Corrado Iorizzo - MindDump

My TechDays 2011 Bern slide deck

2011-11-02T22:14:00.001Z

I attended a great TechDays event in Bern and I also had the great opportunity to take a talk.

The Recording of my session is available here.

The slide deck, as usual, can be download from by skydrive space here.

I also recall that my friend and colleague Benjamin Soulier had 2 talks. Here the links too:

ISACA Event–Cambridge Technology Partners

2011-10-13T20:31:00.001+01:00

I just did with my great friend Benjamin a demo on Amazon EC2, Azure and O365 at the ISACA meeting sponsored by CTP.

The slide we used are available on my skydrive space here.

Partner of the Year

2011-10-09T18:44:00.001+01:00

I am very pleased to announce that Cambridge is the 2011 Microsoft Partner of Year in the category Future of Productivity.

The award is in recognition of the outstanding work that has been done in Switzerland , in the delivery of Portal and Collaboration projects on top of Microsoft SharePoint.

In particular Microsoft has rewarded the “SharePoint Business Accelerators” for Enterprise Social Collaboration as most innovative and leading edge solution of the year.

Congratulations to the delivery team (Alan, Charles, Bastienne, Fabrizio, Benjamin) that make this possible!

TechDays 2011–Bern

2011-10-05T21:18:00.001+01:00

The 21st October I’m more than glad to have the opportunity to run a session at the Switzerland Techdays in Bern about the customization of TFS (through plugin and eventing service) to allow the integration with external platforms (ticketing systems or ppm tools).

More details on the event agenda here: http://www.microsoft.com/switzerland/msdn/fr/techdays/agenda.aspx

Geneva SoftShake and other local events

2011-09-26T17:07:00.001+01:00

Next week in Geneva it will take place the second edition of the Soft-Shake conference that I strongly recommend (…even though if I cannot attend since I’ll be in Anaheim for the SharePoint Conference).

We have 2 speeches here:

Ben, our Azure MVP, just back from the Build is presenting the latest features of Azure;
Sandro and Velan are going to speak of a real case study of ALM applied to an Azure project and, probably for the first time in Switzerland, they will present the new TFS Online in their session

SoftShake is not the only upcoming event, since we’ve many initiatives around the cloud.

I’ll be directly involved in this ISACA session on Cloud computing and Swiss Market Trends where I will do with Ben a kind of Jam session on IaaS and PaaS.

Below the agenda:

Agenda
18:00 Welcome and Greets
18:30 Swiss Market Trends in Cloud computing - Anees Qureshi, CTP Nyon
18: 50 Understanding the cloud computing better – Issues, Threats and solutions, with real life case analysis on various offerings
- Corrado Iorizzo, Senior Architect / Benjamin Soulier, Manager, CTP Nyon
19:50 Q and A Session
20:05 Networking Apero

Location:

Cambridge Technology Partners, Chemin de Precossy 27, Nyon.

TFS 2010 Web Access - Project Collections don’t showed

2011-09-21T18:12:00.001+01:00

This morning I’ve lost a couple of hours with an enterprise customer with a very annoying problem.

We’re using different Project Collections to segregate permission and delegate administrations among different countries/departments/sand-boxed environments;
Since a couple of days, when I add a new Project Collection, it doesn’t showed on the Project Selection window of TFS Web Access

Indeed Visual Studio 2010 worked perfectly, showing all the expected Project Collections accordingly to the granted permissions.
After having checked (and forced) all TFS permissions, logs and web-configs what I did had just forcing an option on TFS Web Access web.config

I had to change the following option:

          1: <tfServers>

         2:  <!-- <add name="http://server:8080" /> 

         3: -->

         4: </tfServers>

First I removed the comment, forcing to connect to the TFS server DNS URL (http://tfs.mycompany.com/tfs)

This wasn’t working too so I forced Web Access to connect to a specific Project Collection URI (http://tfs.mycompany.com/tfs/oneofmyprojectcollection) and unexpectedly this worked!

I don’t know why but almost probably specifying a project collection uri force TFS to enumerate the root collection.

I’d like to remember that this option is used when you need to decouple TFS Web Access from TFS Application Tier, splitting the module on two different servers.

Balsamiq Templates Collection

2011-09-21T17:38:00.001+01:00

Balsamiq is an excellent tool that I use to design application storyboards, mockups and functional specs, and I’ve to admit that since I’ve discovered it, I prefer it rather than Microsoft SketchFlow. It’s also interesting the company behind the product and the philosophy of the founder (…one of the few italian guys running a startup).

Anyway for whom is working with Balsamiq I’m landed on a must-link site providing for free additional templates that can be used to enrich the Balsamiq library to support different sketch style (as example SharePoint 2010 and iPad). Take a look to: http://mockupstogo.net/

Azure UG Switzerland – 23.09.2011

2011-09-14T10:29:00.001+01:00

By enabling you to build, host and scale your applications in the Cloud, Windows Azure is the unifying factor coming for the enterprise.

If you missed the opportunity to attend the Build Conference in Anaheim, California, please joint us on Friday September 23rd, 9 to 12 AM, for a discovery tour of all the latest features and capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud Platform, a tour presented by Switzerland’s first Windows Azure MVP Benjamin Soulier.

Then you will hear about a real life experience presented by Mr. Adam Jones of The Global Fund.

Registration:

Attendance is free, kindly register at:

http://www.azureusergroup.ch/

Location:

Chemin de Précossy 27

Cambridge Technology Partners Office

1260 Nyon

Schedule:

Date: Friday September 23^rd 2011

Time: 9AM to 12AM

Agenda:

09:00-09:30: Breakfast,

09:30-10:15: Session: Benjamin Soulier -

Technorati Tags: Azure UG

All about new the features coming to Azure

10:15-10:30: Break

10:30-11:15: Session: A customer’s voice: Adam Jones from The Global Fund

11:15-12:00: Open discussion

SharePoint 2010 – NLB vs Hardware Load Balancer

2011-08-30T11:29:00.001+01:00

In the last period, many times I was involved in discussions with customers regarding the adoption of the out-of-the-box Windows Server NLB (Network Load Balancer) or dedicated hardware solution (Cisco, F5, Coyote, etc.)

I’ve tried to summarize my mental pattern about this argument, in the table below (…well, I censored Duff & Donuts from my thoughts):

	PROS	CONS
NLB	It’s cheaper (already available as part of Windows Server stack). Rapid deployment and adoption: SharePoint team doesn’t need to rely on the infrastructure team for the configuration; No real technical expertise needed;	NLB works at socket level (TCP/UDP) and doesn’t provide any specific feature or optimization for http/https. A dedicated NIC (network card) is strongly recommended. Governance and Operations of NLB cluster could be tricky: more people must be made aware of NLB configurations Configuration could be tricky in presence of multicast traffic. No caching capability is provided: for http/https is expected to rely on Microsoft ISA or IAG; No certificate management: Certificate must be individually managed in IIS; Some Governance is needed; No compression capability: for http/https is expected to rely on IIS 7.x Technology is …antique, well not really an issue but NLB was created to balance COM+ application with NT4/OptionPack
Hardware Load Balancer	Improved Performance, https traffic is managed at hardware level; Low latency during the switching in case of High-Availability configuration. SSL and HTTPS configuration is managed internally, making it transparent to IIS/SharePoint configuration. Caching capabilities if needed (don’t abuse of this). High-Availability generally supports dependency rules on how to route packets in case of unavailability of specific servers/application tiers. Support of protocol specific rules (http, https, etc.) Support of Security Rules; Technical Agnosticism, the tools can be used to balance Windows, Linux, Web Server, sockets, email servers. Governance in the sense that there is a centralized point of management for all the needs regarding balancing, high-availability, security etc.	Expensive, for sure it something to be acquired and identifying the best solution won’t be easy ‘cause the huge amount of options in the market. Learning Curve

Rules of Thumb

Use NLB if hardware load balancer is not available and there are no plans on that (polite way to say no budget);
In the Intranet, if reverse proxy isn’t available (sometimes the hardware load balancer is available only for Internet traffic);
As Tactical Solution (as example for running stress test on your new project in a stage environment if the hardware solution is not available or cannot be used);
We can definitely state that a strategic solution must rely on hardware load balancer, a tactical solution could rely on a software NLB.

SharePoint Governance, ITIL and MOF 4.0

2011-03-09T17:36:00.000Z

In these times I’m working for different customers in defining some models of SharePoint Governance modeling processes, planning strategies and defining maturity models in IT organizations to support a SharePoint Service Line being able to manage heterogeneous organization business departments:

I’ve to say that it’s a very interesting and quite challenging topic and I’m strongly leveraging the experience I’ve done in the last years where I’ve used ITIL v3 to support IT organizations in adopting an ALM strategy based on Team Foundation Server.

Here my personal quick annotation of useful resources regarding Services Frameworks.

Process-Map

ITIL.org

MOF Team Blog Announcement

MOF IT Library

Get the Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0

Azure User Group Suisse – Moved to 16th February 2011

2011-01-25T10:53:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: Azure,Cloud

Hi everyone, I’m very proud to re-announce the first Azure User Group Suisse Meeting that will be in held in Nyon on 16.02.2011 (I know it was originally planned for the 02 Feb), thanks to Cambridge Technology Partners that will provide the conference room and the technical infrastructure to run the meeting.

The Group Leader is my dear friend and great speaker Benjamin Soulier and we’ve decided to run this initiative together to have the opportunity to share ideas and experience for a technology we’re sure is going to drive the IT projects in the incoming years.

The idea is to import in Suisse the User Groups UK formula where communities and groups are largely spreaded with some common features:

Contents and Topics are directly chosen by group members;
Live events every 2-3 months in off-work hours (18,00-20,00)

2 Sessions of 1 Hours
Final drink with networking and free sharing-experience

More information here

Event Manifesto

This year has been announced by numerous IT analysts as the year of Cloud Computing.
As a first initiative around Microsoft cloud technologies, you are invited to discover and get up to date with the next IT revolution.
The event is organized with the support of Cambridge Technology Partners that provides the conference room and the tec...hnical infrastructure to run the meeting and will consist of two great sessions, some networking and a final apero’.

Session 1 – Emmanuel Mesas - from Microsoft
We’re honored of having Microsoft with us that will take the first session about the cloud proposal and Microsoft vision.

Session 2 – Benjamin Soulier - A Lap Around Azure
This session will explain all what you need to start building your applications in the cloud.
What you need to know to start your projects in the cloud in an effective way.
The Goal of this session is understanding how to write code, test it locally & deploy and maintain your application in the Cloud

Call To Action:

I’m looking to speakers and Topics for the next events and obviously I am not necessarily looking for seasoned speakers. In fact the value that group bring to all of you is that you are part of community and if you want to share a good story to tell about real world implementation you can do that!

Why should you speak at Meetings:

To practice your public speaking abilities in a friendly environment
To promote your name and measure your technical skills
To have the opportunity to share your experiences for everyone benefits and viceversa

If you’re interested, please write to me: corrado.iorizzo [a--t] yahoo.co.uk or drop a comment on this blog.

ALM Day 2011 – Team Foundation Server and ITIL to support IT processes

2010-12-10T09:35:00.001Z

I’m very proud of being invited by Microsoft Switzerland to speak at the ALM Day 2011 on 27 January 2011 in Zurich about our experience on the implementation of IT business processes on the top of Team Foundation Server.

It this meeting I’m honored of the presence of Luis Marcos that gave me the opportunity to work together on the automation of some delivery processes in JT International and we co-present the session.

I can also announce that Cambridge Technology Partners, is organizing another ALM Day that will be held in Suisse Romande most probably in march.

Technorati Tags: ALM,TFS

Azure User Group Suisse – 02.02.2011 Call for User Groups Sessions

2010-12-10T08:39:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: Azure,Cloud

Hi everyone, I’m very proud to announce the first Azure User Group Suisse Meeting that will be in held in Nyon on 02.02.2011, thanks to Cambridge Technology Partners that will provide the conference room and the technical infrastructure to run the meeting.

The idea is to import in Suisse the User Groups UK formula where communities and groups are largely spreaded and have some common features:

Contents and Topics are directly chosen by group members;
Live events every 2-3 months in off-work hours (17,30-20,00)
- 2 Sessions of 1 Hours
- Final drink with networking and free sharing-experience

Call To Action:

I’m looking to speakers and Topics for the first events and obviously I am not necessarily looking for seasoned speakers. In fact the value that group bring to all of you is that you are part of community and if you want to share a good story to tell about real world implementation you can do that!

Why should you speak at Meetings:

To practice your public speaking abilities in a friendly environment
To promote your name and measure your technical skills
To have the opportunity to share your experiences for everyone benefits and viceversa

If you’re interested, please write to me: corrado.iorizzo [a--t] yahoo.co.uk or drop a comment on this blog.

VS/TFS – A lot of improvements

2010-12-08T09:12:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio,TFS

In these days a lot of updates and news around Visual Studio and TFS are coming out by MS and I’d like to fix-up some useful links and features:

VS/TFS 2010 SP1 Beta (Source: bharry’s WebLog)

Released on 09.12.2010 it’s a Beta that appears to be very reliable and it’s also licensed to run on production servers. In terms of functionalities released it doesn’t appear to be huge, but technically it resolves many internal issues (memory leaks and performance) and build automation should be very reliable now.
Download links:
- .NET Framework 4 Update Beta – otherwise know as .NET Framework 4 KB2162169 – BETA
- VS 2010 SP1 Beta (Includes the .NET Framework 4 update)
- TFS 2010 SP1 Beta (Includes the .NET Framework 4 update)
Functionalities
- Local help viewer – …honestly I don’t care
- Silverlight 4 tools - The Silverlight 4 tools are now included along with Silverlight 3 support.
- Unit Testing on .NET 3.5 - In VS 2010, you can only run unit tests against .NET 4.0 and must rely on Framework compatibility to trust that your app will actually work if deployed on .NET 3.5.
- Intellitrace for 64-bit and Sharepoint – Intellitrace – Anyway is still missing the Silverlight and unmanaged C++
- Performance Wizard for Silverlight – Profile for SilverLight. I still hadn’t the time to test for it.
- VB Compiler runtime switch (/vbruntime) – Key VB runtime components can be included as references in your application, making it easier for you to target new platforms as they are released.

Visual Studio Feature Pack 2 (Source: MSDN)

It was announced during the Inner Circle Partners Summit on November in Antwerpen and released on 15.11.2010
Licensed to VS Ultimate with MSDN, VS Premium with MSDN or VS Test Professional with MSDN
It’s a cumulative pack so it INCLUDES the Visual Studio 2010 Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack (aka Feature Pack 1)
Download links:
- MSDN Visual Studio 2010 Features Pack
Functionalities
- Testing features:
  - Important: Use Microsoft Test Manager to capture and playback action recordings for Silverlight 4 applications.
  - Use action recordings to fast forward through manual tests that need to support Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6.
  - Available to Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate)
    - Important: Create Coded UI tests for Silverlight 4 applications
    - Edit coded UI tests using a graphical editor
    - Important: Run coded UI tests for web applications using Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6
- Code visualization and modeling features(requires Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate):
  - Important: Use the Generate Code command to generate skeleton code from elements on UML class diagrams. You can use the default transformations, or you can write custom transformations to translate UML types into code.
  - Create UML class diagrams from existing code.
  - Important:Explore the organization and relationships in C, C++, and ASP.NET projects by generating dependency graphs.
  - Important:Import elements from UML sequence diagrams, class diagrams, and use case diagrams as XMI 2.1 files that are exported from other modeling tools.
  - Create links and view links from work items to model elements.
  - Create layer diagrams from C or C++ code and validate dependencies.
  - Write code to modify layer diagrams and to validate code against layer diagrams.

