Infosys | Microsoft

“Oslo” is a very nascent yet promising technology. Hence working with the “Oslo” SDK in its current state does pose a lot of challenges. As I had mentioned in my previous post, the “Oslo” May CTP released a month back. We were working with the Jan CTP till last month and hence we were excited about the new CTP. The list of improvements that had been made seemed very impressive. The setup was really quick and easy. It was great to get a good first look at the Quadrant tool. But when we tried opening up the MGrammar file that we had developed using the Jan CTP in May CTP Intellipad, we faced a couple of issues.

Continue reading "Issues with “Oslo” SDK May 2009 CTP" »

Posted by E. Krishna Kumar at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently, I have been in multiple client interactions related to BI Dashboards and the best technology/ tools for achieving superior user experience on BI dashboards.  One question that I faced on more than one occasion was ‘how does Silverlight compares with Xcelsius for doing corporate performance dashboards ‘?

Continue reading "Enterprise BI Dashboards: Silverlight vs. SAP Xcelsius" »

Posted by Chandan Gokhale at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Clients who have embarked on SOA initiative using Microsoft technology stack by year 2006 would have realized their business services using ASMX web services.  Since then, Microsoft web services technology has evolved rapidly to new framework of building services called as WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). WCF has been available since .Net 3.0 and above. WCF has been primarily designed to implement SOA principles.
For SOA implementation built using ASMX services, it may be good idea to look at the current Microsoft technology services stack and build a case for migrating from ASMX to WCF services.
Here is an attempt to list some of the technology drivers that can help build the Services migration business case in an Enterprise.

Continue reading "SOA – Built to Change!!!" »

Posted by Sudhanshu Madhaorao Hate at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Troubleshooting WCF Service application hangs" »

Posted by Sudhanshu Madhaorao Hate at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day I finally got to install VS 2010 Beta 1. I had decided to build a VPC for the same so as to not impact my current workstation setup. Overall the experience was pretty smooth and the setup ended without any issues, but the initial few components did cause a bit of pain.

After every component (VC 9 Runtime, VC 10 Runtime, .NET 3.5 SP1 and .NET framework 4 Beta 1), i.e. 4 of these, I had to restart the machine and it was really painful. Beyond that it completed without any more restarts.

Posted by Atul Gupta at 04:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a simplistic approach of relating an ERP implementation to constructing a bridge (under Build, Operate and Transfer basis by a private contractor) due to the inherent nature of activities being the same in both the scenarios.

The making of a bridge entails site inspection to ground preparation to blueprinting ending with construction where there are tests in the intervening duration to ensure that this is safe and can serve the intended purpose without risking the lives of the users who are going to use this to go from Point A to Point B. The work is not limited to only bridge but also entails making approach roads and giving a complete end to end solution to the commuter needs.

Continue reading "Understanding an ERP implementation – Bridge Analogy" »

Posted by Sachin Bery at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When we look at conditional validation needs in WPF, the typical option that people talk about is the usage of UpdateSourceTrigger property in binding expression. There are many examples that one can find on setting this to explicit and managing the validation or things like setting this to PropertyChange when validating textbox input without having to focus out of it.

However there can be scenarios where you can't use explicit since you want the normal two way binding behavior, but have a need to validate based on value of some other control. I had a similar scenario the other day where we had a combo box with yes/no options and the validation had to happen only if a value of "yes" was selected in the combo box.

Continue reading "WPF - Performing Conditional Validation" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One question I have faced multiple times since the inception of Silverlight technology is how well does it support Web Accessibility requirements?  The support for accessibility was quite limited in Silverlight 1; but with Silverlight 2 there have been significant improvements.

Continue reading "Silverlight 2 and Web Accessibility" »

Posted by Chandan Gokhale at 02:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amartya commented on my previous Windows 7 blog post that network activity notification icon issue would be resolved by upgrading to Office 2007 SP2 (http://www.infosysblogs.com/microsoft/2009/05/windows_7_system_tray.html#comment-123052). Over the weekend I upgraded my system with Office 2007 SP2. As i suspected still my network notification icon mismatch problem persists  

Today I find that Outlook is taking too much time to start up. I got a dialog that system is Preparing Outllook for first use. After 10 mins when I looked at the dialog I found the following ( 45 mins remaning). Check the below picture.  

