Photos of Seattle and Taipei

I've uploaded selected photos from my Global MVP Summit 2005 trip at Seattle and transit @ Taipei.

For viewing pleasures.

Gartner Analyst: Stop Outsourcing Now

While this article is written in the perspective of US, it is still worth reading. One interesting point to note is "multi-sourcing", instead of plain vanilla outsourcing.

I'm pretty fortunate to have a company which believes in putting extra thoughts before outsourcing for the benefit of 'cost savings'. In fact, according to my observations, the service level that a vendor provides is not as good as your own IT staff.

Plus, that's always a cost attached to your vendors when one needs extra work done; while your own IT staff would gladly go out of his/her way in order to fulfill those demands.

Just my $0.02.

SGDN Nov 2005 UG Meeting #18

Agenda
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6:30 - 7:00 Registration
7:00 - 7:45 Win FS by Sanjeev Sharma
7:45 - 8:15 Break
8:15 - 9:00 Working out with Windows Workflow Foundation by Wee Hyong
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Venue
NTUC Centre, 1 Marina Boulevard (near Raffles Place MRT and next to Neptune Theatre) Level 22, Conference Room 12

Synopsis
Win FS by Sanjeev Sharma (ISV Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Singapore)
Win FS is the next generation relational file system that is built on the tenets of data Unification, Organisation, Exploration and Innovation. Get a glimpse of WinFS Beta 1 and see demos of futuristic applications that will redefine user experiences.

Working out with Windows Workflow Foundation by Wee Hyong (INETA, Acad)
Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) empowers developers to quickly building workflow enabled applications. "Working out with Windows Workflow Foundation" is designed to provide developers with a broad overview of the cool technology innovation in WWF, and how it can improve development productivity by reducing the complexity of building workflow in applicaitons. In this talk, we will disuss the a .NET-managed API for WWF, the workflow engine, and the unified workflow programming model. We will then demo the latest Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation.

Date/Time:
10th November 2005, 6:30pm to 9:00pm

Register here at http://www.sgdotnet.org/events/Events.aspx?key=nov2005

David Chappel visits Sunny island

I attended a talk by David Chappell about Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), formerly known as Indigo. Once again, the familiar concepts which William has delivered during his TechEd topics were delivered.

David was witty and able to relay that WCF is for everyone and that it doesn't take your arm or leg in order to build a functional application using WCF.

For any of those who missed out on his presentation, this article pretty much covers whatever David has mentioned during the night. Of cos, there're no demos in that article and take note that the article was probably written way before Beta 2 is even released.

Met a few familiar faces and guess who I saw...Our very own Black Ink Bottle (BiB). Haven't seen him much lately and boy, am I glad to see him.

Howard's End

I was pleasantly surprised when I flipped Sunday's (23 Oct) copy of Newspaper. I found an article from Howard. For those Howard fans, watch out for his bi-monthly articles...

Thumbs up to Adam Cogan

Adam Cogan presented in the Singapore Sql Server Usergroup event yesterday night and he drew lots of crowd. He spoke on this and being a developer myself, I loved his 2nd topic: Rules to better code.

Thumbs up x 10 to Adam and many thanks to William for arranging for Adam to speak and Sukhdev for giving SGDN airtime during Sql Server user group's meeting.

OpenLDAP v2.2.28 for Windows

Following an earlier post where I met problems starting v2.2.19, I've just upgrade to v2.2.28. This version allows you to start OpenLDAP directory service as a Windows service and I managed to install w/o a glitch.

When I tried to start the OpenLDAP Directory service, it turns an error (found in System Log).

The OpenLDAP Directory Service service terminated with service-specific error 19 (0x13).

Atlas Programming Model

Internet @home!!!

ASP.NET 2.0 Provider Documentation

If you thinking of creating your own providers for ASP.NET 2.0 in your environment, this is the place to visit.

Extracted from MSDN:

ASP.NET 2.0 Provider Model: Introduction to the Provider Model

Contents

Introduction to the Provider Model (14 printed pages)
Membership Providers (24 printed pages)
Role Providers (13 printed pages)
Site Map Providers (20 printed pages)
Session State Providers (21 printed pages)
Profile Providers (23 printed pages)
Web Event Providers (14 printed pages)
Web Parts Personalization Providers (12 printed pages)
Custom Provider-Based Services (10 printed pages)
Hands-on Custom Providers: The Contoso Times (3 printed pages)

Must READ!

OpenLDAP 2.2.19 for Windows

I was trying to hunt around for a windows open-sourced LDAP server and after much searching, I found one. After installation, I tried starting the LDAP server and here's the error I encountered:

@(#) $OpenLDAP: slapd 2.2.19 (Dec  9 2004 08:55:24) $
 @LUNCHBOX:/home/jpclizbe/openldap-mingw-build-4/openldap-2.2.19/servers/slapd
daemon_init: listen on ldap:///
daemon_init: 1 listeners to open...
ldap_url_parse_ext(ldap:///)
daemon: initialized ldap:///
daemon_init: 1 listeners opened
slapd.exe init: initiated server.
bdb_back_initialize: initialize BDB backend
bdb_back_initialize: Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 4.2.52: (December  3, 2003)
error loading ucdata (error -127)
slapd.exe shutdown: freeing system resources.
slapd stopped.
connections_destroy: nothing to destroy.