TFS and Project Server Integration in Beta (Source: Microsoft Project 2010 Blog)

This is an hot topic in today IT organization because one of emerging need is traceability where TFS is great, and companies needs to correlate Project Portfolio Management solutions with Software Construction and QA processes and also to the Operations landscape.
The distribution of the integration will be done as a Feature Pack that is available ONLY to Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate
The integration can be downloaded only from MSDN download center (available to MSDN subscribers), access it and then look at:

Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack Beta (x86) - (English)
Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack Beta (x64) - (English)

The installation requires TFS 2010 SP1 Beta to be installed on the affected TFS Server.
Visual Studio SP1 Beta need to be installed on the clients that will leverage these integrations functionalities (I expect the Team Leaders only machines)
The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack must be installed on Project Server:

It supports Project Server 2007 and 2010 too

Functionalities

In terms of the functionalities supported I’ll dedicate a Post later on this topic but I’ve to say that I’ve some concern and there is room for improvements.
I don’t like the resource mapping from TFS to Project Server (but I need to perform some more test).
There are some constraints and assumptions regarding the Work-Items that you want to keep aligned with Project Server that you need to consider when you model and implements your ALM business processes

RIA Services – Under the hood

2010-05-13T17:20:00.001+01:00

Personal reminder: I’ve found these couple of posts very useful:

WCF & RIA

http://blogs.msdn.com/saurabh/archive/2009/11/23/understanding-the-wcf-in-wcf-ria-services.aspx

RIA Endpoints:

http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2010/05/05/silverlight-and-wcf-ria-services-2-services.aspx

Deployment:

http://blogs.msdn.com/saurabh/archive/2010/03/16/ria-services-application-deployment.aspx

TIQ won a Microsoft Inner Circle @ Western Europe Partner Summit in Rome

2010-04-15T22:10:00.001+01:00

It was 6 month ago but I’ve taken the pics only yesterday (…thanks to Microsoft mktg :-D )

I’m on the left and obviously as you can see from my formal dress the award has been totally unexpected…

.Net 4 & Parallel-Programming: Quick Start

2010-04-15T22:05:00.001+01:00

Ok, you’ve to think to your code and data structure in a different way to leverage multi-cores processor at their best, but with VS 2010 and .Net 4.0 it’s very easy to begin the development of concurrent algorithms and procedures:

Remember that:

Always think to synchronization of task. Having concurrency features doesn’t mean that you’ve to start parallel processing indiscriminately!
You cannot parallelize DB operations (well you can if you use a connection for each task, better on different tables and pay attention to DB locking);
If you share data structures between the concurrent tasks protected them with lock(mydatastructure( if you’ve to update or change them (for example a Dictionary<>).

Sharepoint 2007 - “Cannot install the package” during service pack installation

2009-11-17T18:47:00.001Z

Install Sharepoint 2007 SP2 on a test server I ran into this problem. No log, no additional info.

The work around I found was:

Run officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x86-fullfile-en-us /extract:c:\mytempdir
In this way I’ve got all the Sharepoint SP2 patches available in a temp directory
I’ve installed manually the available patches
Now it seems that everything is right!

Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2007

Sharepoint 2010 Beta 2 Available

2009-11-16T22:28:00.001Z

Ok, the time for the braves is arrived!

Sharepoint 2010 is available to MSDN subscribers.

Marco (my colleague owner og my account) please, go on with the new servers!

Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010

Microsoft ALM Day – Rome and Milan

2009-11-11T22:52:00.001Z

The last week I had the opportunity to speak at the second edition of Microsoft ALM Day (Application Lifecycle Management) the 5th in Rome and the 6th in Milan. Here my presentation.

I love these events because I always to meet great people (dr. Ivar Jacobson during the previous edition, Brian Harry in Rome and Brian Keller).

I also had to opportunity to speak and eat with great and BIG people. Thanks Lorenzo for the fillet….

Technorati Tags: ALM,VisualStudio 2010,Speech

Visual Studio 2010

2009-11-11T22:38:00.001Z

The previous week I attended to the Microsoft Inner Circle Partner Summit in Rome about Visual Studio and ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) topics.

Brian Harry announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 for the Q1-2010, while the RC should be shipped for the end of the year.

The only certain thing is the product launch that will be held on march 22nd, at this moment is also sure that the RTM will be made available a little bit earlier or a little bit later :-P

The suite has been rebranded and the Team System name is gone on retirement (well officially the last Team System brand name will be the 22nd march)!

There are going to be 3 main products:

Visual Studio 2010 Professional/MSDN (more or less is Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition)
Visual Studio 2010 Premium/MSDN
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate/MSDN

But the big stuff are on the supporting tools:

Visual Studio Test Elements 2010 to create test cases and manages test execution (manually or partially automated);
Visual Studio Team Lab Management 2010 to integrate and automate the virtual machines management in the ALM;
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 now installable on Windows 7/Vista, included with MSDN and also with the CAL!

In the following pics the features stack of the different VS products:

These are the technology enablers to build real software farms!

More when I will have the time to delivery and reorganize our internal procedures of Milan Campus to leverages the new features!

Technorati Tags: VisualStudio 2010

Sharepoint Conference 2009

2009-11-11T22:22:00.001Z

I’m back from the Sharepoint Conference 2009 from a couple of weeks (it has been held on 19-22 October in Las Vegas) and I’m in a huge late in publishing some personal annotation from there.

The keynote was driven by Tom Rizzo and Steve Ballmer

The key messages were:

Beta will be available November, the goal is to made the RTM available for the 2Q 2010;
One thing is Sharepoint 2010 on premises, on thing is Sharepoint Online (business opportunities and different target for them);
Sharepoint Services is going to change is name to Sharepoint Foundation and it will not be longer part of Windows Server (it will be an independent downloadable package);
Total integration between Development Environment (VS2010), BDC (now Business Connectivity Services) and Office 2010;
Sharepoint now run on Windows 7/Vista to leverage the integration with VS2010 (this is real happiness for me and many of my customers);

Full Ajax support to reduce the front-end flickering;
Full WEB 2.0 , social and and community features (document rating), the idea is to “recreate” the Facebook experience in Sharepoint for business purpose;
The User Interface is totally based on Ribbons (like Office 2007);
Full Streaming support for video, audio and pics (I guess that someone will run his own clone of youporn on SP2010!). This is to better support SilverLight development;
I love BI and I was impressed by PowerPivot (it’s an in-memory database)

I’ve seen filtering from Excel 2010 100 milions rows in less than 1 second! Simply incredible!!
Performance Point now is part of Sharepoint (this is a huge news from a strategic perspective because in this way it should be easier to push it to the SMI market, where Perfomance Point alone wasn’t a justified as an investment);

Groove is now fully integrated with Sharepoint providing offline support (but offline and syncing is also possible with Office 2010)
Access, Visio, Word services and services architecture (yes Access, Visio and Word now work on server side)
Full REST architecture to access the Sharepoint data (very exciting for me’cause I’m a REST fan)
Huge improvement on Document Libraries performance. Now each folder could host one milion items.
Workflow, seems to work on .Net 3.5, I don’t see big news maybe the management from Sharepoint Designer where the workflow now are reusable and can be export/imported with VS2010;
Shared Services have been reengineered and now they are called Application Services and are sharable between more server farms;
Sand-Boxed Application, developers can leverage a developer mode to sand-box the application guaranteeing the reliability of the farm. Very interesting but the development model still seems tricky and challenging.

Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010

London Technology Network – Intelligent Transport Conference

2009-11-11T21:41:00.001Z

Here my presentation from the 01st July conference in London (I’m in huge late in blogging!).

It has been just a 5 mins speech about the awesome TIQ projects :-D on industrial vehicles tracking.

(Ok ok it’s always the same stuff).

The important thing in this blog is the excellent job made by friend Alessandro Faraci the London Technology Network business development manager and the conference chairman.

Technorati Tags: Tracking,Speech

TFS, Conchango and MOSS

2009-11-03T10:38:00.001Z

I'm working with a customer deploying MOSS 2007 and TFS 2008 in the same server farm, sharing the DB between the 2 environments and also the MOSS portal with TFS.

Indeed the topology is quite easy, with three servers:

A SQL-Server 2005 with SSAS, SSIS;
The TFS Application tier with SSRS;
The MOSS FE (with the TFS WSS extension)

Customer adopted a SCRUM methodology and would like to leverage the Conchango template, but I got in trouble because you've to manually setup Conchango on a dual server TFS topology, manually deploying a Sharepoint solution (Conchango).

I was unable to deploy the Conchango templates and after having thought it was caused by my fault, I found the following error in Sharepoint logs:

10/28/2009 10:59:38.94 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B64) 0x0A78 Windows SharePoint Services Timer 5utx Unexpected The timer service could not initialize its configuration, please check the configuration database. Will retry later.

This one, usually is due to a problem in Sharepoint configuration cache that can be easily resolved forcing an update of the cache (take a look to the blog post).

It didn't worked for me so I had to remove the server from the farm (easy in my scenario because it was just an 1 server farms) with:

psconfig -cmd configdb disconnect

The reinsert the server itself in the farm just with psconfigui.exe

To deploy Conchango is mandatory to install Team Explorer both on Sharepoint FE and on the TFS AT.

I don't like having team explorer on a MOSS FE, but in this case I need it because on the same server there is also Team System Web Access and explorer is a requirements also for it.

To manually deploy Conchango on Sharepoint : stsadm -o Conchango.TeamSystem.Scrum.Sharepoint.wsp from the path C:\Program Files\Conchango\Scrum for Team System\SFTS WSS Template

Reporting Services 2005 and Embedded Code

2009-09-08T21:54:00.001+01:00

I’ve a got a report where a field must be populated calling a “cascading” stored-procedure from the main query.

There 2 ways to do it:

To Create a sub-report and embedding it in the field just to retrieve the sp result (easy to deploy, but weak in performance)
Use SSRS Embedded code with ADO.net to invoke the stored-procedure populating the field.

Obviously the second way is “more” pragmatic (it guarantees the best performance but… from a developer perspective it’s inelegant).

Well I’ve chosen the second way so I needed to setup the SSRS .Net CAS permission.

Open the Report Server application directory (something like C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportManager)
Open rsmgrpolicy.config
Add a new PermissionSet to allow execution of SQL code
                        <PermissionSet
                                class="NamedPermissionSet"
                                version="1"
                                Name="Corra-Expression">
                            <IPermission
                                    class="SqlClientPermission"
                                    version="1"
                                    Unrestricted="true"
                            />
                            <IPermission
                                    class="SecurityPermission"
                                    version="1"
                                    Flags="Execution"
                            />
Modify the predefined Code Group (for Reporting Services expressions) after having backed-up the previous one:
                        <CodeGroup
                                class="UnionCodeGroup"
                                version="1"
                                PermissionSetName="Corra-Expression"
                                Name="Report_Expressions_Default_Permissions"
                                Description="This code group grants default permissions for code in report expressions and Code element. ">
                            <IMembershipCondition
                                    class="StrongNameMembershipCondition"
                                    version="1"
                                    PublicKeyBlob="blablabla"
                            />
Now you’re able to invoke ADO.net from SSRE expressions.

[OT]The VSTS italian team

2009-07-08T23:10:00.001+01:00

…just to share my praise to the italian VSTS team (…ok I’m not sure about the group definition). I mean:

Francesca Longoni
Lorenzo Barbieri
Paola Rossetto
Pasquale Della Torca

(…alphabetically sorted by first name). They’ve closed the year with an excellent and astonishing result!

Their commitment is great but more important the professionalism and organization is simply perfect. When I worked with them for the italian ALM Day, everything was… like a swiss clock!

I hope to have the opportunity to work again with them!

SQL-Server 2005 BI Studio – Class not registered

2009-06-30T17:59:00.001+01:00

If you get this error:

Try to install Office Web Components from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=7287252c-402e-4f72-97a5-e0fd290d4b76&displayLang=en

On my development VM I’ve installed only O2007 getting this error.

Windows 7 – Upgrading from BETA to RC, it worked!

2009-06-23T12:45:00.001+01:00

It’s a couple of weeks that I’m receiving a notification ad every boot of my Windows 7 RC Laptop reminding me to backup data because it will expires in july without providing me the opportunity to recover data and application.

I’ve just planned 2 day to reinstall everything but thanks to my friend AndreaR (the cyborg) I used this article to upgrade.

Recap:

Get a Win 7 RC copy from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx
Unzip it to an external disk (a USB key is fine)
Open the file .\sources\cversion
Change from MinClient=7x00.0 to MinClient=7000.0
Launch .\setup.exe and the upgrade

I know, it’s the “italian way” very pragmatic. I guess that upgraded process hasn’t been fully tested so that it has blocked by MS.

In my case it worked great (it took a couple of hours to be completed)

ANIPLA 2009 – Naples

2009-06-23T12:34:00.001+01:00

On 19th June I had the opportunity to speak at Federico II University of Naples (Italy) to the italian national conference on Intelligent Manufacturing.

My speech was again about BAM (Business Activity Monitor) on industrial plant and it has been co-authored with Enzo Maria Tieghi from ServiTecno our partner providing us with GE Fanuc SCADA solutions.

The presentation is available here:

PS: …I was forgetting to suggest to avoid “Oste Pazzo” restaurant at Borgo Marinari in Naples. Expect from them a huge bill depending from your home town and a meal quality that is the same of a low level restaurant in Milan. Do you know the worst things about touristic restaurant? Well, you can find them there.

IBA-Day 2009 & DDG May Meeting Follow-Up

2009-05-21T14:48:00.001+01:00

My company has been invited to present a project developed for an Hot-Rolling-Table for a new furnace at IBA Day 2009.

I was the speaker but I’ve just presented the great job of my colleagues Eros Valzasina and Chiara Susca.

The challenges of the project were:

How to integrate the Hot-Rolling-Table logic implemented on Siemens MMC with the new S7 PLC?
How the system can be tested running it in parallel with the previous one (we know very well this topic for level 2 application, but this was the first time we applied our “Sunsetting” to Level 1;
Is it possible to deliver a Level 1 PCS with a low-cost Wintel hardware using IBA technologies?

Obviously if we were invited to IBA Day, the answer is yes to all of the question…

To know how, the presentation is here:

Yesterday I also attended to may meeting of London .Net User Group

There has been a great Battle of the WEB contest (great idea from Jason Chapman) where in a 35 mins for each speaker, different Content Managed platform and approach have been presented.

Obviously I’ve talked about Sharepoint but my battle has been a Waterloo…

My demo server with MOSS and WSS runs out of ADSL so that I talked about Content Management using the italian intranet running on WSS…

I’ve to be grateful to BT for this…

Anyway presentation is here:

AISTech 2009

2009-05-06T14:24:00.001+01:00

For my company AISTech (America Iron and Steel Technology institute) is “the event” and until now we’ve 7 papers (and 7 sessions) about projects we’ve delivered on metal market.

This year we’re also exhibitor and you can find our stand on the aisle 2900.

In the past days I’ve took some sessions:

“Computer Applications - Level 1 & 2 Control Systems and Migration” was driven by Andy Szabo from ArcelorMittal and from my friend Wlodzimierz Filipczyk (the most skilled person about level 1 and level 2 systems on steel market I’ve ever meet).
My session was about our methodological approach and the framework in leveraging data and information available from basic automation and PCS to provide high-level business information and also how to downsize unflexible level 3 functions to level 2 systems. Presentation is here.
About the technical stuff the involved platform are Sharepoint, Reporting Services, .Net and Analysis Services.
“Cranes - Crane Technology I” track where I’ve spoken about a project that we’re delivering to mananage an automatic slab yard. Our system leverage an optimizer platform providing simulation, trend analysis and hot-roll mill scheduling accordingly to different policy. Presentation is here.
We’re developing this project leveraging IBM ILog platform, using .Net for integration and WPF for the Front-End. We’ve also to deal with TMEIC-GE software to manage overhead cranes mission control.
“Electrical Applications - Updating Electrical Applications for Continuous Improvements” track where we explained how we’re using our “Sunsetting” approach in rewriting a Level 2 PCS to manage the power distribution of an 11 milion tons steel maker plant.
The news in this project is that we’re using Microsoft OSLO (a Domain Specific Language) to express the relationship between the component of power switches network. Presentation is here.

Reporting Services 2005, 2008 and more…

2009-04-20T17:10:00.001+01:00

I was getting mad in configuring our internal report servers exposing them to internet on https using our CA.

Everything was ok using the reporting services web-server (I was able to navigate and invoke all the reports) but it was impossible having the report manager application working.

The problem was that the DNS names (obviously) were different from netbios name and I’ve found this article that solved my problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

This is gold!

What is surprising is that in any real world scenario you will find a DNS name different from the internal, why I need to hack the registry to deploy my configuration?!

PS: Remember to restart IISAdminService, an iisreset isn’t enough!

Client/Server, REST and RIA in Real-World

2009-04-15T14:22:00.001+01:00

Scenario

In TIQ-Industrial we’re currently working on a revamping of a classic VB6 Client/Server application to WEB (for our customer’s Intranet).

This application is mission critical because it’s used to manage the production-planning and scheduling of the whole industrial site (accordingly to standard ISA-95, it’s a level 3 system). Obviously we’re talking about manufacturing sector.

