The Analytical Software/Web/IT Architect Corner

My blog has moved

2010-05-02T10:16:00.002-04:00

I forgot to do this. But I moved my blog a while ago because I wanted to manage it on my server and give it a better url. It is under my company site now Resolute Innovations @ http://resoluteinnovations.com/klj_blog/

Bing - Will bring Microsoft NO BLING

2009-06-03T18:42:00.002-04:00

Sorry Microsoft but you are way too late to the search party. Microsoft just does not get it. Google owns the search arena! Stop embarrassing yourself with trying to compete. It makes no sense! What makes them think that people will start rushing to use Bing now? All they did was change the skin of the search results page and added little fancy preview link on the side. They could have just upgraded Live Search, which essential is what they did besides change the name.

Google emergence to dominance

Let me be perfectly clear. I'm not a fan of Google. I think everything it makes is worth less than a dollar. Some people claim they are innovative, ok I give you that in regards to the amount of information they have made available online like books and other things. But Google came into the market when search engines were slow. Google's claim to fame was that it search engine returned results fast, which it still does. Now think back for a second when you were in college and you had to do a research paper and all you had was a 56K modem connected to the internet through AOL. AOL's search was really slow which just hooked into an old search firm named Alta Vista I believe. So this made Google a God sent! I can search fast even with a 56k modem! Wow! So then this small little search engine made its way up the technology industry mountain until it made it where it now sits on top looking down at Yahoo and further down the mountain at Microsoft.

Microsoft-Yahoo?

Even if Microsoft & Yahoo merged they will only make up something like 15% of search requests. Yahoo I believe needs to focus on getting away from the search business. Yahoo has so many other businesses it can improve on that it really does not need its search business to survive. The same for Microsoft. Why they both want to continue to play in this game is crazy.

The reason I use Google Search

The reason I use Google is because its fast and it returns results that other search engines do not return. Also for the rare times I'm searching for images or an answer to atechnical question I can search their groups and images section. And when I was in graduate school I used extensively their Google Scholarly section which Yahoo and Microsoft do not have! Also Google search books so that is an added benefit! I could care less how pretty a search results page looks and I know I'm not alone. The worst looking site on the internet, Craiglist.com, get millions of vistors a week!

Conclusion

Message To Microsoft: Microsoft concentrate on the core of your business and leave the search to Google. Bing will bring you NO BLING!

Until next time...

IE Market Share Holding Steady - I'm surprised

2009-03-18T15:40:00.004-04:00

The Article http://rcpmag.com/blogs/weblog.aspx?blog=3609

Yes I'm surprised that IE Market Share Is Holding Steady. I would have thought Chrome would steal some.

Here is why.

Can you say Gooooooooooooogle?

I would have thought you would have a majority of Firefox users going over to it.
Then I would have thought some frustrated IE users would go over to it. There is a Adobe Flash update issue with IE 7 on Vista

Now with IE 8 coming I think you definitely will have frustrated IE users coming over. IE 8 is the worst version in my opinion. Mind you, I have only played with the beta. Microsoft has admitted it is slower.

Google in my opinion did not market their browser effectively. How many people even know about Chrome. Google does a horrible job marketing anything they do. Even their phone.

But Chrome is a good browser. It needs to compete with Firefox and go after the developer community and come out with its version of Firebug.

Until next time...

What I learned from my first recession - Stay In Demand!

2009-03-03T14:43:00.006-05:00

What I learned from my first recession - Stay In Demand!

I know a guy that is in IT. He is a RPG programmer. He is getting laid-off from his job of 4 years. Now what is wrong with that picture? Well after 4 years he continued to just be a RPG programmer. He had the opportunity to learn WebSphere, Java (which are in demand) and other stuff related to the AS400 but he didn't. ADVICE: DO WHAT EVER IT TAKES AT YOUR CURRENT EMPLOYER TO KEEP YOUR SKILLS IN DEMAND.

My story

At my current employer, when I first started there, they gave a project to redesign the corporate HQ website. At this time, from me keeping up with the industry, I found out the SharePoint was and is still HOT! So I walked into my manager's office and convince them to use SharePoint to host their new website. Did they have to? NO. Did it make alot of sense? It was debateable. I did this because I knew that would be a good skill to have and it would make me more marketable.

So to whoever is reading this. DO NOT USE THE EXCUSE OF MY EMPLOYER SAID WE CANNOT DO THAT. Convince them of whatever technology you want to learn to make you more marketable because when times like these hit you would have wish you did.

Employers want to keep their people skills up to date also. It keeps employees happy, knowledgeable and loyal. Take advantage of that. Don't be like my friend.

Secondly, DON'T BE LAZY. Read books, go to user group meetings, even if you have to used your own money and vacation time, GO TO TECHINAL CONFERENCES & TRAINING. Don't always look for your employer to provide training. It's not your employer's job to keep your skills up-to-date.

Don't say I did not warn you. This is the second economic recession of my career and it probably will not be my last.

I learned actually 3 things from the first economic recession.

1. Keep your skills in line with demand.
2. Pay attention to the economy and the stock market.
3. Keep up with things in the IT industry. Don't fall behind!

And also I don't care if you are over 62 years old. If you are working in the IT industry and plan on to be still working for at least another year. You should be doing the 3 things I outlined.

Until next time...

5 reasons why IT people would be good for Congress

2009-02-25T13:34:00.004-05:00

I was at work the other day listening to the Fed Chief (Ben BerNaNke. I do know his name) give testimony to Congress. All I could say is that they need I.T. people in Congress, people that can solve problems! These people were asking the dumbest questions I have ever heard of. These are our elected officials folks, sad to say.

5 reasons why I.T. people would be good for Congress

1. We can solve problems, we do it everyday.
2. We can make a decision and live with it.
3. We understand that you cannot fix everything.
4. We understand that there are some people that just won't get it.
5. We have low tolerance for ignorance. (click the link to get the definition for this word)

I'm sure I could have listed about 20 reasons but I'll let other give me more.

Until Next Time...

Passed the WSS 3.0 Exam 70-541!

