Latest News from .NET Developer's Journal

Magic Software to Demonstrate Microsoft SharePoint Integration with Social Media

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:21:00 EST

Magic Software Enterprises Inc., a subsidiary of Magic Software Enterprises Ltd., a provider of application platforms and business and process integration solutions, on Tuesday announced that its new iBOLT business integration suite component for Microsoft SharePoint will enable unlimited closed loop integration between Microsoft SharePoint and enterprise systems for ERP, CRM, HRIS and other critical business functions as well as social media content from websites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

You Can't GO with Windows OS

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:55:00 EST

Google's GO programming language is not ported for Windows. You can run it only on Linux and Mac OSX. It has separate compilers for AMD64, X86 and ARM. It's an Open Source project (translates to free) distributed under BSD like license. Get on to this language which you may encounter more often in the future here. It is still an experimental language designed to overcome some of the perceived deficiencies of C and C++, and somewhat more like JavaScript and Python.

Watch a promotional video here.
Lack of resources is cited as the reason for not porting to Windows.

Microsoft Buys Patent Insurance

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:30:00 EST

Microsoft has taken out some patent insurance by becoming a paying member of the 14-month-old RPX Defensive Patent Aggregation service. RPX fends off patent trolls by beating non-practicing entities (NPEs) to the punch and acquiring patent rights before they do to protect its clients, which now include IBM, HP, Cisco, Nokia, Sony, McAfee, Symantec, Sharp, Enea, HTC, Epson, Seiko-Epson, TiVo, Panasonic, LG Electronics, Samsung.

Book Review: Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET 3.5

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:15:00 EST

There are several authors of .NET books who not only know their material but are able to present the information in a practical manner. One such author is Scott Mitchell. This book is well written and is divided into four parts with a total of 24 chapters. While the level of the book is directed at beginners, it’s a good refresher for more experienced developers who want to learn some of the new features available in ASP.NET 3.5.

Microsoft WebsiteSpark: Get New Business Leads to Grow Your Business

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:00:00 EST

Did you know that PHP runs on Windows?? Run Drupal, WordPress, SugarCRM, or other PHP-based apps on Windows today with the free Microsoft Web Platform Installer. Microsoft WebsiteSpark is a specially designed program for PHP Web developers and designers to help you explore running on Windows. This program enables you to get new business leads to grow your business, and receive the software, support and trainingyou may need, at no cost for 3 years. To find out how to start getting new business leads, and leveraging the benefits of WebsiteSpark please enter your information here to download the Program Guide and receive enrollment instructions.

Microsoft and Intuit to Deliver Web Applications to Small Businesses

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:00:00 EST

Intuit and Microsoft plan to create new opportunities for software developers to deliver and market Web applications to small business customers through the Intuit App Center. The two companies plan to integrate the capabilities of their cloud services platforms – the Intuit Partner Platform and Windows Azure platform – to enable developers and channel partners to deliver solutions to the millions of employees within businesses that use QuickBooks financial software. In addition, the two companies will provide small businesses with Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity applications via the Intuit App Center.

Configure an External List with BCS in SharePoint Foundation 2010

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:02:00 EST

One of my favorite features in SharePoint 2010 is External Lists. If you haven’t heard by now, the MOSS 2007 Business Data Catalog (BDC) has become Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2010. The ever better part is that it is included in SharePoint Foundation and does not require SharePoint Server. One new concept that we get from this is the External List. To the end user, these look like regular lists in SharePoint, however they really are reaching out to external systems such as databases and web services. Whereas the BDC only “officially” supported read operations, the BCS supports full CRUD operations on your external data source.

The title of the article mentions how easy it is to set up. As you will see shortly, it really is quite easy using SharePoint Designer. In fact, if you have a database table, you can have it exposed in SharePoint in under 10 minutes. If you worked with the BDC before, you know that we had to manipulate huge XML files that represented the application definition. We relied on third party tools to make this easier, but it was never a clean experience until now. Before we get started with SharePoint Designer though, first make sure that you have the Business Data Connectivity (likely to be renamed) Service Application started. To verify this go to Central Administration –> Manage Service Applications.

You can tell this is SharePoint Foundation since there are only a few Service Applications (SA). Ok, admittedly it could be server with very few installed, but you get the point. If you click the Manage button, you can manage any application definitions you have created already. Although, we’ll skip this since we’ll be using SharePoint Designer. If the SA is not started for some reason, go to Central Administration –> Services on Server and click Start next to the appropriate service. Also remember if you are using Windows Server 2008 R2, you will need to have the WCF hotfix installed before any SA works.

Now let’s take a look at our table. In my case I have a table of products with a few columns. I want to expose this table to SharePoint and make it editable.

Now open SharePoint Designer 2010 and connect to your SharePoint site. My server is called sp2010, so I would click open site and then enter http://sp2010. SharePoint Designer is redesigned and has a new item on the left-hand tab called External Content Types. This is where we want to go. Click the External Content Type button in the New section of the ribbon.

It will take a minute, but then you will get some details about your new External Content Type. Here is what mine looks like after I gave it a name of Products.

We’re then going to click the link Click here to discover external data sources and define operations. This is where we pick that we want to pull data from my database table. We can also use this to connect to a web service or talk to a custom .NET object.

