Angus Logan's Link Blog

100K project problems

2004-11-23T20:32:00.000+10:00

100K project problems
To leave aside patents for a moment, if you're having problems with large (>100K lines of code) projects in VB, this KB article might help. The problem is fixed in VB 2005, but if you're using VB 2002/2003, there is a hotfix for it. Thanks to Eric Harrison for publicizing the problem!

InfoPath - Hands on Lab Manuals - Posted

2004-11-21T13:21:00.000+10:00

Hands on Lab Manuals - Posted

I wanted to thank everyone that attended the recent Hands on Lab sessions that we help for InfoPath. As promised here are the lab manuals that you can download from here.

Checklist for Testing SharePoint Web Parts

2004-11-20T22:49:00.000+10:00

Checklist for Testing SharePoint Web Parts
Use this checklist to assist with deployment and maintenance of your Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Web Parts.

Good Point...

2004-11-20T22:37:00.000+10:00

Good Point...
"Programming is like sex: One mistake and you support it a lifetime"

Integration of Project Server 2003 & WSS with IBF

2004-11-16T21:54:00.000+10:00

Integration of Project Server 2003 & WSS with IBF.

Folks,

Here is the first solution that I have worked on that integrates Project Server 2003 and Windows sharepoint services with IBF. This solution is available freely for download at (http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/3/0/4301f026-044b-4272-8857-a705c294187e/MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_ProjectServer1.0.exe)

I am working on making enhancements to the solution. Keep watching this blog for more information on the solution.

Cheers,

-Natarajan

Live Communications Server 2005 Documents Available for Download

2004-11-14T18:44:00.000+10:00

Live Communications Server 2005 Documents Available for Download

A number of new downloads are available for anybody going for the new Live Communications Server 2005:

Business Value of Presence
This document describes the business value of presence within an organization and how this vital information has been integrated into the programs used by most information workers.
Active Directory Schema Extensions
This download contains the Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 XML Schema used to extend the Microsoft Active Directory directory service.
Release Notes 1.0
This document contains the most up-to-date information for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. The release notes list important information you should know prior to deploying and using Live Communications Server 2005, including known issues.
Deployment Guide
This document guides you through the deployment of a Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Standard Edition.
Feature Guide
This document provides an overview of the features in Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and the features found in Microsoft Windows Messenger and Microsoft Office System programs, such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Instant Messaging Etiquette Guide
This guide provides a set of guidelines and best practices to help you use instant messaging effectively in an enterprise context and to mitigate the risk of unwanted communications.

Guy Worth Hiring

2004-11-12T09:28:00.000+10:00

A Guy Worth Hiring

This guy deserves a flood of job offers. Make yours good!

K-Wise Deployer

2004-11-11T20:28:00.000+10:00

K-Wise Deployer

I had a superb demo today of the K-Wise Deployer ... this provides a powerful content migration solution for SharePoint 2003 product and Technologies. It constitutes a stand-alone application designed for the rapid content migration from multiple sources.

The K-Wise Deployer is an accelerator for the design, modeling, construction and content migration stages of SharePoint. It provides:

Migration from:

SharePoint 2001

File Shares

Exchange Public Folders

Hummingbird

Hyperwave

Lotus Notes

other sources

Mapping and analysis of content sources

Metadata Editor, extraction of properties and flexible mapping into Columns

A graphical interface supports rapid creation of SharePoint Server
structure: Sites, Areas, Libraries and Folders

Bulk and Batch check-in of documents

Taxonomy management tool

Sharepoint+

MCMS Rapid ... update

2004-11-10T15:35:00.000+10:00

MCMS Rapid ... update
Further to my previous blog entry of the MCMS Rapid Solution Site - I spent yesterday with ArtemisCorp ... just wanted to reassure everyone that this is on target for 30Nov. And BTW - its looking awesome!

My Microsoft Interview

2004-11-10T15:33:00.000+10:00

My Microsoft Interview
My second interview process at Microsoft started off with the typical scare (I'm not going to go into my first interview experience, but I will say I was offered a position at Microsoft but did not accept it). I need to realize that traffic going to Redmond from my home is really bad around 8:15. I thought I had left plenty of time, but still barely made it with a minute or two to spare. (When will I learn?!) I did wear a suit again, this time a really expensive Hart Schaffner and Marx number (that looks very good on me, if I do say so myself!)

My second interview seems like it went according to the typical MSFT process. I still didn't get a puzzle question, but that's okay, I probably would have bombed it anyway!

The interview started at 9:00am with Cody Horton in Building 19. I actually walked past one of the Moon Gals' office when going to Cody's office, but I can't remember which one! Anyway, I chatted a while about things with the recruiter, then he sent me on the shuttle over to building 44.

In building 44 there was a bit of a mix up as the first person on my interview list was out that day, so things were a little bit off kilter, but after that things went smoothly. I chatted with a peer of my boss named Joanne, then a gentleman from another group (whose name escapes me now). After that, I met with my future boss, Chase Carpenter, then went to lunch with one of the technical guys on the team. We had lunch at Claim Jumper, that bastion of light lunches, and we found out that we both had a somewhat similar background (a liberal arts background).

After lunch, I had one more scheduled interview, and then was asked to wait to speak to one other person. After that, they asked if I could wait around for a little longer to talk to my future boss' boss. I think that getting to that point is the key that they are considering you. If it is a competitive situation, it's not a guarantee, but if you are the only candidate and talk to your boss' boss you are likely going to get an offer.

The interviews for the program manager position were much more focused on scope negotiation, dealing with slippages, phasing, communication, etc. There was not as much security, but I think they had a good feeling about my skills since a) I had been offered a position by the Security Center of Excellence, and b) I have a reasonable resume. A MSFT PM has solution architecture and project management responsibilities, and at least from the interview, they were more concerned about the PM aspects of the position. I think I did relatively well throughout the interviews.

By the time I met with Jeff Newfeld, I was pretty beat. I started in with him after 5:00, and had been "on" almost the entire day. It was pretty exhausting, but I was happy when things were over close to 6:00.

On the whole I think I did pretty well, but was told that there was another candidate, so I wouldn't hear anything until the end of the week. Didn't I do this waiting game 3 months ago?!

The perfect CV?

2004-11-09T21:11:00.000+10:00

The perfect CV?

I don’t know if there is a perfect CV and each recruite’âs idea of a perfect CV will be slightly different. But I can tell you what I like to see.

A good CV is one that clearly shows me how well you are suited to the role that y’uâre applying for.

Some easy tips to follow

Tailor your CV for each role that you apply for

Keep it short and to the point

Look critically at every item you include. If you can't immediately see why it's there, take it out

When your CV is completed check it carefully for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes and then check it again. Itâs a good idea to get someone else to read over it for you as well

What you should include

Name and full contact details including mobile and e-mail address

A short career objective or career profile

Education and qualifications

Relevant work experience

Interests, activities and achievements that clearly show skills for the position your applying for

Dont include unless it's been requested

Marital Status

Age

Your photograph

Nationality

How to present your CV

Type or word processing your CV as black text on a white background

Print each page on a separate sheet

Keep it plain. Fancy fonts and decorative borders are more of a distraction than a help

Make it esy to follow by being consistent with headings and fonts

I hope this helps and I welcome any feedback or questions that you may have. ZoÃ« and Gre’chenâs site has heaps of great advice regard’ng CVâs so make sure you have a look.

We have a couple of CV templates on our careers site that you can have a look at as well.

Thanks JB

Windows Installer 3.0 Redistributable Live

2004-11-09T20:58:00.000+10:00

Windows Installer 3.0 Redistributable Live

I was just notified that the Windows Installer 3.0 redistributable has been posted live.

1. The redistributable package can be obtained from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5FBC5470-B259-4733-A914-A956122E08E8&displaylang=en

2. There is also a Knowledgebase article about this release available at: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=884016

3. Finally, the SDK documentation and tools are part of the Windows XP Service Pack 2 platform SDK and are available by clicking the "Windows XP SP2 SDK" link from: http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/

I know a number of you were waiting for this release, so here we go. On with better patching and command-line typing in Darwin.

IBF Samples

2004-11-09T20:57:00.000+10:00

IBF Samples

Looking for samples demonstrating the power of the Information Bridge Framework? Microsoft download center has a download with the following samples:

These downloads include the following sample solutions and a white paper:

A generic customer relationship management sample solution (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_Sample1.0.exe)
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system sample solution based on Oracle LOB applications (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_Oracle1.0.exe)
A Hello World sample solution (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_HelloWorld1.0.exe)
Developing a Hello World Sample Solution for Information Bridge Framework White Paper (HelloWorldWhitePaper.doc, included in MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Solutions_HelloWorld1.0.exe)

SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

2004-11-08T10:42:00.001+10:00

SQL Server 2005 Webcasts
Just thought I'd plug the SQL Server 2005 webcasts which are due to launch from the beginning of December. If you'd like to know more, go here to register: http://msdn.microsoft.com/SQL/2005Webcasts/.

Amazing Pet Shop Boys fan site

2004-11-08T10:42:00.000+10:00

Amazing Pet Shop Boys fan site

Wayne Studer has on his site "interpretations and analyses of every song written or performed by Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant" -- pretty darn impressive! You can catch the goodness at http://www.geowayne.com/psbhtml.htm

Personally, I think one of the most powerful lines they've ever written comes from Jealousy, on the very melancholy album Behaviour:

I wish I'd never met you or that I could bear to let you go.

I'm sure we've all felt that way at some point in our lives :-(

Free Windows XP Service Pack 2 E-Learning Clinics

2004-11-08T10:39:00.000+10:00

Free Windows XP Service Pack 2 E-Learning Clinics

I was going through my email on the weekend and found these e-learning clinics for Windows XP SP2. They are really pretty good

Announcing Free Windows XP Service Pack 2 E-Learning Clinics
Microsoft Learning is excited to announce the availability of free self-paced e-learning clinics for IT professionals and developers on Windows XP Service Pack 2.

These e-learning clinics are available in English to all customers worldwide on http://www.microsoftelearning.com/xpsp2/

Free hands-on labs online will be added to this content in the coming weeks to allow customers to walk through practical exercises in a safe, virtual environment.

IT Professionals: E-Learning Clinic 2851: Deploying and Administering Windows XP Service Pack 2

Session 1: Windows XP Service Pack 2 Security Technologies
Session 2: Deploying and Managing Windows XP Service Pack 2

Developers: E-Learning Clinic 2853: Developing and Maintaining Applications on Windows XP Service Pack 2

Session 1: Introduction to Windows XP Service Pack 2 for Developers
Session 2: Developing Applications in Windows XP Service Pack 2
Session 3: Running SQL Server on Windows XP Service Pack 2
Session 4: Advanced Application Development with Windows XP Service Pack 2

[ Currently Playing : They Can't Take That Away from Me - Robbie Williams - Swing When You're Winning (03:08) ]

My Media Center PC

2004-11-07T11:55:00.000+10:00

My Media Center PC

Buy one or roll your own?