2009-02-19T20:37:00.002-05:00

Today I took and passed the WSS 3.0 - Application Development exam. I basically took it to prove I know something about SharePoint development. SharePoint is HOT! right now. If you just know to install SharePoint you can make alot of money right now.

I passed with a score of 828. I did not think I would do that well but I did. It is an extremely hard exam. If you do not have a solid full-time 1-2 years of SharePoint development experience, do not attempt. Save your money. This exam is not for people that did a couple of SharePoint development projects.

There is only one book out as of today Inside Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that even attempts to discuss WSS 3.0 development. I read the book almost twice and it still did not help that much. It got me through a major WSS 3.0 development project but it was not that much help for the exam.

I might take the configuration one in about 2 months but my next exam is the MCAD to MCPD Web Developer Upgrade exam. I'm trying to get all my certification current. I was going to upgrade to the Enterprise Developer exam, then attempt the MCA but my WinForms experience is not much.

Until next time...

Interview with ACM President Wendy Hall

2009-02-03T15:28:00.004-05:00

If you have not already notice, I think the Association for Computing Machinery is the best IT organization there is. Most IT organization are social networking organizations where you have a hard time justifying the membership fee. Well not the ACM.

An interview was done with ACM President Wendy Hall. This is a must listen to because I believe she touched on some very important points. A few of them were:

1. She feels that IT does not get the respect it deserves like other professions.
All I can say is WOW! and AMEN!

2. She feels there needs to be standards and a code of ethics for the IT industry to identify IT professionals. She values degreed IT professionals it seems like from the interview.
Do you need a CS degree to do this stuff? To be honest I kind of wish more emphasis was put on people with degrees from universities in the industry but today a 10 month degree from a technical school will do just fine.

3. She said (paraphasing) "We need more scientists and engineers running companies in the future." She said not CIO or VP of IT, but on the board running the company.
I have been preaching this to everyone I know. In too many companies today, IT is the support arm and not apart of the overall strategy. It should not matter what the industry is, I don't care if it is food service, IT should be apart of the strategy.

Link to the interview. Enjoy!
http://www.stephenibaraki.com/audio/Wendy_Hall.mp3

Until next time...

Why I uninstalled IE 8 Beta 2

2009-01-28T09:23:00.002-05:00

Last night I uninstalled IE 8 Beta 2 and went back to IE 7. I had it on my home computer since August of last year I think. The reason I uninstalled it was because not only was it alittle too buggy for even Beta software. It had major issues with video streaming sites where to the point the video would not even show. Something like that should work even in beta software. Also it did not impress me with its performance, memory footprint or features. Web Slices? Who cares about that? The average internet user is not going to use that anyway.

Don't get me wrong I love Microsoft and their innovation in some cases, but let's be real, certain things are just not worth putting in a product if people do not care about them. I guarantee you if Firefox, Chrome and Safari was pre-installed on Windows, IE would have the second and maybe third largest market share instead of the dominant first. Personally as far as look and feel and just regular internet browsing, I like Safari for Windows. Call me crazy but that what I like. From a development standpoint, IE is the leader. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is not always standards compliant. But that is why I like it. Plus it fixes your mistakes. If you are a hack web designer like me, you have to love IE! (Hey that rhythmes!, DJ AA in the house!). Second is Chrome. I know people are going to say WHAT YOU ARE NUTS! Firefox rocks for development. It has Firebug and every development tool known to man! IE has the same tools in some form or another. Maybe not as friendly but they exists. So get off it.

Conclusion: I waiting on IE 9 or IE 2009 that will be out 3 months after IE 8 officially hits the streets. (A joke people. Don't you get it?)

Until next time...

President Obama - My IT Wish List

2009-01-20T13:49:00.003-05:00

Now that Obama is officially President, I would like to create an IT wish list for him.

First...
1. BRING BACK THE 90s!!!!!!
For anyone who was working back then remember them as the good ole days. These were the days where tech IPOs were coming out daily. A dot com would go up 100% in one day. IT jobs were very easy to come by. Consultants were paid and treated like consultants and not contractors.

In the 90s I was working for a consulting firm and we would be flying all over the place going from one Fortune 100 company to another. Staying at luxury hotels and eating steak dinners. It was awesome! These were the days where innovation was at its peak and you have to be on the bleeding edge of technology to make money.

Those days are long gone now and I wish President Obama would bring them back!

2. Please fix the education system.

I have kids and sometimes they really hate school because its just too demanding for them. Teachers are cramming months worth of learning into 9 weeks of schools and some kids just find it hard to keep up. It's hard to make it fun when you have to be fast with it and have 25 kids to teach. Personally I rather for the summer to be 4 weeks, then to have my kids struggling to keep up with the pace of the SOL test. No child left behind was a joke because I think its leaving every child behind. Most advance educational countries go to school all year around. Also in relationship to IT, incorporate IT in the classroom more. I'm not saying make it like the Jetsons but my kids are computer experts for their age and absorb every on it they learn on it. STEM! STEM! STEM!

3. Keep on marketing technology - We need it

I had to laugh when I heard the story that President Obama did not want to give up his blackberry. I thought to myself "Now how many people (young and old) are going to go out and get a Blackberry now?" RIMM should have gave him some money and ask him could he do a commercial.

4. Encourage Innovation

I think we have gotten away from this the last 8 years. Look at NASA, does anyone watch the Shuttle take-offs anymore. NASA is almost non-existant. Does anyone dream about inventing the next big thing or discovering the next big thing. But in the last 8 years I think the focus has been on the stock market and housing market and how to get rich in them. I remember everytime you used to turn on the TV after a certain time Carlton Sheets would be on. Jim Cramer is like a movie star on CNBC now. I'm not against the stock and housing market but when you think of old rich guys, what are the two ways you think they made their money? It sure is not starting an e-commerce website.