Requirements

The main challenges we’ve to face are:

The user interaction, experience and responsiveness must be at least the same or improve the existing one;
We’ve to minimize the network round-trips because in some plant areas the available network bandwidth is scanty;
We cannot change the existing database (based on SQL-Server 2005) because the new system will run in parallel with the existing one, working at the same time with the same tables and stored-procedures but in the near future the customer would like to improve the current design (well we think so and we hope so :-D);

The technology standard for the new web application are ASP.Net 3.5 and SQL-Server 2005

The above requirements will be addressed the following ways (in vision):

Requirement 1
The application will be developed in a RIA-style (Rich Internet Application) strongly leveraging AJAX and 3rd party controls (Telerik RADControl for ASP.Net Ajax).
There will be a strong commitment by the development team on the user interface (…and not as happens sometimes on business components generalization and sexy technical stuffs creating no value for the customer)

Requirement 2
PostBack is the enemy!
Usually in ASP.Net forms development model, a PostBack is generated each time users click on a button, asking the server to perform some tasks.
We can also say that an event is generated on the browser and that event is processed by the web server generating a new page.
Today’s page are rich and large and where there is a lack on network bandwidth the user experience is bad!

Our aim is the reduction of the postbacks needed providing direct access to database data and business services to the client (browser).

This aim can be reached through a REST architecture where AJAX it the enabling technology providing richfull browser logic and functionality (…we’re emancipating the browser :-D )

Requirement 3
I’ve to admit that we don’t like the current database design but we cannot improve it!

Although this project is an opportunity to think about a new and improved database design. We’ll try doing this providing a virtual implementation of the database entities using an ORM (in this case ADO.net Entity Framework)

It this way, we take 2 advantages:

We can design the application working on an “ideal” and “optimized” database design abstracted through the Entity Framework and we can also evaluate if db model is working as expected…
In the future (if and when) the customer would decide to improve the db design, it will be feasible to reuse the existing db artifact experience (conceived in ORM) to drive the design of the new DB.
From the application perspective, we will need to update the entities mapping to the new design (and obviously we’d like to achieve a 1:1 mapping).

Logical Architecture

The diagram below explains the main layers of the application:

Navigation Services

It’s the “classic” web-server and provides the navigational logic to the application (page generation and page navigation).
Nothing different than standard web development approach, reference technologies are based on IIS 6 and ASP.Net 3.5
When an user asks for Something to Show, a new page (for example a Report, a Master/Slave view) is generated by the WEB server and pushed to the browser (as HTML obviously with graphics and scripts mixed-up). The important thing is that the page doesn’t contain data!
Data will be bound later and page itself (hosted by the browser) will ask/pull for the data.

Data Services

It’s the service that exposes data to the browser through http in a restful way (…in this project data will be exposed in read-only)!

I don’t have time to explain REST approach here (and there are a lot of blogs about that). For more information take a look to:

Pablo Castro’s Blog

WCF: Developing RESTful Services

Here, the main idea is that page controls will directly ask the data needed (something to read) to this layer that will send them using JSON/ATOM without needing to generate a new page avoiding the PostBack.
The idea is easy to understand, but in the was tricky and challenging to be implemented. The good news is that today we’ve technology for doing effective development with this approach.

ADO.Net Data Services (built on top of Microsoft’s ORM ADO.Net Entity Framework mentioned above) is a framework to expose relational data sources and manage REST events.

We’re using this framework to expose our data model to the external clients (browsers).

Services

ADO.net Data Service is great to expose data clusters and also their basic operation (CRUD) to the browsers but it’s not effective enough to expose complex business services and transaction. It hasn’t conceived for this!

The Services layer is in charge of exposing to external client applications (hosted by browsers) high-level services (business actions) that can be invoked by users.

Technically, there is nothing new in doing this, we leverage WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) that is mediator between the clients and the stored-procedures that currently are implementing the business-logic.

Currently there is a 1:1 correspondence with a business-services to stored-procedure, but strategically we can compose more complex services aggregating stored-procedures in transactions.

What is new here is that we exposes WCF using the REST Starter Kit so that this interface is compliant to the way in which data are exposed by the Data Services layer (atom/json), providing a single pattern in accessing data and services.

Summary

With this approach we can satisfy all the customer requirements and further we‘ve a couple of more gains:

Basic data are exposed though REST so that they can be “consumed” by other applications (for example warehouse mng, quality mng, etc.);
Business-Services are exposed through a standard (still REST) and in a strategic perspective, they could be invoked by etherogeneous clients to perform complex and shared business actions (for example raw material allocation) avoiding the needing to create complex ETL to keep the underlying databases aligned.

That’s SOA!

RIA, Flash & Web-Services

2009-03-24T15:37:00.001Z

This morning I was getting mad working with a colleague on the deployment of a RIA (Rich Internet Application) application developed targeting Adobe Flash 10

The application calls some web-services to get data from back-end system (data for tracking and telemetry of locomotives but this is irrilevant).

When the application runs from Flash Player it works fine;
When the application runs from the ActiveX hosted by IE nothing happened (meaning that we hadn’t crash, just it didn’t do anything…)

Using Fiddler we found that when a flash file is hosted by IE it asks for a crossdomain.xml resource.

Googling and looking to Adobe documentation we discovered that a crossdomain.xml must be deployed (saved) on the root of the web-server providing the web-services (that invoked back-end) and it contains the default policies allowing incoming Flash clients to call the hosted service.

Our crossdomain.xml is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
   <cross-domain-policy>
    <site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies="master-only"/>
    <allow-access-from domain="*"/>
    <allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="SOAPAction"/>
   </cross-domain-policy>

Don’t forget the last line to allow a SOAP (web-service) interaction.

It allows any incoming request from external Flash clients.

I admit that I’m totally incompetent on Flash and RIA techniques so I’ve lost a couple of hours on that!

[Italian Speaking]Evento Sharepoint + Avepoint @ Roma il 07.05.2009

2009-03-22T15:49:00.001Z

Volevo segnalare il seguente evento dedicato all'infrastruttura ed alle pratiche operative su Sharepoint:

http://www.decatec.it/Eventi/Decatec-Evento-Sharepoint-Roma-7-Maggio-2009.aspx

L'evento è organizzato da Stefan Demetz un eccellente professionista oltre che un amico e quindi sarà sicuramente sinonimo di qualità.

AvePoint ha delle eccellenti soluzioni per il backup/restore di Sharepoint che operano su base selettiva consentendo quindi di partizionare i contenuti da salvare in maniera semplice ed efficace.

ALM Day & DDG Group - Follow-up

2009-03-18T22:57:00.001Z

Just a quick note about the last speeches.

Microsoft ALM Day (Milan and Rome), here are the pdf and xps of the italian presentation;
Developers Group (London), here are the pps of the englishalian presentation;

I'd also wanna thanks the italian Microsoft Team for the perfect event organization (Francesca, Lorenzo, Paola, Pasquale) and Joanna, Jason and Pete from DDG for hosting me again.

Today the point of no return has been passed (sigh), unfortunately (for me) I've been charged also with a biz-development role in UK...

Just to begin, let me know if someone needs support or mentoring on BizTalk, Sharepoint and TFS, me or someone from my team will be delighted to work with you smiling, at the best of out capabilities and ...uhm ah! yes providing great value and effectiveness to your solution (...I don't wanna be a sales person sigh)

ALM Day & DDG Group

2009-03-08T20:02:00.001Z

It's a lot a time from my last note and I was very busy in a lot of different tasks for my company.

I prefer using my blog to write something about the technologies I'm using but I stll writing somethink about the incoming speeches...

This week I'll be in these italian events at Milan (11.03) and Rome (12.03): http://www.microsoft.com/italy/alm/eventi/almday.mspx

To be honest, I'm a little bit proud of sharing the same event with Ivar Jacobson...

The week after the next, I'll speak The Developers Group in Microsoft Cardinal Place (London UK) again on Team Foundation Server and how we use it in TIQ-Industrial. For more information on this take a look to http://www.richplum.co.uk/

[OT]Looking for Microsoft MCPD Enterprise Application Developers

2009-01-23T16:11:00.001Z

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

2009-01-22T14:42:00.001Z

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

2009-01-18T21:10:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: Infrastructure,Virtual Server

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.
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!
For each Target server that you have to virtualize (moving it on the Host server):

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!)
Copy locally and Run gatherhw.exe.
It will generate servername.xml and copy it back to the virtualizer server.
Check that everything is fine with:
VMScript.exe /hwvalidate /hwinfofile:servername.xml
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
Check that PXE support on your host server network card is on (to boot from the network)
On the Virtualizer server run the following commands:

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.
C:\<VSMT Directory>\p2v\<GuestMachinet>\<GuestMachine>_CreateVM.cmd
this will create the configuration file for the new virtualized server (.vmc).
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

2009-01-18T20:56:00.001Z

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

2009-01-09T12:17:00.001Z

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!

Upgrading Sharepoint 2003 to 2007 - Issues

2008-12-12T13:53:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: Sharepoint,Sharepoint Migration,prescan,stsadm

Preamble

There are a lot of different of different scenarios, issues and methodologies realated to upgrade from Sharepoint 2003 to 2007 (WSS or SPS).

Generally:

Check the service pack of SPS 2003 to match the prerequisites;
Backup the existing Sharepoint databases
Launch prescan /all on your server to be upgraded to check that Sharepoint is ready to be upgraded. You can find this utility on an 2007 installation under <%root%>\program files\common files\Microsoft Shared\web service extenstions\12\bin directory and copy it to the 2003 installation (allowing you to execute it);
Manually fix all the errors found from Prescan;
Proceed with the upgrade (accordingly to Microsoft brest practice);

Usually every time you'll find different errors depending to the Sharepoint topology and configuration.

This morning, I've found the following errors migrating WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0:

Launching prescan /all the log files was:

..............

12/11/2008 10:35:47 Scanning SPWeb: http://customer-server/test
12/11/2008 10:35:47   Updating list schema in web.
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Scanning SPWeb: http://customer-server/xyz
12/11/2008 10:35:47   Unghosted page: http://customer-server/xyz/default.aspx.
12/11/2008 10:35:47   Unghosted page: http://customer-server/xxx/SharedAreas/Forms/AllItems.aspx.
12/11/2008 10:35:47   Unghosted page: http://customer-server/xyz/Lists/Available Areas/AllItems.aspx.
12/11/2008 10:35:47   Updating list schema in web.
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Scanning SPWeb: http://customer-server/zz
12/11/2008 10:35:47   Updating list schema in web.
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Checking if Server="customer-server";Database="customer-content-database";Uid="userid";Pwd="userpwd";App="prescan.exe" is a WSS V2 SP2 database.
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Checking if any site has not yet been scanned in Server="customer-server";Database="customer-content-database";Uid="userid";Pwd="userpwd";App="prescan.exe".
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Error: The following site has not been scanned. Id = ef24fe63-efdf-42b7-b431-a9ae04abc24a and Url = /
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Checking if any list has not yet been scrubbed in Server="customer-server";Database="customer-content-database";Uid="userid";Pwd="userpwd";App="prescan.exe".
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Error: The following list has not been scrubbed: Id = b5f896c9-8f1c-40d2-9282-1154ccbaf6cb, Name=Web part galleries, Containing Web=
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Error: Prescan has encountered sites or lists that were not updated because they cannot be accessed using the SharePoint Products and Technologies object model. The most likely reasons for Prescan to skip a list are covered in the Knowledge Base article at: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=69958&clcid=0x409.
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Skipping virtual server: http://customer-server:81/. Server state = NeedExtend. Most likely this virtual server is not extended with WSS v2.
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Scan finished with failure.
12/11/2008 10:35:47 ===============================Logs===============================
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Log file: C:\DOCUME~1\sts_test\LOCALS~1\Temp\2\PreupgradeReport_633645885183825054_Log.txt
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Summary file: C:\DOCUME~1\sts_test\LOCALS~1\Temp\2\PreupgradeReport_633645885183825054_Summary.xml
12/11/2008 10:35:47 ==============================Totals==============================
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Number of sites skipped (already scanned):   0
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Number of sites scanned:   2
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Number of broken sites:   0
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Number of webs scanned:   554
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Number of broken webs:   0
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Number of webs using custom template:   0
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Number of pages scanned:   5848
12/11/2008 10:35:47 Number of unghosted pages:   1606 (27,46% of total).

.......

Usually the first thing you've to do with this kind of problem is trying to fix them with:

STSADM -o databaserepair -url http://customer-server -databasename customer-content-database

With this command all the orphaned entities in Sharepoint content database are found and fixed (removed).

The problem is that SOMETIMES stsadm is unable to find orphans so that prescan doesn't complete succesfully and you cannot upgrade...

To fix that you can MANUALLY force orphans in the content database directly working with Sharepoint database tables.

The idea is getting the entities id from the prescan log file (in our example the site with id=ef24fe63-efdf-42b7-b431-a9ae04abc24a and the list with id=b5f896c9-8f1c-40d2-9282-1154ccbaf6cb).

For force the orphans connect to Sharepoint content database and executes the above sql commands:

use customer-content-database

delete lists where tp_id='b5f896c9-8f1c-40d2-9282-1154ccbaf6cb'
delete sites where Id='ef24fe63-efdf-42b7-b431-a9ae04abc24a'

Now go back to the command line shell and execute:

STSADM -o databaserepair -url http://localhost -databasename customer-content-database -deletecorruption

So that you will the orphans removed.

Now you can launch prescan /all and it should run succesfully.

Keep in mind that you've to manually fix each error discovered by prescan. Each time you've to find a workaround! This SQL code must be adapted to you scenario and you should have to deal with others Sharepoint tables!

Microsoft Virtual Server and Remote Desktop

2008-12-02T19:04:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: Virtual Server,Remote Desktop

This is for my colleagues getting scaried when they get The website cannot display the page with an Internal Server Error when they try to access Virtual Server WEB Management page from a Remote Desktop session:

it's an authentication problem! Virtual Server is running well!!

Use from Remote Desktop the Console session and everything will be fine (...or access the WEB page from another client and not locally by Remote Desktop).

How to start a remote console session from Vista and last updated XPs?

mstsc /admin (in the past it uses to be mstsc /console)

and then insert target server IP on the logon window

REST and Industrial Applications - An alternative to OPC

2008-11-25T08:05:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: Visual Studio 2008,REST,OPC

Writing software for industrial application is trivial and risky and a lot of different software platforms and hardware devices must be integrated in a common environment often evolved through tens of years.

In this scenario, one of the most important standard is OPC that defines sets of specification about how to produce and consume data, alarms and events generally produced and processed in a common industrial system.

The following picture is a sample scenario showing the concept behind OPC:

A sample scenario

On the bottom area there are some different sample classes of industrial devices:

PLC-A is a sample PLC which exposes a set of memory data (called tag).
A tag is a calculated variable or the value of a physical signal. Usually tags are accessible using proprietary protocol like Siemens SH1 depending from the PLC used.
In the sample the tags are named (A01, A02, A0n for PLC-A, Z01, Z02, Z0n).
PLC-B is another sample PLC, working in the same way as PLC-A but using GE EGD protocol to expose tags to the other systems.
Legacy-Z is a sample system implementing a complex mathematical-model and exposing data to the upper layer using a custom UDP protocol.
This kind of system usually get data from PLCs, process them with feed-back model and generates setup data-packets sending them back to the PLCs. A lot of etherogenus operating system and programming languages have been used for delivering these application (Real-Time OS, Unix, Fortran, PML, C, etc.).
In this sample we assume the some of the calculated values are exposed with the tags pattern (name, values) using a custom developed protocol.

Before OPC

As you could realize, before the OPC era, developing the upper software layers (like a databases with trend analysis, HMI modules with the user interfaces) required to create 1:1 connections with each integrated devices implementing custom protocol (SH1, EGD, TCP UDP, etc) from every client applications wasting a lot of effort in application plumbing.

For example, if you HMI needs to integrate the PLC-A, PLC-B, Legacy-Z you must have in your code the SDKs or the components for using Sinec-H1, EGD and custom UDP.The same for the trend-analysis database.

What is OPC

Referring to the depicted scenario:

OPC is a standard communication protocol to mediate and expose the underling protocols to the upper software layers through a single and standardized access model.

As you can see from the sample picture, the Trend server and HMI server are directly connected to the OPC Server using just a single protocol (the OPC protocol).

To implement an OPC Server you should get it from the market. There are a lot of different products (Kepware, OPC Power Server, Matrikon, etc.) and you choose one basing on the availability of the supported protocols you could need.

In the sample scenario there is a logical mapping between the OPC exposed tags values and the underlying tags (like the OPC tag 00-01 is mapped to the physical tag A01. the OPC tag FF-02 correspond to the physical tag Z02 and so on)!