In my case, until a couple of weeks ago they weren't even sold in Australia so I had to build it myself.

I got my hands on an eMuzed MauiIII PAL TV card 6 months back and tried running MCE2004.

Well that didn't go well. No program guide, I couldn't even tune in the channels. I got it working eventually with some hacks and a Dutch program guide, but it was not a great experience.

Enter MCE2005, yes it works in Australia, even though we don't have a program guide (the TV stations own copyright on programming information and MS has yet to do a deal with them, though it is expected in the future)

I took a fairly standard PC and turned it into a MCE2005 box

P4 2800
1 GB RAM
>300 HD?s
eMuzed MauiIII PAL TV Card
cheap GeForce Ti4200 Display Adapter
eHome Infrared Remote Control (freebie from MS, thanks guys)

It works very well, surprising with the low end display adapter. I want be rushing out to get an FX or Radeon anytime soon.

The main thing seems to be the TV Card quality, *GET* one that does hardware decoding. If your offered one with software decoding tell em where to shove it.

I suspect you could run this on an old spare box. A P2 or P3 as the CPU isn't getting hammered and the disk subsystem throughput requirements are not high.

Anger Management for Outlook 2003 ...

2004-11-07T11:51:00.000+10:00

Anger Management for Outlook 2003 ...

Have you ever sent an e-mail you knew almost immediately you would regret? (More importantly, does this happen often?) If you've ever wondered if your e-mail client could protect you from yourself, here's a handy tip you should consider: You can create a rule in Microsoft Outlook 2003 that defers sending messages for a few minutes after clicking the fateful Send button.

Follow these steps:

From the menu, Click Tools > Rules and Alerts > New Rule to bring up the Outlook Rules Wizard.

Let's Start from a blank rule, and check messages after sending - Click Next.

Since the rule will apply to all sent messages, click "Next" to skip selecting a set of conditions. A dialog box may appear asking you to confirm that this is what you want to do.

Check Defer delivery by a number of minutes. Down below, click on the underlined "a number of" text and select the number of minutes you thinks it takes for your sanity to previal. Note: if it actually takes a few days, you might have a bigger problem than Microsoft Outlook can help you with. A couple of minutes usually works for me.

If you think you may want to apply some exceptions to this rule, click Next to apply any additional properties. Meeting invitations are a common exception - We rarely flame people we'll be meeting with shortly. Otherwise, click Finish. You're done!

Later ... In that fateful moment when you come to yourself after sending an e-mail, rush to your Outbox and delete the message before it goes. Wow! You may have just saved your career.

Resume breathing.

Mild-mannered e-mail writers need not apply.

My experiences also include accidentally sending e-mails before I finished writing them (doesn't that always look dumb?) Share your story below about "that message" you wish you could go back in time to erase ...

A (speculative) look inside Google

2004-11-07T11:46:00.000+10:00

A (speculative) look inside Google

Thanks to John Topley posting a comment on my blog, I discovered this old but fascinating speculative look inside Google based on published accounts. There are some interesting conclusions in the paper - the key one being that Google is building a general purpose supercomputer that will serve as a platform for running web scale applications. Hmmm ... sounds a lot like Amazon/Yahoo (not so sure about eBay).

The comments are also interesting to read as well - with a few anonymous folks 'showing off' (or flat out lying about) their knowledge of Google internals.

For some meaty information, check out this paper on the Google Filesystem, which talks about the design of Google's petabyte fault-tolerant filesystem that lives on 100,000+ nodes, which was presented at SOSP 2003.

Edit Posting Properties in Authoring Mode

2004-11-07T11:38:00.000+10:00

Edit Posting Properties in Authoring Mode

On the past couple of MCMS projects I've worked on, we decided to bring the Page Properties into the page in authoring mode and turned off access to the "Page Properties" window for authors and editors.

This killed two birds with one stone:

1) It took a fewer steps for authors and editors to change properties like the StartDate, ExpiryDate, Important, and certain Custom Properties. No more needing to open a separate window and figure out which properties to change.

2) It allowed us to hide certain Page Properties from certain users, like Name, Display Name, and some Custom Properties. Since you cannot restrict rights down to the placeholder or property level (only the channel level), this allowed us to show some properties only to users in certain role groups (using another nifty method, BTW). Plus, we automatically set the Name and DisplayName of most of our postings, so this method removes the ability for the user to edit these properties as well.

We built separate User Controls for each feature, and then added the controls to each template. This works well, but does mean that we have quite a few different User Controls.

Stefan Goßner has come up with a solution which can bring some or all of the Page Properties into the page, and does not require much (or any) coding! Check out the article on his blog and download the sample code from GotDotNet.

Toss the TiVo for Media Center '05?

2004-11-06T01:40:00.000+10:00

Toss the TiVo for Media Center '05?

Bold statement by PCWorld... I would so love ot try out a MC'05 box... but I'm heavily invested in TiVo (2x80hr Series 2 boxes).

» New Media Center OS Plays Well

Need A Time Zone Converter?

2004-11-06T00:22:00.000+10:00

Need A Time Zone Converter?

TimeAndDate.com has a search engine for its WorldClock that allows you to see what the current time and time zone is for most major cities througout the US and the World.

In addition to current time and time zone the WorldClock also provides:

GMT Offset

Daylight Savings information

Sunrise/Sunset

Dialing Codes (can tell you exactly how to dial a specific international number)

Geo-Coordinates (Longitude & Latitude)

Meeting planning features

Books about the city searched

Here is Austin's info:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=24

And, Belfast:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=919

Solution to allow property editing when being in authoring mode

2004-11-06T00:20:00.001+10:00

Solution to allow property editing when being in authoring mode

A common question I received from customers is that they would like to edit property values during authoring time similar to editing placeholder content.

I have previously provided a solution for this but this needs to do some coding for every property. A better solution would be to have a server control similar to the MCMS placeholder controls to do this.

After spending a several hours I just finished such a server control which will be available on GotDotNet in a few days.

Here is an article with a brief description on the details.

ASP.NET Starter Kits laboration.

2004-11-06T00:20:00.000+10:00

ASP.NET Starter Kits laboration.

Only for swedish readers:

I mitten på november kommer vi på Microsoft tillsammans med Jönsson & Lepp hålla tre stycken gratis heldagslaborationer i ASP.NET Starter Kits. Vi kommer att titta på arkitekturen, hur vi skräddarsyr utseende samt utvecklare egen funktionalitet. Under dagen bjuder vi på mat och fika. Anmäl dig snarast eftersom det endast finns 20 platser på respektive ort och tillfälle.

Den 17:e november är vi i Stockholm: http://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=118751090&Culture=sv-SE (OBS FULLT)
Den 18:e november är vi i Göteborg: http://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=118751474&Culture=sv-SE
Den 19:e november är vi i Malmö: http://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=118751475&Culture=sv-SE

Hoppas att vi ses!

Look who's blogging - The Recruitment Team at Microsoft Australia

2004-11-05T15:47:00.000+10:00

Via Frank Arrigo

Look who's blogging - The Recruitment Team at Microsoft Australia

New SQL Server 2000 Labs to download

2004-11-04T20:44:00.000+10:00

New SQL Server 2000 Labs to download

Hi folks, on a spot of holiday this week - but spotted this....definitely worth sharing

"Some new SQL Server 2000 labs have been developed and were recently featured at the SQL PASS conference. These self-pace training labs are free, lightweight troubleshooting training for anyone interested in reviewing training in a self-study environment. They cover popular topics such as blocking, performance, memory, and debugging, and data recovery. They include hands-on usage of the PSS tools: READ80TRACE, OSTRESS, and PSSDiag.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AEC18337-887F-4EC6-A858-81F84DE8082F&displaylang=en"

SharePoint Explorer... a great free tool!

2004-11-04T00:23:00.000+10:00

SharePoint Explorer... a great free tool!

This is a great tool... going on my download links right now.

Have a look at http://www.ontolica.com/English/SharePointExplorer/Home.html for a great explorer tool with the following capabilities (quote from website):

WSS Features

View and modify the object properties of Virtual servers, Sites, Lists, List templates, Document Libraries, Files, Folders, List items and List fields.

Delete site collections, sites, lists, files and file versions.

Download files from document libraries.

View the content of any text file.

SPS Features

View and modify the object properties of Virtual portal servers, Portal sites, Areas, Keywords, Listings, Catalogs, Content Sources and Scheduled Tasks.

Delete content sources and search schedules.

Import/Export list of content sources including search schedules. Makes it easy to copy the list of content sources to another SPS installation.

Start/Stop crawling.

Really good!!
[Serge van den Oever [Macaw]]

Microsoft's TechNet Magazine (online version)

2004-11-03T21:40:00.000+10:00

Microsoft's TechNet Magazine (online version)

TechNet Magazine is an excellent online monthly magazine devoted to Microsoft technology and best security practices.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/

New version of lookout

2004-11-02T13:38:00.000+10:00

New version of lookout

Lookout is lightning-fast search for your email, files, and desktop works with Microsoft Outlook®.
Built on top of a powerful search engine, Lookout is the only personal search engine that can search all of your email from directly within Outlook - in seconds...

You can use Lookout to search your:

Email messages
Contacts, calendar, notes, tasks, etc.
Data from exchange, POP, IMAP, PST files, Public Folders
Files on your computer or other computers

http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/download.html

Creating a Tabbed Interface for your WSS site

2004-11-02T12:01:00.000+10:00

Creating a Tabbed Interface for your WSS site
From Bil Simser ...

Creating a Tabbed Interface for your WSS site

Changing SPS Search Results

2004-11-02T12:00:00.001+10:00

Changing SPS Search Results

From Nigel Bridport ...

Changing Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Search Results

SQL Server 2005 Integration Services - A Look At What's Coming

2004-11-02T12:00:00.000+10:00

SQL Server 2005 Integration Services - A Look At What's Coming
This webcast will feature Microsoft's own technologists presenting a technical review about this new product in the SQL Server Business Intelligence platform, what you can expect and what's so new about it. You'll get a great run-down of many of the great new features that are planned for Integration Services and how it takes over where DTS left off. We'll even have a drawing for a free copy of Windows Server 2003 at the end of the webcast.

Weds Nov 3 1:00p PST

http://www.sswug.org/webcasts

SPS Research Master from Content Master

2004-11-02T08:59:00.001+10:00

SPS Research Master from Content Master

Content Master's SPS Research Master helps integrate the desktop productivity features of Microsoft Office 2003 applications with the document storage and search capabilities of SharePoint Portal Server (SPS). With SPS Research Master, Microsoft Office application users can find and interact with relevant information stored in SharePoint sites directly from a Microsoft Office 2003 application.