5. Last but not least - Discourage Outsourcing

I'm not against outsourcing. I know why companies do it, to save money to meet corporate profit expectations so their shareholders are rewarding. Their we go again the stock market. I'm not against the countries that take advantage of it either, I would to. But it sure can be encouraged to hire people here first. All I hear is that their is a shortage of IT workers in the US. I REALLY DO NOT BELIEVE THAT. All these college students that graduate every year from universities around the US that come out and end up doing helpdesk for a law firm. It's hard to believe it's a shortage. The problem is that these companies want experienced people but are not willing to pay a decent salary along with all the administrative cost like healthcare insurance. So they end up hiring a consulting firm here or in India to do the work. The stock market is setup to reward a company for laying-off people and/or cutting costs now instead of rewarding them for expanding or being innovative. Ever since the dot com bubble of the 90s popped, Investors have been closely watching for the negatives of a company.

Until next time...

Last day of 2008, Predictions for 2009

2008-12-31T11:19:00.004-05:00

I have to post before the new year is out, just to say HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!. It was a wonderful year. I started this blog, I learned alot of cool stuff, I went to a conference for the first time and hopefully it will not be my last. I really enjoyed doing this blog because I have alot of opinions about things and I really needed a plcae to vent. Now before I leave I have to tell you about an article I read in ComputerWorld. The title was "The 9 hottest skills for '09". The list was:

1. Programming/Application Development - The article basically said SAP and .NET are HOT! Which is true. If both of them were not the reason for this I would have ranked it #2.

2. Helpdesk/Technical Support - Why? Is it because of Vista or Windows 7? This should not be #2. If the Mac had 98% market share this would not be on the list.
(Disclosure: I do not own a Mac or any Apple stock)

3. Project Management - The reason for this is because project management is more of an art than a skill. The good ones are hard to find.

4. Networking - Due to email, video and instant messaging and other communications systems, network specialist will be in demand according to the article. Beside email and the internet in my opinion their is little need for a network guy. At my company the Network Admin probably does 10% network stuff and 90% helpdesk/support stuff. Why is it #4? Because their are people who actually believe that communication methods will change sometime soon in the corporate world. My CEO does not IM.

5. Business Intelligence - This is #5 because people do not understand this enough to see the value in this. Will that change in 09? Maybe. This should be higher and if you understand it enough you can make a boat load of money.

6. Security - This should be #2 or even #1a. You want know something about IT security in the future. I read an article the other day that quoted a congress man that said "The US is not ready for a cyber attack". When our 9/11 comes in cyber space (God forbid) you will be glad you took alittle time to learn about this.

7. Web 2.0 - This is nice but do I see it being implemented in the corporate world to make it worthwhile, it depends on the company. The article mentioned a hospital implementing a portal for its remote doctors. Is that Web 2.0? I don't think so but if that is what they mean everybody needs to go learn SharePoint (which is HOT, HOT, HOT!).

8. Data Center - Can you say virtualization? This is not a skill but it will be something common in about 2-3 years. There will be no more Windows 8 DVDs and boxes, you will be able to download it via the internet as a single virtual OS file, you will mount it, and use it. Your company network will consist of 1 physical server and 10 virtual ones. Believe me that day is coming. Hardware companies will be going out of business.

Last but not least...

9. Telecommunications - Wifi, City WANs and hotspots will be common in 2009. You will be able to go anywhere and get internet access. That might just save the industry.

Predictions of 2009

1. The stock market will rebound in the fourth quarter of 2009 along with the housing market. Why? Because Obama won't fail and it will take alittle longer for his plan to work.

2. The Celtics will repeat.

3. The Giants will repeat.

4. The Yankees will get to the World Series.

5. IT security will get more attention.

6. F# would have came and gone like J#

7. Yahoo will get brought for under $10/share

8. I would have went to another conference. (I have to make sure I get one prediction)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Until Next Time...

Day 4 at VSLive Dallas - Final Day

2008-12-11T22:04:00.003-05:00

Last Day

Well today I thought I would wake up and make sure I eat breakfast on my company dime. As I was eating breakfast, in walked in a speaker who was a Microsoft Evangelist, Josh Holmes. We struck up a conversation lasted about an hour. It caused me to miss my the first session of the day. It was not a keynote today. We talked about IronRuby and Silverlight which he did a session on yesterday that I did not go to. He made me more curious in Silverlight 2. In the Silverlight 2 SDK there are these sample that contain themes. You can design a web form and apply these themes and get a half way get looking site. I will do this over the weekend. Good tip.

First Session - Visual Studio Reporting Technology and SQL Server 2008

I was busy trying to catch up on updating the blog so I was barely paying attention. But basically nothing has really changed in reporting services. My notes were blank.

Second Session - Panel Discussion, Bill Vaughn, Ken Getz, and Scott Belware

The three oldest guys in the conference in a panel. This was a treat. Bill Vaughn holds none of his words and Scott is an activist and Ken is a apologist.

Out of the questions and the discussion I picked up that:

Bill loves VB
Scott loves OOP
Ken does not want to put alot of the blame on Microsoft for all the problems in the industry.

Also everyone feels that the Entity Framework is not as nearly as good as it can be. But everyone agrees it's a good start.

End of Session.

Lunch was great. Cafeteria style!

Next Session - Sync Services for ADO.NET

Sync Services I think is very useful. We have a in-house made CRM app that is a good candidate for this because it is an Online/Offline app like Outlook. It stores CRM data in a local Access database when Offline and when Online it syncs-up with a remote SQL Service database on the network. The terrible thing about this CRM app is that you have to VPN into the network in order the sync the data. It's crazy. I did not design it. The one problem I was hoping this could solve was high transaction concurrancy, making it easier to sync data conflicts. But it does not I was told by the speaker. Too bad. NEXT!!!.

Next Session - Custom Client-Side Extenders with ASP.NET AJAX and VS 2008

Basically he picked off where he left off. He is a good speaker but I felt cheated he basically show us the AJAX Toolkit samples and told us to examine the code to learn how to create custom extenders. He must have been ready to leave. NEXT!!!

Those controls are very useful. I will use.

Last Session of VSLive - Leveraging the CLR in SQL Server 2008

What was Microsoft think when they created this functionality? I really doubt if anyone is using this stuff. Bill wrote a whole 150 page chapter in his book trying to figure out a use for this crap and all he could find is a currency converter. If anyone reading this that has ever even seen CLR code used in SQL Server, please let me know. There is no reason to use the crap. There is little or no performance gain. No need to use. Forget about it.

