Business - IT Development" alignment is driven by business requirements (functional, service level, cost, time-to-market, etc). SOA isn't a "requirement", but a technique that helps IT achieve the desires of the business to support their business processes.
"Business/IT Operations" alignment is properly performed as defined by ITSM/ITIL Best Practices, and as illustrated in my graphic below. Business and IT need to work as a intimate partnership to define, implement, deliver, and continually refine an optimized Service Portfolio at contracted service levels and an established and predictable cost point. Again, SOA is simply a technique that helps IT achieve operational excellence.
All other functions are internal to IT. The fact that requirements are fleshed out in an Agile fashion and constructed/deployed using a SOA strategy is meaningless to the Business Unit. They simply want IT to build the capability they need, adjust it when asked, and deliver it as expected.

2005-04-04T17:48:00.000+03:00

John Crupi - CTO of Sun's Enterprise (On SOA)
"[W]e cannot do SOA without a mutual effort between IT and the BU. Gone are the days of throwing the requirements over the fence and hoping it hits. Not only do these two groups have to work together, they have distinct roles and responsibilities. Basically, the BU runs the show and owns the business drivers, use-cases and processes. IT implements the BU requirements and owns the service definitions. It's unfortunate that we really do have to refer to this as a "shift", because we should be doing this anyway. But, the reality is that IT and BU typical function as disparate groups and rarely work together to have the business use-cases drive the process and service definition."

2005-04-04T17:46:00.000+03:00

John Evdemon made two points on SOA relevant to this issue several months ago:
SOA does not enable or ensure the alignment of IT and business. The IT industry has been promising this for decades – there is no silver bullet for aligning IT and business. Alignment of IT and business is an organizational issue that will not be resolved by an architectural design philosophy alone.
Service Orientation will happen in your organization in one of two possible ways: chaotically (typical approach) or in a disciplined manner. The path your organization takes (and the cost of later fixing that path) is up to you.

2005-03-15T08:14:00.000+03:00

Why microsoft products ?
After nearly half a decade of working on Microsoft platform i have just switched to a non microsoft software for data integration, the product is considered to be a leader in the segment but in the past couple of weeks have just realized why the development cost are so low in the MS platform.
1) There are enough news groups about the product im working on
2) the site of the company looks more like someones hobby site ( content !!!..where is it ??!)
3) The application doesnt have an intuitive look and feel and things dont come naturally to the user as a MS product.
4) the messages/ prompts were written by some guy who doesnt know the grammer of the english language !! i didnt know if i should click on Yes/No !!!
5) Google results are very poor for the product.

Been working on .NET since Beta 1 but even then i had more documentation then.... hmm.. im begining to see the light ....

2005-03-15T08:09:00.000+03:00

Microsoft Acquires Groove Network :
"The nature of work itself has changed. Many of us, for better and worse, work in the office, at home, in hotels, at Starbucks." -- Groove Networks CEO Ray Ozzie, during a conference call last week to discuss his collaboration-software company's acquisition by Microsoft

2005-03-14T08:18:00.000+03:00

Microsoft Acquires Grove Network

Groove Network Owner Ray Ozzie now another CTO at MS
Ray Ozzie was one of the creators of Lotus Notes !!

Groove products to integrate with Longhorn and the upcoming version of MS Office

2005-03-10T09:38:00.000+03:00

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates
revealed his company's collaboration and communication vision
yesterday and unveiled two new Microsoft Office System products,
Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 (code-named Istanbul) and
Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and
one new service, Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005. Gates also
highlighted some of the technologies that Microsoft plans to ship in
the next Office version, code-named Office 12.

2005-03-10T09:33:00.000+03:00

Multiple Child Aggregation:
An eyeopener docuement on Multiple Child Aggregation here
What ive been critizing all along seems to be the best approach .. duhhhh....
The document only describes the scenario on SQL Server and so the performance on Oracle is still debatable ;)

2005-01-25T17:26:00.000+03:00

Heres a site with lots of good articles
Mostly useful for consulting and mangement type people
The details are published by the Wharton college and most
of the articles would be like the current affairs/ trends etc

2005-01-25T17:07:00.001+03:00

The Top 10 Things Every CIO Should Know
Good artice, gives good pointers, at first glance i would say that the author just discusses simple ideas...but in reality thats all a CIO could focus on. How IT can can advance a company in its strategic direction.

Read the article here

2005-01-25T17:07:00.000+03:00

The Top 10 Things Every CIO Should Know
Good artice, gives good pointers, at first glance i would say that the author just discusses simple ideas...but in reality thats all a CIO could focus on. How IT can can advance a company in its strategic direction.

Read the article here

2005-01-18T14:00:00.000+03:00

22 Imutable laws of marketing
great read for geeks, Eric describes in brief about the 22 imutable laws of marketing here

2005-01-10T16:31:00.000+03:00

The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams. -Oprah Winfrey

'Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.'- Seneca, Epistles. Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD)

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. - Henry Adams (1838 - 1918)

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. -Bill Cosby

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. - Dr. David M. Burns

Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his. -Franklin P. Jones

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.-Herm Albright

Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. -William James

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. -Isaac Asimov

Life is a sexually transmitted disease. -R. D. Laing

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. - Robert Heinlein

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends. -Japanese Proverb

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still. -Chinese Proverb

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. - Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941