SharePoint+

Research Master web site

CMDocSafe from Content Master

2004-11-02T08:59:00.000+10:00

CMDocSafe from Content Master

Content Master's CMDocSafe capitalises on your existing SharePoint investment. CMDocSafe is a document management Web Part that extends the core functionality of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services. It actively manages and promotes collaborative processes for team-based projects, and provides robust document-management facilities. It enables team members to contribute efficiently to business documents and project resources, while ensuring the consistency of those files in the collaborative SharePoint environment.

SharePoint+

CMDocSafe web site

PSS Troubleshooting Labs from SQL PASS

2004-11-02T08:57:00.000+10:00

PSS Troubleshooting Labs from SQL PASS

You can get them at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=aec18337-887f-4ec6-a858-81f84de8082f&displaylang=en. These are the labs that the SQL Server escalation engineers were using to illustrate troubleshooting techniques at the PSS Service Center at PASS. Per the download page:

“All labs are documented so that users can work through different scenarios in a self-study environment. These labs cover popular topics such as blocking, performance, memory, and debugging, and data recovery. They include hands-on usage of the PSS tools: READ80TRACE, OSTRESS, and PSSDiag”â

There's a whole lot of valuable material here - download & dig in.

This Blog Hosted On: http://www.SqlJunkies.com/

iPod costume relies on Tablet PC

2004-11-02T08:56:00.000+10:00

iPod costume relies on Tablet PC

Heh, Jared Winick decided to be an iPod for Halloween. Great use of the Tablet PC!

How British are you?

2004-11-02T08:54:00.000+10:00

My mother will certainly be surprised.
According to this quiz, I am...

Jolly good, wot! Anyone for tennis? That'll be ten ponies, guv. You're the epitome of everything that is english. Yey :) Hoist that Union Jack!
How British are you?
this quiz was made by alanna

Never been there, but I hear the view is nice.

Trond's Blog: Sharepoint trick: How to expose user info from AD in sharepoint

2004-11-02T08:53:00.000+10:00

Trond's Blog: Sharepoint trick: How to expose user info from AD in sharepoint

Great Article! Thanks Trond!

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/trond/articles/856.aspx

An Analysis of Skype VoIP Application For Use in a Corporate Environment

2004-10-31T14:27:00.000+10:00

An Analysis of Skype VoIP Application For Use in a Corporate Environment

Summary The report linked here is an analysis of the VoIP application Skype. One of the scopes in this report was to investigate whether the Skype application is secure enough to deploy in a corporate environment.

http://www.securiteam.com/securityreviews/6K00M2ABFM.html

http://www.geocities.com/bergstromdennis/Skype_Analysis_1_3.pdf

Bluetooth a Mile Away

2004-10-31T14:22:00.000+10:00

Bluetooth a Mile Away

[Popular Science] With a simple mod, I can make a Bluetooth connection up to a mile away—about 4,950 feet farther than most. Bandwidth is’ât increased, so ’tâs not a Wi-Fi killer, but now I can connect to my Bluetooth devices from anywhere in the house or yard.

More information and pictures can be found up at Bluedriving.com.

Speaking of replacing antennas - remember a few months ago when I was talking about replacing the antenna of my Netgear WGR614 router? I was finally able to track down a place to get the right connector (an U.FL to RP-SMA female bulkhead, bought from JEFATech) so I could add on a Netgear ANT-05 Omnidirectional and really boost the range of my 802.11g.

I'm planning on doing the upgrade in the next week or so, I'll post some pictures and instructions with the results.

Connected Systems

2004-10-31T13:59:00.000+10:00

Connected Systems
The following presentation for the ISV Community Evening Briefing Dublin, 26. October 2004 is amazing. Certainly useful for me since in a couple of weeks I have to do a Webcast and a training on the business perspectives regarding Microsoft Office smart client and the Information Bridge Framework. The whole story Office smart client and IBF fits nicely within the connected systems wave.

FxCop 1.312 Released!

2004-10-31T13:50:00.000+10:00

FxCop 1.312 Released!

Download

Major features of this release
======================
-Simplification of report xml.
-New Fix Categories: Each message is marked to indicate if the suggested fix will constitute a breaking change for previously shipped code.
-User Interface Improvements: windowing behavior has been made more consistent
-Auto Update: Sign up to get notified when a new version of FxCop is available.

New Rules
========
Design
-Avoid excessive parameters on generic types
-Collections should implement generic interface
-Do not declare static members on generic types
-Do not expose generic lists
-Do not nest generic types in member signatures
-Enums should have zero value
-Generic methods should provide type parameter
-Members should not expose certain concrete types
-Types should not extend certain base types
-Use generic event handler instances
-Use generics where appropriate

Interoperability
-Avoid overloads in ComVisible Interfaces
-Call GetLastError immediately after PInvoke
-Com visible base types should be ComVisible
-Mobility
-Do not use idle process priority
-Do not use times that prevent power state changes
-Naming
-Compound words should be cased correctly
-Do not name enum values ‘Reserve’â
-Resource string compound words should be cased correctly

Performance
-Avoid calls that box value types
-Avoid costly calls where possible
-Avoid unnecessary string creation
-Avoid unused parameters
-Do not cast unnecessarily
-Do not ignore method results
-Do not initialize unnecessarily
-Remove unused locals
-Use literals where appropriate

Portability
-Avoid testing for floating point equality
-PInvoke declarations should be portable
-Security
-Catch non-CLSCompliant exceptions in general handlers
-Review sql queries for security vulnerabilities

Usage
-Call base class methods on ISerializable types
-Do not dispose objects multiple times
-Do not raise reserved exception types
-Implement ISerializable correctly
-Implement serialization methods correctly
-Literals should be spellect correctly
-Mark all non-serializable fields
-Provide deserialization methods for optional fields
-Rethrow to preserve stack details
-Review Boolean assignment evaluations
-Use managed equivalents of win32 api

Migrating Custom Rules
=================
Please see the readme at http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/fxcop/Misc/gotdotnetstyle.aspx?url=1.312_readme.mht for more details on how to migrate custom rules.

This Blog Hosted On: http://www.DotNetJunkies.com/

Ewww - Geek loving

2004-10-29T12:56:00.000+10:00

Every male geeks dream...

You know it's every geeks dream to have some lovely looking woman approach him and admire him. Well it is mine anyway. I've been going to gym now 3 times a week for the last 4-5 months. There are lots of others also on the fitness drive in my area and some very nice looking women. Being a typical male I can't help but “observ”â some of these as they go through their workout routine. So today while I was at gym - I had one of the approach me and say hello. She asked me about the MVP shirt I was wearing - it was one that us SBS MVP's made up for the SBS2003 Launch last year. It turns out that she had a great admiration for MVP's as they had helped her out of a tight spot some time back via the MS Newsgroups. She wanted to chat further, but as soon as I mentioned my wife and kids, she decided she had to leave. :-)

Still if I was a single guy it could have been even more fun. Lucky for me I am very happily married to an absolutely fantastic woman!

Photo Story 3 Available for Download

2004-10-29T12:55:00.000+10:00

Photo Story 3 Available for Download

We released the latest version of Photo Story yesterday, and it is now available for download for Windows XP users. If you're like me, you probably have a hard drive full of digital photos that you'd like to make into an easy-to-download (or e-mail) slide show. Well, this free tool makes that process extremely simple. Here are some of its features:

It's very easy to add motion and transitions to give your slide show that Ken Burns documentary effect.

You can add your own music or have the system automatically generate custom themes based on several music styles (it does a pretty good job at this).

If you have a microphone attached to your computer, you can easily add your own narration.

You can retouch your images by correcting color levels, reducing/eliminating red-eye, rotating, or cropping.

There are about 10 styles that you can apply to make your images look like they were created with watercolor, colored pencil, chalk or charcoal, or any of a few other styles.

This new version can automatically remove any black borders from your image so that it occupies more of the frame (very cool). This is based on work done by Microsoft Research.

You can optionally add your own caption for each picture.

When you're done composing your slide show, you can have Photo Story create a file for use on your computer, a Pocket PC, a Smartphone, a Portable Media Center, or for sending via e-mail.

Channel 9 has an interesting 28 minute interview with members of the product team, including: Vladmir Rovinsky, Lead Program Manager, Mehul Shah, Development Lead, James Yuan, Software Test Engineer, and Dongmei Zhang, Researcher (Developer). Also, Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows has a good review of Photo Story 3 that is worth reading.

SharePoint Developers Road Map:

2004-10-29T10:15:00.000+10:00

SharePoint Developers Road Map:

In order to be an effective SharePoint Developer you need to be skilled in many areas. I would strongly suggest that you start by completing the MCSD.NET Certification. Then I would read all books and documents mentioned below.

1. Learn to code .NET

            A. C# Programmer's Cookbook

            B. Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability

            C. Application Architecture for .NET: Designing Applications and Services

            D. Design and Implementation Guidelines for Web Clients

            E. User Interface Process (UIP) Application Block - Version 2.0

2. Learn to code ASP.NET

            A. Developing ASP.NET Server Controls and Components

            B. Microsoft ASP.NET Coding Strategies with the Microsoft ASP.NET Team

3. Learn to code Web Services –

            A. .NET Web Services Architecture and Implementation

4. Learn CORE Web Technologies

            A. XSLT - XSLT Cookbook

            B. JavaScript & DHTML - JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook

            C. CAML–â

            D. XML - Applied XML Programming for Microsoft .NET

E. XSD - Definitive XML Schema

F. FrontPage 2003 - Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out

5. Learn SQL 2000 and ADO.NET

            A. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Administrator's Pocket Consultant

            B. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Performance Tuning Technical Reference

            C. Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design

            D. SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL

            E. UML for Mere Mortals

            F. C# Developer's Guide to ASP.NET, XML and ADO.NET

            G. ADO.NET Examples and Best Practices for C# Programmers

6. Windows Server Directory Security

            A. Building Secure Microsoft ASP.NET Applications

            B. Improving Web Application Security

            C. Pro .NET Directory Services Programming

            D. The .NET Developer's Guide to Windows Security

7. Learn SharePoint

            A. Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2003 Solutions

            B. Out in Jan 2005 - Advanced SharePoint Services Solutions

            C. Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit

Leon's on Drugs Again - Sometimes you frustrate me, Mrs. Reporting Services.

2004-10-29T09:51:00.000+10:00

Sometimes you frustrate me, Mrs. Reporting Services.

Sometimes you say one thing when you really mean another.

Remember the other day? You said:

"There is an error in the query. Implicit conversion from data type sql_variant to datetime is not allowed. Use the CONVERT function to run this query."