Conference Conclusion

All in All I would go again. This is a good conference because you get an independent view of Microsoft technologies and tools.

I will try and go to this at least once every two years.

The End

Until Next Time...

Day 3 at VSLive Dallas

2008-12-11T10:36:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the late posts. My bad.

Keynote

The keynote was great! Some guy (Roger Sessions) who was the CEO of objectwatch.com and very technically decorated. He said he was the first Microsoft MVP in Architecture, he wrote 7 books, is an IASA Fellow, etc, etc. The title of the keynote was "Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises". He I think basically went through a methodology he developed called SIP, which I can't think what it stands for but basically it walks you through a process of partitioning a large application into smaller applications to decrease complexity, which is what SOA intends to do. I enjoyed it because he used a quite bit of mathematics in his presentation which was interesting to me, a math major. He referenced one of my favorite book, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering. You should see it on the right in my book list. His topic was great but a very basic concept if you have experience. In his slides, he partitioned a table of items by item category which I thought was obvious just by looking at the table. The concept and process he presnted was omething I thought is learned through experience. 99% of projects are partitioned by functionality which is to me the same as category, this appears to be nothing new.

First Session - What's new in VS 2008 for ASP.NET Developers

The speaker went over a few new things in VS 2008 like the:

CSS info pane
Javascript Intellisense
ListView control
DataPager control

The CSS stuff to me has not been helpful, but I had problems understanding how to use the CSS panes. The same thing is use in Expressions Web. Now you don't need a designer app like Expressions Web. You can do it all in VS now.

Javascript Intellisense & Debugging is cool but I already knew about it.

The ListView control to me is basically the same as the GridView control. So nothing gained. The DataPager control was cool because you canpage through any data collection.

Things I learned

You can call a web service through Javscript

The DataPager control has AJAX support

The AJAX control toolkit has extender controls you can use with other controls.

I will definitely use them on my next project.

Next Session - Building Workflows with SharePoint

Basically in VS 2008, its alot easier to build custom workflows. It comes with a project template and you can develop, run and test if SharePoint is installed on the same machine. (Which is not good in production). If not, it is still a pain to test because you have to still create the necessary files to install a feature on the server and then activate it. And God help you if there are bugs because you have to keep on running the install.bat file.

I will play with this more. I think workflows are not used as nearly as much as I think they should be.

Next Session - Building Effective Models with the Entity Framework

By far the most crowded session of the conference, it looked like it was a keynote session. The Entity Framework was developed due to an old class design issue. In the old days of OOP, you basically would design your database based on your class structure. So every class maps directly to a table in the database. This works but if you already have a database in place and want to create classes model to model it, how would you do it?

You have to invest in an ORM. Object Relational Mapping.

The Entity Framework is one way to do it. Microsoft felt it needed to get into the ORM space and the Entity Framework is MS ORM.

Additional Note:

ADO.NET Data Services exposes entities over the web (web services). ADO.NET Data Services (Code name : Astoria) is really cool!

Next Session - ASP.NET AJAX in Visual Studio 2008

This was a very introductory session to ASP.NET AJAX which showed you how to used the updatepanel control. The speaker was funny and really informative. One tip I got was to use a script manager proxy for usercontrol development. You might say, "I would have thought you would have already know that.". Well I did not, thank you!

Also as of SP1, there is a history extender object.
Also the speaker said if you are a web developer you must get Firebug for Firefox

Next Session - SQL Server 2008 Enhancements

All I can say that this was a great session. Bill Vaughn is a really really good speaker. He like everyone else, he loved the new Table Value Parameters. Also he talked about the new Object Dependency Tracking. This is really cool! Let's say you you have a function and a million stored procedures. You can find in what stored procedures where the function is being used easily.

Things to note:

Bill Vaughn Blog: www.hitchhikers.net - Check it out!

Bill Vaughn said "It's better to sort on the client or server in code than to use an ORDER BY in the stored procedure." You would not know how many times I have seen people use order by in a stored proc.

Look at ADO.NET Sync Services - Handles syncronization - Think of ActiveSync. Online/Offine syncronization.

Until next time...

Day 2 at VSLive Dallas!

2008-12-10T09:17:00.008-05:00

Keynote:

The keynote for the day was done by Rob Howard, the CEO of Telligent(I like the name of the company). He first started off stating his background with Microsoft and how he started off as a developer and moved up to Program Mangager and then left to start Telligent. Then he basically went into his spill on Enterprise Infrastructure 2.0, which was basically a mix of marketing his company products and where he thought where the industry was going which is toward a more social networking, Web 2.0 and that it will be really brought to life when our little kids reach adulthood because they are growing up with things like Webkinz. My kids keep bugging me to get those stuff animals for them!

First Session

The Cloud Computing for .NET session I really wanted to go to was cancelled. So by default I went to a session that I think would help me at my current employer, "So Many Choices, So Little Time, Understanding Your .NET Data Options.

This was a good choice. The speaker briefly went through each of the data access options in .NET 3.5 SP1. As of SP1, you have about multiple choices.

LINQ to SQL
LINQ to ENTITIES
ADO.NET Web Services
Traditional ADO.NET

The speaker, Lenni Lobel did a good job I think. He also added alot of humor to keep you awake. Excellent speaker and session.

Rating: 5 stars

Second Session

For the second session it was a tossup between "Entity Framewoork 101" or "Introduction to ASP.NET Dynamic Data". Again I chose the one that would benefit my current employer, "Introduction to ASP.NET Dynamic Data". Man I wish I knew abou this a month ago. I had this project which basically was a GridView with CRUD operation so users change change their information on the web. Well with a Dynamic Data Web application project. You can create a page with a GridView with CRUD operations in 10 minutes max! It took me a week to get to the point that the speaker got to in 10 minutes! It was crazy! Check it out because my simple GridView project is a very common IT project in companies.

The speaker gave the impression that this might have been his first conference presentation. But he did alright and actually had someone from the audience do the demo.

Rating: 5 stars because of usefulness.

