architects are covered by a limited set of very generic patterns

I was skimming throught Ali Pasha's Blog and came across this interesting post on architects role.

The basic working methods of the architects are covered by a limited set of very generic patterns:
- Viewpoint hopping, looking at the problem and (potential) solutions from many points of view, see section 4.2.
- Decomposition, breaking up a large problem in smaller problems, introducing interfaces and the need for integration, see section 4.3.
- Quantification, building up understanding by quantification, from order of magnitude numbers to specifications with acceptable confidence level, see section 4.4.
- Decision making when lots of data is missing, see section 4.5.
- Modeling, as means of communication, documentation, analysis, simulation, decision making and verification, see section 4.6.
- Asking Why, What, How, When, Where questions, see section 4.7.
- Problem solving approach, see section 4.8.

This was taken from the book at: http://www.gaudisite.nl/ArchitecturalReasoningBook.pdf.

Reverting back to Office 2003

As much as i liked Outlook 2007 its mail rendering problem made me revert back to Outlook 2003 :( and all this not without a mere loss of time and energy.. but also at the expense of loosing contents of some of my old mails :(
i am eagerly waiting for a patch or some thing to resolve the issues so that I can get back to Outlook 2007......

.net palm offline meeting

We are planning to arrange meetings for all DotNetPalm members, we are providing you an opportunity to come forward and give your opinion. We need your feedback, please fill out the short survey.


The agenda of meeting will include:

Introducing & Sharing Community Vision.
Setting up teams that will run the community.
Deciding about the topics and venues for up coming off line event.
Hear your views and expectations from Community
Kindly fill out the survey available here http://www.dotnetpalm.net/Survey/tabid/68/Default.aspxat your earliest.

Office 2007 beta 2

I installed Office 2007 beta 2 today. Although I have seen Office 2007 beta before but dint install it on my machine.
I am loving outlook for its sleek look and RSS feed feature.Besides to-do bar and event calendar are all available in the single view. Following is a snapshot of how it looks like:

Microsoft Iron Architect Competition

Although to be able to participate in Microsoft's Iron Architect competition there are certain requirements and rules to to be met. But still I believe its worth looking at and attempting the question.

So here it goes!

TechEd Iron Architect Contest : Iron Architect Question: "Bob is the CIO of a large financial institution called Contoso, based out of New York � but with many regional offices throughout the world. Through a number of mergers and acquisitions, Contoso has itself built up a large number of CRM systems � ranging from Excel spreadsheets that contain customer information, Access databases, SQL databases � right up to large implementations of Siebel and other CRM systems. At the last IT audit, Bob was told that a total of 52 different sources of CRM data exist in the enterprise.
These CRM systems store information about customers the bank is working with � namely contact information, appointment data and activities (e.g. logs of telephone calls). No CRM system shares the same schema for a customer, and some of the CRM systems also have duplicate records (for example, one customer may be represented twice on different CRM systems).
Bob wants to fix this. He needs to harmonize the disparate CRM systems and deliver a unified experience via the tools that the traders use every day � namely Microsoft Outlook and Windows Mobile 2005.
As chief software architect, Bob has hired you to architect a system that will harmonize the customer data, resolve the conflicts, scale across multiple regions, and create a user experience that fits into the lifestyle of the employees.
Submissions must be entered via this blog. The more creative the better.
Submissions will be judged on:
Leadership
Strategy
Communications
Lifecycle Process
Organizational Dynamics
Technology Depth
Technology Breadth"

Iron Architect Competition

Iron Architect is another reason I would have loved to goto Tech-Ed. :(

Updater Application Block for .NET 2.0

From

GotDotNet.com

patterns & practices is pleased to announce a new release of Updater Aplication Block ported into the .NET 2.0 framework and adjusted to use the latest version of Enterprise Library (January 2006 Release).

We suggest you should always evaluate ClickOnce as the peferred technology for managing updates on Smart Clients, but there are scenarios where ClickOnce is not applicable (like Windows Services). Based on the feedback received from our community, we've ported UAB into .NET 2.0 to help customers working with these scenarios. No new features have been included though.

What is in the release:
--------------------------
- The code compiles on .Net 2.0 of course :-)
- Updater Application Block uses Enterprise Library 2.0 (Jan 2006) for the configuration
- Quickstarts migrated to support the new configuration system
- Breaking changes only related to configuration and not the Updater API
- Bits Downloader now handles broken downloads gracefully (this is a fix to the original implementation)
- UpdaterTask serialization fixed. There was a bug on the net 1.1 version of UAB related to the partial update scenario. When some files were removed from the manifest, the UAB serializes the UpdaterTask with the original version of the files. This caused the ApplicationDeployProcessor to fail.
- Partial update scenario fixed.
- The algorithms that might be used to calculate file hashes are non-keyed hash algorithms like: MD5; RIPEMD160; SHA1; SHA256; SHA384; SHA512
- Manifest tool fixed to correctly support salt enabled hashes
- The solution assumes you have EntLib installed in your machine to the default location (c:\program Files\...)