I’m just going to go with the defaults on the next screen for my data connection. I gave it my database name of bcs_test as well as my SQL Server name. You can also configure out which identity is used here to talk to the database. Remember that you may need to grant permissions on the SQL Server itself for the appropriate user. It will then iterate your data source and display it to you. Pick out the table you want, and then right click on it. This gives you a list of operations you can add as you can see below.

As you can see, you can add individual operations such as Read Item, Read List, Create, Update, and Delete. You can also create an association if you have multiple tables related to each other. However, I want everything, so I am going to choose Create All Operations. This starts a wizard. The most important part for you will be the Parameters configuration. Here you set what field to show in a picker control as well as what the id is. Usually, you don’t need to configure much. Here I am setting that the name field should show up in the picker.

It automatically detects my primary key and maps it to the identifier for me.

You can also specify an Office Property to allow you to map things into existing types such as an Outlook Contact or Task. This lets you use Office to edit things directly in the BCS. I won’t cover that today though since that is a little bit more involved. The next step in the wizard allows you to do some filtering. In my case, I am skipping it.

When that is finished, go back to the main tab for your External Content Type and you should see something like this. It has the operations you have chosen as well as what fields are in the type.

Now, we want to save out External Content Type, by pressing the Save (Disk Icon) in the top left corner. On to the fun part. Let’s use SharePoint Designer to create an External List by using the Create Lists & Form button in the ribbon.

Clicking it you will get the following screen asking about your list. I’m calling my lists Products and I just use default values for the rest. If you are using server, you can click the Create InfoPath Form checkbox and you will be able to customize the InfoPath form for the list right there. Since we are using Foundation today, I’ll leave that unchecked.

You can also create the list directly through SharePoint as well. Once the list is created, go to your SharePoint site, navigate to the list, and you should see something that looks like this.

Comparing it to my table from the SQL Server, you can see that it matches. You can see that it looks a lot like a regular list in SharePoint. Now, what if I want to change the price on the Plush Bear? Not a problem. Click on the item and select edit, change the value in the form and save it.

Now what does the data in SQL look like?

It has the new price of course. You can also add and delete rows and perform bulk operations, but screenshots really don’t do it justice. It’s this simple to set up, you should go out and try it for yourself. One reminder, I will give you is that even though this looks like a list, it doesn’t always quite act like a list. You won’t find it in SPWeb.Lists for example. There are a also a number of other things that do and don’t work. Be on the lookout for a follow-up post on what you can and can’t do with an external list. This is a great new feature in SharePoint 2010 and I hope you will like it as much as I do.

SYS-CON Launches “iPad Summit” and Announces "iPad Expo"

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:30:00 EST

iPad on Ulitzer - SYS-CON Events announced on Monday that "iPad Developer Summit" will take place November 1-3, 2010, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The Summit is co-located with the 7th International Cloud Conference & Expo and the 9th International Virtualization Conference & Expo. The iPad Developer Summit is an intensive and content-rich one-day program designed to satisfy the growing hunger among software developers and IT professionals for a broad spectrum of sessions informing developers what kinds of development options and opportunities the iPad provides.SYS-CON Events announced on Monday that “iPad Developer Summit” will take place November 1-3, 2010, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The Summit is co-located with the 7th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo and the 9th International Virtualization Conference & Expo.

Data Services Update for .NET 3.5 SP1

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:24:00 EST

Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (aka ADO Data Services v1.5) has been re-released and is available for download. If your target is Windows7 or Windows 2008 R2 you can pick it up here. For all other OS versions you can get the release from here. This release targets the .NET Framework 3.5 [...] Related posts:

ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2 Released Today CTP2 of ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 release is now available...
Codename “Huron” - Sync Enabled Cloud Data Hub “Huron” provides synchronization capabilities within SQL Data Services to enable...
SQL Data Services. Your Database in the Cloud. One thing in the Microsoft cloud I find really interesting...

Silverlight in SharePoint 2010

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:36:00 EST

One misconception I have heard is that SharePoint 2010 is completely based on Silverlight. While SharePoint does use Silverlight now in various places, I would say most of it is still based upon regular ASP.NET pages. I haven’t seen anything that actually requires Silverlight yet, but it does make things prettier when you have it. This is just a brief overview of some things you might see. For example, one of my favorite new things is the Create page. If you don’t have Silverlight installed, you get something that looks like this.

As you can see it looks a lot like the traditional Create page in previous versions of SharePoint. However, one thing you might notice that’s new on this page is the Improve the Creation Experience - Install Microsoft Silverlight link. It gives you a link to install it and the next time you go to the create page, you get a modal window, that looks like this.

As you can see the experience is much nicer. When you hover over each time, you get an effect and all that pretty stuff. You have various ways to filter and categorize what you can create as well. If you are worried about your settings when creating a site, don’t worry they are neatly tucked away under the More Options button. Here is what that looks like.

This is just one place where things have changed. You are going to find Silverlight in other areas as well of course. The most notable areas would be the PowerPoint preview in the FAST search results as well as in Office Web Apps. I’m going to talk about Office Web Apps more soon, but the main thing I will point out is that they do not require Silverlight. So if you are editing a Word Document directly in the browser, you can do that with just HTML and JavaScript. Now if you do have Silverlight, you gain some things such as how well the document zooms, but for the most part the experience is largely the same.