One OPC Server integrates differents etherogeous devices using one common logical tags table.

The translation from the industrial protocols (Siemens SH1, EGD, etc.) is in charge to the OPC drivers (there are a lot of different drivers on the market). If you need to translate a custom protocol (from sample scenario the custom TCP UDP protocol ) you can write your own driver with existing OPC SDK.

Architectural Pattern

From an architectural perspective you can consider OPC as a common layer to map and provide access to a network of underlying devices and resources using a name/value addressing pattern.

When you implement complex mathematical models or process control software in a modern environment you'd like to leverage OPC to implements your common memory areas providing access to your computed variables to different algorithms and models.

So on complex mill there are different applications running on different hardware systems that need to share data in the same way OPC was build for.

The problem is that OPC isn't enough fast to enable process control software doing his tasks and also the code you've to write providing OPC access is trivial and "fat" due to the involved SDKs and components.

So the question is:

How we can leverage the OPC pattern to implement common data areas using modern technologies and providing access to shared variables?

My idea is the development a REST service.

REST

Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style to expose a set of connected resources (and their basic operation) usually leveraging the HTTP protocol suite.

It's a different thing than Web-Services and SOA. I guess to understanding REST the best approach is a sample:

A multimedia contents could exposes its multimedia catalog through REST providing basic services for updating them;
A complex system could exposes its configuration and metadata and clients browser could leverage rest to connect and update those data;

The pillar of REST are:

URI to address a connected resources (for example: http://mycontenctapplication/myCatalog/Author="Rocking Corrado";
HTTP verbs to specify an operation to the connected resource:
- Get for fetch or read resource values;
- Put for updating or insert of resource values;
- Delete for deleting resources;
- Post for appending resources;

Now the problem is how we can leverage REST for industrial applications?

REST and Industrial Software

If your software have to manage a complex site (like an Hot-Strip Mill), you've to deal with different applications and process controls (Furnace Control, Roughing Mill, Finishing Mill, Cooling Section) that have to exchange a lot of data and messages.

Those application usually uses custom protocols to exchange messages (pushing data with 1:1 synchronous interfaces) and using common shared areas for in-process communication.

The following pictures shows an Hot-Strip Mill process control system build using a REST architecture.

The Rest application will be developed with the following features:

A data-structure will be implemented to collect information from existing process control software;
The data-structure will be updated with standard interface with existing software for example TCP-IP sockets;
The data structure will be exposed with a restful interface;

If you will use REST to expose common area I guess that you will have a "closed" set of tags so that only GET and PUT verbs will make sense (consumer of REST will never add or delete new Tags).

Which are the main benefits of adopting REST in your process control software?

A standard protocol to expose data (HTTP)
Client application could access REST information in an easy way (XML and JSON);
REST is very well suited:
- To provide access and update configuration data
- To provide and update runtime information (like the Finishing-Mill parameters)

How we can write REST applications?

WCF Rest Starter kit is here (developed by MS WCF team)!

It has been published on Codeplex and it could included in .Net 4.0:

A set of templates are available for Visual Studio 2008:

Rest Collections/Singleton services;
Atom Feed/Atom Publishing Protocol
HTTP/POX services

And what about the c# code that we should write? Easy:

[OperationContract]

[WebGet(ResponseFormat=WebMessageFormat.Json,UriTemplate="processControl/{tagId}")]

ProcessControlData GetTag(int tagId);

The WCF Rest Starter Kit also provides:

the WebProtocolException class to implement exception management in Rest services;
the RequestInterceptor class to manage the processing pipe-line of the service;

PDC 2008 - Day 4 - Sessions

2008-11-06T08:14:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: PDC

TL35 WCF: Developing RESTful Services by Steve Maine

Abstract

Learn the latest features in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)for building Web 2.0-style services that use URIs, HTTP GET, and other data formats beyond XML. See how these features can be applied to AJAX web sites, "REST" applications, and data feeds.

What I carryed out...

Great, great, great presentation. If you don't know the meaning of REST this is a must!

Talking about REST is long discussion for this incipit.

I just want to remember:

Rest Starter Kit it's a set of libraries and templates which makes easier the development of REST solution. I think that a big value in that is the exception management that usually is very tricky in this kind of architectures implementation.
The pillars of REST programming in .Net 3.5 are

[WebGet] + [WebInvoke]
UriTemplate
WebHttpBinding

BB12 .NET Services: Messaging Services - Protocols, Protection, and How We Scale by Clemens Vasters

Abstract

Look under the hood of the Microsoft .NET Services service bus, the protocols we use, and how to use the services from non-Microsoft platforms and languages. Learn which part of the messages and requests the Building Block service inspects, which parts are not inspected, and how you can verify this. Also, learn how to work through NAT and Firewall limitations Last, hear about the architecture on the Data Center side that enables "Internet scale."

What I carryed out...

Dooooonuuuuuttssssss!

I didn't go to the previous presentation about messaging and event bus so it was very hard to understand some topics in this session.

There are a lot of different bindings to connect to the message bus. You've to evaluate and test the best-accordingly to you architecture.
The event-bus is a "queue" but it's not guaranteed to be fully reliable. You should consider it a buffer. This was a big surprise for me!

TL31 "Oslo": Building Textual DSLs by Chris Anderson, Giovanni Della-Libera

Abstract

The "Oslo" modeling language can define schemas and transformations over arbitrary text formats. This session shows you how to build your own Domain Specific Language using the "Oslo" SDK and how to apply your DSL to create an interactive text editing experience.

What I carryed out...

How to implement a DSL to implement a new grammar.

How to generate assemblies implementing that grammar that could be loaded from .Net.

There is a huge value in creating old-style compiler. I'll blog later about it.

BB27 .NET Services: Orchestrating Services and Business Processes Using Cloud-Based Workflow by Moustafa Ahmed

Abstract

See how simple it is to use cloud-based workflow services to run business processes in the cloud as well as perform orchestration across on-premises and cloud services while running workflows in an environment that scales automatically.

What I carryed out...

When you create WF application you need an host. Now you can choose:

Your own implemented host;
Dublin (an application server)
.Net Workflow service on Azure platform

Why choosing Workflow on Azure?

It' scalable and if you need more performance you can buy it!
Reliable and available - it' hosted by MS Datacenters
Accessible from anywhere - it's a cloud, you can leverage it to connect you services over Internet

Features:

It supports .Net 3.5
There are new activities to interact with the Service bus
You can use the existing designer

My personal feeling is that you need to evaluate the worst case in a project to be sure that you can implement what you need. I'm scaried from wall in the environment when you're in a later stage in the project.

PDC 2008 - Day 3 - Other sessions

2008-11-05T21:01:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: PDC

Keynote

The Keynote by Rick Rashid was very impressive. I already know about Microsoft Research, but I didn't know that it was wide and that so much people work on that. Google does a lot of marketing on their Google Labs but to be honest I'm more impressed by MS Research (which works in the shadow) and I hope that MS will not build a marketing strategy on that!

The video is here.

For people from Italy take a look to this.

TL06 WCF 4.0: Building WCF Services with WF in Microsoft .NET 4.0 by Ed Pinto

Abstract

Eliminate the tradeoff between ease of service authoring and performant, scalable services. Hear about significant enhancements in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 4.0 and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) 4.0 to deal with the ever increasing complexity of communication. Learn how to use WCF to correlate messages to service instances using transport, context, and application payloads. See how the new WF messaging activities enable the modeling of rich protocols. Learn how WCF provides a default host for workflows exposing features such as distributed compensation and discovery. See how service definition in XAML completes the union of WF and WCF with a unified authoring experience that simplifies configuration and is fully integrated with IIS activation and deployment.

What I carryed out...

One of the best presentation I've seen at PDC this year.

I will talk about Dublin as an hosting process in another blog. What I really apreciated in this session was the leveraging of Workflow Foundation (WF) for the management of asynchronous messaging in complex interacting systems scenario.

Why I've this feeling with asynchronous messaging? Because for my job (industrial and tracking applications) has a HUGE RELEVANCE so I strongly reccomend to my colleagues (Eros, Lucone, Gallo, Valerio e Luca) to take a look to the video (download it and play it on a airplane trip!)

Also it's very impressive how the editor of WF is improving. It's very closer to the Orchestration editor of BizTalk 2006 (that is born for the orchestration of business processes...)

PC22 Windows 7: Design Principles for Windows 7 by Samuel Moreau

Abstract

Together, we can increase customer enthusiasm, satisfaction and loyalty by designing user experiences that are both desirable and harmonious. In this session we introduce the Windows User Experience Principles approach to shipping software. Along the way we share stories and lessons learned along the journey of designing the user model and experience for Windows 7, and leave you with a set of principles that you can apply as you build your applications for Windows.

What I carryed out...

A skipped lunch....

TL24 Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability by Steve Carroll, Ed Glas

Abstract

Performance must be considered in each step of the development lifecycle. See how to integrate performance in design, development, testing, tuning, and production. Work with tools and technologies like: static analysis, managed memory profiling, data population, load testing, and performance reports. Learn best practices to avoid the performance pitfalls of poor CPU utilization, memory allocation bugs, and improper data sizing.

What I carryed out...

This session were be of interest for my colleague AlessandroF because was based on VSTF 2010 and the new tools for perfomance testing.

The basic idea is that there are different tools to accomplish difference performances analysis requirements during the steps in project life-time.

During the "Gathering Requirements" you would use a tool to set the performance goal on different scenarios;
During the "Designing" you would run end-2-end test to evaluate your achitecture;
During the "Development" you would run tests and evaluating how your changes affects the previous release (the following pictures show an out-of-the-box report):

There is a strong interaction between the performance analysis tools and ALM of VSTF 2010 so that you can evaluate your progress during time.

Also there a lot of improvements in the tools theirs elf:

Now you can profile JavaScript!
There is a memory profiler tool and a Contention Profiler (this is very important for multi-core development, you can look to the lock and jump to the code that is causing the lock!)
Tools work remotely and under virtualization.

BB18 "Dublin": Hosting and Managing Workflows and Services in Windows Application Server by Dan Eshner

Abstract

Hear about extensions being made to Windows Server to provide a feature-rich middle-tier execution and deployment environment for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) applications. Learn about the architecture of this new extension, how it works, how to take advantage of it, and the features it provides that simplify deployment, management, and troubleshooting of workflows and services.

What I carryed out...

Dublin is one of my favourite technologies from PDC. It's an application server to host workflow instances.

It's also important for my job (in the industrial world but also for business process management and Sharepoint) so that I'll blog separately about it.

PC56 Windows Embedded "Quebec": Developing for Devices by Shabnam Erfani

Abstract

Do you need to understand how to extend your applications and services to embedded devices using Windows 7 technologies? See the new Windows Embedded roadmap and hear plans for our next-generation offering built on Windows 7 technologies.

What I carryed out...

That's for my colleagues Eros and Martino which uses to work with Windows XP Embedded. Please read this!

Quebec is the new release of XP Embedded based on Windows 7 (yes, Vista has been skipped!)
No, It's not for Real-Time and you need Real-Time you need 3rd party extension
Language Independent (XP was based on English, here you can bind different language images)
Sensor SDK for development and integration of external sensors (but I cannot find anymore reference to this).
64bit support
Minimum image size of 512MB (to fit on a Flash)
To create an image the following tools (Quebec image build tools) are available:

Image Builder Wizard (IBW
Let you installs Quebec interactively or unattended
Image Configuration Editor (ICE
GUI tool to create image configuration and distribution shares for image configuration
Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM)
Installs M feature sets to an offline or online Quebec image
Windows PE 2.1
Windows operating system with limited
services, used for initial image installation
Syspre
Removes system-specific data from an embedded Windows image
Supports application plug-ins
Windows Deployment Services (WDS)
Used for remote installation of images on device
Additional tools for managing languages packs, drivers, and servicing

PDC 2008 - Day 2 - Other sessions

2008-11-05T16:59:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: PDC

Ok I've done hundreds of photo to the slides to discover that everything has been published 1 day later the presentation here https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx ! Happy for that :-D

It's hard to understand if it's good think, because a lot of people have payed to join the conference and to sell-back the new skills.

From my perspective the PDC it's a huge opportunity for a full immersion on a lot of new technologies having a direct feeling on the them. So I appreciate having the immediate availability of the slides and videos

BB36 FAST: Building Search-Driven Portals with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Silverlight by Stein Danielsen, Jan Helge Sageflåt

Abstract

The combination of FAST ESP and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 allows for the development of powerful search-driven portals. Learn about the architecture and functionality of FAST ESP, and see how FAST ESP can complement and extend existing search features in MOSS 2007. Watch a demonstration that shows how to create search user interfaces by configuring and extending the FAST ESP Search Web Parts, including the use of Silverlight to deliver unique search experiences.

What I carryed out...

At the moment Endeca is better than Fast (for my perspective) but there is a strong commitment from MS in inproving his platform.

The first result is the availability of that is a set of webparts on Codeplex to integrate Fast backend: http://www.codeplex.com/espwebparts

On a medium time perspective Fast strategically should be the best solution due to the strong integration with the platform.

BB26 SQL Server 2008: Business Intelligence and Data Visualization by Stella Chan

Abstract

Learn how to create an entity data model and bind it to data visualization and ReportViewer controls. Dive into new Reporting Services features like: Tablix, new Data Visualization controls, and the new Report Creation experience. Also, preview the future AJAX ReportViewer control and the new RDLC designer.

What I carryed out...

My expectation was for a session which goes deeply inside BI topics discussing about mining but a lot of time went on graphics controls.

The interesting stuff was:

Take a look to Microsoft Charting Control for .Net framework 3.5. It's very powerful. In the past I always used OWC or 3rd parties.
Report Builder 2.0 is the new Report Designer shipped with SQL Server 2008 tailored to power users. Now the reports designed with could be hosted by Visual Studio 2008 Reporting Controls so that you can embed a report inside an application without having a full Report Server.

TL27 "Oslo": The Language by Don Box, David Langworthy

Abstract

The "Oslo" language, at the heart of the Oslo modeling platform, allows developers to quickly and efficiently express domain models that power declarative systems, such as Windows Workflow Foundation and "Dublin." In this session, we'll get you started writing models for your own domains by introducing you to key features of the language, including its type system, instance construction, and query. You'll learn to author content for the Oslo repository and understand how to programmatically construct and process the content to target your own specific runtime environment.

What I carryed out...

Oslo was one of the top topics from the PDC and I'll about it to reorder my understanding.

In this (short) session David Langworthy was a little bit restless (maybe because Don Box was there) so the presentation wasn't great.

We've seen M (the textual-based DSL language and how to persists the modelled DSL to the DB).

The idea is that you can model a world with a textual-based language (for example defining entites such as PowerSwitch, PowerLine, PowerConsumer,...), also using the language you define the "plumbing", instances and attributes for each entitities persisting it to a SQL-Server Database.

Using M you can also query the DBs!

More or less you can think to M as a query and definition language for a DSL, in the same way like LinQ is a query language for SQL...

ES02 Windows Azure: Architecting & Managing Cloud Services by Yousef Khalidi

Abstract

From design to deployment, building a scalable, highly available service is different from building other kinds of applications. This session discusses the impact that designing for the cloud has on all stages of the service lifecycle, and how the Microsoft cloud platform works for you to meet the scaling and availability goals of your service. This session will show how automation is used to free the developer from dealing with many hardware and networking issues. Also learn how the cloud services platform is architected to enable a pay-for-use dynamic model.

What I carryed out...

Doooonutttts!

You've to think to an Azure solution in a total different way. Too early to say something more. I need to try writing some code to understand how it work, the walls and the real world application you can write.

TIQ-Industrial - New white papers released

2008-11-04T14:36:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: White-Papers

On TIQ-Industrial site, you can find some new white-papers:

Industrial sites vehicles tracking with GPS-DGPS-GPRS technologies
Data-Warehouse And Mining Tools For Steel Production Control
Sunsetting: A solution framework to revamp and integrate the Level-2 process control software
An Integrated Production Site

If you're interested on those topics, hoping you will enjoy them!

PS: I know, I know the aesthetics and look & feel of the site is bad! Give us more time, we're working on that...

PDC 2008 - Day 2 - Keynote

2008-10-30T07:50:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: Visual Studio 2010,Windows 7,Office 14,Office Online

Windows 7 is here...