But I pressed the "Edit..." button. The query builder came up and displayed my query. It all looked okay. So I pressed "OK" to close the query builder.

Then you gave me a different message altogether. You changed your story, Mrs Reporting Services.

You said:

"Could not generate a list of fields for the query. Check the query syntax or click refresh fields on the query toolbar. EXECUTE permission denied on object 'queryname', database 'dbname', owner 'dbo'."

Dammit! You tried to trick me, Mrs Reporting Services!

As soon as I granted execute permission to my role for that sproc, you stopped complaining.

Sometimes I wish you'd just tell me the truth right from the start of an argument.

But you're still a very special lady to me, Mrs Reporting Services.

I like your style. I'm sorry I threw that vase at your head.

Andrew Connell's SharePoint Links

2004-10-29T09:30:00.000+10:00

Blog update...

Most people just syndicate blogs... I know I don't spend too much time actually going to someone's blog. Little update on mine. I plan to create a few "link" pages that contain product info, how to articles, downloads, blogs, etc... just your standard link page. I like to think of it as my personal favorites list used between home and work... just out there for you to use as well. I just posted my SharePoint links. Feel free to send me a message if you think I'm missing something. I'll post my MCMS links, blog roll, .NET resources, and my favorite non-work sites on there in the comming weeks. I'll post when there's a new list added... but not again unless there's a huge update or something. All link pages will be accessible via the site header.

» SharePoint Links & References

Search Blogs from the Microsoft Office 2003 "Research Pane"

2004-10-29T09:23:00.000+10:00

Search Blogs from the Microsoft Office 2003 "Research Pane"

Here's an interesting thing.

MyST Technology Partners have built an Office Research Service to access all content from the aggregation of RD blogs.

You add it to your Research Pane, with things like the Dictionary and Encyclopedia.

You can also right click on a word within Word and "Lookup" that word in a list of blogs.

What a great way to remind us that "it's just data."

Way Cool Windows Forms 2.0 Samples

2004-10-29T00:06:00.000+10:00

Way Cool Windows Forms 2.0 Samples

My Windows Forms partner in crime, Mike Weinhardt, pointed out to me this morning that the Windows Forms team has posted their way cool Windows Forms 2.0 samples, including:

Design Mode Dialog - Mike Harsh
This is a sample dialog component that allows any form to go into "design mode" at runtime. This component highlights the new, easy to consume, designer infrastructure APIs in Whidbey and has the same usage pattern as other common dialogs.

Stock Quote Chart Generator - Joe Stegman
This app uses the sample asynchronously polls a web service for stock quotes and charts the results over a customizable time period.

MSN Messenger Clone - Scott Morrison
This is a Windows Forms app that emulates the functionality of MSN Messenger.

Internet Explorer Clone - Joe Stegman
This is a Windows Forms app that looks like Internet Explorer 6 and uses the new WebBrowser control.

Windows Forms RSS Portal - Joe Stegman
This is portal type application that aggregates RSS feeds asynchronously.

Outlook 2003 Clone - Joe Stegman
This is a UI front end that has the look and feel of Microsoft Outlook 2003.

VSTO 2005 Demo Videos

2004-10-28T21:40:00.000+10:00

VSTO 2005 Demo Videos

A bunch of short demo videos from the VSTO 2005 team focussed on common tasks developers need to perform:

Locate and Delete Named Range Controls

Auto-resize of Controls in a Worksheet

Custom User Controls in a Document

Row/Column Order Persistence in DataBound List Objects

Resize Excel Controls

Dev Luv: Transforming Visioâs XML File Format

2004-10-28T09:49:00.000+10:00

Dev Luv: Transforming Visio’s XML File Format

As I mentioned in my last blog on the Visio XML file format, Visio documents can be saved into a native XML Visio file format (.VDX) or Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). The Visio XML file format is not a W3C standard. SVG, which is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML, is a W3C standard and has a strong community of support. (Click here to read up on SVG.)

If yo’âre looking to convert Visio VDX files to a W3C-accepted standard XML file format, you have two options.

1.       Use SVG. As a user, you can save any Visio 2003 file to SVG. As a developer, you can automate the saving of a Visio file to SVG format. You can also take advantage of post-authoring third party tools that can convert a Visio XML file to SVG. I hear that SourceForge has a tool that does this, although I have not tried it myself.

2.       Write an XSLT to transform the Visio VDX file. Y’uâll have to write a transform that maps Visio XML to another schema. There is a sample in the Visio 2002 SDK call“d âXSLT Sa”pleâ that describes how to use XSL Transformations (XSLT) to transform data in a Visio drawing into an HTML-based report (you can do a transform for another XML schema too). The sample consists of an HTML page used to run the XSLT and display the resulting report, the Visio drawing in XML (.vdx) format, the XSLT map that transforms document data, the XSLT map that transforms shape data, and the JScript file containing the functions used in the sample. The sample takes a Visio diagram like this one:

You can set if the report displays document and/or shape properties, and get the following report:

Note this sample illustrates how to do a transform from a VDX file to HTML. To run a report on custom properties within Visio, you can go to the Tools Menu, click Reports, and walk through the wizard.

Iâve heard requests from customers to add the ability to save a Visio document to other XML file formats that are industry-specific, like the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), which is currently in process of being standardized. BPEL is a schema that supports abstract processes as well as the extensive details for executable processes. It deals explicitly with the key elements of a business process, such as control flow and long-running units of work. I th’nk itâs pretty interesting. I also think that other XML schemas out there for industries ranging from biology (Systems Biology Markup Language) to finance (Open Financial Exchange) are interesting. We like standards. If these schemas become standards accepted by the W3C and accepted by the marketplace as the de facto standard, then Visio will certainly look into having the ability to leverage the ones that make sense for our customers, such as standards for business process diagrams.

However,’we donât provide native export support for these schemas in Visio 2003 because they are not universally accepted by the W3C or the marketplace and Visio is not specifically a BPEL or SBML or (insert XML flavor here) authoring tool. Visio gets used to create business process flowcharts, network layouts, org charts and a whole number of other types of diagra’s. Thatâs one of the reasons why the Visio app is so popular. Yes, these diagrams MAY end up in an enterprise system that uses a custom XML format, but that's why we provide the tools to enable a transform to industry-specific XML schemas (through an XML file format of our own and documentation.).

Visio 2003's export to SVG is pretty powerful functionality. SVG is a widely accepted and used XML schema. If you want to publish your Visio diagrams in a W3C standard format, use SVG. If you want to transform your Visio XML file to a specific XML schema like BPEL, you have a couple approaches you can take. You can write an XSLT to transform the Visio XML to BPEL format. Or, you can use SolutionXML to store and extract the shape information from the Visio XML file and add that data to an existing BPEL file or just write a simpler transform on the shape schema (rather than the entire Visio XML file format).

Next blog: How to best store and extract data from a Visio XML file using SolutionXML.

-- Mai-lan

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Yesterday's InfoPath WebCast: MSDN Webcast: Business Logic in InfoPath 2003

2004-10-28T09:22:00.000+10:00

Yesterday's InfoPath WebCast: MSDN Webcast: Business Logic in InfoPath 2003

Hello all,

I want to start by apologizing to all of you who tried to connect to yesterday’s WebCast. We had some network issues that were preventing most people from connecting. However, the WebCast was recorded and is available on-demand via the following URL: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032259112&Culture=en-US

If you were’ât able to view it yesterday, I hope you will take the time to view the recording. The talk was very interesting and informative.

I also hope you will join us next Tuesday, November 2nd for the next presentation in the InfoPath Webcast serie“ âUsing Managed Code and Visual Studio to Build Soluti”nsâ which will be presented by Willson Raj David, a developer on the InfoPath team. I think we have all the kinks worked out so there sho’ldnât be any problems connecting to the Live Meeting. Also, remember that attendees who are not Microsoft employees who view the entire Webcast and fill out a survey at the end will be entered into a drawing for Halo 2. (The contest is open to US residents only. Full contest rules will be posted shortly.)

You can register for next’weekâs talk through the following URL: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032259539&Culture=en-US

Here is more information about the talk:

MSDN Webcast: Using Managed Code and Visual Studio to Build Sol—tionsâLevel 300

Start Time:       Tuesday, November 02, 2004 1:00 PM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)
End Time:        Tuesday, November 02, 2004 2:30 PM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Event Description
Learn where Mi®rosoftÂ® Office I™foPathâ¢ fits into the M®crosoftÂ® Office family. Find out about the Object Model and business logic programmability features in the product as well as the M®crosoftÂ® Visua® StudioÂ® Toolkit and managed code support that is available in InfoPath.

Presenter: Willson Raj David, Software Design Engineer, Microsoft Corp.

Willson Raj David is a developer in the M®crosoftÂ® Office ™nfoPathâ¢ product division and has been with the product team for at least four years. He primarily worked on the Designer controls and other features’ Willsonâs core expertise is Microsoft C++ and COM and he also has extensive knowledge in many Web technologies.

Thank you,
Scott Roberts

Overriding the Search Results Web Part in SPS

2004-10-27T23:03:00.000+10:00

Overriding the Search Results Web Part in SPS

A posting from Nigel on how one can override the search results Web part in SPS to have the results rendered the way you would like it. I have not tried it out, but it looks good.

Part 1: Visioâs XML File Format

2004-10-27T20:27:00.000+10:00

Part 1: Visio’s XML File Format

Visio has a native XML file format for a Visio drawing, a Visio template, and a Visio stencil. We do not have the ability to save a Visio drawing into any other XML schema but our own. If users want Visio diagrams in BPEL or some other business XML format, the user needs to work with a solution provider or their IT department to write an XLST to transform the Visio XML file format to another schema. ’âll blog more about transforms later on this week. First, I wanted to give a little bit of background on the Visio XML file format itself.

You can save any Visio diagram into XML format using File | Save As and open it in an XML editor to read. Once y’uâve loaded a Visio XML document into an XML editor, you will note right away that a) the schema is quite complex and b) the XML file itself is relatively large compared to its VSD format, and c)’itâs a great way to learn about the Visio automation model and/or what comprises a Visio shape.

’hatâs because ’isioâs XML file format is a physical file format. In order to render the Visio drawing properly from XML, Visio needs the document schema to tell the app all the gory details about geometry, layout, and other behaviors for the shape. Consider the following simple flowchart.

If you save out this drawing into a VDX file, you will get a 103 KB XML fil’. (Itâs 44 KB i’ Visioâs binary drawing format.) If you click here, you can take a look at the XML. About 20% of this file is garbage because by default, when you save a Visio file, it saves with the Preview Picture option turned on in Document Properties. Once I go and turn off the Preview option (on the File | Properties dialog, look on the Summary tab and uncheck Save Preview Picture tab), the file size for the document reduces to 107 KB. Click here for the XML without Preview Picture garbage.