Lunch

Lunch was interesting. They had people sit together according to a topic they were interested in. It was called the Birds of a Feather Lunch. I sat at the SharePoint table and had an interesting conversation with a SharePoint consultant and one of the SharePoint speakers, David Walker whose session I went to after lunch. My discussion with the consultant was how to solve content editing and publishing issues in WSS. WSS does not have a decent content editor that is hosted in the browser.

After Lunch Session

After lunch I went to a session I thought would help me advance technically. "Practical Use of Model View Presenter and .NET". I'm very weak when it comes to design patterns so I thought I would try to learn something. I did learned about the Model View Presenter passive view pattern. It's a good pattern but to sum it up, if you take the traditional three tier architecture model and add an additional layer between the UI and business layer and name it the View, then you have the MVP pattern.

Rating: 3 stars for knowledge gained. Other than that. It was boring.

Next Session

This is the timeslot with the session of the speaker I spoke with at lunch, the first SharePoint session. I think David Walker did not do a good job of presenting what the title of the session inferred you were going to learn "Best and Worst Practices - SharePoint as an Application Development Architecture". He mention maybe 3 best practices in his whole session and 2 of them were SharePoint 101 practices. A waste of time.

Rating: 1 star

Last Session

A bad mix of sessions for this timeslot but because I wanted to tell my company I went to everything then I chose a session to attend, "Using Windows Workflow Foundation to Build an Order Processing System". Robert Green, the speaker, did a good job I thought. It got me very interested in doing Workflows with WWF (the old WWE, bad humor). The only thing is that he assume to much previous WWF knowledge for me.

Rating: 4 stars

VSLive After Dark - The furure of .NET

I was hungary by now so I went and got something to eat and miss the beginning of this but caught most of it. It was a panel of independent consultants that answered questions from the moderator. One question was worthy of noting "What are the Pros and Cons of .NET". One speaker hit the nail on the head. It keeps changing every 6 months! Once you get familiar with one thing, something new comes one and they tell you to forget everything you just learned like with conventional ADO.NET. Now LINQ is out and that is the new sliced bread so learn and use it.

That was it.

What I learned:

LINQ to SQL - Ultimately gets converted to conventional ADO.NET, Produces dynamic SQL and only benefit is to decrease lines of code.

Web Services - Only use web services externally - Internet
WCF - Only use internally - Intranet

Refresher of MVP pattern

Get the book - Domain Driven Design by Eric Allen

Tomorrow should be better

Until next time...

Day 1 at VSLive Dallas

2008-12-09T11:08:00.002-05:00

Finally in Dallas! I just enjoyed the beautiful hotel, Adolphus Hotel. I did not pay to participate in the all day workshops in the first day. I did not want to try to justify that to my company. Just getting them to pay for this was challenging enough.

I will give an update after each day of what I learned and what I found to be interesting. Check back each day.

Talk to you soon.

Until Next time...

VSLive 2008 in Dallas Bound on Monday!

2008-12-05T17:25:00.002-05:00

VSLive 2008 in Dallas Bound on Monday! I will be there the whole week and hope to gain alot of knowledge and have a good time!!!

I could blog from my cell phone. Hmmm...

I'm going to take alot of pictures. So keep checking back!

Until next time...

IBM's XML Challenge - Are You an XML Superstar?‏

2008-12-02T09:43:00.005-05:00

Contest Time!

What is this contest?

The XML Challenge is designed to recognize developers who will shape the XML landscape of the future.

Why Enter?

Glory. If you're a student, then you can leverage your entry in your job hunt. If you're already in the professional ranks, you can gain some well-deserved recognition for your XML skills. Oh yeah, and there's thousands of dollars in prizes, ranging from Wiis to complimentary technical conferences.

http://xmlchallenge.com/

Until next time...

.NET Cheat Sheets

2008-11-28T10:26:00.002-05:00

I recently got an email with a link to another blog that contained a variety of .NET CHEAT SHEETS For those of us who can't remember everything. Check it out!

Until next time...

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

10 days to VSLive Dallas!!!!

Best Web Browser For Development

2008-11-06T11:11:00.003-05:00

And I'm an advocate for testing your web applications in the four major browsers:

1. IE
2. Firefox
3. Safari
4. Chrome

If you feel my list is wrong feel free to comment.

Nobody uses Opera. I have been on web teams that had anywhere from 100 to 6500 concurrent users and have seen stats.

But I recently had a Javascript error in my page and I used:

IE 7 - Did not break the page - This is why I love IE. It hides bad developers' mistakes :)
IE 8 - Broke the page but did not report the error
Firefox 3.0.3 - Broke the page but did not report the error in the error console
Chrome - Broke the page and reported the error!

I was not a big fan of Chrome at first. I taught it was a Firefox clone. But because of this I might jump on the Google bandwagon. :)

Until next time...

Why The IT Community Should Be Proud of Our New President in America - Barack Obama!

2008-11-05T11:37:00.005-05:00

I believe the IT community around the world should be proud of the new President-Elect of the United States of America, Barack Obama, because he made people young and old more comfortable with the use of technology, which make our mission easier. He took advantage of every technology available to him and used it very effectively to win this election. He used blogs, text messaging, chat rooms, collaboration spaces, myspace, facebook, twitter and online advertising and video sites like youtube unlike any other President in history to reach the young and even the old. He did a remarkable job of promoting technology and how it can be used effective. Every company in the world should have seen this and thought about ideas how they can use technology to further their brand.

I would not be surprised to see a jump in IT spending among companies worldwide behind this.

I just hope he keeps his website going because it is truly a good example of what can be done on the web and how a website can be used as a marketing tool.

A majority of my career has been in web application development and all I can say when I see Obama website is WOW!

Until next time...