Steven Sinofsky (which report direclty to Steve Ballmer) talked about Windows 7. Here are the key messages from the presentation:

Windows 7 - A lap on User Interface

Improvement on Task-Bar and Tray-Area (notification management and Jump-List) ;
The wIndows are now dockable on the desktop and the UI seems a multi-user documents interface like Office clients;
Libraries are groups of storage resources (external disks, folders, etc.) that could be aggregated from the search point-view and you can search items on a specifice Library (ie My Videos...);
Home Groups are a set of shared resources that you can find and connect usually at home (printers, players, shared folders on NAS, etc,) to whose Windows 7 will automatically connect althouh if it's usually joined to a domain (like for a business laptop). Before Home Groups to get the same you need to write you own startup scripts;
Device Stage "defines" the plumbing of a device and to which other devices could be connected. Also it's single management entry point for each device;
You can play remotely an MP3 file or mpg video (right click and "Play to" with a list of target devices (players, MM devices, ...) ;
Touch is definitevely the major improvement in the UI. I don't have an iPhone but should be the same but tailored to big screens;
BitLocker extended to USB and external storage devices. BitLocker is a tecnology to encrypt and protect data on storage devices. Now it work also with solid state-memorie.
VHD: It comes from Hyper-V, Windows 7 can manage different VHDs files and could be itself installed on a VHD because the boot manager can choose the image to start! I love this!

	On the left the major improvements on Windows 7. The new version is not a breakthrough like Vista compared to XP, but appears to be a major review to Vista improving it accordingly to users feed-backs. Everybody at PDC has a lot of expectation about performances!
	On the left the Jump-List over the Task-Bar
	Device Stage where there is a single point of management for each connected device to an hosting PC.
	A demo about Touch using new Home-PC from HP. You should think to an iPhone experience using a bigger LCD... Very interesting for Multimedia and obviously for Process Control Applications (SCADA) on plant production lines. Keep in mind: Touch was also supported by Vista but now it has been strongly enhanced in term of user experience (for example with multitouch).
	Windows 7 (the front-end) has been reengineered to stricly interact with Live Services (the users Cloud).
	About the transitions the driver model and the drivers are the same of Vista, so there will not be the issues as moving from XP to Vista about devices compatibility.
	Call to action fro developers, new features to be evaluated with an API: Ribbon User Interface Jump-List Libraries Multi-Touch, Speech Direct-X
	The Windows 7 Development project drivers: Less memory foot-print and I/O to get more performance. I wanna see the improvement on registry access that is one of the worst bottleneck in Vista.
	The Pre-Beta is available now! I will evaluate if installing it on my laptop. Following there will be Beta 1, Beta 2 and RTM. The Pre-Beta will achieve the goals for performances but is not yet features completed. Some other minor improvements: The DLP integration and the extended desktop through Remote Desktop are great! For the first time in a Microsoft Presentation :-D Steven Sinofsky showed a switching on the DLP by a laptop and it worked (with all the people clapping).
	Call to Action for Developers!
	Scott Guthrie explained why Windows 7 is a great platform for developers... But this message was built on user interface improvements. I should admit that DLP management and remote desktop extension are great for my job.
	A Demo from Auto-Desk in which they leverage Microsoft Surface to improve the user experience of designer. The demo was "cute" but I don't think that in real world application you can model your sketch with a finger... Maybe some application are feasible for fashion.
	Obviously both .Net and C++ development environment are supported by Windows 7. For C++ VS2010 is mandatory. For .Net the 3.5SP1 fw release is ready.
	.Net 4 is closer to be really available. Now there is CTP on a VHD for a first evaluation. A lot of improvement on WF, WCF and now Dublin is available (but I'll blog later about it). The idea is that you can host and MANAGE workflow processes. Dublin "de facto" is a WF application server.
	Extensibilty in VS2010, you can create your Extenston assemblies (for example to add features to the IDE and the editor like in the left picture) and deploy them just copying the DLL in the VS extension directory. No registration to be performed!
	Very impressive demo from Tesco (the UK grocery market leader). They created a Windows 7 Gadget totally based on WPF which work with Touch experience to create a community of families, managing an agenda of deliveries and to leverage the webcam integrated in a pc to read the barcode and placing the order! It was impressive.
	JQuery will be part of the development tools of Microsoft and it will supported by MS as an open-source project! JQuery is an lite JavaScript library that is one of the most popular libraries by web developer. In a very easy way you can interrogate (query) your html page so that is very usefull for creating Ajax applications.
	In a Visual Studio solution (2010) now you can have different configuration files for different targent environment (like development, staging, production for example).
	Improved support from Visual Studio 2010 to SilverLight. Now a Silveri Light designer is included directly in VS (and VS itself is based on WPF) and a toolkit with some additional control for Silverlight is available here.
	Live Services, using the new development platform is very easy to create Mesh applications tailored to consumer users. There is the Live Services framework (a .Net library) to create application in this environment More information about this world here.
	A demo from BBC quite impressive. An offline multimedia player based on SilverLight! It can interact with all devices having Live Mesh installed to share the users preferences.
	Office 14 is coming... We've as seen some very impressive demos about the integration of Office Online within Office for desktops to collaborate on documents (OneNote, Word, Excel)
	In this demo over 2 concurrent PCs is possible to collaborate with OneNote using the PC client and the Online version at the same time! The same approach is also possible using Word and Word Online. I'd like to know more about Office 14 but I think that this will be the only Office 14 topic in all the PDC.
	Is it Excel 14? No it's Excel Online hosted by Firefox.
	And this is Microsoft Surface. No mouse, no keyboard, just your hands. We can think about application scenarios (...first of all high branded retail shop!)

Keynote from Chris Anderson and Don Box. It's not a speech instead is a Jam Session they're great (and they didn't use PowerPoint!).

The expectation from PDC people for them is the same for a concert of Bruce Springsteen...

The compressed a lot of topic in just 70 mins. very impressive:

They started from PDC 2005 demo built on LinQ to get the list of process from a system with a service (the provider exposing data through WCF) and a console client (the consumer)
The Service has been transformed in a simple Azure (cloud-based) , publishing it on the ServiceBus And finally, they deployed the service into the cloud so that it was being hosted by the Azure servers.
Later they interact with LiveMesh using the same approach and just changing the authentication provider.

The most important message from this talk was that the service that they wrote was accessible through standards protocols.

Azure-based services are accessible through a “REST-ful” interface, using the existing GET/PUT/POST/DELETE verbs in HTTP to execute corresponding Read/Update/Create/Delete data operations on the service provider.

During the single step they just changes the URI of the client to change the plumbing and connects to different service (WCF, Azure, LiveMesh) leveraging the same pattern.

PDC 2008 - Day 1 - Other sessions

2008-10-29T08:54:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: PDC,MVC,Geneva,SQL-Server,SQL-Services

ASP.NET MVC: A New Framework for Building Web Applications by Phil Haack

I already knew MVC which is tool-set built over ASP.Net to implement the architectural pattern of MVC (Model View Controller).

During this session Phil Hack has explained some approach to use ASP.Net and IIS as a more effective platform to build WEB 2.0 applications.

ASP.NET MVC really looks alike Ruby On Rails and it's very use to use within Ajax.

The architecture of www.stackoverflow.com (maybe the first real application built with MVC has been explained by the CEO Jeff Atwod ).

MVC has been developed has an agile project collaborating with the community and it's supported through CodePlex. The official site is here from where you can download the toolkit and have access to all the documentation.

Identity: "Geneva" Server and Framework Overview by Caleb Baker, Stuart Kwan

Geneva (aka Zermatt) is a platform (server + development toolkit) for identity management and federation management composed by a set of tools and services:

Geneva Framework: is the set of .Net libraries to connect your applications to this environment;
Geneva Server: is the identity server to store the policies and to manage the plumbing of federation;
Geneva CardSpace: is the CardSpace release tailored to Geneva;

Geneva is a complex environment to define trusted set of resources based on policies and claims about the policies (yes, it's the same pattern of Kerberos that seems to have inspired Geneva).

The topic is hard and complex to be blogged but very interesting and it's a must for who need to create cross-company applications through HTTP which are federated (...or obviously if you'll write code for the cloud!)

The beta of Geneva is available now, the RTM for the second half of 2009.

The framework is available for VS2008, VS2010.

SQL Server: Database to Data Platform - Road from Server to Devices to the Cloud by David Campbell

David Campell explained how the world of databases is changed in the last 20 years.

Now you can choose from different DB technologies all based on SQL-Server.

SQL-Server mobile
SQL-Server
SQL-Services (aka SDS)

What's the best for what?

Depends from the scenario. You have different choices permitting you to leverage different hardware singularity in a whole overall solution.

It reminds me Jack Welch who used to day "Think globally, act locally" and that's true in a well conceived architecture.

My expectation from the presentation were to know something more about SQL Server Services, but we got just a bird-eye view.

One drawback: when you create solution for SQL-Services you cannot test them locally.

PDC 2008 - Day 1 - Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: A Lap Around VSTS 2010

2008-10-29T08:15:00.001Z

Nice and interesting presentation from Cameron Skinner about VS2010 focused on the new testing and ALM feature.

Here are the requirements for the new release of VS2010!
Those requirements are translated in new functionalities and practices supported by VS2010 with a lot of small improvements which promises to simplify a lot the daily life for the developers!

This is the Bug Report view that has been strongly improved. Now the tester could also save a video to show the error to the developer and when the application crashes is it possibile to save the state and context (a dump) so that developers could inspect this file to evaluate what's happened leveraging the VS integrated debugger.

Some improvement included in the IDE:

Test Impacted: when you choose this function (with a right click) on a function you can see the tree of impacted tests (to avoid the butterfly effect that happens when you change a small part of code and a lot of unexpected functionalities are impacted!)
Test Validation: Before check-in a test-validation is mandatory to avoid to break a continuos-building process.
Sequence-Diagram: it's possible to generate a Sequence-Diagram to show the interaction between the function and methods.

On the left there is an architectural diagram of the name-spaces in a solution. It's a cool feature because you can define architectural-constraints and when the code violate them, warning and report are automatically generated so that you can review the architectural assumption.

Test-Recorder maybe is the most complex feature add to the test tool-set in VSTS. You can record your interaction with WEB applications and Windows Form applications for performing regression-tests and including this "functional test" in the the validation process.

VSTS 2010 is including some functionalities that use to be part of other sophisticated and vertical quality control platform (like Compuware, Mercury, etc,)

Recap

Those are not the whole features of VS 2010 but just a small subset about the ALM for testing!
VS 2010 is a WPF application. That's cool! You can see a lot of improvements in the editors.
Drawback: Unfortunately the Test Recorder doesn't support SilverLight and I guess that a future support hasn't yet been

Technorati Tag: PDC,VSTS 2010,Testing

planned

PDC 2008 - Day 1 - Keynote

2008-10-28T07:15:00.001Z

The "huge" news from Ray Ozzie keynote has been Azure which represents the coming of Microsoft in the world of cloud computing (a sexy buzz-word to describe a buzz-concept like Software+Services :-D )

My expectations from PDC were for a set of tools and maybe server platforms to create the "clouds" but Microsoft has gone beyond!

The main idea is to leverage the huge MS experience on data-centers (Live, MSN, MSDN, Windows Update, etc.) to create an hosted-horizontal platform that could be used by external developers to create their own service application without having to think about the engineering of the server farm (network, storage, disaster-recovery...). All is managed and maintained by the MS team.

So everything we use to know until today (the MS Server Platform or what is assumed to be "The Premises") is enforced with a new set of online "tools" hosted and managed on the MS datacenters spread around the world.

To have access to those tools obviously a license has to be purchased (but the sales strategy doesn't appear to be already defined). In 15 days demo access token will be released to the attendant of the PDC to test and play with the platform!

	The On-Line platform is composed by a set of services (SQL Services, Live Services, Sharepoint Services, .Net Services, Dynamics CRM Services) that appear to be a "subset" of the original server application but tailored to work in a cloud environment.
	To create your hosted-application, new project templates are available in VS 2008. What is really amazing is that you can run and debug your application locally and then deploy it to the online services! To deploy the application just push the "Publish" button in Visual Studio. Well, to be honest is not possible to debug locally SQL Server Service (but this hasn't mentioned during the keynote...)
	You own Dashboard is available online to manage the application (I think there are 2 environments, for staging and production) but I didn't understand if the versioning is managed and how.
	An application has been demonstrated (www.bluehoo.com) which leverage the hosted platform. Ok there is Silverlight, there are animations. It's an application for Social Networking integrating Mobile- Phones with the cloud but I didn't understand the business model (and this is my concern, when we talk about Azure there is a technical perspective where everything is cool, and there is a business perspective where everything is dark...)
	Bob Muglia talked about the impact on Enterprise companies. The idea is that we're entering in a new era for computer applications (and that's potentially is true but I don't think the adoption will be so quickly).
	What is very important for enterprise application is the extensiveness of the platform that is guaranteed by .Net Services (you can create and deploy you own .Net assemblies and integrating them with a set of integration services like workflow, identity management etc.)
	Security, Identity Management and Federation are Key-Concept for Cloud Computing and everything has been released in this platform. What I've really appreciated is the Active Directory connector that can be used to delegate authentication and authorization to the company system which is "federated" in the service. There are some wizards which will guide you in the configuration of the "federation". It has been very impressive"

	SQL-Server Services is the database offered by Azure. Don't think to it as an hosted full SQL-Server! It's a subset and you don't OLAP cubes, Integration Services, etc. At the moment I don't know the available features but the idea should be having a relational online database for your on-line application. The implication is that you cannot use this as an alternative to SQL-Server. It' hasn't been conceived to store TB of data! Also if your application need to integrate data from etherogeneus data-sources (not on HTTP) maybe is not a good idea to put it on an Online platform!

Azure has been created for HTTP applications! EAI and ETL cannot run on this platform!

So Keep it on mind! If you're from Italy and you're thinking to this platform to put-away the servers and the system engineers from you small to medium size company (a PMI) you're on the wrong-way

The final demonstration was driven by Shawn Davison from RedPrairie which explained how they delivered and integrated Microsoft System Center with an approach Software+Services showing some Dashboard and some reports build with Reporting Services 2008.

Recap

Technical Perspective

Everything seems to be amazing.
Which are the wall and the constraints imposed by the platform interfaces contracts? How complex could be the applications? Which are the functional boundaries?
Which are the performances trade-off and the suggested storage and transaction limits (the work-load)?

Business Perspective

A billing module is missing. That's a lack for a services development platform. I'd like to see off-the-shelves functionality to manage the billing of the services!
How the platform will be selled by MS?
Which is the partner ecosystem? Potentially some applications could be moved from small/medium size companies to hosted platform (Exchange, Sharepoint, CRM) shrinking the market for system engineers consultancy.
Which could be the business-model for service application hosted by Azure? Who will build them?? Maybe Azure could be for the innovative startup companies what myspace has been for the musicians...

Technorati Tag: PDC,Azure,.Net

PDC 2008

2008-10-26T19:56:00.001Z

I registered myself this morning, but this year I'll skip the preconference sessions.

I think I know the main focus for this edition...

Stay tuned, I'll blog about the sessions I'll attend to.

Test Driven Desing & PEX

2008-10-26T16:35:00.001Z

For people who works with Test Driven Design on .Net, this could be an amazing tool: http://research.microsoft.com/Pex/

The best scenario to leverage it is If you already have a function to test (I know, I Know that with TDD you write the test before) it will help you in finding the values-set to stimulate your code.

Try to take a look also to the presentation here: http://research.microsoft.com/Pex/presentations/PexPublicSlides20081010.pptx

There are 2 different versions of the plug-in: for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 CTP!

The Developers Group London - 15.10.2008

2008-10-16T11:13:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I had the pleasure to speak again @ The Developers Group in Microsoft Cardinal Place (London UK).

We discussed about Sharepoint and Workflow with three demos about the Out-Of-the-Box functionalities of Sharepoint (like Collect Feedback),

designing a workflow with Sharepoint Designer, and creating (and deploying) a sequential workflow with Visual Studio 2008.

In 1h and 15 mins I just can give a brief overview about those topics with the goal to "empower" the participants with a "big picture" of Sharepoint and Workflow to approach their customer settings the rights expectations.

The session presentation is hosted by the still empty TIQ-Industrial web site (obviously built on Sharepoint!). To get them go here

As I said during the event, the slides come out from 2 presentations I've seen at the 2008 Sharepoint Conference in Seattle:

IBP309 - Sharepoint Workflows Out-Of-The-Box by Thomas Rizzo
IBP301 - Managing a Workflow Environment by David Mann

While, if you want to try WinFX with Sharepoint take a look to this article.

During the post-meeting dinner, discussing at the table with a couple of friends I've got a new suggestion to Joanna for one of the next DG events: "Declarative Programming in .Net with Workflow Foundation" that could be interesting for any .Net developer and it's agnostic from Sharepoint!