The good news is that the Visio XML schema is documented as part of the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. The bad news is that Visio XML can be clumsy for developers to extract specific information, like Shape text or Shape custom properties, from the document.

In Visio 2002 SR1, Visio introduced SolutionXML, which is customer-defined XML that developers can store at the document or cell level and retrieve by a custom (optional) namespace.

Later on this week, I will cover how to use SolutionXML, which is what I would recommend to developers to store custom data that they want to pull out of the Visio XML file format with minimal parsing.

F’r todayâs XML topic, the key takeaways are:

You can save a document, stencil, or template i’to Visioâs XML file format. Visio does not have native support for saving a Visio document into any other XML file format. To convert a Visio XML document to another XML file format, a developer needs to write an XSLT. (to be covered later this week in my blog)
Always turn off Preview Picture when saving to XML file format to reduce the size of your Visio XML file.
If you plan to generate a lot of Visio XML files automatically, you might want to make sure that you have space for it on your file share. The files can get quite large.
Developers should not have to walk the entire schema in a Visio XML file if all you want out of the file is shape-specific d’ta. Thereâs a better alternative called Visio SolutionXML. (to be covered later this week in my blog)

-- Mai-lan

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Multiple virtual web servers on Windows 2000/XP Professional

2004-10-27T19:42:00.000+10:00

Huge licensing violation ... anyway ...

Multiple virtual web servers on Windows 2000/XP Professional

Microsoft Windows professional, whether 2000 or XP only allow us to maintain one web site in our IIS configuration. If you want multiple sites you must install a sever version of windows, or so it seems. Here is a way to use ADSI and WScript Host to Create and Switch virtual servers.

New MSN Search

2004-10-27T09:29:00.000+10:00

New MSN Search

I know, Goggle is the BEST, however it's good to know that there are different alternatives out there, try http://techpreview.search.msn.com/ and give it a chance !!

New Adobe IFilter

2004-10-27T09:24:00.000+10:00

IFilter back too !

The new Adobe PDF Ifilter is out since last week : find it here !

New Team System Stuff - 2004-10-26

2004-10-26T21:20:00.000+10:00

New Team System Stuff - 2004-10-26

Booch & Pierson on Domain Specific-Languages

Grady Booch recently posted a skeptical commentary (Domain-specific Languages) on domain-specific languages. Harry Pierson responds with a post that offers an alternative perspective (By Request: My Response To Booch's Doubts).

OOPSLA

Harry Pierson also blogs about the DSL tutorial Jack Greenfield, Keith Short, Steve Cook and Stuart Kent presented at OOPSLA on Monday (OOPSLA DSL Tutorial). Harry also has a post that sums up the rest of his Monday experience at OOPSLA (OOPSLA Day 0). Tuesday is the first day for invited speakers, including keynotes from Microsoft's Rick Rashid, Ward Cunningham and Herb Sutter. More to come...

Software Roaches

Ishai Ben Aroya has a post (Bugs that hide from debuggers) that explains how some bugs are able to hide from the debugger when it unwittingly prevents the bug from occurring.

Also, be sure to watch these Channel 9 videos (Alex Kipman - Inside a MS Build Bug Triage meeting and Chad Royal - What gets into the bug database?) that shed some light on bug management here at Microsoft.

If you can't wait for a future release of Team System to debug unit tests, you may want to read about a workaround from reidm (How to step through test cases executing with Whidbey's test runner).

Cloak & Dagger

Okay, no dagger, but for those that are familiar with SourceSafe's cloaking feature, Korby Parnell blogs (Team Foundation vs. SourceSafe | Cloaking) about a similar capability in Team Foundation version control that blocks certain folders from recursive gets.

Team System in the News

Sidebar: Release of SQL Server 2005 May Slip Again (Computerworld - 10/25/2004)

IBM, Borland and Microsoft boost developers' ability to collaborate (ComputerWeekly.com - 10/26/2004)

Upcoming Events (New Events)

Want to hear more about Team System? Here are some upcoming events where Visual Studio Team System is on the agenda:

OCT 2004

26 - VBUG Support Meeting [Ipswich, UK]

NOV 2004

01 - Montreal Visual Studio User Group [Montreal, QC]

FEB 2005

07 - VSLive! [San Francisco, CA]

Got an event you'd like me to include here? Contact me. Otherwise, I'll just ditch this feature on 11/2.

New IBF Goodies

2004-10-26T20:55:00.001+10:00

New IBF Goodies

Duplicating Jan's posting of yesterday. It shows how IBF is to grow and get more mature in the next coming months.

Just released on the MSDN Dowload site (get it here); a nice set of tools to help you with IBF development!

WSDL to Metadata tool (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Tools_WSDL1.0.exe)
PReg tool (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Tools_EPReg1.0.exe)
Cache tool (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Tools_Cache1.0.exe)
DSReg tool (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Tools_DSReg1.0.exe)
A set of common components (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Commons1.0.exe)
Goup Policy ADM File (MOIBF1.0_Reskit_Tools_GroupPolicy1.0.exe))
Visio Metadata Explorer (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Tools_VisioMDExplorer1.0.exe))
WSE 2.0 Adapter (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Tools_WSE20Adapter1.0.exe))
Unit Testing Smart Tags Tool (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Tools_SmartTagUnitTest1.0.exe))
Metadata Debugging tool (MOIBF1.0_ResKit_Tools_MDDebugTool1.0.exe))

MS PressPass: Office Live Communications Server 2005 RTM

2004-10-26T20:55:00.000+10:00

MS PressPass: Office Live Communications Server 2005 RTM

Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Microsoft® Office Live Communications Server 2005. Part of the Microsoft Office System, Live Communications Server 2005, available for the first time in both Standard and Enterprise Editions, enables organizations to extend the benefits of enterprise instant messaging and presence awareness to remote business partners, customers, co-workers and suppliers, empowering them to quickly find and communicate with each other and ultimately make better decisions more quickly.

Read the full press release here.

SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

2004-10-26T13:20:00.000+10:00

SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

Cool stuff coming out from MSDN around SQL Server 2005…

Get a sneak peak at what Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 has in store for the future database development. SQL Server 2005 offers a new paradigm for database development that integrates SQL Server and the CLR to provide several major benefits including enhanced programming mode, enhanced safety and security, user defined types and aggregates, and a common development environment, where database development is integrated into the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 development environment.

Learn all about how you can use the same tools for developing and debugging database objects and scripts that you use to write middle-tier or client-tier .NET Framework components and services.

Bonus: Attend a live webcast in this series during the month of January and you will receive a SQL Server 2005 developer resource kit. Additionally, you could qualify for a Microsoft T-shirt or an Xbox System! See official rules for more details.

Register today.

Technical Infopath Webcast - Level 300

2004-10-25T22:25:00.000+10:00

Been looking for some technical InfoPath training?

MSDN Webcast: Business Logic in InfoPath 2003—Level 300

10/26/04
2p-330p

Learn how to create a simple schema validation and custom data validation using pattern-matching and creating script-based validation using the OnValidate event. See how to use formulas to calculate totals and construct an e-mail address. And how to use conditional formatting to call attention to a text box value and use rules to display a message box and to set the value for another field.

.NET Framework 1.1 Master Pages design pattern implementation without using custom controls

2004-10-25T08:24:00.000+10:00

.NET Framework 1.1 Master Pages design pattern implementation without using custom controls
Article shows a very simple but powerfull way to use Master Pages design pattern in .NET without using Custom Controls

Shrinklet now hosted on SourceForge

2004-10-24T21:27:00.000+10:00

Shrinklet now hosted on SourceForge

Have you been wondering why I haven't posted up anything about Shrinklet recently? Of course you were, you were just sitting there on the edge of your seat waiting for more Shrinklet goodness weren't you.

The reason is that I have been waiting to get Shrinklet approved as a SourceForge project. My initial application was rejected because I didn't provide enough detail and I didn't notice the rejection notice so it sat there waiting for clarification.

I am now happy to report that the project page is up and running SourceForge right now and I spent an hour or so migrating the CVS repository over including the historical file versions (minus correct date information).

Feel free to go and check it out. Over the next few days I'll set up the bug tracking and feature request systems the way I want. I will continue update my source code releases on Darren Neimke's Project Distributor - actually - I hope over time I'll be able to move everything over there once they start getting SourceForge like features.

Over the coming weeks I hope to start commiting sources for a 2.0 or 1.1 release (not sure depending on the features that get included), at which point I'll need to branch the repository to do bug fixes on 1.0 versions.

CSS expressions in IE (or, How to make a TBODY scroll)

2004-10-23T22:12:00.000+10:00

CSS expressions in IE (or, How to make a TBODY scroll)

I've heard of CSS expressions before, and the msdn doco on it is pretty skimpy, so i never really knew what they were. They're not talked about that much, so i never found out.

But now i have. All i can say is that this is cool. Expressions in CSS are an IE 5+ only thing. This doesn't worry me, as our target platform that we target our applications at work already stipulates IE 5.5 or greater, and i prefer IE myself anyway. All you freaky firefox, mozilla, opera and safari wierdo scum just have to live without :P (don't flame me, i know you probably don't want it anyway - you've got tabs, what else is there to wish for in a browser? *grin*)

Anyway, we needed to make a TBODY scrollable at work. It's been done before, but normally involves two table tags. My partner-in-code found out about expressions however, and it amazed me at how much power you could have. (have i used that term before? I think it's a good way of referring to the guy i'm currently coding with at work :)

An example is probably best. I wanted this (roughly..this is a simple sample):

Col 1 Col 2 Col 3 Col 4 Col 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5

And to do it, all that you need is this:
<STYLE type="text/css" media="screen">
    #container
    {
        border: solid 1px black;
        width: 50%;
        height: 150px;
        overflow: auto;
    }
    .noScroll
    {
        position:relative;
        top:expression(this.offsetParent.scrollTop); 
        background-color:white;
        font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    }
    TH
    {
        text-align: left;
    }
</STYLE>
<div id="container">
    <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 100%">
        <thead>
            <tr class="noScroll">
                <TH>Col 1</TH><TH>Col 2</TH><TH>Col 3</TH><TH>Col 4</TH><TH>Col 5</TH>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
            <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
        </tbody>
    </TABLE>
</div>
Pretty cool huh? End result: javascript in CSS. Even to the level of having the 'this' object available. Sweet.

A quick item of note: You really need to set the background color on the row you don't want to scroll - if you don't, it stays transparent, and you can see the scrolling text behind the thead. Whoops :)

Of course, now i'm worried about CSS based virus's. Perhaps *.css needs to be marked as an unsafe attachment in Outlook :)

This Blog Hosted On: http://www.DotNetJunkies.com/

Col 1	Col 2	Col 3	Col 4	Col 5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5

SQL Server Keyboard Shortcuts

2004-10-23T22:02:00.000+10:00

SQL Server Keyboard Shortcuts

Darshan over at YukonXML posted this about SQL Server keyboard shortcuts. Cool!