The last thing to mention is that there is a Silverlight web part included now (which I am sure you have already heard about). This is nice because it makes it easy to include your own Silverlight applications without having to rely on third party web parts or writing your own.

SPQuery Error: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:05:00 EST

When I get an error, I like to blog about it. Especially when the error gives you no useful information whatsoever. Now, you can get the above error in a variety of ways, but the one I am going to discuss today is when using SPQuery. I inherited some code that had some CAML queries in it and I could not figure out what the cause was at first. When I called SPList.GetItems(SPQuery), I would receive something like the following.

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException was unhandled by user code
Message="Cannot complete this action.\n\nPlease try again."
Source="Microsoft.SharePoint"
ErrorCode=-2147467259
StackTrace:
       at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.GetListItemDataWithCallback(String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, String bstrViewName, String bstrViewXml, SAFEARRAYFLAGS fSafeArrayFlags, ISP2DSafeArrayWriter pSACallback, ISPDataCallback pPagingCallback, ISPDataCallback pSchemaCallback)
       at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPListItemCollection.EnsureListItemsData()
       at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPListItemCollection.get_Count()
       at Samson.P2S.SharePoint.Services.Synchronization.P2S_SynchronizationService.<>c__DisplayClass6.<GetInventoryChecklist>b__4() in C:\Projects\SamsonTFS\P2S\P2S_V0\Samson.P2S.SharePoint.Services.Synchronization\P2S_SynchronizationService.asmx.cs:line 166
       at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.CodeToRunElevatedWrapper(Object state)
       at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.<>c__DisplayClass4.<RunWithElevatedPrivileges>b__2()
       at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SecurityContext.RunAsProcess(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)
InnerException: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException
       Message="Cannot complete this action.\n\nPlease try again."
       Source=""
       ErrorCode=-2147467259
       StackTrace:
            at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.GetListItemDataWithCallback(String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, String bstrViewName, String bstrViewXml, SAFEARRAYFLAGS fSafeArrayFlags, ISP2DSafeArrayWriter pSACallback, ISPDataCallback pPagingCallback, ISPDataCallback pSchemaCallback)
            at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.GetListItemDataWithCallback(String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, String bstrViewName, String bstrViewXml, SAFEARRAYFLAGS fSafeArrayFlags, ISP2DSafeArrayWriter pSACallback, ISPDataCallback pPagingCallback, ISPDataCallback pSchemaCallback)
       InnerException:

The cause is actually simple. My CAML query was malformed. Specifically my where clause was not nested properly. The previous developer put three conditions in an and clause and that simply does not work. A COM exception though? Really? Wouldn’t it have just been better if it validated the query first and gave us a nice error message such as the following?

CAML query is malformed.

That would be too nice I guess. Anyhow, if you get this when querying, start looking at that query. While, I am here, I’ll remind you if you copy the query from CAML Query Builder, to remove the Query element. If you can’t figure it out and first, go back to the CAML query building tool of your choice and start executing the query there and comparing it to the one you have. You should be up and running in no time.

Top Ten Reasons To Use "Real" Outlook On Your iPhone

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:15:00 EST

In reverse order: 10 . You won't get fired for leaving your iPhone in a cab revealing company secrets. 9. You won't miss another meeting with your boss because the iPhone calendar app didn't sync right with your Exchange server. 8. Speed read through your email with just a swipe.

Intro to Querying Lists with REST and ListData.svc in SharePoint 2010

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:04:00 EST

What I really like about SharePoint 2010 is all of the new ways we can get at list data. You can always use the Client Object Model, Linq to SharePoint, or the existing object model, but one neat new way to get at list data is with listdata.svc. ListData.svc provides a way of getting information from a list (or lists using joins) using REST. What you end up with is a nice RSS feed of list data, that you can consume with whatever client you would like. You can construct URLs in various manners to get specific records, do joins, or perform simple queries. I won’t go through everything that you can do with it today, but I’ll point you towards resources to do the more advanced things.

When you are getting started, the first thing you want to do is check and see if you have ListData.svc up and running. Like any SharePoint web service, it’s located in the _vti_bin folder of any existing site, so it will work with items relative to that site. Here is what a typical URL might look like.

http://<sharepoint-server>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc

Try hitting that URL on your SharePoint 2010 server and see if it works. There is a good chance that you will get a 404 error. This happened to me, so I did some searching and found Rob Garret’s post stating to go out and install ADO.NET Data Services 1.5 CTP 2. There are a few choices, but I have seen others recommend you go with the runtime only. I had issues installing the full package. Once you have it installed, it still didn’t work for me, so I rebooted my server and everything worked fine when it booted back up. My guess is you probably could just reset IIS though.

Once you have a working ListData.svc, hitting it you should get results like this.

You get an XML document of all lists available to be queried. If you notice the href on each collection it gives you an idea of how you can construct subsequent URLs to get data. In today’s example, we’re going to work with a simple task list. We’ll look at the various ways we can get data from this list.