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

As any good blog item I've some photos from MS Cardinal Place (...another cool MS office in UK):

Some more remarks from yesterday meeting:

Sharepoint Designer didn't worked on the existing Document Library. Yersterday night I took same tests and... the library was corrupted! Creating a new document library everything was fine.
Yesterday, during the pre-session I've seen that there is a lot of interest for security, encryption and so on. I just want to say that today's big challenge is mobility and how to protect data on mobile devices (smart-phones, rugged devices, mobile-phones and also lap-tops). A couple of years ago I used to work for consultancy for an enterprise company based in Switzerland for a feasibility project about mobile core solutions. I've found these solutions www.credant.com has very valuable. Try taking a look!
Regarding data-distribution on database and replications...

For my perspective the "dba pattern" is that replication is good to distribute partioned set of read-only data (master data). 2-ways transactional replication is a nighmare and could be valuable just in mobile scenarios.
To distribute data across server (with SQL-Server) you can also take a look to Log-Shipping (easy and economic), while the best approach for high-perfomance database is based on federated servers.

Warm-Up for Sharepoint 14

2008-10-10T18:03:00.001+01:00

One of the few things that we know about the next release of Sharepoint is that it will run only on x64 platform.

So there are 2 Rules of Thumb:

If you're deploying MOSS now, plan your infrastructure to be 100% x64! This is a must if you want to leverage the inplace migration to upgrade!
If you're creating your "perfect" Sharepoint Development environment, with your favourite tools, settings, configuration files and all the stuff that usually requires a lof of days just setting up, well... it's a good idea to set them up on an x64 environment otherwise you will have to reinstall again!

Paul Glen - Leading Geeks

2008-10-10T11:56:00.001+01:00

I'd like to suggest this [Video] from Strategic Architect Forum 2007 conference in Seattle (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb267380.aspx).

There is also a book (http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Geeks-Manage-Deliver-Technology/dp/0787961485) that seems to be very interesting.

The basic idea is easy: "geek job is different from other jobs because the creativity is one of the most important part of the commitment" so that standard management approaches doesn't work as expected and if you want to increase the effectiveness of teams if you've to rethink about the meaning of leadership.

CAB Mission Control

2008-10-03T17:40:00.001+01:00

Our first "mashup application" with Microsoft VirtualEarth http://www.tiq.it/TaxiMilano/MainPage.aspx to have access

Username: visitatore
Password: pass

Technologies: ASP.Net, .Net framework 3.5, Ajax Control Toolkit, SQL-Server 2008

The application is a proof-of-concept for a CAB company that want to improve the user experience effectiveness of the call-center operators.

The CAB positions come from a simulator. In the real application a dedicated cab onboard unit (with GPS and GPRS integrated) will send coordinates and begin-end of missions (we've deployed a lot of these devices on industrial dumper).

Great job! And my congratulation to my colleague Giuseppe Introna!

Venture-Capitals and Innovation....

2008-09-30T23:01:00.001+01:00

While taking a look to the new proposals from Tech-Cruch 2008 (http://www.techcrunch50.com/), I've found these as been of great interests.

http://www.yammer.com/ (it's twitter for professional use! that's great to keep track of projects effort!)

http://www.connectivelogic.co.uk/

Ok TechCrunch has been dominated by appliance for MS Table and I give my attention to different kind of stuffes that doesn't means they are better!

It's also interesting that there is so much "gazoline" to find new ideas and that there is a structured approach in looking for that by these conferences organized by VCs and a Major company like MS and Google to leverage the growing of an echosystem around their technologies.

It's different from the technological park that we've in Europe. Great approach. In we've to learn a lot from that!

A funny work environment

2008-09-30T22:50:00.001+01:00

I began my professional life quite early when I was 20 years old (...and now I'm 36 sigh) working in C and C++ and getting happy discovering memory leaks and managing pointers... but that's another story!

For the first years very often I was the youngest in the companies I joined and sometimes they seems to be fool giving some small managing duties or customers visits. That was very stressful to me because of my lack of experience and this was considered by me a huge problem. Also I thought that because I was one of youngest I had to compensate appearing as the most serious and concrete guy in the world...

Big mistake! (Or maybe not, I don't know because I cannot change that times..who knows!).

What I learnt during time is that serious and coercive management doesn't pay and create unnecessary stress...

My approach (that I've to say is spontaneous) is leading by example, working with my team and giving also to myself technical assignment (or accepting assignment suggested by colleagues), in this way there isn't predefined hierarchy but just a single and whole team!

In this way you can joke and kid freely (for example when a small error is done by someone) and keep in mind that teaching by kidding of errors is the best approach (people remember things during an emotion and lightly kid with someone provide a positive emotion)...

A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about all of this because I'm not sure if this is a good approach.

Very often we have teams kidding and laughing and, I've to say, we achieve very good results but...it could also be a little bit disorienting (in Italy it's not so common having a funny work environment)

Well, maybe I've found the answer by myself reading some books regarding who the brain working and cognitive engineering (Brain Rules from John Medina and Body Language from Allan and Barbara Pease)

It’s very easy:

When you truly laugh a lot of endorphin is released in your body...
Endorphin is very similar to morphine, it increases the heart rate but doesn't stimulate the cortisol generation (which usually is generated with morphine to slow down its effects over brain but having a lot of collateral effects…)
Increasing the heart rate also the breath rate increase and in this way more oxygen is delivered by blood
More oxygen in the blood also means more oxygen for the brain and with oxygen the brain works better!

So having a lot of laughs on work environment it's good and it should be a must! ...it's chemically demonstrated!

AIM (Italian Metallurgy Conference) Ferrara 24th-26th September

2008-09-19T17:35:00.001+01:00

Just for the italian readers, on friday 26th of the next I'll speak @AIM of Ferrara (http://www.metallurgia-italiana.net/index.php?action=dettaglio_evento&id=18&evid=149).

I'll be engaged in 2 different speeches:

Sunsetting: l’approccio metodologico di TiQ per il revamping dei sistemi di controllo processo di Livello2

Sunsetting is our methodology framework for the migration of legacy process control application to Microsoft .Net leveraging our platform TiQ Steel Platform.

Tracking: localizzazione satellitare veicoli, gestione della logistica di stabilimento

In this session I'll explain a Success Story with Microsoft Italy (http://www.microsoft.com/italy/casi/caso.aspx?uid=586366c2-fdd5-4e2f-900e-7e65cfc757c9) about an integrated system for railways tracking leveraging standard tecnology (GPS, GPRS, DGPS, BizTalk, Flash, ....).

Not the most difficult project in which I was involved but the one with most widely range of technology adopted.

And in the final speech (I think I should jump between the rooms like in Robin Williams dinner in Mrs Doubtfire) with my colleague Luca Erba:

Data-WareHouse: la gestione dei dati di produzione per analizzare la qualità dei prodotti

Here we'll explain how to leverage SQL Server Analysis Service and Sharepoint to define prediction model for quality analysis of steel coils

If anyone will be closer to Ferrara on thursday evening I'll be happy having a dinner together.

Windows Complete Backup over Network

2008-09-10T11:17:00.001+01:00

I'm already around Europe with my laptop and my concern are the backup is my laptop was lost or steal.

Each time I'm back at home in Luton, I perform a complete backup of my pc on the server using my wifi network.

The standard Vista user interface doesn't allow you to perform backup to a shared network drive, instead you need to use the wbadmin.exe (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742083.aspx) command line application.

Use the following script:

wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:\\MyServer\MyShare -allCritical -user:MyDomain\MyNetworkUser -password:MyPersonalPassword
pause

If you have the UAC on, on you must execute the script as Administrator.

For more information take a look to: http://www.techinvasion.net/2007/11/12/vista-complete-pc-backup-to-network-share/

UML Tools

2008-09-09T16:36:00.001+01:00

I need to "fetch" my UML skills and I'm looking to some good tools.

I thank Francesco for the following links:

http://www.magicdraw.com/

http://staruml.sourceforge.net/en/

http://argouml.tigris.org/

MagicDraw seems to be better than Rational Rose.

The community edition hasn't reverse engineering or code generation support and it's limited to 20 shapes for diagrams (...but It's good for me, I've just to draw some architectures and explain them).

StarUml is veeeery young but it's growing I'l take a look on it.

ArgoUML I worked and love it and in the past but now it's no more updated. I think that Poseidon is the commercial version of ArgoUML.

Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v2.0 x86

2008-09-09T12:09:00.001+01:00

Just as a personal remark. I haven't yet time to evaluate it...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=263cd480-f6eb-4fa3-9f2e-2d47618505f2&displaylang=en

It's a candidate for the Must Have Tools for any Sharepoint administrator.

The Developers Group London - 08.09.2008

2008-09-09T11:56:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, as usually by some times, I went @ The Developers Group to the Reading Microsoft Campus Place (closer to London UK).

It's a very nice place (also if the weather is cloudly) and seems to be in Seattle with different buildings commited to different things (maybe seems to be in Seattle also because the weather conditions more or less are the same...)

In yesterday meeting the sessions were:

Overview of Silverlight 2 - Mike Ormond (Microsoft)
In this session we take a look at the sorts of web experiences that can be built with Silverlight 2.
We look at the different scenarios that Silverlight 2 enables and the core capabilities of the platform
for rich web experiences built on .NET. We also take an introductory look at the tooling and frameworks
that developers and designers have available to them for building Silverlight 2 applications.

Remarks by Corrado - Nothing to say. During the session some Silverlight demo have been presented and also some technical integration explanation about VS 2008 was been showed. My personal feeling is that all the effort on Silverlight development isn't on VS2008, XAML etc. but on Blend... You cannot create a "real world" application without Expression Blend and it's not an easy to learn tool... Well you must know the .Net Silverlight fundamental but the effort is on Expression!

Delphi 2009, What’s New? - Jon Harrison (Embarcadero)
Jon gives us an overview of the new features in Delphi 2009, including:
- new IDE features
- new and enhanced VCL components
- new DataSnap architecture
- new Unicode support

Remarks by Corrado - Nice platform. Seems to be in VS 2005 (not yet 2008). I've got 2 questions:

If I was starting from scratch, without any Delphi skill, why should I choose Delphi against VS 2008? What's the added value??
Is this platform tailored to migration projects? How it could enlarge Embarcadero market? Just with the integration with the DB tools??

Navigational Data Access in .NET - Joachim Duerr (Sybase)
Moving from ADO to ADO.NET means changing the view on how to access databases. The ADO.NET
data access model is disconnected and set based, which has advantages, but also disadvantages; all
records of the result set have to be transferred to the client in order to work with the data and
concurrency conflicts can happen when writing changes back to the database. This session shows
how you can develop in .NET but with connected record sets, with actual live data on the workstations
and the ability to lock records in the database to avoid concurrency conflicts.

Remarks by Corrado - The session showed how to create ISAM application leveraging "Advantage Database Server .Net Provider" that is built on ADO.Net extending the features to integrate with Sybase Advantage Server that basically is an ISAM-oriented (!) DBMS.

I agree with the limits of ADO.Net for ISAM oriented application but the limits arise because ADO.NET wasn't create for making ISAM applications...

I'd like to have some more architectural scenario where Sybase Advantage Server could be affordable. I can just think to small booking or crm applications where locking is very important.

For the upcoming sessions take a look at http://www.richplum.co.uk/

The next month (on the 15th october in Microsoft Cardinal Place closer to Victoria Station) I'll speak again aboutSharepoint:

Workflow Management
In this session we take a look at the off-the-shelf workflow features of Sharepoint, creating a quick and
easy “no-code” application with Sharepoint Designer and exploring the pros and cons of this approach.
Then we develop another sample application with Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Workflow
Foundation and bind it to a Sharepoint document list, exploring the potential of fine customization.
Windows Workflows Foundation is totally integrated with Sharepoint platform and very complex
application could be created leveraging the Sharepoint object model.

Evaluating Prospects

2008-08-05T17:35:00.001+01:00

Take a look to:

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/08/why-vcs-say-no-99-of-the-time.html

It has been very instructive for me moving the explained scenario to my personal experience.

I'm not a VC but 30% of my time is on presales and techincal proposals. My company works on very challenging and innovative projects on steel-making industry so the problem is staying focused on visionary projects that have an opportunity to be done.

I agree that the trick is:

"As one wise old VC once told me, "the trick in this business is to spend very little time on a lot of deals, and then a lot of time on very few deals." In other words, see everything to be a better investor, but exert a very tough first filter so that you only spend time on very, very few deals. In my experience, a typical VC has the bandwidth to actively "spend time" or actively work on only one to two deals at any given time and perhaps 10-20 in a year -- as compared to those 300-500 they get exposed to."

So the "rule of thumb" should be:

Stay focused on few projects and choose the ones in which in you have more experience. A Visionary Project doesn't mean that you don't know how to approach it but just having the feeling that you can do it...

Visionary means that you have the feeling on how to create value for your customer leveraging your technical experience!

P/Invoke Interop Assistant

2008-07-30T11:28:00.001+01:00

The integration of old legacy code based on C, C++ and API invocation sometimes requires a lot of time in the migration of API invocation to .Net managed environment.

This tool help you in doing this operation:

http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=clrinterop&ReleaseId=14120

We can say that it works for API Interop like TlbImp works COM.

It's amazing when you need to integrates 3rd party DLLs with a standar C-based interface.

U2U CAML Builder

2008-07-29T10:46:00.001+01:00

CAML is one of the most tricky features for Sharepoint. Having a good knowledge of it is important for doing the things in an easy way but the learning curve is quite a long way.

The best way to explain the CAML role to Sharepoint is a similitude: "CAML is for Sharepoint lists what SQL is for relational database tables"

You can leverage the CAML features in your .Net code through the Sharepoint object model, but sometimes testing your CAML query requires effort to tune-up it.

This tool from U2U is an extension (a solution) for Sharepoint which add a set of functionalities to test your CAML query. It's a cool job!

Che Lavoro di m...

2008-07-18T18:41:00.001+01:00

My friend Diego Vicamini is a very high-talented guy with a huge-experience in the HR and recruiting area.

Just for the italians readers I'd like to invite them on his new site http://www.chelavorodim.it that is a blog with suggestions to people that want to move-on and improve their career (I'd also love so much the site name, but I guess it's better avoiding to translate it...)

Diego is also involved in the startup of www.agork.it that is a great idea of having a service-provider tailored to small and medium size companies for corporate blogging, wikis and knowledge-sharing. The business model is based on subscriptions and advertising.

I was very impressed from the idea also if we choosed for a custom in-house solution built on Sharepoint 3.0 (...well we're an ICT company)

The Developers Group London - 16.07.2008

2008-07-18T18:30:00.001+01:00

The last wednesday I've spoken @ The Developers Group in Microsoft Cardinal Place (London UK).

It has been my second session with them (the first-one was on 14th May still in Microsoft Victoria).

During the may session, I've talked about:

Introduction to Sharepoint Services and MOSS

Overview of WSS v3 and MOSS 2007 features and functionality
Navigation and taxonomy
Access control and security
Site columns
Content types
Lists and Views

During the this week session, the content was:

Sharepoint Services as a Developer Platform: How to Develop & Deploy Web Parts

Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint 1.2
Web Part Development
How to Deploy Code and Resources
Site Properties

This time I was in trouble with my virtual-machine performances (it's not so easy a development live session with a 15 GB VMs running on a Laptop...) and also with my strong italian accent (ok Joanna I confident that I'll be able to learn to cut the words! :-D )

I like enjoy these meetings, the partecipants are great and sessions very interesting (...not the mine).

For the upcoming sessions take a look at http://www.richplum.co.uk/

Resizing VHD and next, next, next

2008-07-04T11:19:00.001+01:00

I've just created my new wonderful and delicious virtual machine (over VPC 2007) clicking on next, next, next :-D

I installed Win2008, MOSS, SQL 2005 and everything was running fast and fine while I tryed to install VS 2008 and realized that next, next, next wasn't a good idea (always think to what you're doing!). 16 GB weren't enough...

Instead of adding another virtual disk having 2 differents VHDs, I found this great tool:

http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx

It can resize a VHD and it works fine!

Obviously after that the VHD has been increased don't forget to extend also the NTFS volume (using the Disk Manager) to leverage the new vhd size!

Windows Server 2008 - POP Server

2008-07-01T13:29:00.001+01:00

It has been removed from Windows Server 2008...

I don't wanna know what people which leveraged this feature for their own applications will do...

