Continuing the list of recent additions to our team, we are thrilled to announce that Pablo Cibraro has joined Tellago as a Sr. Solutions Architect. Pablo is a phenomenal programmer and one of the authorities in Microsoft Connected Systems technologies…(read more)
NewsFlash…Microsoft today announced their long-awaited entry into the Complex Event Processing market. The press release is at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/May09/05-11TechEd09PR.mspx.
Unfortunately, this is the only information I can find so far in the public domain, and, being a cautious kind of guy, and NDAd up the hilt, I will hold back from saying more until I can guage just how much detail Microsoft is releasing at the current time.It looks like theyhave a session at TechEdtomorrow on their forthcoming offering, and we are all hoping for a CTP very soon. Watch this space for more info.
In the meantime, here are a couple of Microsoft Research links that you might find interesting. I couldn’tpossibly say how relevant they might be 😉
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=70517
http://middleware05.objectweb.org/WSProceedings/demos/d1_Barga.pdf
Movie was just awesome. Maybe one of the best movies of all time. Really
ever.
If you are in LA for TechEd you have a moral obligation to go see Star Trek – at the
Arclight Cinerama Dome Hollywood -http://tinyurl.com/ca3b3o.
The Arclight is really the best theater I’ve ever been too. Leather *assigned*
seats, no talkers (well almost never any talkers) great projection and sound
in every theater.
If you are into music – go next door to Ameoba – its an old school record store (and
there aren’t many of those left).
Check out my new book on REST.
Siebel adapter uses the COM interface to invoke calls on Siebel. For business component query, Siebel supports two ways of retrieving the field values for records. One can either use GetFieldValue to retrieve one field at a time or the other option is to use GetMultipleFieldValues to retrieve values for a bunch of fields in one go. The latter is better from a performance standpoint and is what the adapter uses. The problem with this approach though is that even if one of the fields, whose values are being retrieved, is mis-configured, the entire query call fails.
In development environments, it can happen that some of the customizations have issues, resulting in query failure as described above. The first step towards diagnosing the problem is identification of those problematic fields. The error message doesn’t always help identify the fields. When in such situation, one can use the attached Siebel COM sample code to narrow down the fields. You will need to add a reference to sstchca.dll (present in the Siebel install folder, in the bin sub-directory).
Once you have narrowed down the fields, you can either fix the issue with the field or if it’s not of interest, mark them as inactive on Siebel backend. You can then query using the Siebel adapter without any issues. Alternately, you can also use the QueryFields (optional) argument passed to the query operation to retrieve only the fields of interest.
Thanks to my colleague Ron Dunn for bringing this MSDN article to my attention:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd263442.aspx
**Snippit**
The Microsoft.com Engineering Operations (MSCOM Ops) team is continuously searching for ways to improve the performance of its Web sites, which include Microsoft.com, the Web site for the MSDN%u00ae developer program, and TechNet. These Web sites are complex, distributed applications with Microsoft%u00ae SQL Server%u00ae database platforms that attract an enormous amount of traffic from users around the world. Site performance and user experience are two of the principal metrics that the team uses to evaluate its own success.
In late summer of 2008, MSCOM Ops initiated extensive replication performance testing, comparing SQL Server 2005 running on Windows Server%u00ae 2003 with SQL Server 2008 running on Windows Server 2008. By using both operating environments to replicate data between a server located in Tukwila, Washington, and another located in Blueridge, Virginia-a distance of approximately 3,000 miles-the team discovered that SQL Server 2008 running on Windows Server 2008 yielded up to 100 times faster performance without requiring any expensive wide area network (WAN) acceleration hardware.
Encouraged by these impressive results, the team decided to test replication of “live” content from its MSDN database in Redmond, Washington, to a remote data center in Dublin, Ireland. The performance enhancements in SQL Server 2008 running on Windows Server 2008 enabled the team to successfully replicate this content and demonstrate that WAN-based geo-replication is feasible in a real-world scenario. Further, the MSCOM Ops team used this capability to cut page-to-load times on its MSDN Web site by approximately 33 percent, resulting in a dramatic user experience improvement in Europe.
Now, in addition to providing an improved Web experience to people around the world, MSCOM Ops benefits from enhanced business continuity. And, with solid evidence of the feasibility of WAN-based geo-replication, MSCOM Ops plans to expand its implementation of this solution.
This white paper details the business challenges that prompted the MSCOM Ops team to explore WAN-based geo-replication, describes the testing the team performed, documents the test results, and conveys insights and conclusions based on these results.
Given that a lot of our customers here in VIC have experience around Oracle, this might be some interesting training?