To get the data for this list via REST we simply just add the list name to the URL. In my case the name of the list is called Tasks. Here is what the URL would look like.

http://<sharepoint-server>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/<ListName>

In my case:

http://sp2010/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Tasks

Here is what the results look like.

As you can see we get an RSS feed and this is how Internet Explorer renders it. However, if we look at the actual XML of the feed, we’ll find that we get quite a bit of data back about the list. Here is a snippet of the XML.

<feed xml:base="http://sp2010/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title type="text">Tasks</title>
  <id>http://sp2010/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Tasks</id>
  <updated>2010-01-21T19:21:27Z</updated>
  <link rel="self" title="Tasks" href="Tasks" />
  <entry m:etag="W/&quot;1&quot;">
    <id>http://sp2010/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Tasks(1)</id>
    <title type="text">Test 1</title>
    <updated>2010-01-21T09:26:51-06:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name />
    </author>
    <link rel="edit" title="TasksItem" href="Tasks(1)" />
    <link rel="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/related/Attachments" type="application/atom+xml;type=feed" title="Attachments" href="Tasks(1)/Attachments" />
    <link rel="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/related/Predecessors" type="application/atom+xml;type=feed" title="Predecessors" href="Tasks(1)/Predecessors" />
    <link rel="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/related/Priority" type="application/atom+xml;type=entry" title="Priority" href="Tasks(1)/Priority" />
    <link rel="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/related/Status" type="application/atom+xml;type=entry" title="Status" href="Tasks(1)/Status" />
    <category term="Microsoft.SharePoint.DataService.TasksItem" scheme="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/scheme" />
    <content type="application/xml">
      <m:properties>
        <d:ID m:type="Edm.Int32">1</d:ID>
        <d:ContentTypeID>0x01080085FF0E1548B7414787A693232497B24E</d:ContentTypeID>
        <d:ContentType>Task</d:ContentType>
        <d:Title>Test 1</d:Title>
        <d:Modified m:type="Edm.DateTime">2010-01-21T09:26:51</d:Modified>
        <d:Created m:type="Edm.DateTime">2010-01-21T09:26:51</d:Created>
        <d:CreatedByID m:type="Edm.Int32">1</d:CreatedByID>
        <d:ModifiedByID m:type="Edm.Int32">1</d:ModifiedByID>
        <d:Owshiddenversion m:type="Edm.Int32">1</d:Owshiddenversion>
        <d:Version>1.0</d:Version>
        <d:Path>/Lists/Tasks</d:Path>
        <d:PriorityValue>(2) Normal</d:PriorityValue>
        <d:StatusValue>In Progress</d:StatusValue>
        <d:Complete m:type="Edm.Double" m:null="true" />
        <d:AssignedToID m:type="Edm.Int32" m:null="true" />
        <d:TaskGroupID m:type="Edm.Int32" m:null="true" />
        <d:Description>&lt;div&gt;Test 1 Task&lt;/div&gt;</d:Description>
        <d:StartDate m:type="Edm.DateTime">2010-01-21T00:00:00</d:StartDate>
        <d:DueDate m:type="Edm.DateTime" m:null="true" />
      </m:properties>
    </content>
  </entry>

As you can see in the content element, we can see the various site columns on a particular list item. Of course, there is more we can do with REST than just view everything in a list. If you want a specific item, you can use parenthesis and specify an indexer. Note that it is unit-indexed, not zero-indexed.

http://<sharepoint-server>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/<ListName>(<Index>)

In my case:

http://sp2010/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Tasks(3)

However, when you do this, Internet Explorer will give you an error that it cannot display this feed.

Not to worry though, if you view source, you still have a working XML document. It will pretty much look like the one above minus the initial feed information. You can take the query above and go one step further. Say, you just want to know the status for a specific task (note that the site column is actually called StatusValue here), you can simply add it to the URL like this.

http://<sharepoint-server>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/<ListName>(<Index>)/(<Field>)

In my case:

http://sp2010/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Tasks(3)/StatusValue

You’ll get an even simpler XML document that looks like this. It will create an element named after whichever site column you passed to it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<StatusValue xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices">Completed</StatusValue>

The last thing I will cover is simple queries. You can do this with $filter. There are a number of operators you can use here, but the one I will start with today is eq (or equals). For example, say I want to see all tasks that are completed, I would use a URL like this. Put any literals inside quotes.

http://sp2010/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Tasks?$filter=StatusValue eq 'Completed'

This returns results that look like this and of course the content element in the XML has the complete data on each list item returned.

You can also use various other types of predicates, such as ne, gt, ge, lt, le, and, or, not, etc. What each one does is probably pretty obvious, but if its not take a look at this MSDN reference for more information on the various filters and parameters you can use. Skip the code stuff at the begging and scroll down a bit to find the good stuff. This is a good start to working with REST in SharePoint, but this really is just the tip of it. What you are learning here isn’t really just specific to SharePoint but it applies to anything you do with ADO.NET Data Services, so it might be useful elsewhere later.

One thing I will point out is that I was not able to use this with an external list. I am guessing this is by design (which sucks), but it doesn’t look like it’s going to work. Of course, my install could just be broken or this could be subject to change.