URL rewriting - how do YOU do it?

2004-10-23T21:59:00.000+10:00

URL rewriting - how do YOU do it?

I am writing an article for aspalliance about making asp.net sites search engine friendly. This obviously brings me to the subject of URLs.

Regardless of if you believe there is any benefit to a search engine ranking doing this I think it is a lot kinder on your users to have static looking URLs. Which would you rather see?

http://www.somesite.com/?pageId=7627&catId=2367&site=Foo&caption=Elephant+Butt

or

http://www.somesite.com/photography/wildlife/elephant.aspx

?

So which is the right approach to acheive this?

Up until now I have done the HTTP module thing. Then I happened accross James Shaws new blog where he discusses this subject

http://www.coveryourasp.net/URLrewritingornot

He mentions using 404 handlers. I thought "that sounds easier, but won't it return a 404?". Well, James assures me it doesn't and he has tested the headers it returns too. That's good enough for me :O)

TestDriven.NET RC2: Keyboard Mapping

2004-10-23T21:55:00.000+10:00

TestDriven.NET RC2: Keyboard Mapping

Peter Provost - If the focus is on the Output window, and you use a hotkey to launch the addin, you get an output message that says, "Unknown window vsWindowTypeOutput". It sure would be nice if it could find the topmost open editor and use the first test class in there.

In this latest release I have imporved the way TestDriven.NET chooses a set of tests the execute. If the code editor window is selected, the test(s) to execute will be determined by the position of the caret. All test(s) in a method, class or namespace can be executed this way. If any other window is selected, the active item will determine the test(s) to run. The active item is the project or project item most recently selected (these items are shown in solution explorer with grey backgrounds). This is basically as Peter suggested.

You can now right click on project items in solution explorer and select run tests(s). This is a quick way to execute tests without opening the source document. The type at the top of the document will be executed as a test fixture. Classes with a 'Main' method rather than a [TestFixture] attribute will be executed as an ad-hoc test.

The TestDriven.NET command names have also changed. They now all start with 'TestDriven.NET.' followed by the short command name. Here are the commands that are most likely to be of interest.

Client - Build and execute test(s) in a cached external process (this is the default 'Run Test(s)' test runner).
Solution - Build and execute all tests in the current solution.
Restart - Restart the last executed test(s).
Debugger - Build and execute test(s) in the debugger.
DebugString - Build and execute test(s) showing all OutputDebugStrings (including in spawned app domains and processes).
DllLoad - Build and execute test(s) showing all Dlls as they load.
CreateProcess - Build and execute test(s) showing all spawned process and command lines.
DTE - Build and execute test(s) in the Visual Studio process (the extensibility object is accessible using (DTE)AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetData("DTE")).
Abort - Abort the current test run.
NUnit_GUI - Build and load tests using the NUnit GUI (in an external process).

You will find these fixes in TestDriven.NET RC2

Visual Studio Team System 2005 Video

2004-10-23T21:54:00.000+10:00

Visual Studio Team System 2005 Video

If you want to get a good overview of what's in Team Studio 2005, without installing the Beta and spending a significant amount of time playing with it, then a good start is to take a look at the TechEd 2004 General Session Demo video, which is available from here:

http://www.shrinkster.com/1j7

SQL Server 2005 Delayed

2004-10-23T21:46:00.000+10:00

SQL Server 2005 Delayed
Microsoft has decided to delay the release of SQL Server 2005 from the first half of 2005 until later in the summer of that year. A Community Technical Preview will be released as an interim beta with possibly more to come before the final beta and the product’s eventual release. [More...]

Visual Studio 2005 may become Visual Studio 2006 - that sucks!

2004-10-23T21:45:00.000+10:00

Visual Studio 2005 may become Visual Studio 2006 - that sucks!
Just read here, of course this is pure speculation right now but it would seem likely that if this is true (Sql Server 2005 is being delayed until Q3 2005 or so...) the Visual Studio 2005 will also be delayed by at least that much. This would be a terrible move - especially as MS are already encouraging people to move to using the 2005 products early and devoting entire editions of MSDN magazine to the product (which doesn't even have a go-live license yet!). The latest betas of VS 2005 seem pretty stable and ASP.NET 2.0 appears to be pretty feature complete (especially as many of the cooler features have recently been ditched) , for many developers the SQL Server and VS releases do not need to be linked at all - it'd suck if you couldn't use the new cool CLR in DB features but it's not a killer.
In short, please Microsoft just get on and release VS 2005 as soon as it's ready - you'll get a lot of happy developers that way!

WebDAVlayer

2004-10-23T21:38:00.000+10:00

Mistaya and WebDAVlayer

I was investigating access to the root folder of Exchange mailboxes yesterday and came across am Exchange-oriented WebDAV explorer called Mistaya and a .NET WebDAV API called WebDAVlayer, by Henning Krause. These may be of use for anyone doing work with the WebDAV functionality of Exchange.

It looks like you cannot access the root folder via WebDAV, only the "Top of Information Store folder" sub-folder which corresponds to the top level of the view you see in Outlook, the folder containing Inbox. I'm working on an application which stores information in an item in the root folder and given all the trouble we have had with MAPI - threads hanging if objects are released when the Exchange server goes offline, very long calls at random intervals which can't be timed out, etc - I was interested to see if we could use WebDAV instead. The big advantage of WebDAV is that we would have complete control of the client-side code, instead of relying on the code in MAPI32.dll. This would make it easy to implement timeouts on calls. Ignoring the lack of root folder access for the time being, the next step will be to compare the performance of the two protocols.

PR professionals: Wake up to the blogosphere!

2004-10-23T20:24:00.000+10:00

PR professionals: Wake up to the blogosphere!

Steve Rubel has pointed to a 4 part "State of the Blogoshpere" report by David Sifry of Technorati.

Sifry graphically illustrates the spikes in posts and their relation to news events and highlights how a piece of news generated by bloggers often pre-empts the breaking of the story by the commercial news networks.

"The blogosphere was abuzz around the discovery of a flaw in the basic mechanism of high-end Kryptonite locks, which made them vulnerable to picking with a dime-store plastic pen, and that news flew around the blogosphere for 5 days before mainstream media picked it up, which caused a second spike, as shown by a secondary spike in posting volume, as bloggers discussed the implications."

The implications for PR professionals are clear: they need to track blogging activity in order to be effective:

"A side note: I wonder how much Kryptonite could have done if their executives were keeping track of the blogosphere on a regular basis - it certainly could have helped to avert a major PR problem if they had reacted quickly and offered a recall or a fix before the news had broken in mainstream media."

The full report:

Part 1: State of the Blogoshpere

Part 2: 4.6 posts per second

Part 3: Big Media vs Blogs

Part 4: Corporate Bloggers

Its that time again: MVP Nominations - BizTalk

2004-10-23T16:18:00.000+10:00

Its that time again: MVP Nominations

The Business Process and Integration Division is looking for industry leading experts in BizTalk Server, Commerce Server and Host Integration Server. We are looking for individuals to nominate as candidates for the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program.

The Microsoft MVP Program is a worldwide award and recognition program that strives to identify amazing individuals in technical communities around the globe who share a passion for technology and the spirit of community. Microsoft MVPs are recognized for both their demonstrated practical expertise and willingness to share their experience with peers in Microsoft technical communities. Please see http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ for additional information about the program.

The nomination process has started for this quarter and will close on November 15, 2004. Please send your nominations us immediately. We ask that you provide the following information:

First, Last Name

Email address

Country

Area of expertise (BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, Host Integration Server)

Newsgroup that candidate participates in on a regular basis

Length of participation in newsgroup or other areas

Your comments describing why your candidate should be consider for membership in the MVP program.

Sample post to activities in newsgroups or links to other community activities

Please contact your local Microsoft representative and request that they nominate your candidate. You can alternative send your nomination directly to one of the community team members as follows:

James Fort: mailto:jfort@microsoft.com

Alex Shogren: alexsh@microsoft.com

Eamon O’Reilly: mailto:eamono@microsoft.com

Please send your nomination prior to November 15, 2004.

VSTO 2005 Videos

2004-10-23T16:06:00.000+10:00

VSTO 2005 Videos
Eric Carter points us to new videos demonstrating the new VSTO features in 2005. Cool Eric!

Are web services too slow?

2004-10-22T22:44:00.000+10:00

Are web services too slow?

I spend a lot of my time with professional developers building systems on .NET, discussing various architectural and design issues. One of my focuses as the moment is web services, and one of the topics that comes up on a fairly regular basis, when discussing web services, is the issue of speed.

Typically the question is couched in terms of “web services sound quite interesting, but they seem like they will be a bit slow, and speed is important to u”â. Some people will then go on to tell you they have written their own special application protocol, to get the most speed out of their application.

So, are web services too slow? The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer? Read …nâ¦.

So why do people think web services might be too slow. A lot of it seems to stem from the use of all those angle bracke–s â there seems to be some aversion to t–em â that and“the âv”rboseâ text that is the typical serialisation of an XML Infoset on to the wire. It is this very op–nness â as opposed to the opacity of say a DCOM ORPC wire level packet - that gives web services it great interoperability.

I think it was Pat Helland who likened XML to the cardboard packaging that we are all familiar with when we get good delivered - yes, it may be a little bulky and bigger than the item it is transporting, but its role is to help ensure that the package gets delivered to the right place safely. By and large, most of us are happy with that set up. Well, those angle brackets serve the same purpose for your application payload in a web service call.

However, text and angled brackets is not the only format for serialising an XML –nfoset â Indigo supports an optimised binary format that Don Box mentions in his Why Indigo? : The Five Minute Challenge blog. â[We] don't use angle brackets unless we are forced to, and when forced to, we do it happily and pretty”damn fastâ.

Another aspect to the web services speed issue is the assumption developers have that web services are bound to be the bottleneck. Why? Any sort of network call means latency, but are web services the bottleneck here? Not really. Yes, there is obviously a cost associated with the serialisation/de-serialisation, and the latency when the packet is on the wire, but how does that manifest itsel– to users â the perceived latency in the way the application handles the network calls versus the actual latency? A well designed application and judicious use of threads / asynchronous web service calls can help enormously, whatever you put on the wire.

There is also the issue of the application level protocol, and whether it is too chatty. This is a tougher one, but if you had a chatty interface that makes lots of calls, then you are going to be susceptible to speed issues irrespective of the protocol you use.

Architects and systems designers that go through this process of investigation do usually come to the conclusion that all the benefits afforded by w–b services â openness, cross industry support, interoperability, developer tool supp–rt, etc etc â more than make up for any issues (real or perceived) around speed.

