Certifications

I was looking at the latest stack of MOSS certifications and found these set of exams:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-sharepoint-server.aspx#tab2

The format seems pretty good and unlike a lot of other Microsoft exams there are no ready made cramsheets that I can see...As I understand it there are about 50-55 questions..multiple choice and you need to shoot straight from the hip...Interesting huh?

Comparison: Azure SQL and SQL Server

An interesting comparison between Azure data services and SQL Server :
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9692818

Looking into MOSS 2010 Features

While looking at the different features of MOSS, and evaluating the sharper focus that 2010 brings came across these:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303422(office.14).aspx

Wishing you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year

It was a very interesting yr...2009..Full of surprises, challenges, successes and the likes...Now lets see what 2010 has in store for us..
Hope its better, fuller and brings out the best in us on all fronts..
Enjoy!

Last week of the yr

As the last week of the yr draws to a close, nostalgic moments of this yr go past in the mind..Lots of interesting events, trips and important of all learnings from this yr..Lets ring out the old and ring in the new..

Happy XMas and a smashing new year ahead..

Zachman framework for enterprises

While organizations grapple with increasing complexity in business place as well as technology implementation, Zachman provides some help in organizing corporate assets in reusable format.

http://www.zachmaninternational.com/index.php/the-zachman-framework

ASP.NET MVC 2 BETA

ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta provides a new Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework on top of the existing ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 runtime.
The framework encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application – the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model. ASP.NET MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development (TDD).


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4817cdb2-88ea-4af4-a455-f06b4c90fd2c&displaylang=en

Money Transfer: The Top Mobile App of 2012?

An interesting piece of information surfeced on Business week regarding top mobile app by 2012. Transferring money apparently will be the most sought after feature in mobile banking

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/11/money_transfer.html

About Doloto

Doloto is an AJAX application optimization tool, especially useful for large and complex Web 2.0 applications that contain a lot of code, such as Bing Maps, Hotmail, etc. Doloto analyzes AJAX application workloads and automatically performs code splitting of existing large Web 2.0 applications. After being processed by Doloto, an application will initially transfer only the portion of code necessary for application initialization.

The rest of the application's code is replaced by short stubs -- their actual function code is transferred lazily in the background or, at the latest, on-demand on first execution. Since code download is interleaved with application execution, users can start interacting with the Web application much sooner, without waiting for the code that implements extra, unused features.

In our experiments across a number of AJAX applications and network conditions, Doloto reduced the amount of initial downloaded JavaScript code by over 40%, or hundreds of kilobytes resulting in startup often faster by 30-40%, depending on network conditions.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/ee423534.aspx

Performancepoint in MOSS?

While investigating about the latest status of PerformancePoint came across the following links:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/01/23/microsoft-business-intelligence-strategy-update-and-sharepoint.aspx

What this means for us:"Microsoft is removing the barriers for customers who want to deploy a complete Business Intelligence solution, leveraging their existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel. Customers with SharePoint ECAL SA will have rights to deploy PerformancePoint Server today. PerformancePoint’s scorecard capabilities are certified by the Balanced Scorecard Institute/Palladium, building on the capabilities first introduced in Business Scorecard Manager. This means companies can implement their scorecards, following any methodology they choose, and accurately reflect this with their company strategy. The contextual dashboards allow organizations to create data-rich views that are interactive and change based on the users context. Organizations can create rich views that combine Excel, Excel Services, SharePoint Lists, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and relational information to accurately reflect the business, measure the right information, and quickly understand changes in real-time.

This capability augments the team-based KPIs in SharePoint today, and utilizes the Excel Services environment, already allowing customers to share and reuse their workbooks in personal dashboards across the organization."

Saw USS NY

Today saw the USS NY sailing on the Hudson river from my office..This magnificent piece of work was built from the wreckage of the WTC.



At approximately 8:00 a.m., on November 2, the future USS NEW YORK will come to a standstill across from the World Trade Center site, dip her flag, and deliver a 21-gun salute. Members of the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, Port Authority Police, members of the families of 9/11 victims and veterans will gather on the shore at the North Cove in the World Financial Center to return the salute.

SharePoint and alternative to BDC?

While doing some brainstorming on where SharePoint currently is and what exactly BDC does, there are so many ideas around what this could mean. Getting an overview of BDC and its metadata model at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms546541.aspx
you can't miss thinking is there an alternative to BDC, using the same Runtime Object model exposed....Is there a plug in solution out there that could do that?

Visit to the Statue of Liberty

A visit to the Statue of Libery today :



Amazing piece of sculpture. It was apparently gifted to the US by France on the occasion of 100 yrs celebration for declaration of independence.
Standing on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, it welcomes visitors and immigrants traveling by ship Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue.Maurice Koechlin—chief engineer of Gustave Eiffel's engineering company and designer of the Eiffel Tower engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique, where a malleable metal is hammered on the reverse side. Amazing piece of art!

DI using Unity Application block

A nice article on DI using Unity Application block is at :

http://computerauthor.blogspot.com/2009/09/di-using-unity-application-blocks.html#SolvingproblemusingUNITYblock

Application Architecture Guide 2.0

The application architecture guide provides design-level guidance for the architecture and design of applications built on the .NET Framework. It focuses on the most common types of applications, partitioning application functionality into layers, components, and services, and walks through their key design characteristics. This guide is a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, product teams, and industry experts.

http://www.codeplex.com/AppArchGuide

More on this soon..

Visit to Lake Placid

Over the last weekend, we went to Lake Placid, a beautiful place upstate NY..


Mirror lake :



Veterans Memorial:



From Whiteface:



Winter Olympics training:

About Newport and the surroundings

A little bit about Newport, the place I stay and the surroundings now..
Below a nice snapshot of this place taken from the Hudson that borders on this city. The building with a weird top is my office..



To get a true flavor of Newport you should visit, http://www.newportnj.com/
Nice place this for families and the like..Following are some more things to see..

The mall:



Near Pavonia:

Oslo roars ahead

Microsoft's strategy to have MDA into the mainsteam surges ahead with a big push into Oslo..Here the site that talks about it all:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/oslo/default.aspx

Performance Engineering and architecture

I read some really nice article on performance aspects at:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/SitePerf.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998530.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/10ASPNetPerformance.aspx

Some really nice facts of the performance and scalability aspects were brought forth by these articles.

Happy Diwali to one and all

This is my favorite time of the year..Not that I am overly religious but being an absolute foodie..its an amazing time of the year to be gulping sumptous foods, sweet dishes and the like..The festival of lights inspires one and all...Destroying darkness and lighting the sky with crackers/fireworks of different colors..The smell of newness everywhere and shoppers going crazy for the festive season..
Amazing experience..!!

Happy Diwali to all..May this new year bring happiness and enrich you with health, wealth and everything you wish for...