New Data Visualization Options in Report Builder 3.0

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:22:00 EST

In my book 'Learning SQL Server Reporting Services 2008' I dealt mostly with reports that can be authored using Report Buidler 2.0.

A complete chapter from the book on Report Buidler 2.0 is freely available at the two following links:

Learning SQL server Reporting Services 20089 - Part 1

Learning SQL server Reporting Services 20089 - Part 2

Together with SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov-CTP there is a new Report Builder, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP Report Builder 3.0 which is available as a standalone download from this location.
It can be installed using either wizards or from the commandline. You could also choose to configure it to work with a report server in native mode, or with a report server running in integrated Sharepoint mode.

I took a first look at it installing in native mode to my SQL Server 2008 R2 NoV-CTP Hodentek3\Kumori. When I open the Report Builder 3's UI, I see a number of data visualization options that were not available in Report Builder 2.0.
Here is a screen shot of the UI with the new items. In additions to Charts and Gauges, there are several other interesting options.

Microsoft Seeks Rare Rehearing

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:45:00 EST

Having lost one appeal of the i4i patent infringement decision ordering Word off the market at a cost of $290 million in damages, Microsoft last Friday asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for a rare en banc review of its Christmas decision. It wants all 11 judges to listen to its complaints, not just the three who found for i4i on December 22. If that doesn’t work, it has threatened to try the Supreme Court, a real long shot.

Was InVista the New Betamax?

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST

The best method of Storage virtualization has been one of the most debated and argued issues within the industry. Nobody argues that while it is nothing more than an abstraction between the storage device and its application, the benefits that come with it such as consolidation, ease of management, online migrations etc. make it a fundamental aspect of the constantly non-heterogeneous emerging world of storage.

When RAID 10 Is Worth The Economic Cost

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:45:00 EST

Faced with the prospect of the extra disks needed for RAID 10 or the heavily marketed RAID 5, most users would go with the economic option and choose the latter believing they avoided themselves potential capacity problems for the future. But with 15k FC disks now seen as a norm for an OLTP (with some users even going for SSDs), the need to decide between RAID 10 or RAID 5 is something that needs to go beyond economic considerations.

VMware Confirms Zimbra Buy

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:30:00 EST

VMware confirmed Tuesday afternoon that it’s buying Zimbra, Yahoo’s open source e-mail and collaboration unit, a move into software-as-a-service for the virtualization leader. VMware said it had signed a definitive agreement and expects the deal to close sometime this quarter. No price was mentioned but All Things Digital, the Dow Jones blog that broke the story last week, put the price at between $100 million and way less than the $350 million Yahoo paid for the joint in late 2007.

Microsoft Prices Office 2010

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:15:00 EST

Microsoft said Tuesday that Office 2010, due out in June, will cost between $99 and $499 depending on which of the four retail versions of the stuff the consumer selects. The prices aren’t all that much different than what Microsoft charged for Office 2007 – although there are no discounted upgrade prices encouraging folks to trade up from older versions, which could make it more expensive – and this time through there will be free access to Microsoft’s Google-fighting Office Web Apps.

Free Windows Azure Storage

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:00:00 EST

As I am upgrading my Windows Azure account from CTP to production mode, I noticed that Microsoft provides great introductory offers for Windows Azure Storage. (A) 500M free storage for everyone. This means you can have free online storage from your Windows Azure Account for 8 months!

Microsoft Cloud to Power New TV Experiences

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:30:00 EST

Version 2.0 of award-winning Mediaroom TV platform enables subscription TV providers to deliver more entertainment content to more types of screens, using a single cloud-based infrastructure.

Reality Distortion Explained

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:14:00 EST

The rumor mills and speculation are running at fever pitch. I really should have predicted that 2010 would be the year of the tablet. With bloggers falling all over themselves trying to get the scoop on the Apple table, it seems that the bloggers are trying to call a tablet from Microsoft to be announced tonight, though Mary Jo says “I don’t think so.” With all that in mind, I was trying to figure out how to explain the world of tech in which we live.

My Personal 2010 Predictions

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:30:00 EST

In an effort to save a lot of pain and suffering for those people who don’t want to read an incredibly long blog post, I have a nice little summary table. The predictions run the gamut of my personal and professional interests, so they may not be 100% interesting to all people.

Fixing “Disk I/O Error During Read” Error Message

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:30:00 EST

Access Recovery exceeds all your expectations in every aspect of performing MS Access Database Repair. The software repairs almost all database components and is compatible with almost all latest Windows operating systems including, Windows 7. The read only software supports Access 2007, 2003, XP (2002), and 2000.

Error Messages While Restoring the MS SQL Server Database

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:26:00 EST

Restoration of data from an updated database backup allows you to overcome almost all SQL Server database corruption scenarios. It is therefore, always recommended to maintain a systematic database backup on some other storage media as well. While restoration of data is an easy process, it might result into an error message, which prevents you from restoration of the database. In such situations, an easy way is to restore the data from any other updated database backup. However if in case, no other backup is available or backup falls short to restore the data, then you will need to opt for advanced third-party SQL Recovery application.