In my next blog I will tackle the issue of moving large amounts of data using–web services â an area where some advice and guidance is often needed, and a blog topic in its own right.

Integrating BizTalk Human Workflow Services with InfoPath 2003

2004-10-22T21:30:00.000+10:00

Integrating BizTalk Human Workflow Services with InfoPath 2003

Take advantage of features in InfoPath 2003 SP1 to integrate Human Workflow Services (HWS) functionality (part of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004) with your InfoPath forms and create workflow solutions.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/odc_ip2003_ta/html/Office_InfoPath_integrating_HWS.asp

Beta Program for FileNet Content Services Launches

2004-10-22T21:29:00.000+10:00

Beta Program for FileNet Content Services Launches

Be the first to preview the Vorsite Protocol Handler for FileNet Content Services. Vorsite has developed a search protocol handler for Microsoft SharePoint Portal server to index content stored within a FileNet Content Server. This will enable Microsoft SharePoint users to search and retrieve their FileNet stored data directly from SharePoint.

Technical Guidance for Connecting MicrosoftÂ® Office SharePointÂ® Portal Server 2003 to SAP R/3

2004-10-22T21:18:00.000+10:00

Technical Guidance for Connecting Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to SAP R/3

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4a581c05-4a3f-4daf-b96d-804b83f34868
Technical Guidance for Connecting Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to SAP R/3 demonstrates how organizations can make the business information they store and manage in SAP applications available to users in an intranet portal site displayed in a Web browser.

How to pickup and move your G5

2004-10-22T20:56:00.000+10:00

Friday afternoon fun

One of my colleagues found this very useful Apple knowledge base article.

"How to pick up and carry your iMac G5" (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86816)

I pray that this it is a joke.

.NET Compact Framework 2.0 in 4 minutes

2004-10-22T14:31:00.000+10:00

.NET Compact Framework 2.0 in 4 minutes

This a bit unfair. Craig Neable was asked to sit down in front of a camera and talk extemporaneously about his favorite things about .NET Compact Framework 2.0 for an internal training video. Now I'm posting that video publicly just because I liked listening to it and thought you might too. It's only fair, since I did the same to Thomas Lewis yesterday ;)

What is a support incident?

2004-10-22T14:30:00.000+10:00

What is a support incident?

I believe there is no better way to start talking about support than starting by the beginning: the support incident. We can find many definitions in the vast literature about the subject, and I believe there is common sense about it. Generally speaking we can define an incident as an indivisible event that causes a malfunction - or is the effect of a malfunction - in a product; in our case, a Microsoft product. For a support engineer that will help a customer to address the problem that is causing the malfunction, the incident starts when he or she receives a notification from the customer; for the customer, the incident starts earlier - and sometimes a lot earlier. Sometimes the customer will call in the Microsoft support center after his or her customer - or the end user - has called in and reported that something was not working properly. There is therefore a gap between the time when the event happened and the time our support is called to help the customer; I will return to this in future postings.

After the support incident is reported to an engineer, this person will help to resolve it: the resolution is always a joint effort where the customer's team and our support team in CSS will work together to resolve the problem. In some situations, the engineer will provide a comprehensive action plan that will solve the problen; in others, the troubleshooting steps and documents sent to the customer will help him or her to build the action plan that will resolve the problem.

In the lifecycle of a support incident, we can enumerate 3 phases: scoping, troubleshooting and implementation. In the scoping phase, the engineer and the customer must start working by agreeing on a definition about what needs to be fixed: what is the objective to be pursued and what resolution will look like. The troubleshooting phase will allow the engineer to define what data needs to be collected to serve as evidence of the root cause of the problem; then a hypotesis will be elaborated in order to address the cause of the problem. The data collection will rely in many tools like event logs, network traces, performance logs, memory dumps, and sometimes private instrumented binary code that will allow specific data collection. The implementation phase should happen only after the troubleshooting has successfully identified the solution or workaround that will allow the objective to be fullfilled. Unfortunately due to possible limitations the solution may not always be reached.

In future posts I will try and elaborate more in this subject by detailing each of these steps.

Saludos!

Deo Melgaco

MCMS: Template switching at runtime

2004-10-22T13:47:00.000+10:00

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.cmserver.general/browse_thread/thread/15f8993510ab62f5/982026bc27902b3c#982026bc27902b3c

Ever needed a "NoDataTemplate" for a repeater?

2004-10-22T13:34:00.000+10:00

Ever needed a "NoDataTemplate" for a repeater?
I have... and Alex has a great solution:
» Extended asp:Repeater (NoDataTemplate)

SQL 2005 Beta 2 Technical Preview Week

2004-10-22T13:33:00.001+10:00

SQL 2005 Beta 2 Technical Preview Week

Katie Bar the Door! There's a whole slew of SQL 2005 webcasts come'n down the information superhighway in the form of SQL 2005 Beta 2 Technical Preview Week, - December 6-10, 2004

Overview of the new Developer features in SQL Server 2005—Level 200
Monday, December 06, 2004
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PT
Register here

Introducing the New SQL Server Management Studi—âLevel 100
Monday, December 06, 2004
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PT
Register here

SQL Server 2005 as a .NET Runtime Ho—tâLevel 100
Monday, December 06, 2004
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM PT
Register here

Introducing XML in SQL Server 2—05âLevel 200
Monday, December 07, 2004
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PT
Register here

Introducing ADO.NET 2.0 for SQL Server —005âLevel 200
Monday, December 07, 2004
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PT
Register here

T-SQL Enhancements in SQL Server—2005âLevel 200
Monday, December 07, 2004
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM PT
Register here

The New Security Model in SQL Serve— 2005âLevel 200
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PT
Register here

Introducing Web Services in SQL Serv—r 2005âLevel 200
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PT
Register here

Introducing Service Broker in SQL Ser—er 2005âLevel 200
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM PT
Register here

Introducing Reporting Services for SQL Se—ver 2005âLevel 200
Thursday, December 09, 2004
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PT
Register here

Introducing SQL Server Integration Services for SQL S—rver 2005âLevel 200
Thursday, December 09, 2004
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PT
Register here

Introducing SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services for—DevelopersâLevel 200
Thursday, December 09, 2004
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM PT
Register here

Introducing Full-Text Search in SQL—Server 2005âLevel 200
Friday, December 10, 2004
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PT
Register here

Introducing Replication in SQ— Server 2005âLevel 200
Friday, December 10, 2004
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PT
Register here

Introducing Notification Services in S—L Server 2005âLevel 200
Friday, December 10, 2004
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM PT
Register here

See you there!

This Blog Hosted On: http://www.SqlJunkies.com/

use SharePoint's web services to access list data using FrontPage

2004-10-22T13:33:00.000+10:00

use SharePoint's web services to access list data using FrontPage

Windows SharePoint Services ships with some really powerful web services that allow users to access list and site information not available through other means. FrontPage 2003 allows users to access these web services in a very straight forward manner, populating all of the query fields dynamically so that little or no knowledge of SOAP is required.

This example here describes how to use the Data View Web Part to access the lists.asmx web service to display the Attachments on list items in wss. In order to make this as easy to describe as possible, I will use the Announcements list.

So, to start, I browse to the announcements list on my server: http://myserver/subsite/lists/announcements/forms/allitems.aspx and add a new announcement. The title is 'foo' and I click to add an attachment which is called attachment.htm. By default, I now how two announcements in my list, on with title "Welcome to Windows SharePoint Services..." and one with title "foo." I open this site in FrontPage 2003 and create a new blank page on which to work.

Data..Insert Data View

In the Data Source Catalog, Right click Announcements > Show Data

In the Data View Details taskpane, select the Title and the Body and click "Insert Data View" (this should create a data view web part on your blank page displaying the Title and Body for the two announcements)

Data..Insert Data View

Expand the "XML Web Services" section of the Catalog

Click "Add to Catalog"

In the "Service Description Location" type: http://myserver/subsite/_vti_bin/lists.asmx

Click "Connect now"

Under "Operation" change to the "GetAttachmentCollection" method

Double click "listName" and set the value to "Announcements"..OK

Double click "listItemID" and set the value to '2' (without the quotes - this is the ID of the item that has the attachment from above, if you set this value to 1, step 14 will not work), check the box that "The value of this parameter can be set at runtime"..OK

Click OK to the Data Source Properties dialog

Right click this new data source in the Data Source Catalog > Show Data

You should see the path to your attachment load in the Data View Details tree

Place your cursor under the DVWP you inserted in step 3

Select the "Attachment" data value in the DVD tree and click "Insert Data View" (you should now have two data views on your page, one of the titles and body and one of the attachments)

Right click the Data Value to the Attachment and Format Items As > Hyperlink

Right click the first data view > Web Part Connections

Use the Connections wizard to create a connection which will pass the ID value from the first data view to the second

PROVIDE DATA VALUES TO > NEXT

CONNECT TO A WEB PART ON THIS PAGE > NEXT

TARGET WEB PART: Lists on Subsite; TARGET ACTION: Modify web part using Parameters from > NEXT

COLUMNS IN ANNOUNCEMENTS: ID; INPUTS TO LISTS: listItemID >NEXT (if you don't have listItemID, you forgot to check the box in step 11)

CREATE A HYPERLINK ON TITLE and INDICATE CURRENT SELECTION USING: ID > NEXT

FINISH

Save the Page and Preview in the Browser

Click on "Foo" and you will see the Link to its attachment. Click the link and see the Attachment load in your browser.

I hope that this introduction to web services in SharePoint and FrontPage inspires you to check out all the other methods. Let us know what problems you've solved by using these web services!

Thanks!

Use SharePoint's web services to access list data using FrontPage

2004-10-22T13:31:00.001+10:00

Use SharePoint's web services to access list data using FrontPage
Example from FrontPoint describes how to use the Data View Web Part to access the lists.asmx web service to display the Attachments on list items in Windows SharePoint Services.

How to Customize Your Search Using SharePoint Portal Server 2003

2004-10-22T13:31:00.000+10:00

How to Customize Your Search Using SharePoint Portal Server 2003
MSDN Article - How to Customize Your Search Using SharePoint Portal Server 2003 - Patrick Tisseghem.

Explore three ways to incorporate Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server Search (service) into custom Web pages, SharePoint Web Parts, Microsoft Windows applications, and other smart-client front-end applications such as those in the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions.

Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework 1.0 Planning and Architecture Guide

2004-10-21T16:15:00.000+10:00

Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework 1.0 Planning and Architecture Guide

The Microsoft® Office Information Bridge Framework connects Microsoft Office applications with compatible Web services or common language runtime (CLR) services that are written for line-of-business (LOB) services, such as accounting, supply chain management, and resource planning applications. With this system, users can interact with LOB services directly from content that is hosted by Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003.