Yesterday's Deploying SharePoint Roadshow

2008-10-30T14:03:00.009-04:00

Yesterday I considered myself fortunate to go a "Deploying SharePoint" Roadshow at the Omni Hotel in Richmond (really luxurious hotel with a Starbucks inside). It was excellent in my opinion because it was really for people like myself who are kind of a mid-level SharePoint Developer & Administrator. During the sessions the presenter went over SharePoint infrastructure & terminology, deployment, backup and recovery, farm architectures and best of all overall best practices from the industry. The presenter seemed knowledgeable about alot of things in SharePoint. He even took the time and went over every menu option and feature and told us whether it was used in the industry or not and if it was he told us how it was used, which really helped me. I took quite a few notes. I would post them but I left them home. I came away with quite a few "I did not realize you can do that in MOSS 2007." Since I have only implemented WSS 3.0, I did not realized the differences in MOSS. I still would say its not that much, it mainly depends on your client's needs. In my in-between sessions with the presenter I asked the question "Do you see more people going from WSS to MOSS or MOSS to WSS?". He said quite a few people want to go from MOSS to WSS. I was not surprised because of the money factor and the client's basic needs. A couple of additional things I wish WSS could do that MOSS does but it's not that critical in our environment.

I was surprised to learn that the next version of MOSS will be 64 bit ONLY. I hope they don't do that to WSS.

The sponsers Quest Software and AvePoint presented as well. The Quest Software SharePoint Administration Software I thought rocked! If you have a SharePoint Farm, you might want to look them up.

Too bad Richmond was the last stop. If you missed it, you missed a good and very informative Roadshow.

Next stop VSLive 2008 Dallas!

Until next time...

Why I like C# but prefer to develop with VB.NET

2008-10-30T10:51:00.004-04:00

This is coming from someone that developed in a C/C++ UNIX environment for years but now develops in VB.NET and have had some exposure to C# for a period of time.

OK lets get one thing straight. C++ developers are the kings of the hill. For many reasons that I'm not going to go into here. If you have to aptitude and the heart to be a C++ developer, God Bless You. But for us second tier developers who prefer things alittle easier, many of us are .NET developers. In the .NET world there are basically two dominent languages the ever popular C# nad VB.NET. I have only heard of one place developing in J#. That might be the only place in the world too. I you use J# I would love to heard from you. Please tell me why.

Why C# is so popular

C# is very popular these days and I wonder why sometime. I believe it is because of the C in C sharp. I think if you put C or ++ in any language name and the majority of developers will jump into it. Great marketing Microsoft! Why you may ask? Because like I said in the beginning, C++ developers are the kings of the hill. Everyone wants to be associated with a language that is believed to be the most challanging, and the closest thing to being a C++ developer is being a C# developer. If every C# developer was honest with themselves they would tell you, I never really got C++ and C# is the closest .NET language to it and VB is viewed as a beginner language.(I will touch on that later). So that is why I develop in C#. Plus every employer is jumping into it and it pays more.

Why I like C#

There are two features in C# I wish was in VB.NET
1. The @ string literal

To me this has to be the best feature in C#.
It's simple, effective and sensible.

@”c:\somepath\someotherpath\myapp.exe”

or @”This is a just some text
and on it goes
and on
like the energizer bunny
2. The USING statement

using (C c = new C())
{
c.UseLimitedResource();
}
Console.WriteLine("Now outside using statement.");
Console.ReadLine();
I like it because it disposes variables automatically! I realy wish this was in VB.NET

Other than that, it cool to say you develop in C something but at the end of the day it is no real difference between C# and any other .NET language.

Why I prefer VB.NET

Sad to say VB over the years has been branded as a non object oriented beginner language. You can argue whether that is true or not but VB.NET is far from that. I would say 95% of what you can do in C# can be done in VB.NET. But what VB.NET gives you that C# does not is what was a big deal back in the day, but not now is CODE READABILITY. Forget the cute curly braces and semicolons and the short-handing of everything. VB.NET is easy to understand when first looked at by anyone, your grandmother or mother. (I'm not insulting anyones intelligence) Code readability seemed to have went out with the dot coms of the 90s. It seems like know one maintains code anymore. It seems like code is developed, it may get used for about 2 years, something new comes along and then it get thrown away because it is considered old. Another reason is that it is easier to learn. The learning curve is short for people that have a programming aptitude. I believe CODE READABILITY and LEARNING CURVE is critical when deciding what language to choose for your development shop. Now let me go on to my side note about F#.

Prediction: F# will be a bust

F# is being talked about now as the next great language in the .NET world. Because there is not a C or ++ in the name it will not take off and developers will not jump into it. When I see F# I think of Fortran but actually it comes from another language which at one time was referenced on Wikipedia but Microsoft must thought it would hurt the language popularity and now I cannot find it. But it was derived from one of the other old-time great languages and it was not Fortran. If you think any language developed today is developed from scratch without a base language concept you are very misled in your thinking.

Until next time...

Thank God For Fiddler!!!!!!

2008-10-24T18:55:00.003-04:00

OMG. Fidder saved me. I was getting the following error:
"Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerParserErrorException: The message received from the server could not be parsed. Common causes for this error are when the response is modified by calls to Response.Write(), response filters, HttpModules, or server trace is enabled. Details: Error parsing near HTML dir='ltr'"
I started stripping everything out the page and even went to the point of creating a vanilla masterpage and the error still kept on popping up!!! Then I realized "Why is it still showing HTML dir='ltr'? I took that out three versions ago.". Let me use this handy tool called Fiddler to see what is being sent back to the browser. I opened up Fiddler and looked at what was coming back to the browser and the problem was it was trying to send an error message back to the browser but the parser had a problem parsing its own error message! The error message was buried in the response back. I fixed the error and that got rid of the cryptic Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerParserErrorException error.

Thank you Fiddler and whoever created it! I believe the guy works at Microsoft now.

Many Registered Voters Have An Age Of 108

2008-10-21T16:03:00.006-04:00

Can anyone guess why? The way this happens is if you register to vote and don't provide your date of birth. If you don't provide your date of birth in some states, the system defaults to '1/1/1900'! This is the default date for many database systems including SQL Server and the AS400.

Why can't the default for a datetime field be NULL?

Admittedly I only thought about this for 10 seconds. Inside those 10 seconds I concluded that the reason it cannot be NULL is, that it was something that was started in the very beginning. As time went on people figured out it would be too costly to change the default now because of all the critical applications that would need to be changed that would be affected. It would bring another Y2K!

That is probably not the case but it sounds good.
I will do some research and find out why.

Until next time...

