[OT]Looking for Microsoft MCPD Enterprise Application Developers

Hi everybody,

One of the companies in my group is looking for certified professionals to get the CDS Competency from Microsoft.

Is anyone interested?

Let me know!

Cheers!

The Developers Group London - 21.10.2009

Yesterday I've took a speech @ The Developers Group in Microsoft Cardinal Place (London UK) Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation (WF not WWF which is copyrighted by World Wrestling Federation and it's another story...)

You can download slides and demos from Speech & Conferences area on the "naked" TIQ-Industrial site (or click here Slides, Demos).

I'm absolutely unhappy with yesterday presentation because I've totally missed the presentation timing that I planned!

I started writing code to much slowly so that I was unable to complete all the demos that I consider to be "a must" to learn the pillars of WF.

The basic things You should know:

• Demo 1 - The editors is totally integrated with the object model of WF. You can draw or code (obviously first option is better...) and you need to know ho to manage exceptions.
• Demo 2 - While, Condition, If, Branches... You must know how to manage your flow
• Demo 3 - Data exchange, you must be able to exchange information between host and your workflow instance and viceversa (it's not the initial parameters passing to the workflow, I haven't the time to show this feature).
• Demo 4 - Custom Activity create your custom components libraries extending the WF basic toolbox (like Sharepoint and TFS 2010 do). Yesterday the problem exposing a property was the default constructor exposed by my Snippet wasn't good for WF.
• Demo 5 - Event State Machine that it's the real added value of WF in modelling real world behaviour (document management, resource management, long running transaction.

For the upcoming sessions from DG Group take a look to http://www.richplum.co.uk/

Virtual-Server: Quick guide to virtualize you servers

Technorati Tag: Infrastructure,Virtual Server

1. Deploy Virtual Server R2 (more information here)
   1. You'll need an Host server for the new virtual machines;
   2. You'll need a Virtualizer server to perform the conversion job;
   3. You "should" have a Target server to virtualize.
2. Add the required components on the Virtualizer server:
   1. Install FULL ADS (more information here). Pay attention to install 1.0 and non 1.1!
   2. Install VSMT (more information on here)
   3. Take a look to VSMT help to understand where to begin...
      Don't expect to find a friendly interface.
      Everything must be  manually done and through scripts!
3. For each Target server that you have to virtualize (moving it on the Host server):
1. Delete unused spaces and defrag local disks.
   If you've Dynamic-Partition you need to convert them back to Basic
   (it's not so easy and PAY ATTENTION you can only virtualize system with Basic-Partions!)
2. Copy locally and Run gatherhw.exe.
   It will generate servername.xml and copy it back to the virtualizer server.
3. Check that everything is fine with:
   VMScript.exe /hwvalidate /hwinfofile:servername.xml
4. On the Virtualizer server run the following command to generate the migration scripts: vmscript /hwGenerateP2V /hwInfoFile:<GuestMachine>.xml /name:<VirtualMachineName> /vmConfigPath:<Your VSMT Directory>\vmconfig  /virtualDiskPath:d:\vmdisk /hwDestVS:<YourVSMcahine> /virtualDiskDynamic /vmMemory:256
5. Check that PXE support on your host server network card is on (to boot from the network)
6. On the Virtualizer server run the following commands:
1. C:\<VMST Directory>\p2v\<GuestMachine>\<GuestMachine>_Capture.cmd
   this will create the image and at the end of the process wil shut-down the Target server.
2. C:\<VSMT Directory>\p2v\<GuestMachinet>\<GuestMachine>_CreateVM.cmd
   this will create the configuration file for the new virtualized server (.vmc).
3. C:\<VSMT Directory>\p2v\<GuestMachine>\<GuestMachine>_DeployVM.cmd
   This will link the configuration to VirtualServer starting the new virtualized server.

Final Note (unfortunately last but not least):

VSMT doesn't support Dynamic-Partition. Every "real" WIndows server system is installed with Dynamic-Partion

...so any consideration is up to you...

The only thing you can do is to TRY to virtualize the disks of you server with WinImage without leveraging VSMT.

There is a lot of work to do for VSMT team for making it suitable for real world scenarios!

Zoomify V4 Released

Technorati Tag: Zoomify,Tracking,Flash

In our tracking projects (GPS/GPRS systems in industrial plants) we leveraged Zoomify technology to process the plant images (usually took from an airplane and the reassembled by post-processing).

Today there is also SilverLight with DeepZoom to achieve the same result but if you're still working with Flash Zoomify it's still the best tool.

A new version (Version 4) has just been release. Take a look here for the main features.

To my colleagues: PLS take a look!

PS: About tracking project, this week has been published a white-paper from my company about a project on Iron & Steel Technology magazine. It's at page 58....

OT - LiguriaIn

Just to inform you that I was charged as local representative to LondonIn (a LinkedIn group to connect London professionals) for the Italian network LiguriaIn ( www.liguriain.com ).
Liguria is an industrial district where are located top companies for healthcare, industrial engineering, naval-shipping, energy and obviously tourism.
I'll be focused to enabling relationships, synergies and hopefully business initiatives between UK companies and LiguriaIn companies.
Feel free to contact me for any further information.

I'm really honoured of this commitment because I was born in Genoa (the main town of Liguria) and I've a very good feeling with people of my hometown!