For me and for POC (Proof Of Concept) development this could be enough:

http://weblogs.asp.net/hpreishuber/archive/2008/04/30/visendo-smtp-pop3-extender-for-windows-2008-server.aspx

So that you can avoid having Exchange on your systems.

VSTO PowerTools & Visual Studio Extensions for WSS

2008-06-15T21:09:00.001+01:00

It's a must and make your life easier during the development of VSTO applications:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc626294.aspx

And you need to create complex solution with Sharepoint and don't want to waste time:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/06/04/announcing-the-vsewss-version-1-2.aspx

Sharepoint Community Kit, Sharepoint White-Papers and CodePlex Tools

2008-06-15T19:56:00.001+01:00

Sharepoint Community Kit

Set of installable features to enhance sharepoint functionalities:

http://www.codeplex.com/CKS

The most important improvements are on on Wiki and Blog functionalities.

White-Papers

Interesting white-papers about Sharepoint on the following site:

http://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads%202007.htm

Sharepoint it's a huge platform and it's not so easy to find the starting-point. For the development this is a must:

http://www.microsoft.com/click/SharePointDeveloper/

Code-Plex Tools

Some tools interesting to implements winy company web-sites with blog.

http://www.codeplex.com/MyWebPagesStarterKit

http://www.codeplex.com/blogengine

Marathon

2008-06-13T14:44:00.001+01:00

Following the a customer suggestion, I've looked at www.marathon.com a company which provides high-reliability software solutions.

Here my personal annotations:

Marathon everRun VM

Provides extensions to give high-reliability to Citrix XenServer.

Good to know but usually we work deploying VMWare which has other ways to provide reliable configurations.

Marathon everRun HT & FT

everRun is a virtual environment which creates a virtual logical server leveraging 2 physical servers. We can think to it as a cluster without using Microsoft cluster service and should be easier to maintain.

The synchronization at disk level is provided duplicating all the writes operations on both physical disks over the 2 physical servers. The write is transacted and an Ack is sent back to the physical servers only when the operation has been completed on both systems.

My concern are just for the performances but at a basic level no dedicated hardware is required to provide high-reliability.

We are internally evaluating the platform to provide real high-reliability to SCADAti\

everRun SplitSite

Provides geographic redundancy but I don't understand which kind and how...

I think that in some way it leverages the distributed transactional writing having high-reliability over a files system (excluding application executions).

everRun CDP

Like for SplitSite I haven't understand so well the product scope. It should enlarge the functionalities of everRun HT & FT providing them geographic redundancy. It should work as a kind of synchronizer for all the everRun servers.

C++ MultiPlatform classes libraries

2008-05-22T14:23:00.001+01:00

We're evaluating for the UI of a project with multi-platform requirements a set of C++ class libraries.

The "short-list" has been restricted to:

Poco is an open-source product, while Troll-Tech is a commercial-one.

The first-one has been signalled to me just a week ago and seems to be very powerful so that we're strongly considering it also because the class library hierarchy is very well-designed and seems to be refactored more and more times and it's not the classic design where you can see decades of evolution and ideas forced to stay together.

TDD & Database development

2008-05-20T15:24:00.001+01:00

I'm working on database refactoring on a project where the PK of the central table has to be changed (unfortunately at the end of the project).

Regression test obviously is a must, so while I was looking for some tools to simplify my job, I've found these:

http://tsqlunit.sourceforge.net/index.html

http://www.ndbunit.org/

TSQL Unit is useful when you don't have a testing framework in your project environment and you need a "light" tool to simplify database development while the project is already on-run;
DBUnit is an excellent tool to be integrated in your existing testing environment (nUnit) to enlarge the scope of unit test to the database deliverables.

Sharepoint & OSIsoft

2008-05-12T13:57:00.001+01:00

On friday I've gone to visit the local offices of OSIsoft in Philadelphia.

I've seen http://www.osisoft.com/Products/PI%20System/ which a platform which leverages MOSS/WSS to create portal application which integrates data and information from L1, L2, L3

Interesting platform. Todays we achieve the same results in terms of application features (from the user perspective) but we deliver value through a custom project. We'll evaluate if using OSIsoft platform we could increase out effectiveness.

AISTech Day 2 (06 May, 2008)

2008-05-12T12:35:00.001+01:00

The Pitt's conference center:

Today, I've "played" my last session:

BAM Applications and Steel Production – Getting business value from tracking information

A recent niche of Business Intelligence is called BAM (Business Activity Monitor) which means having high value business information in near real time presented using Dashboards and Key Performance Indicators.

This is an area which provide huge added value for steel makers because the BAM paradigm is an enabling technology to optimize the production stages and processes.

A BAM application has been developed and released during 2007 in Thy Marcinelle plant in Belgium (RIVA group).

An integrated system has been developed with the following features:

Level 2 Tracking and Supervision
Level 3 Reporting
Level 3 Plant Dashboard

Level 2 software layers send information to Level 3 reporting and BAM application using an enterprise service bus architecture. Tracking information are processed and connected to business information providing real time monitoring of the plant performance.

Instead I've attended to the following sessions:

Multisite Sales and Operation Planning at a Major Flat Carbon Steel Producer

P. Moinier, AIS

The abstract is:

BlueScope Steel (BSL) is implementing an integrated supply chain management system with AIS' SteelPlanner® solutions. The solution includes multi-site sales planning, operation planning, master scheduling and unit scheduling. This paper describes in detail the multi-site sales planning. The objective is to optimize profit by choosing which orders have to be produced on the different production units and when. While doing this, production constraints like line calendar (maintenance, shifts), line campaigns, and minimum/target/maximum levels of WIP stock are considered. The expected benefits of the overall project, integrating different levels of the supply chain in one view, are to sustain target delivery performance by more effective flow, order and inventory planning. In particular, the benefits from multi-site sales planning optimization will be improved customer service (due date fulfillment increase and lead time decrease), a reduction of production and stocking costs, an increase of line throughput , an improved visibility of potentially upcoming problems and improved information sharing among different management levels.

I was very impressed by Pascal presentation and he's a very good speaker.

I've already seen SteelPlanner at the previous AISTech during a session.

I know it (http://www.steelplanner.com/) as a very good tool for scheduling optimizations of hot strip mill. In this session Pascal has explained the optimization of the whole supply chain but I'haven't understood the role of steel planner in this.

Integration Technology at ArcelorMittal Dofasco

B. Barna, ArcelorMittal Dofasco Inc.

The abstract is:

It is not a question of "if" you will have to deal with integration issues, but rather a question of "to what extent." ArcelorMittal Dofasco has recognized the key role integration and related technologies play in an IT strategy supporting a manufacturing environment. This presentation recounts ArcelorMittal Dofasco's journey to its present state, and highlights successes and lessons learned in the modernization of its information systems.

During the session the it governance approach (...and wishing list) of ArcelorMittal has been discussed.

WebSphere MQSeries provides the ESB while BEA provides all the applications and portal development infrastructure.

AISTEch 2008 - Day 1 (05.05.2008)

2008-05-12T12:11:00.001+01:00

I'm arrived on saturday here in Pittsburgh and it's a real nice place.

Here is the link to the conference http://www.aist.org/08_aistech/2008aistech.htm

Today, I've "played" 2 sessions:

Data Warehouse and Mining Tools for Steel Production Control

Data-warehousing and mining technologies have been recently adopted by ILVA in Taranto plant and they are used to collect data from the different production lines (i.e. hot strip mills and plate mills) and consolidate them into an huge data hub named Quality Data Warehouse.

The Quality Data Warehouse provides Historical Data:

To optimize the processes planning;
To build the engineering plans;
To build the reports to evaluate the quality results of produced coils and plates

All these information are easily and quickly accessed through a WEB application over the Intranet based on Microsoft Sharepoint.

The most innovative feature of the system are the mining tools which are used with excellent results by researchers to find patterns and trends or to evaluate the hidden relationships during the stages in the manufacturing processes for quality prediction purposes.

Plant Vehicles Tracking With GPS/DGPS/GPRS Technologies

The ILVA Taranto plant is an huge area with about 150 miles of railways with more than 50 trains and over 1700 freight cars which connect the different production lines (blast furnaces and hot strip mills). The operational management of the logistics and the maintenance of this infrastructure was a huge challenge.

An integrated system has been developed with the following features:

Train Tracking with GPS/DGPS/GPRS using Windows-based remote units
Telemetry Application to get trains data and alarms in real time to prevent damaging
Maintenance Application to report the trains usages for planning purposes
Management Application integrated with the ERP system to support and manage the daily operations of railways infrastructure

The integrated system has been released in 2005 with success and it was extended, leveraging the existing infrastructure, also for the tracking of industrial trucks.

A case success paper has been published by Microsoft in Italy:

http://www.microsoft.com/italy/casi/caso.aspx?uid=586366c2-fdd5-4e2f-900e-7e65cfc757c9

Instead I've attended to the following sessions:

Fully Configurable Level 2 Infrastructure for Metal Rolling and Processing Control Systems

From John McMillen (TMEIC-GE)

I've already seen the GE architecture and I was very impressed because it has been conceived and design 15 years ago using today's best practice...

Configuration and not development, message bus, scripting to manage message processing, sinks, instrumentation and so on are all features included in GE framework.

From my perspective is an excellent design, my only concern is that some custom features in the platform today are offered off-the-shelves by integration with moder operating systems (ie instrumentation with WMI or message bus WS-Messaging or SQL Server Brokers)

PC-based System for "High-Resolution" Weld Data Acquisition, Archival and Analysis

From T. Roach, (U. S. Steel)

Excellent job regarding the best practices about development of high-perfomance software on Windows Environment (C++ unmanaged obviously).

The application written by Dr. Roach is a signal software recorded with good analysis capabilities.

The Arvedi Endless Strip Production Line (ESP) — From Liquid Steel to Hot Rolled Coil in Seven Minutes

From J. Siegl, Siemens VAI Metals Technologies GmbH & Co.

The abstract is:

Acciaieria Arvedi SpA, and Italian steel producer, installed the world’s first Arvedi ESP Endless Strip Production plant in Cremona, Italy. Start-up is planned for 2008. The unique design and plant configuration of this facility will allow fully continuous casting and endless rolling of high-quality strip in a wide range of steel grades. Due to the highly compact layout (total length 190 m), lower investment costs are incurred compared with conventional thin slab casting and direct rolling plants. Productivity of the ESP plant, based on a single casting line, will be about 2 million tonnes/year, and production costs will be noticeably lower than those of other thin slab plants and also of the ISP plant already operating in Cremona. With the line's ability to produce ultrathin hot rolled strip gauges of 0.8 mm and lower, a subsequent cold rolling process will no longer be necessary for many strip applications. Due to endless rolling operations, the production of strip with uniform and repeatable mechanical properties will be possible along the entire strip width and length. This fully integrated production facility, incorporating advanced technological packages, is the basis for overall plant reliability, superior products and a high line output.

Nothing more to say. I'm very impressed by the overall engineering and I little bit proud because the plant is in Italy!

CQE - Controlling Mechanical Properties of Hot Rolled Coil

A. Polo, Danieli Automation

The abstract is:

Danieli's Coil Quality Estimator (CQE) is an on-line system for prediction of mechanical properties of hot rolled coil, such as the yield strength (YS), tensile strength (TS), elongation (EL) and hardness (HV), at different locations over the length of the strip. The estimation is based on the final microstructure, the evolution of which is traced during entire thermomechanical processing using physically based models for simulation of thermal, deformational, microstructural, precipitational, and finally the structure-property correlation. The uncertainties in actual processing are taken into consideration with the help of the Artificial Neural Network (ANN), which acts in additional to the mathematical models. The system is available for different steel grades such as low-, medium- and high-carbon steels, and high-strength low-alloy steels. The accuracy of prediction is ±20 MPa for the YS, ±20 MPa for UTS, and ±5% MPa for EL. The system is useful for process control and optimization.

The project is very similar to our paper on "DWH and Mining Tools for steel production controls" but we were focused on IT technologies and methodogies, while Danieli has explained their mathematical models and excellend achieved results.

It has been very interesting, because now I've also understood what there is inside the mixed neuronal/genetic algorithm DLL (coming from ILVA) that we've integrated with SQL analysis services...

Book recommendation: SOA in the real world

2008-05-04T17:23:00.001+01:00

Yesterday on the flight to Pittsburgh I've finished to read this book:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=cb2a8e49-bb3b-49b6-b296-a2dfbbe042d8&displaylang=en

I strongly recommend it to all my colleagues in TiQ-Industrial because give a good idea of what SOA is and also there are a lot of architectural pattern for "real" scenarios.

GE iFix - Scheduled Task - Architectural Patterns

2008-04-27T00:37:00.001+01:00

Summary

iFix is a SCADA software used in industrial application to write the supervisory applications and sometimes simple process control(http://www.gefanuc.com/as_en/products_solutions/hmi_scada/products/proficy_ifix.html)

In these kind of application, sometimes (...very often) you need to write code for delivering background processing, event-management, implementing watch-dog, storing report informations and so on..

Scenario

There are different features in iFix which could be leveraged but all of them are based on the "concept" of schedule.

An schedule is like an event for form-based applications and could be on timely bases, or triggered by a real world event (ie an alarm, a tag treeshold passed, etc.)

An schedule is implemented through VBA script (in iFIx v4.0)

The schedule could be hosted by different iFix modules (I'm considering a complex iFix deploy with Terminal Server)

iFix Workspace (on users sessions)
iFix Workspace (on a dedicated protected session)
iFix Background Server

iFix Background Server is a dedicated host tailored for background processing because it's like and iFix Workspace lacking of all user interface features so that the process footprint is very light.

We could think to an iFix Workspace like a Windows Form application, and iFix Background Server like a Windows Service.

The development of background processing in iFix is very hard and challenging due to iFix architecture.

Both iFix Workspace and iFix Background Server use Microsoft VBA as a script languages platform development and execution.

VBA is very easy to use so that people which hasn't good programming skill could write iFix application but that's also a BIG drawback when server code has to be delivered!

VBA has been created to delivery macro functionalities to Word/Excel not to write server application and the engine is for single threaded.

This mean that each event has to be singly processed by the hosting iFix process, so possibily issues could arise:

Memory Leaks due to COM object (each object must be explicity deallocated with Set x = Nothing)
DB Connection management
Performance on each I/O operation (ie DB). If a query needs 2 sec to be completed, no more scripts could be processed
Exception Management

To avoid this problem you need to decouple the iFix hosting process from the event management scripts.

Architectural Pattern

The interaction betwen the VBA scripts and iFix is done through COM objects which exposes iFix functionalities. So you could create and external application in .Net and through interop leverage the iFix COM objects.

The requirement is that the external application is deployed in the same machines where iFix is running

COM+

Creates a .Net library component and register it in COM+
Implements a method for each event management script using iFix COM objects (ie EDA)
When the script is raised from an iFix host (Workspace or Background Server), from the VBA code invoke the .Net method.
The .Net method should be asynchrounous and must use the .Net threading pool to complete the event management. In this way the method completed immediately, enabling the the iFix host to continuee the event management.

External Agent

Creates a .Net Win32 service which will be executed on the same machine of iFix
Creates a library component proxy to send message to the Win32 agent

This component could be a .Net component which send data using different kind of queue (msmq, sql server 2005 broker, etc...)
A VBA custom function to send message to .Net component in an easier way (SQL Server tables, files, etc..)

When the script is raised from an iFix host (Workspace or Background Server), from the VBA a message will be sent to the agent which will be asynchrously processed
In this solution, comparing it to the COM+ approach, it's not possibile to send COM object as parameters to the external hosts! So the COM+ approach it's the better one.

One of the worst errors a project manager could do...

2008-04-26T22:21:00.001+01:00

I've always thinked that a good manager is someone which doesn't appear to be a manager...

He should drive the team but the team must not understand that it's driven by him
He should trust and encourage the member of the team delegating charges and duties more as possible
He should get the top performance more as possibile from his team members (...and he isn't supposed to directly do the job, well I guess that's not a priority, the focus should be on team members)

There is a bright phrase to describe the manager charges (ehm..the bright phrase is still mine...):

You cannot taste the wind, you cannot see it and maybe you cannot hear it but wind is there and it silently boost boats. A good manager is like the wind, he boost the team from behind the scenes.

Probably that's all true but there is a huge error that a manager, a project manager, *MUST* avoid!

One thing is trust and delegation style, one thing is an agnostic tasks assignment style.

From my perspective, an agnostic tasks assigment style is when the manager works just as a task dispatcher, considering efforts, critical paths, etc. but simply assuming that there is a task and that someone will consume that tasks. The manager isn't worried from "how" but just from "when".