This 15 modules, level 300 course provides students with the knowledge and skills to capitalize on their skills and experience as an Oracle DBA to manage a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 system. This workshop provides a quick start for the Oracle DBA to map, compare, and contrast the realm of Oracle database management to SQL Server database management.
Christian Weyer has been writing a very interesting series of posts on some of the new features of WCF 4. There is still a long way to go for the release, so as with all products / technology stacks, it is wise to anticipate change. However, there is some really good stuff here and if […]
[Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman]
This was the title I settled on forthe interactive session at Microsoft’s Architect Insight Conference yesterday. We had a good turnout and some interesting discussions – thanks again to everyone who came along. The purpose of the session was to think about ESBs in terms of the value they provide to IT and to the business. The slide decks will be published on the AIC site, and this post adds some of the discussion points. Broadly we covered three topics: sources of value, components of an ESB architecture, and approaches to implementing ESBs. (The budget figures below are only illustrations…)
Sources of Value
Some of the key areas where value might be expected – in terms of ROI for the SOA/ESB approach, and more broadly in terms of IT being viewed as providing value to the business. The priorities will differ between organisations:
1. Project Efficiency
An SOA goal to encapsulate logic within systems, prevent duplication and see the benefits of reuse. Provided the right governance and communication are in place, you should see value from projects being delivered more quickly, but possibly not at a level which will pay for the ESB (if the annual project spend is %u00a35m, you need substantial reductions in effort for a %u00a31m ESB project to pay for itself)
2. Operational Efficiency
Expected gains from streamlining operations may be higher than project gains (if the annual operational spend is %u00a330m, you only need 0.5% gain to pay for a %u00a31m ESB in a year). Large organisations with a disparate system estate will benefit from the centralized integration of an ESB, which can provide metrics around service usage – frequency of calls, time taken to respond etc. This enables informed decision making on rationalisation – virtualizing systems which are infrequently used, decommissioning unused systems, clarifying to the business how much a system actually costs.
3. Flexibility
Using simplified, standards-based communication makes interoperability an integral feature of the architecture. Commissioning new systems based on whether they can consume and publish ESB services may remove the need for customization, and make more systems available for consideration. The ESB also enables a strategic move to building bespoke systems using a composite application model for rapid development.
4. Cultural Change
Less quantifiable than other areas, but equally important. The move to strategic rather than tactical point decisions should provide consistent good design through new projects and ensure you’re not building up a new legacy of complex and fractured systems. Improved flexibility and quality should increase trust in IT, and prevent key business functionality being supported by rogue Excel and Access applications which are constructed outside of IT.
ESB Architecture
Common components of an ESB architecture. These can be evaluated in the light of the potential value they provide – which source of value can you trace a component back to, and will it provide enough value to consider it as a requirement:
Identifying the required components drives the technical selection of the ESB. We talked through a few different implementations, all of which were suitable in different situations:
Approaches
Full ESB delivered as independent project, with no active services or consumers
Skeleton ESB delivered alongside tactical project, with few active services and consumers
Project scoped to deliver full ESB with logical subset of active services and consumers
One of the difficulties in adopting an ESB strategy is defining exactly what you will need the ESB to do. Messaging load, security and operational requirements may be best-guesses until the ESB is in place and active. Implementing a standalone ESB in a project is dangerous as the best guesses may not be accurate. Delivering an ESB alongside a tactical project which publishes and consumes services has the advantage of ensuring the ESB has all key functionality, but may result in an under-specified bus which needs enhancing as it becomes more widely used. If you have the option of pragmatically implementing the ESB – take the best-guess requirements and a core subset of existing integrations, and deliver the ESB and migrated integrations as one project – you’re more likely to establish a bus which provides exactly what you need.
Takeaway from the session – an ESB will only provide value if it’s actually used. It needs to be easy to find, publish and consume services, and routing messages through the ESB shouldn’t significantly impact performance.
At MIX we unveiled the Web Platform Installer (PI) 2.0 Beta. The WebPI combined with the work we have done on the Web App Gallery is a significant step forward in helping customers build and deploy Web applications and sites. For developers, this means they can easily build and promote their free applications to millions of customers worldwide. I spent some time with Michael Cote of Redmonk talking about our Web Platform in this video which also includes a smart observation from Michael on components of this platform evolving into runtimes, where customers can choose .NET-based or non-Microsoft languages to construct versatile, interoperable solutions. I thought that was a really interesting way to look at it.
For those who haven’t had a chance to look at it, check this out. To date, we have had over 200,000 downloads of WebPI with over 1 million Express Product Installs, which is a real testament to the value that customers are finding in having a one stop shop to get Microsoft’s full Web Platform stack. As always, tell us what you think…