I did not know that the full IBF planning and architecture guide is available online here (tx dotnetfindserv).

ASP.NET 2.0 in 10 minutes

2004-10-21T09:19:00.000+10:00

ASP.NET 2.0 in 10 minutes

Watch Thomas Lewis, Technical Evangelist for ASP.NET 2.0, give you his top-of-mind perspective on salient features of ASP.NET 2.0 in this 10 minute video.

Generating Outlook vCalendar files (.vcs) to download in ASP.NET

2004-10-21T09:16:00.000+10:00

Generating Outlook vCalendar files (.vcs) to download in ASP.NET
VB.NET code for webpage to ask to download Outlook calendar item

MCMS Licensing Tidbit - will continue to be licensed pre-processor and not pre-core

2004-10-21T09:01:00.000+10:00

Multi-core chip licensing plans
Good news for MCMS customers. Microsoft announced yesterday that our server software that is currently licensed on a per-processor model will continue to be licensed on a per-processor, and not on a per-core, model. This policy will allow customers to recognize more performance and power from Microsoft software on a multi-core processor system without incurring additional software licensing fees.

This is in contrast with certain competitors who are currently indicating that they plan to license "Per Core".

Dual-core processors will be introduced into the market by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel Corp. in 2005, with expectations that this technology will become mainstream in 2006. A processor containing multiple cores, leveraging its ability to execute multiple tasks, will offer a higher level of computing power and functionality than the current generation single-core processor.

More info.

Announcing: Will Code for Device! - Competition - US Only

2004-10-20T22:55:00.000+10:00

Announcing: Will Code for Device!

Want a Mobile Device?

Mobile applications are quickly becoming an essential component of application development. One of the things that many people don’t realize is that any .NET developer is already a mobile developer! We are taking the Mobile Message across the county with the .NET To Go Mobility Roadshow. This Roadshow is showcasing and teaching developers everywhere how today, they can develop Compact Framework applications using the power of Visual Studio .NET 2003. The feedback has been tremendous! The problem is that we need to see some code and are willing to trade you a brand spanking new Windows Mobile device for it!

Show Me the Code!!!

Her’âs how the contest works:

All contest entries must be received by midnight November 25, 2004.

We are looking for any and all interesting sample applications that target the Compact Framework using Visual Studio .NET 2003.

You must live in the United States. (Sorry but it has to be!)

Extra points are given for creativity and usefulness. The application must do something interesting, unique, and creative. (I definitely d’nât want to see a“y âHello W”rldâ applications). The more creative and interesting the better your application will score.

Applications must be fully functional and can be games, business productivity solutions, recipe prog–ams â the only limit is your imagination! Remember creativity counts!

You must provide all source code (Absolutely no commercial applications).

All sample applications must run within any of the available Visual Studio .NET 2003 emulators. The key is that y’u donât need a device to enter the contest!

Use the emulator to get the device!

What can – g’t? â Itâs simple:

A Windows Powered Mobile Device!

All entries received will be posted as samples to help others and spread the word of the power of the Compact Framework! Whether you win a device or not I post all sample code and applications.

My mother always taught me that sharing is caring!

How d– I’win? â Itâs simple:

We will review and score all entries using a combination of how the application exploits features of the Compact Framework and how interesting and useful is the application. Remember - Creativity and the usefulness of your application is the key to winning a device. All applications will be ranked using these two points and validated using Visual Studio .NET 2003.

Once we complete the judging the top 5% of all submitted applications will receive either a Smart Phone, Pocket PC or some other fantastic shiny new Windows Powered Mobile Device.

Yes you read that right! The more applications we receive the more devices we give out. According to my math if I receive 3000 samples that means we give out 150 new shiny Windows Mobile devices!

Do you want a Device? Then show me the code!!!

How do you submit you application?

Submit your application by sending an email that contains the following items.

Name, Phone Number, and email address

A screen shot of your application running within the emulator. Creativity and usefulness are given the highest grading weight so make sure your screen shot shows the most interesting feature of your application.

Maximum of a 250 word description of your application.

Attach all code in a compressed file. Make sure that you include all source code so that we can run it.

Sorry but any incomplete contest entry will not be considered.

Help me to spread the word and give away more devices! Tell your family, friends, loved ones and others and get them to write me some code! Every speaker on the tour is waiting to see what you are writing. If you are attending the Mobility Roadshow make sure to bring your application and show it off!

Show me the code and you could get a Windows Mobile device!

Post-beta1 community tech previews of Visual Studio 2005 express editions now available!

2004-10-20T22:13:00.000+10:00

Post-beta1 community tech previews of Visual Studio 2005 express editions now available!

Thanks to Aaron Stebner for pointing out the specific links to the latest builds of these amazing products:

Visual Basic:http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/a/21a4b949-758c-4ff2-8381-1acb2a943bf9/vbsetup.exe

Visual C++:http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/9/6/996fe06a-08fb-459b-a7c4-35640b4f7bf3/vcsetup.exe

Visual C#:http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/5/e/a5efa6aa-b73c-4fa7-89b7-4a5fcd60f2a8/vcssetup.exe

Visual J#:http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/d/6/dd6aa2e5-20ae-4cd1-85ec-52e5ee78dfd4/vjssetup.exe

Visual Web Developer:http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/6/b/96bc21d5-6a5e-4cc8-ac22-272d98f96a64/vwdsetup.exe

One important note here- if you have any Visual Studio 2005 beta1 products installed, you will need to uninstall them before you install this community tech preview. Setup will not block you, but it will fail if you don't uninstall VS 2005 beta1 first (including all pieces of VS - the .NET Framework, MSDN, SQL Express, etc).

Also, since this is a community tech preview and not a full-fledged beta, there are some known issues that were not fixed in time for this release. You can find that list at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/readme/cptreadme1004/default.aspx

Speculation on Google Browser and Google IM

2004-10-20T22:12:00.001+10:00

Speculation on Google Browser and Google IM

Avalokna links to two articles discussing Google's plan for IM and Google Browser.

Tejas Patel

.NET Rocks - The Whidbey Show

2004-10-20T22:12:00.000+10:00

.NET Rocks - The Whidbey Show

New .NET Rocks show on Whidbey is available as an MSDN.

Want me to find your blog resume without the trouble of having to send it to me?

2004-10-20T11:14:00.000+10:00

Want me to find your blog resume without the trouble of having to send it to me?
Link from your blog resume to this post and I'll check out your resume by reviewing my referrals. Pretty stealth, huh? Nobody needs to know except the 2 of us ; )

BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA Enterprise 3.0 (English)

2004-10-20T09:53:00.000+10:00

BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA Enterprise 3.0 (English)
BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA Enterprise 3.0 (English) was posted to MSDN Subscriber Downloads on October 14, 2004

Located in: Servers | BizTalk Server | BizTalk Accelerators and Adapters.

This is available in the following subscription levels:

- MSDN Universal
- MSDN Academic Alliance
- Microsoft Certified Partner

Integrating BizTalk Human Workflow Services with InfoPath 2003

2004-10-20T09:52:00.000+10:00

Integrating BizTalk Human Workflow Services with InfoPath 2003
Take advantage of features in InfoPath 2003 SP1 to integrate Human Workflow Services (HWS) functionality (part of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004) with your InfoPath forms and create workflow solutions.

Col 1	Col 2	Col 3	Col 4	Col 5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5

Col 1	Col 2	Col 3	Col 4	Col 5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5

Angus Logan's Link Blog

100K project problems

InfoPath - Hands on Lab Manuals - Posted

Checklist for Testing SharePoint Web Parts

Good Point...

more presentation tips

Integration of Project Server 2003 & WSS with IBF

Live Communications Server 2005 Documents Available for Download

Guy Worth Hiring

K-Wise Deployer

MCMS Rapid ... update

My Microsoft Interview

The perfect CV?

Windows Installer 3.0 Redistributable Live

IBF Samples

SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

Amazing Pet Shop Boys fan site

Free Windows XP Service Pack 2 E-Learning Clinics

My Media Center PC

Anger Management for Outlook 2003 ...

A (speculative) look inside Google

Edit Posting Properties in Authoring Mode

Toss the TiVo for Media Center '05?

Need A Time Zone Converter?

Solution to allow property editing when being in authoring mode

ASP.NET Starter Kits laboration.

Look who's blogging - The Recruitment Team at Microsoft Australia

New SQL Server 2000 Labs to download

SharePoint Explorer... a great free tool!

WSS Features

SPS Features

Microsoft's TechNet Magazine (online version)

New version of lookout

Creating a Tabbed Interface for your WSS site

Changing SPS Search Results

SQL Server 2005 Integration Services - A Look At What's Coming

SPS Research Master from Content Master

CMDocSafe from Content Master

PSS Troubleshooting Labs from SQL PASS

iPod costume relies on Tablet PC

How British are you?

Trond's Blog: Sharepoint trick: How to expose user info from AD in sharepoint

An Analysis of Skype VoIP Application For Use in a Corporate Environment

Bluetooth a Mile Away

Connected Systems

FxCop 1.312 Released!

Ewww - Geek loving

Photo Story 3 Available for Download

SharePoint Developers Road Map:

Leon's on Drugs Again - Sometimes you frustrate me, Mrs. Reporting Services.

Andrew Connell's SharePoint Links

Search Blogs from the Microsoft Office 2003 "Research Pane"

Way Cool Windows Forms 2.0 Samples

VSTO 2005 Demo Videos

Dev Luv: Transforming Visioâs XML File Format

Yesterday's InfoPath WebCast: MSDN Webcast: Business Logic in InfoPath 2003

Overriding the Search Results Web Part in SPS

Part 1: Visioâs XML File Format

Multiple virtual web servers on Windows 2000/XP Professional

New MSN Search

New Adobe IFilter

New Team System Stuff - 2004-10-26

New IBF Goodies

MS PressPass: Office Live Communications Server 2005 RTM

SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

Technical Infopath Webcast - Level 300

.NET Framework 1.1 Master Pages design pattern implementation without using custom controls

Shrinklet now hosted on SourceForge

CSS expressions in IE (or, How to make a TBODY scroll)

SQL Server Keyboard Shortcuts

URL rewriting - how do YOU do it?

TestDriven.NET RC2: Keyboard Mapping

Visual Studio Team System 2005 Video

SQL Server 2005 Delayed

Visual Studio 2005 may become Visual Studio 2006 - that sucks!

WebDAVlayer

PR professionals: Wake up to the blogosphere!

Its that time again: MVP Nominations - BizTalk

VSTO 2005 Videos

Are web services too slow?

Dev Luv: Transforming Visioâs XML File Format

Part 1: Visioâs XML File Format

Col 1	Col 2	Col 3	Col 4	Col 5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5
1	2	3	4	5