In this way the manager work as an "accountant", assigning, checking but not governing the processes!

In the trust and delegations style the manager still dispatches tasks and assignment, still consider effort, critical paths and so on and still check the tasks are being done...

Where is the difference? It's in the style, I think that an in agnostic task assignment a manager is..., what I could say, well he's lazy. The style is assign and forget (well that's also a design pattern in software architectures, fire and forget but it's other stuff).

In trust and delegation style the manager *must* be part of the processes critically checking, reviewing and supporting team members decisions

He should empower the team, explaining and suggesting on the basis of his knowledge and thats totally different from imposing decisions.

So what's the error to avoid, "one of the worst errors a project manager could do"?

Obviously it's the agnostic task assignment style (and too much often I do this error). Trust and delegation is very challenging and hard because it's also needed a deeply knowledge of the approached scenarios and sometimes you've to admit you errors if you've convinced team members to change their decisions (yes, I've just said to you) , but IT'S ALWAYS THE WINNING ONE!

Tools: http://www.datadefractor.com

2008-04-24T21:06:00.001+01:00

Seems to be a nice tool to import ed export BI data (OLAP cubes) leveraging Excel.

Thanks again to Mimmo!

It might be used to create small and independent datamart to be distributed to users on a periodically basis (for example a report with kpi about sales performances).

OPC Server Platforms

2008-04-22T17:21:00.001+01:00

I've just finished a technical proposal for a big migration project of a Level 2 and Supervision platform from UX System V to Windows Server 2008/.Net

Level 1 to Level 2 process control will be connected through our proxy (which guarantees high performances). The supervision system will be connected to Level 2 through OPC.

I'm evaluating 2 OPC servers:

From a technical perspective, the architecture are differents but the features are quite the same.

From a sales perspective, the proposal is easier to build using kepware offering (too many options in matrikon price-list) :-)

Some speeches

2008-04-19T11:42:00.001+01:00

The next month I will have some speeches:

AIST 2008 @ Pittsuburgh (http://www.aist.org/aistech/)
- Monday 05th May
  - Data Warehouse and Mining Tools for Steel Production Control
  - Plant Vehicles Tracking With GPS/DGPS/GPRS Technologies
- Tuesday 06th May
  - BAM Applications and Steel Production — Getting Business Value From Tracking Information
The Developers Group Meeting @ Microsoft Victoria, London (http://www.ukbug.co.uk/)
- Wednesday 15th May
  - Introduction to SharePoint Services and MOSS

Incremental User Interface

2008-04-19T11:03:00.001+01:00

Some interesting considerations:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000887.html

I think we're closer to new improvements to user experiences (like integration of Speech Server and voice recognition). Incremental Search is an enabling technologies to improve productivity in user interaction.

(Thanks Mimmo for having posted me the link)

Vista SP1 - Training

2008-04-19T10:59:00.001+01:00

Good idea for users training to new product features...

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080416/internal-vista-sp1-promo-rockin-our-sales/

How could I say... It's mnemonic.

UML - I cannot believe! This is what I define a techie...

2008-03-20T14:56:00.001Z

http://www.umljokes.com/index.php

SQL Server 2005 - Indexes Reorganization

2008-03-18T10:46:00.001Z

When you create a Maintenace Plan for SQL Server 2005 with a "Reorganize Index Task" very often you'll get the following error:

Executing the query "ALTER INDEX [IX_myIndex] ON [dbo].[myTable] REORGANIZE WITH ( LOB_COMPACTION = ON )
" failed with the following error: "The index "IX_myIndex" (partition 1) on table "myTable" cannot be reorganized because page level locking is disabled.

This is due to the default behavoir when you create an index with the GUI in SQL Server Management Studio which is to disable page-level locking for the index. The behavoir is changed with SQL Server 2005 SP2 (obviously it must be applied to the clients).

When you try to reorganize a database you may find a lot of indexes with page level locking disabled.

To enable it, you can execute the following script on every impacted database (I've got this script from http://www.megasolutions.net/Sqlserver/Finding-all-the-indexes-on-a-server-with-AllowPageLocks-set-to-FALSE_-65676.aspx)

The script will output the sql to update the indexes, so copy the sql and execute it again.

set quoted_identifier off
go
SELECT "alter index [" + i.name + "] ON [" + s.name + "].[" + t.name + "]
SET (ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) "
--    s.name, t.name, i.name
FROM sys.schemas s
JOIN sys.tables t ON
    t.schema_id = s.schema_id
JOIN sys.indexes i ON
    i.object_id = t.object_id
WHERE
    i.index_id > 0
    AND INDEXPROPERTY(i.object_id, i.name, 'IsPageLockDisallowed') = 1
    AND INDEXPROPERTY(t.object_id, i.name, 'IsStatistics') = 0
    AND NOT EXISTS
    (
        SELECT *
        FROM sys.objects keys
        WHERE
            keys.parent_object_id = i.object_id AND
            keys.name = i.name AND
            keys.type IN('PK', 'UQ')
    )

[Link]Sharepoint Explorer View Troubleshooting

2008-03-16T16:14:00.001Z

Nice document. Now I understood that Explorer View is really complicated:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c523ac7a-5724-48be-b973-641e805588f4&displaylang=en

...And I still cannot understood why it's not working with https!

[Link]Unicode Explained

2008-03-11T14:28:00.001Z

Just for my memory: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

Excellent introduction.

Sharepoint Conference 2008 - Summary

2008-03-07T08:47:00.002Z

At the end of the conference some new idea raise-up for running projects in Europe and probably I learned something new on MOSS best-practices.

But the greatest value of this conference is the italian people I've met (rigorously sorted by Last Name):

Igor Macori - http://www.macori.it/
Paolo Pialorsi - http://blogs.devleap.com/paolo/default.aspx
Romeo Pruno - http://www.nonaka.eu/

From technical perspective they've very strong technical skills on MOSS, .Net and architectures as they're kindly and friendly guys from human behaviour.

It has been an honor having met them here.

Hard to find skilled developers

2008-03-06T21:13:00.001Z

This morning during a presentantion in Sharepoint Conference 2008 in Seattle about MOSS, Excel Services and Form Server as an integrated plafform for consultancy tracking and planning someone asked to the speaker "cool stuff, very interesting but it's hard to find skilled sharepoint developers!"

That's a real big truth, like watching a porn film and after thinking: "cool stuff, but it's difficult to find skilled girls doing these jobs"

Sharepoint Conference 2008 - Day 4

2008-03-06T21:05:00.001Z

Attended to the following presentation:

Building Composite Office Business Applications

Nice and brilliiant presentation about OBA Reference Toolkit (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/cc196391.aspx).

It's very interesting to create an application framework which pivot across sharepoint to integrate the user experience with client side office applications (developed with VSTO).

Well, I'm very interesting in see real world application, at the moment they say that there a lot of opportunity for partners and that's not a good sign for real deployment...

It's not clear for me to understand how OBA is positioned comparing to Acropolis. I think that Acropolis will be the composer for Smart Client/SOA scenario while OBA is the composer for VSTO/IW applications.

Developing applications on SharePoint: Build your own Resource-Tracking and Staffing Management Solution

Real world application for consultancy tracking (the same business of my company). The application uses Sharepoint lists as a storage for engagements and consultants leveraging Search apis to find information.

But the the best showed idea is leveraging of UDF for Excel Services to pull business information from the data-sources integrating them into spreadsheets used as Dashboard in a very easy way. The UDF functions could be configured with a .config file to specify where data will be fetched

Also in this case, the lesson learned is that Form Servers is very challenging and tricky (because it's impossible discriminate the form section behaviour according to user role).

Managing a SharePoint Workflow Environment That Includes Custome Activities and Actions

Nothing new. Some best-practices about exception management and logging.

That's all about the conf.

Sharepoint Conference 2008 - Day 3

2008-03-06T16:18:00.001Z

Attended to the following sessions, after the Keynote with Greg Lemmond (his life is interesting, really great man).

Best of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 for SharePoint Deployments

New features from Windows Server 2008 (mainly leveraging PowerShell for MOSS deployment and IIS tracking).

Regarding SQL Server 2008 they said that you've database encryption (how?!) and fastest data backup. I expect somethink more from SQL....

SharePoint Tools for Style: Advanced Techniques for Branding SharePoint

Best practices on CSS and Master-Page management. For tips&tricks http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/

Rendering Data in SharePoint Using AJAX and LINQ

Great opportunity for me to see Linq in action.

I was very impressed by data abstraction which could be done with LINQ. I think that the best use could be to implemente feedback model where a lot of inputs are collected by etherogeneus datasources and loading them into an object model which could be queried using LINQ.

I'm thinking to fields tag in an industrial plant which using Linq could be joined with alarms stored in a relation database and it would be very easy and quicker to extract the information you need. The requirement to have performance in this scenario is having the objects in memory (well it's the default using Linq on objects). During the presentation this approach has been used to query MOSS but is's high risky because in the same way all the lists must be in memory and the processing could be very dangerous.

Regarding AJAX I've seen how to plumb it into MOSS. Default MOSS WebService aren't AJAX compliant (they are'not scriptable) so they were wrapped by another Web-Service. Fine but you can leverage ASTORIA in an easy way.

Creating Solutions with the MOSS Single Sign On Service

This was one the most crystalline speech that I ever attended Todd Baginsky is a great presenter (http://www.sharepointblogs.com/tbaginski/default.aspx).

The most intersting stuff was the integration of SSO with ASP.Net Form Authentication. In Todd's blog there is a sample.

Sharepoint Conference 2008 - Day 2

2008-03-05T19:44:00.001Z

Technorati Tag: Sharepoint,MOSS

Attended to the following sessions:

Migrating a SharePoint Designer Workflow to Visual Studio .NET
Integrating Business Applications into MOSS Using the BizTalk Adapter Pack
MOSS 2007: Advanced Administrative Architecture, Deployment, and Operations
Leverage the Power of the Business Data Catalog (BDC) to Integrate Content across the Enterprise
Easy Jet: MOSS 2007 As an Information Platform for the Intranet and Beyond

Migrating a SharePoint Designer Workflow to Visual Studio .NET

In Italy we says "Tears and Blood".

It's feasible migrate a Sharepoint Designer Workflow to WinFX, but the question is... Why?!?!

It's too much hardly and Tricky and you need to know some undocuments features. Also hardly to support.

The only scenario is the leveraging of SP Designer for prototypinh and after that migrate, but I think it's cheaper to prototype directly in Visual Studio...

Integrating Business Applications into MOSS Using the BizTalk Adapter Pack

That's the contents: http://blogs.msdn.com/adapters/archive/2008/02/15/biztalk-adapter-pack-released.aspx

From my perspective it's another abstraction layer between the BDC and the LOB but I don't see any great value for them.

During the presentation the speaker had a lot of problem wasting time.

I don't see value using the adapter pack with Sharepoint (BDC is OK), but it could be useful for other stand-alone applications with bidirection interactions (BDC is read-only)

MOSS 2007: Advanced Administrative Architecture, Deployment, and Operations

Best Practices from MS IT for deploying and supporting large enterprises. Nothing new.

Leverage the Power of the Business Data Catalog (BDC) to Integrate Content across the Enterprise

What you can do with the business Data Catalog.

It was very interesting the approach to the presentation. A Sharepoint site with all the features of BDC has been used.

Every site was conceived like a PPT presentation but with the real feature that was showed by the speaker (...and I loosed the name of him)

Easy Jet: MOSS 2007 As an Information Platform for the Intranet and Beyond

I apreciated a lot the presentation from Andy Caddy (Easy Jet chief architect) and he's also the father of www.easyjet.com that I think it's the best flight booking site.

During the presentation he showed EasyJet intranet which is mainly used for collaboration.

The most interesting application I think it's the area of crew briefing which is used to collect technical information regarding the trip and the planned plane. This application help to reduce the wasted or unproductive time to prepare the briefing collecting the required informations.

Evening Party

At Seattle Museum of Flight (http://www.museumofflight.org/Portal.asp?Flash=True and look at the picture).

Free-Food and drinks! But it was better 2 years ago the Experience Music Project (http://www.seattleattractions.com/emp.html). Jumy Hedrix rules...

Sharepoint Conference 2008 - Day 1

2008-03-05T08:18:00.002Z

I'm arrived sunday evening in Seattle to learn something interesting at the Sharepoint Conference (well...I hope so) after 4 days around the east coast.

I attended to the following sessions:

Keynote (Bill Gates, Tom Rizzo, Kurt Del Bene)
Build Interactive User Experiences with the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint
A Roll-Up of Fun & Lessons Learned Using the Content Query Web Part (CQWP)
SharePoint As a BI Platform

Keynote (Bill Gates, Tom Rizzo, Kurt Del Bene)

Announced the online services for Sharepoint ed Exchange (http://www.microsoft.com/online/learn.mspx).
The Search products and features will be enriched by the acquisition of Fast (http://www.fast.no/)
Blue Print for SilverLight: http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/

But the most exciting stuff was this video: http://www.truveo.com/Bill-Gates-Last-Day-at-Microsoft/id/253035224

Build Interactive User Experiences with the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint

Nice session but there is already a lot a room to have Sharepoint and SilverLight integrated.

During a sessions differents approach to embedded SilverLight into a WebPart were showed.

I think that SilverLight could be evaluted to integrate mining model into DashBoard and some also as an interactive tool to render some kind of analytics (I mean a front-end for consolidated reporting).

One of the demo was built over the components of ComponentOne (http://labs.componentone.com/Sapphire/). Seems to be good stuff.

A Roll-Up of Fun & Lessons Learned Using the Content Query Web Part (CQWP)

A lot of different best practices, tips and lesson learned regarding the Content Query Web part.

The main trick is the leveraging of a custom column in every list which could be queried by the Content Query Web Part using predefined tags.

SharePoint As a BI Platform

It was very satisfing for me to look that the session was exposed with the same approach of mine during the 2007 launch of O2007 in Italy.

I've seen for the first time PerformancePoint that is very well conceived but I think it's very hard to sell...

PerfomancePoint it's an excellent platform but it's enabling tool which could be leveraged by strategic consulting firm to implement the Balanced Scorecard Theory to companies.

To create real value it's mandatory to reorganize the company building it around the nodes which are focused by PerformancePoint.

GE iFix: FDS (FixDataSystems) & Performances

2008-02-24T17:39:00.001Z

iFix run over Microsoft platform and it's programmed using VBA and a set of custom ActiveX which provide access to all SCADA functionalities.

FixDataSystem ActiveX (abbreviated to FDS) is one of the iFix components (ie EDA, etc.) which provides access to the PLCs data.

We found a huge performance lack in FDS in an high-reliable iFix deployment.

From the previous image (a typical high-reliable configuration):

There is a Front-End iFix with Terminal Server installed. The server is in charge:

To provide the user interface to operators
To process all VBA scripts (the scripts are executed in the contexts of an iFix workspace)

The Back-End iFix servers which are in charge:

Communication management, I mean getting and sending data within PLCs (Level 1)
Providing high-Level data access to iFix Terminal Server.
Active-Node is the node currently connected to iFix Terminal Server
Stand-By Node is the hot backup and it will be connected to iFix Terminal in case of failure of currently Active-Node.

It's very important to understand that VBA scripts are executed in iFix Terminal Server so FDS ActiveX must create a remote connection to the Active-Node.

With this configuration the performance is very lacking and if you have a lot of tags to be initialized you've to wait tens of seconds which is unacceptable in every operating conditions.

Anyway FDS ActiveX is very fast when it's used locally by the Active-Node (also keep in mind that you can have only 1-instance of FDS for a workspace).

So in the following diagram it's depicted our approach based on COM+ (implemented in .Net using Enterprise Services) which leverage the performance of FDS when it's invoked locally:

As you can see the idea is to create a .Net wrapper (TiQ .Net FDS) to FDS which could be invoked using COM+ (which has good performance for remote calls):

The wrapper (TiQ .NET FDS) is executed in iFix Active-Node
The VBA scripts execute by iFix Workspaces call TiQ.Net FDS using a remote COM+ component (in this way the wrapper is also exposed using a COM interface accordingly to VBA requirement on interface).

Well that's not so easy because to to guarantee high-performance:

We've used hash-tables bypassing FDS COM collection providing access to DataItems.
Net thread-pooling is used to optimize the threads usage during internal blocking call.
.Net Object Pooling with Just-In-Time activation is required to guarantee that only 1 instance of FDS is created.

I will not go into implementation details because it's out-of-scope and..., well it's company know-how and there is a little bit of magic from my colleagues in TiQ-Industrial.