As Times Square Ball Drops, EarthCam's There Live

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST

EarthCam (www.earthcam.com), the world's favorite webcam network and industry leader in webcam technology, webcast its 14th annual New Year's Eve Times Square interactive celebration live from New York City and locations around the world. EarthCam brought the world's largest party in Times Square directly to visitors live in real time via its interactive New Year's website and without commercial interruption. The evening's events were also accessible through mobile devices, including the iPhone.

Manage Azure Blob Storage With Ease

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:30:00 EST

After the Gladinet Cloud Desktop 1.4.232 release, it is fairly easy to manage Azure Blob Storage from your Windows Explorer directly.

Feature Highlight:

(1) Map a Network Drive Letter to the Azure Blob Storage

Resolving “Page Errors on the GAM...” Error Message

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:00:00 EST

The metadata structure of Microsoft SQL database is divided into numerous allocation units, such as, IAM (Index Allocation Map) pages, GAM (Global Allocation Map) pages, SGAM (Shared Global Allocation Map), or PFS (Page Free Space) pages. Corruption in any of the above pages primarily results into unmountability of database, further resulting into inaccessibility of database records.

Tips to Resolve “Microsoft Office Access Cannot Retrieve Field...”

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:05:00 EST

The occurrence of an error message while mounting, accessing, or closing an MS Access database indicates that there is some problem with the database. In most cases, such problems primarily occur due to corruption or damage in database. A damaged database does not allows the user to view its records. In such situations, if you need to access the records stored in your database, then the best way is to restore it from an updated database backup. However, if the backup is unavailable or has been corrupted, then you will need to use an advanced access repair application that can orderly repair your database.

The Skinny on Analytics

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST

Information services businesses are grappling with an increasingly common problem that is all the more critical to them. The very business that they’re in – information delivery – has become harder and more expensive while the demand for it is growing on an exponential basis. TransUnion is a case in point. This world leader in providing businesses and consumers with credit information services lets individuals monitor their credit and gain access to reports and credit scores. For businesses, TransUnion offers comprehensive data and advanced analytics that allow them to market financial services, including credit cards, to customers based on complex credit criteria, risk scores and decision levels. To read the full article go to http://www.globaletm.com/featured_white_papers/Article/sybase_the_skinny...

Html.JqGrid - Cleaning Up Your jqGrid Code

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:46:00 EST

I was recently working on a project where I had five or six different pages, each of which was going to have a full CRUD-enabled jqGrid complete with form editing, date pickers, fields that show up in the form and not on the grid, etc. The problem is after I got finished doing the first one I realized that there was a truckload of really redundant jqGrid code that I didn't want to have to re-type over and over again. Worse, the code is really fragile and if you misplace a comma, bracket, brace, or paren - the debugging of it will give you migraines.

Legendary Citizen Journalist Ron Ross Becomes Ulitzer Author

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

More recently, Dr. Ross was the owner of Tidbits of Douglas County (Colorado), an entertainment weekly that he sold after 12 years as owner/publisher. While a Tidbits publisher he served as the "Dean" of Tidbits University, a three-day program that teaches new publishers how to publish a successful Tidbits paper in their communities. Dr. Ross wrote the training program and taught new Tidbits publishers for several years. He continues to participate in each Tidbits University as a guest lecturer. He writes a weekly motivational/inspirational column that is published in several papers and was repurposed as a brief motivational video and posted on YouTube.

Microsoft’s Departing CFO Goes to General Motors

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST

Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell, who said he was quitting a month ago right before Thanksgiving, is going to another, even more troubled American icon, General Motors, as CFO and vice-chairman. GM’s financial side is said to be a mess and its hidebound management is being shown the door. GM’s last CFO Ray Young, who had the job about 18 months, is now running international out of Shanghai and the company is looking for a new CEO. When Liddell hung up his spurs at Microsoft, the company said he was looking to “expand his career beyond being a CFO.” Obviously the 51-year-old New Zealand import means to use GM as a springboard – maybe to the top – provided the automaker doesn’t hit the wall fatally.

Microsoft Buys Opalis

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST

Microsoft has acquired Toronto-based Opalis Software, a 10-year-old process automation and workflow orchestration ISV, whose widgetry it wants for System Center. Think cloud computing – self-adjusting pools of computing resources tuned based on real-time events – and large virtualized data centers. Opalis already integrates with Microsoft’s Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager and will allow System Center to integrate with infrastructure software from CA, BMC and HP.

True Value of Cloud Computing

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:45:00 EST

As the fog slowly lifts with respect to defining cloud computing, enterprises must now decide where the value proposition lies within the platform. For most large enterprises, the IT department typically offers services internally to various departments. These services are mostly at the infrastructure level such as maintaining existing servers or provisioning new servers.

SECUDE’s Secure SignOn Version 7.2 Supports Windows 7 Platform

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:03:00 EST

Secure SignOn for Enterprise Single Sign-On (E-SSO) ensures high user acceptance, high user productivity, and efficiency by significantly reducing helpdesk calls and by reducing the time required to login to various business applications. Secure SignOn for Enterprise Single Sign-On (E-SSO) ensures high user acceptance, high user productivity, and efficiency by significantly reducing helpdesk calls and by reducing the time required to login to various business applications. These factors result in a rapid and large Return-on-Investment (ROI) after only a short period of time.