Updater Application Block Download

Dubai .Net Developers (.netpalm) Welcome Newsletter

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All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.

—Anonymous

I read this quote some where and it became one of my all time favorite quotes. I don’t know who said it but I believe had Shakespeare belonged to Windows Vista Generation, he would have said a something similar.

Talking about playwrights and actors, how can we forget the awesome Dubai Developers Conference! Where geeks rocked! It was absolutely fabulous to see so many geeks gathering and sharing their passion about Microsoft .net technologies and upcoming and most exciting Windows Vista technologies.

Apart from technical sessions we got to launch our developer community, DotNetPalm (http://www.dotnetpalm).

I would like to thank you all for joining “DotNetPalm”. During my presentation at developers conference I mentioned main focus areas of the community and the core concept behind it. One of the main areas that we are going to focus is in community development based around off-line events, including seminars, workshops and code-camps. Such developer and technical communities have been a great success all over the world. Now is the time to Rock here in Dubai!

In coming days we will contact you and seek your opinion regarding the content and venue of our up coming offline events, or simply say, geek gatherings.

We are looking for volunteers who have the passion for sharing with contribute community. We will post more specific requirements on the mailing list as well as forums section of the portal.

Until then,

Happy .Netting!

Hammad Rajjoub
“Learning, sharing, participation, fellowship and growth”
http://dotnetwizards.blogspot.com

Get BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials!

From MSDN:

The BizTalk Server 2006 tutorials contain detailed steps for implementing simple scenarios to give new users an experience of using a variety of BizTalk tools while creating compiled, testable solutions. For more advanced users, or users who are designing BizTalk solutions, see �Business Solutions Scenarios� in BizTalk Server 2006 Help. You can also find the BizTalk Server 2006 tutorials in the 'Getting Started' section of BizTalk Server 2006 Help. You use files that are installed with BizTalk Server 2006 to complete the tutorials.

Before you begin the BizTalk Server 2006 tutorials, you must complete the steps in Before You Begin the Tutorials. Use the following tutorials to learn how to use BizTalk Server 2006:

Tutorial 1: Enterprise Application Integration. Provides step-by-step instructions for implementing a BizTalk solution that receives inventory replacement request messages from a warehouse and evaluates the request messages. If the solution denies a request, it sends a denied message to the warehouse. If the solution approves a request, it forwards the message to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Tutorial 2: Purchase Order Process. Provides step-by-step instructions for implementing a BizTalk solution for the ERP system that generates purchase orders from the request messages and sends them to an external partner.

Tutorial 3: Invoice and Payment Process. Provides step-by-step instructions for extending the solution you create in Tutorial 2 to incorporate a payment process that includes verifying that the partner received the purchase order, receiving the invoice from the partner, constructing a payment voucher for the partner using rules to determine the payment policy.

Download here

Microsoft .NET LINQ Preview (May 2006)

Microsoft .NET LINQ Preview (May 2006)

"The May 2006 preview of the Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) technology contains .NET Framework enhancements to support querying data, VB and C# language extensions, Visual Studio 2005 integration (editing, designing and debugging), plus samples, hands on labs and
whitepapers. "

Go Live!

Go-Live is a an excellent oppurtunity for ISVs to get the taste of upcoming Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation, part of WinFX platform on Windows Vista.

Read about Go-Live.

And if you decide to go ahead with using Go-Live liscence then you can get your downloads here.

Geek days content and pictures published

Get the contents for the event here.

I just checked out that i m listed as Gulf MVP on Microsoft's Gulf/UAE developer site



Thats me doing a session at Dubai Developers Conference. I loved this black and white G E E K. t-shirt. :)

Hello WCF... a simple program to help u getting started

If you want to take a shot by writing your first service and client using Windows Communication Foundation then here is the best place for you.

If you are using VS 2005 with February CTP of WCF things are even more easy. You dont need to play around with configuration file and you dont even need to create a proxy file from wsdl.

Streaming using Windows Communication

How often do we come across streaming data,audio and video in our daily life on internet. I believe quite often. Real time information delivery and multi-media are driving streaming data/audio/video transfer.
Now luckily we dont have to do the plumbing work on our own implementing or using RTP or SRTP stacks. Windows Communication Foundation (previously known as Indigo) can help us do our job. Check out "Chunking and Streaming Custom Channel" sample by Yasser Shohoud available at WindowsCommunication.net

WCF Rocks!

Database Design Best Practices

I came across following couple of useful resources for "Database Design Best Practices":

SQL Server Database Coding Conventions,
Best Practices, and Programming Guidelines

Best Practices for Database Design

Dubai Developers Conference

It was a missive hit to say the least. I loved being there and so did every other single developer that made it to the event. Event was managed greatly and set up was event better. It was really a great "GEEK." event. I was there to launch our new developer community (DotNetPalm). I introduced what developer communities are and how can user groups become a great resource for the local developer community.
We recieved a great reponse from the audience and i believe now Dubai/UAE are on the map for holding real big developer conferences.
I will post the snaps and other activity updates on the blog soon. If you attended the conference then feel free to share your experiences as well.

Keep .net rocking!