Grady Booch on Software Architecture

2008-10-17T10:36:00.001-04:00

IEEE Software is delighted to introduce a new regular podcast by Grady Booch. Grady has recorded all of his On Architecture columns from IEEE Software. The recordings are available at http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/onarchitecture

Grady is recognized internationally for his innovative work on software architecture, software engineering, and modeling. He was chief scientist of Rational Software Corp. from its founding in 1981 until it became part of IBM, where he's an IBM Fellow. Grady was one of the original authors of the Unified Modeling Language and one of the original developers of several Rational products. Grady has served as architect and architectural mentor for complex, software-intensive projects around the world in just about every domain imaginable.

Grady has six best-selling books, including the Unified Modeling Language User Guide and Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications. He’s published several hundred articles on software engineering, including ones from the early 1980s that originated the term object-oriented design and its practice.

So go check it out

Until next time...

ASP.NET MVC is officially in "Beta"

2008-10-17T10:15:00.005-04:00

ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) is officially in beta. I encourage everyone to go check it out. http://www.asp.net/mvc/ I recently had a discussion about ASP.NET MVC on another site and I asked the question to other software architects and Developers "Is ASP.NET MVC worth looking into?". There replies were as follows:

Yes, yes and yes. and big Yes.

Yes. I will go for it. We do a lot of stuff & its pretty cool.

Certainly, yes!
It is fast and flexible way to build Web UI layer.

Traditional ASP.NET (a.k.a. ASP.NET WebForms) was designed with a event-based pseudo-stateful model to abstract away the difficulties of dealing with the stateless nature of the web (the HTTP Request - Response model).

This decision was mostly a marketing decision to lessen the learning curve of millions of existing Visual Basic developers wanting to develop applications for the web, which had the same basic drag & drop, event-based development experience.

Most (if not all) other web development platforms did not/do not shelter the developer from the stateless nature of the web. Most tend toward a pre-existing presentation layer oriented pattern known as MVC, Model-View-Controller. I won't go into the technical details of the pattern, Wikipedia covers it well.

In response to a subset of developers' complaints about the lack of convenient HTML-level control, frustration with ViewState and the PostBack event model, and difficulty with unit testing WebForms, MS (Scott Guthrie) started development of ASP.NET MVC. This gives developers the option to use the MVC model instead of the WebForms model, giving them lower-level control of the HTML that is output by ASP.NET and also giving them a better seperation of presentation layer vs. business layer.

The word from MS is that WebForms is by no means being replaced by MVC.

It will depend on the project size and type. If you want to create a simple small custom web project, probably you don't need to. Small but mass product like CMS would might need. Long term maintainable enterprise size is absolutely required.
Software architect decision would have an important impact here.

I think it offers a clarity and conciseness that ASP.NET and the page life-cycle does not. In many ways the page life-cycle encourages some bad practives, I think.

It encourages effective unit testing especially with the HTTP context being exposed.

You are given more options around the generation of the markup, although the standard markup is more than adequate. I find it hard going back to traditional ASP.NET.

MVC is one of the design patters, it is my understanding that knowing the design patterns is a part of my job, so this is something every-one is expected to know/understand.

Yes, it is worth using MVC. I hope you believe in test driven development if you do MVC is the way to go. It allows your code to look cleaner and easy to read. Seperating the application flow,data and presentation would help you in the long run.

So check it out.

Until next time...

Presidential Science Debate 2008

2008-10-13T16:13:00.006-04:00

It's been awhile but I had to share this site I heard about.
sciencedebate2008.com
Here the presidential candidates answered questions about technology and science.

The topics covered were
1. Innovation
2. Climate Change
3. Energy
4. Education
5. National Security
6. Pandemics & Biosecurity
7. Genetics Research
8. Stem Cells
9. Ocean Health
10. Water
11. Space
12. Scientific Integrity
13. Research
14. Health

I'm only concerned with my top 2 at the moment. Innovation & Education.

Innovation

In the innovation response from Obama, he threw out some eye-opening stats:

"The U.S. annually imports $53 billion more in advanced technology products than we export."

"China is now the world’s number one high technology exporter."

"The U.S. ranks 17th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering; we were in third place thirty years ago."

As I.T. professionals we should not be surprised by these stats. Americans are not interested in math & science. As a fellow American, when I went to college I think it was about 2 people that was in the Mathematics department with me. Granted I went to a small school (approx. 5000 students), but it was still only 3 of us that graduated the same year.

Both Obama and McCain have plans to fix this but I don't think it will do any good.

Education

In Education, Obama basically picked up where he left off and repeated some of the same things in said in the Innovation response. All I can remember reading is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) (I have a problem with the acronym but that is for another day) But basically he said the school curriculum needs to focus more on a STEM education.

McCain basically said the problem is with teachers not being well-trained and that he will provide them with more and better training.

My Thoughts

Sad to say both of them miss the point!

Innovation

In order to spurn innovation in America, companies need to hire innovative people in America. Innovative does not depend on education. Let me repeat that, Innovation does not depend on Education. Some of our most innovative scientists were not highly educated people. They did not go to the Harvards and Yales. These were people with ideas and worked hard at trying to implement them with the limited knowledge they began with.

Education

The problem with education in the US is that we don't have school all year around. If any candidate said that, they might as well take a long vacation afterward because they would not be going to the White House. We try to cram 24 months of information into 9 months of school. When I went to school we learned at a slower pace and a test did not determine if you were going to graduate or not. I think the pace of school today in the US actually turns kids off from learning complex things because of the pace.

Go to the site and come back and tell me what you think.

Until next time...

What’s the difference between CIO and CTO?

2008-10-02T11:47:00.001-04:00

Great video on the difference between the CIO and the CTO. Very well explained.

Video: What’s the difference between CIO and CTO?

There have been times I have mentioned CTO around people and they say "What is that?". So I posted this link because I believe alot of people don't even know what a CTO is or does. There needs to be a CTO magazine.

Can anyone explain to me why large companies usually do not have both a CIO and a CTO?

I have worked for a few Fortune 500 firms and none of them had both a CIO and a CTO.

Until next time...