Start-up Taps Cloud Computing for Sales & Training

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:30:00 EST

A start-up that used the vague name IT Structures while it was in stealth mode so its purposes couldn’t be divined broke cover Monday as CloudShare and claimed to be the first business-oriented cloud computing company. The little rascal comes to market with some chi-chi customers that are reportedly pushing it further into the cloud than it intended to go.

How to Synchronize with a Cloud Database

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

In fortifying and solidifying its relational cloud database service-SQL Azure, Microsoft has come up with a new tool, the Microsoft Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure November CTP. All that you need to do is to click and presto, you are in sync. This tool [SQL Azure Data Sync Tool for SQL Server] makes synchronizing SQL Azure with a local server that much more efficient (compared to force fitting ADO.NET) and that much more reliable.This power pack provides the SqlAzureSyncProvider that automates much of the synchronizing task, that is, a wizard will step in, and take charge. However you may need to keep your SQL Server Agent up and running and happy.

‘Is it Over? Is It Really Over?’: Ballmer

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST

Nine years and a tidy $2.5 billion in fines since its first statement of objections, the European Commission is reportedly supposed to discharge Microsoft next week from its second antitrust case against the company after accepting a reworked ballot screen compromise to its Opera-instigated bundled browser charges.

Microsoft Overcomes Most of its Writer’s Block

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:45:00 EST

In a status report Tuesday the Justice Department said that Microsoft can go back to collecting nominal royalties under its Communications Protocol Program now that it’s conquered its writer’s block and provided “substantially complete” documentation of the stuff. It’s been seven years since the 2002 antitrust settlement that required Microsoft to make documentation available to other vendors so they could interoperable with Windows.

How to Improve Processes in Most Organizations

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:25:00 EST

Organizations do not require process redesign from scratch, but rather, it is part of a continuous cycle. Forward-thinking organizations grow and learn from past experiences and apply that knowledge to become more efficient and adaptive to their changing circumstances. In today's competitive landscape, becoming more agile and profitable are key to survival, which is why many companies are aggressively streamlining business processes

Microsoft Revamps Controversial Windows 7USB/DVD Tool

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST

Microsoft has redone the Windows 7 USB/DVD tool that it pulled down sometime back after it was widely discussed that the tool contained code which violated the GNU General Public License. The source code in question came from ImageMaster, a tool that is used for reading and writing disk images. Microsoft called the violation an unintentional mistake, and took full responsibility for the infringement even though the code had been supplied by a third party. Now Microsoft has finally released the tool again under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2). The tool allows users to transfer downloaded Windows 7 images to a USB drive or burn them to DVD media.

In a post on the company's blog, Peter Galli, Microsoft's Open Source Community Manager, said "the testing and localisation took longer than we expected". Galli notes that, while the user experience will be the same as before, installation now requires additional steps, including installing Microsoft's .NET Framework and to burn DVDs. Previously the files were launched via a command line, but were separated "for clarity as they are separate programs under different licensing terms". The tool is now available on Microsoft's CodePlex open source software project hosting repository at.

Microsoft Access and SQL Azure

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:02:00 EST

MS Access is one of the oldest of Microsoft products cherished by many. It makes business sense to enable MS Access developers to leverage their knowledge base to create front end while pushing their data to SQL Azure thus making using Microsoft Access Projects supported in the 2007 version. This not only increases SQL Azure platform adoption but also that of MS Access. The main problem, as it stands now is connectivity between MS Access and SQL Azure. The ODBC connectivity can be improved if a driver can be created specifically for SQL Azure. The ODBC driver that downloads with SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov-CTP has problems to connect via ODBC.

PowerShell Basics for SharePoint 2010

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST

I’m not expert in PowerShell, but I thought I would share a few basics I picked up at Ignite and various other places along the way when it comes to getting started with PowerShell. The easiest way to issue SharePoint commands with PowerShell is by running the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell located under Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products in your Start Menu. However, it is good to understand what this shortcut actually does. PowerShell works by using the concepts of snapins. A snapin is simply a DLL installed with gacutil and installutil that implements a particular interface. This means you can write your own snapins to do whatever you want. All of the SharePoint commands are found in Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.dll. So what this shortcut does, is it runs PowerShell with a script located at the path below.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\POWERSHELL\Registration\\sharepoint.ps1

This script simply uses the Add-PSSnappin command to load the SharePoint commands. If you started PowerShell by using some other link, you can also load the SharePoint comamnds by using this command. Note that the name is always specified without .DLL.

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Working with PowerShell is in a lot of ways similar to working with a regular command prompt, it is just a lot more powerful. All of your familiar DOS commands will work because they have been aliased to child items. For example, Get-ChildItem is how you display the contents of the current folder in PowerShell, but you can also just type in dir to get the same results.

Knowing the name of the snappin lets us do a few things. First, we can get a list of all of the commands contained in it by using the Get-Command command with the –PSSnapin parameter. For example:

Get-Command –PSSnapin Microosft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Of course, there are 500+ SharePoint PowerShell commands returned so it makes that list difficult to deal with. So you can use some old school command prompt tricks to make the list more manageable. You can issue the command and hit the Pause key (lol). You can, use the | more technique to view one page at a time.