Adam Cogan is visiting Singapore

RD of Australia, Adam Cogan, to be presenting in the SQL Server UG on the 20th Oct 2005 (Microsoft Singapore: 22nd Floor. One Marina Boulevard). SQL Server UG has graciously invited us (SGDN) to attend the Reporting Services topic and offered a slot after their session for a developer centric topic.

What's new in Reporting Services 2005 + Developing Custom Report Items

[Starts at 1830 hrs]
Reporting Services makes viewing your data a breeze and SQL Server 2005 brings database reporting to a whole new level. In this session you will learn how to take full advantage of the new Report Designer that is integrated into Visual Studio 2005. We will discuss the core product improvements, reporting improvements, the better integration, and the richer developer experience.

You will also discover how to create and implement Custom Report Items - custom data visualization controls that allow you to make powerful reports.

15 Rules to Better Code + Tools to Keep your Code Healthy (including FX Cop)

[Starts at 1945/2000 hrs]
Are you looking to eradicate bugs and ensure consistency? Learn how to take control of your code, ensuring large, complex source code can be simplified, cleaned and maintained. The focus is on the most popular .NET languages (C#, VB.NET) for both Windows Forms and ASP.NET; however, you will learn how to maintain quality code in any language.

As a project or company grows, managing code standards throughout your team becomes virtually impossible. Consistent code is crucial to future development and maintenance. Learn how to review your web apps and projects.

The tools we will explore include FX Cop, SSW Code Auditor, and Re-Sharper

SGDN October Webcast is out!

We captured Stephan Wissel's presentation on Principled Negotiation and you can watch it as a webcast - mms://sgdotnet.org/webcasts/october1.wmv

Security - Part 1

Membership

Membership API provides secure credential storage with simple and easy to use APIs. More importantly, it utilises a plugin architecture through the new provider pattern. This allows for great flexibility in extending the membership API beyond the default providers
- Access, Sql Server, Active Directory

By default, all providers that ship with ASP.NET 2.0 use MS Access provider (AspNetDb.mdb in \data\ folder of web application)

Using Membership

Membership class contains only static methods, thus there is no need to instantiate the class. Some useful methods are

Validate User Credentials

• Boolean Membership.ValidateUser (string sUsername, string sPassword)

Create User(s)

• CreateUser (string sUserName, string sPassword)
• CreateUser (string sUserName, string sPassword, string sEmail)

Retrieving User(s)

• MembershipUser Membership.GetUser ()
• MembershipUser Membership.GetUser (boolean bUserIsOnline)
• MembershipUser Membership.GetUser (string sUserName)
• MembershipUser Membership.GetUser (string sUserName, boolean bUserIsOnline)
• MembershipUserCollection Membership.GetAllUsers ()

Configure Membership

Membership configuration can be done via machine.config.

(2b continued...) Too sleepy to type anymore

MVP Summit - Day 0:: Registration

I woke up early and was supposed to meet the rest of the SG MVPs (Dennis, Bernard, Aaron and Kit Kai) for breakfast and a walk around Pike Market Place. We met at 0745 hrs @lobby of Westin. Pike Market Place reminded me of my uni school days when I had to do grocery shopping at my neighbourhood market in Belconnen, Canberra. As it was a Sunday, the market began pretty slowly and there wasn’t the promised "fish-throwing" activity.

We checked out some stalls (looking for breakie) and started asking around for the location of the 1st Starbucks. Found it and managed to check a few shots of the 1st store of the global mega-coffee chain.

We then head back to the main market building and stumbled onto a store selling chocolates and stuff, called Chukas. The storekeeper was very friendly and allowed all of us to try all kinds of wares he's selling before all of us bought at least 4 packets from him.

We finally decided on settling our brunch at Lowells. It was a spread and the food is yummy. Boy, was I taken back by the size of their tobasco sauce bottle…

Noon came, and we proceeded to Microsoft campus to get ourselves registered. I stayed around to catch up with some other Singapore MVPs which I just met and then proceed to Double Tree @Bellevue for my first Asia MVP dinner.

The main agenda of the night was Howard Lo dancing (hope he doesn't see this) the Asian MVP idol. Our counterparts in various countries are really courageous and fun loving enough to present in front of the whole bunch. In the end, all presenters went home with a XBOX! Man, how I wished we had some Singapore MVPs going upstage to do us the glory..;)

Dinner was over around 2130 and due to a slight hiccup in transportation, some of us staying at downtown Seattle had to wait (in the cold) until 2230 before the overworked but jovial coach driver "came to our rescue". Well, I was glad for the hiccup, without which I wouldn't have met two great persons, Carson Ng (Hong Kong - SAR MVP) and Angel Yuan (MS MVPAA)