Microsoft Announces Visual Studio 2010

2008-10-02T11:18:00.004-04:00

OK Article. Very lengthy in my opinion. I would have preferred a new feature list with brief explanations. But this is a CIO magazine article, so I don't expect them to write articles in the way technical people would want them.

Microsoft Announces Visual Studio 2010

Three things to note, they have added some more architectural tools, they are merging the development and database editions of VSTS. That was a crazy idea to begin with of having two editions. Also they are becoming more agile development friendly. I know they started this in their last version but they added more tools for agile development shops.

Disclaimer: I'm not caught up in the hype (bad word to have used) of agile development methodologies. I was in a scrum environment at one time in my career. I wrote a paper in graduate school comparing agile development methodologies to traditional methodologies. In my research, as far as quality (which is usually the selling point as to why to use agile development methods), there is no difference! Research it yourself if you don't believe me (Really research it). The only reason in my opinion is to use agile methods is if you work in a CMM Level I environment (Most development shops are Level II). These are places where the project requirements change daily. All humor aside, there are arguments on both sides but the conclusion is it really depends on the people that make up the project team.

Until next time...

Article Commentary: Wall Street's collapse may be computer science's gain

2008-09-29T11:10:00.001-04:00

Today I was reading the Computer World article "Wall Street's collapse may be computer science's gain" and the first thing that came to my mind is how? Just to give you a little more insight on me, if you want to get me to read an article, talk about economics and technology in it. I'm fascinated by economics and I love technology. Back to the article...

My first thought was "How?"

Why would students rush into Computer Science because of the problems on Wall Street?

The article mentions how finance students may run to the technology field because of the bad economic times. If the job market or economic time determines your major then
all I can say is "WOW".

My second thought was "Finance to IT? Maybe, Maybe Not."

I can see how young people today might have a second love for IT. Generation Y'ers grew up in the age of technology. With advance gaming consoles, iPods, cell phones, and social networking sites all becoming mainstream in their time, I can see how incoming college students would consider computer science as a major.

My concern is that students that are considering computer science are not well prepared for what they are about to get into. I fell in love with computers when I got my first Commodore 64 at the early age of 13. It was my only love. When I went to college, I had no problem deciding which field to major in. I did not read the newspapeers, check the department of labor statistics or anything. I knew it was going to be computer science. Then I was told I had to have a love for problem solving and mathematics. Do Finance majors have that? I'm not sure. My wife is a finance major and math is not her favorite subject and she does not like math word problem solving. So I don't know. But one thing I do know, computer science is a subject you have to love. It gets pretty boring at times.

Shortage in IT

There was a decline in computer science majors after the dot-com bust. People were afraid of the field because they felt in what not stable enough. But now is not the time to jump back in. The article mentions that the department of labor says there is a shortage. That's right, "SHORTAGE" of IT workers. I think its a shortage but not nearly as severe as they report. They are reporting that network admins will be severely in demand. I do not mean any harm, but network admins? I can see it somewhat due to cloud computing and WANs (movements to turn cities into hotspots) becoming increasing popular. But if anyone has not noticed, the traditional developer in on the decline in the US.

Until next time...

Roles in Software Engineering and Other Ramblings

2008-09-26T14:44:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I was reading another blog and it lead me to a wonderful site, Software Engineering Radio. Now how many people know this even existed? I never heard of it before until yesterday! A great site! Every 10 days they do a podcast where they talk about software engineering. This interested me because I have a Masters degree in Software Engineering from the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). A great school and the most reputable online school. For people like me who WORK full-time and do not live close to Carnegie Melllon or MIT, then UMUC is the school for you. Alright enough of the UMUC promotions, back to my thought.

On the Software Engineering Radio website you will find part I of a great series: "Roles in Software Engineering". It's for everybody, Recent Graduates, Junior Developers, Sr. Developers and Software Architects. They discuss the skills, experience and the mindset needed for SW Engineering positions in large companies, not Mom & Pop places. I found it very interesting to hear what it takes to be a Jr, Sr, and Technical Lead (Software Architect) in a large corporate environment from a noteworthy individual. I tell everybody when you graduate, target large companies to work at because even at the worst ones you will learn essential skills and the attitude to survive in any workplace.

Please don't forget to Donate! It's a great site. Look out for Part II!

Other Ramblings

I was emailed a link to a webcast about a week ago from MSDN Magazine. The topic was "Putting It All Together, SW Development Environments from the Ground Up". I watched the webcast because I figured it might give me a few tips on improving my Software Development Environment. The webcast was fairly decent. The presenter talked about things and ways to increase productivity in a SW Development Environment. And one of the things was, PAMPER YOUR DEVELOPERS! I'm all for that! Give us the right tools and work environment and we will be more productive! Another interesting part of the presentation is that he listed some books every developer should read. It was a fantastic list. A couple I read in graduate school. I will blog about Books Every Devloper Should Read later. But my favorite book everyone should read is Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tim and Tom (Like I'm really on first name basis with these people). Read and Enjoy It. If you are managing a team or hope to be managing a team, you will want to have read this book. Trust me.

Until next time....

The First Day of the Blog

2008-09-25T14:10:00.000-04:00

This is my nth attempt on starting a blog. Before I go on I'm going to try to answer a few questions you might be wondering:

What's up with the name? "The Analytical Architect"?

Well I know its a crazy name but it was the best I could come up with that did not make much sense. Names that do not make much sense seem to catch on faster. I'm a software architect and I'm very analytical (how can this not be the case for all SAs), so I named it "The Analytical Architect Corner"

2. What will you be blogging about?

Good question if I do say so myself. It would not be right to say everything that involves Information Technology. So I'm going to say everything that involves I. T. That will include everything from Artifical Intelligence to Zeon processors (It was hard to come up with something for Z)

3. What do you do?

Another good question! Simply put, WORK!

Don't expect me to blog everyday. But I will try to blog when I go to industry events like VSLive 2008 Dallas. This is not going to be totally a developer blog. I may post code demos from time to time. But what can can expect from the blog is my opinion on certain things in IT, which may not be yours or even accurate. I don't claim to be Bill Gates or Joel Spolsky. Just a person who love application architecture and design (Did you see I did not say Programming?).

Until next time...