Get-Command –PSSnapin Microosft.SharePoint.PowerShell | more

You can also redirect the output to a text file like this.

Get-Command –PSSnapin Microosft.SharePoint.PowerShell > commands.txt

Then you can just open the file in notepad or the editor of your choice. If you want a more verbose description of how each command is used, you can use the Format-List command and pass it specific property names. Notice the properties I specified (Name, Definition) I just got from the table above.

Get-Command –PSSnapin Microosft.SharePoint.PowerShell | Format-List Name, Definition

This is great, but then you might want to know more about the specific syntax of a command. For this you can use the Get-Help command. Just execute it followed by the name of the command you want information on. For example if I want to know about Get-SPWeb, I would issue.

Get-Help Get-SPWeb

It would return something that looks like this.

Once nice thing about PowerShell is that you can use tab to help you complete commands. For example you can type “Install-SP” and then press tab and it will cycle through the available commands. What is even better is that you can also use the tab key to add the parameters to the command. This is useful for when you can’t remember the exact parameter name.

Another thing I really like about PowerShell is that many times if you leave off a parameter, instead of just giving you an error, it will prompt you for the value. For example, if I want to create a new site collection, I use the New-SPSite command. I don’t remember the parameters, but it starts prompting me for things like the URL and owner name. And of course you can always use Ctrl+C to break out of the command if you change your mind.

There is a ton you can do with PowerShell and I won’t be able to cover it all in this one post. The power is that it allows you to string together complex commands together to get things done. If you want to build a script, you simply start by creating a .ps1 file. You can build this in notepad. There is also a PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE) that will allow you to actually debug your scripts. One thing to be aware of is that to execute scripts, it requires an execution policy to be set. Chances are this is already set appropriately, but if its not, your script will not run. The three possible settings are restricted, unrestricted (prompt to run), and bypass. I think most people set this to bypass (although I am sure there are security considerations) with the following command.

Set-ExecutionPolicy bypass

There is so much to say about PowerShell. I hope this post serves as a good starting point to start exploring what you can do with it. I’ll be covering more advanced PowerShell topics in the future.

How to Recover Data from NTFS 5.0 Partitions?

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:02:00 EST

NTFS 5.0 is an advanced version of NTFS file system. Microsoft introduced it with Windows 2000 operating system and is also used with Windows XP and Windows Vista. NTFS 5.0 is an advanced version of NTFS file system. Microsoft introduced it with Windows 2000 operating system and is also used with Windows XP and Windows Vista. In additional to fundamental features of NTFS file system, such as file compression and file system journaling, NTFS 5.0 supersedes its earlier counterpart with several performance and reliability improvements. These include enhanced security and permissions, improvement in journals, disk defragmenter tool, disk quotas and more. Though the new features undoubtedly provide security of data it maintains, but instances of data loss are not exceptions. An NTFS 5.0 partition is prone to host of problems that can corrupt it or compel you to reformat or delete it. You require an updated and clean backup to restore data from. For any reason, if it is not available, it is suggested to use a powerful Windows Partition Recovery utility that could recover the lost data safely.

AWS Cloud Computing with CloudBuddy

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Now you need not worry about loosing your documents that are stored locally on your laptop or desktop. CloudBuddy MS-Office brings the Amazon Cloud to your desktop directly. You can save your MS-Office documents, spreadsheets, presentations and emails directly on the Cloud. CloudBuddy is unique in its offerings and it bridges the gap between the end user and Cloud technology.

Developers Who Live in Glass Houses Refactor Their Code

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:15:00 EST

Another perspective and reason to refactor PowerBuilder code. Do you think that it's too late for improve your software? Are you afraid to take a small risk? Remember that refactoring is all about taking lots of small steps that eventually add up to a big improvement. Do you sometimes get that sick feeling when you're asked to work on a particular section of code? Ever wonder why? Might the reason for the feeling be because the logic is "all over the place", fragile and tricky to make changes to? So wouldn't a bit of restructuring make the job more palatable?

Netbook Apps SDK Betas

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

Intel has put out its promised beta SDK for Windows (C and C++) and Moblin (C) developers working on future Atom-based netbook apps and ports. It can be downloaded at http://appdeveloper.intel.com. Intel couldn’t help but repeat the forecast that netbook units shipped should top 50 million by the end of the year.

Office 2010 & Web Apps Due in June

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:15:00 EST

Office Web Apps, Microsoft’s answer to Google Apps, are supposed to be out sometime in June along with Office 2010. Microsoft, which confirmed the rumored timing, has yet to price the half-dozen versions of Office 2010. The browser-based Office Web Apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, will be free to consumers via Windows Live. Businesses with volume subscriptions to Office will also get free access to the dumbed-down weblets, which they will be able to host internally if they want to. That alternative is viewed as more secure than going to Google’s servers to use Google Apps. Meanwhile, SQL Server 2008 R2 is due May 6.

Oracle + Sun by Spring?

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:45:00 EST

We hear – well, you know how people talk – that Oracle has been quietly meeting with the European Commission and is now expecting it to take – what with the Christmas break and all – until April or May to get clearance for its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. That would be a year to 13 months after Oracle agreed to buy the joint.