Upon further investigation found that there is a KB article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968774. Check the section "First Startup experience".  As mentioned in the article delays are because  "Outlook must update internal PST data structures that are used in SP2 performance optimizations"

Though the above dialog shows that 45 mins remaining. Overall it took about 30 mins to start Outlook on my machine. So please check the KB article on the steps to mitigate this delay. Don't fret and fume if you are in hurry to check mails after upgrading to SP2. I am yet to check up the performance optimizations that have been promised in SP2.

Posted by Naveen Kumar at 03:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday Microsoft released the May 2009 CTP for “Oslo”. This was a surprise release for me as I was not expecting another release till August this year. But as promised they are coming out with frequent releases to keep the community interested and engaged, which I think is good. To know more about what’s new in this release and what has changed, I would suggest you go through the blog post by Kraig, Kent, and Chris (editors on the "Oslo" Developer Center) and the release notes. You can download the CTP from here.

Continue reading "“Oslo” May 2009 CTP Released!" »

Posted by E. Krishna Kumar at 02:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Few weeks back I upgraded my Windows vista enterprise to Windows 7 Ultimate RC build 7100. So i have retained all my earlier programs. It works great, there are lot of cool features that have been extolled by many in the blogosphere, so wont touch upon it.

Listing few problems I came across with this windows version. I searched on technet and msdn forums and didnt find any solutions.

1. Once in a while Windows 7 desktop UI flickers. When it flickers it flickers violently. Entire Task bar and all the icons go blank. I am yet to figure out the reasons/conditions under which it behaves like this.

2. Wrong system icon tray notifications. Though I have internet connection, the net work notiifcation displays incorrect meesage that "no internet access" as shown in the below image. This is true for both LAN connection and Wireless Lan connection.

3. After Upgrade from Windows Vista, my VPN CheckPoint SecureClient was not starting. Went to Services MMC and found that "Check Point VPN-1 Securemote service" is dependent on VPN-1 module that has been deleted or marked for deletion. Tried many things but finally reinstallation of the Secure Client Software did the trick. After reinstalling i found that "Check Point SSL Network Extender" has been added to services list. In the Log On options, "Allow Service to interact with Desktop" has been checked.

4. e Trust Anti Virus 8.1 version from Computer Associates. This is not compatible with Windows 7. It is installed properly and works. Just that it does not download the latest signature files. Add to this, Action Center shows me that this Antivirus software is not compatible and suggests me other compaines anti virus programs. Being on the corporate network cannot use anti virus software not recommended by our network group. Currently working with our network team to sort it out. This may force me to take my laptop off the network or force me to down grade my o/s to Vista.

5. Not exactly related to Windows 7. IE 8 that comes as a default browser is not compatible with Outlook Web Access. This requires Exchange Server to be upgraded with a patch to allow DHTML controls on browser. Any patch management on servers is a huge task for network folks so would take take. Some of our internal IS apps are not compatible with IE 8. So I am planning to install a VPC image on my laptop with IE 6 as browser. Are there any better ways to work around it??

If you are aware of any solutions to the above problems, please point me to them.

Posted by Naveen Kumar at 03:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Classification types and their formats are defined to perform text formatting in Intellipad for your textual DSL. For example, you would want to define text formatting for your language tokens like keywords, comments, values etc. so as to make it more readable while viewing/editing inside the Intellipad. The out of the box classification types as well as their formats are defined in ClassificationTypes.xcml and ClassificationFormats.xcml respectively under the folder: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Oslo SDK 1.0\Bin\Intellipad\Settings folder.

Continue reading "Custom Classification Types and Formats for your Textual DSL" »

Posted by E. Krishna Kumar at 06:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While defining .net architecture several times we come across scenarios where multiple server side caching options needs to be evaluated and dealt with, with .Net 4.0 it is to be seen whether these decision get simplified or further complicated.

Microsoft Project code name “Velocity”, part of .net 4.0 is Microsoft’s highly scalable in memory cache framework for all kinds of data in distributed applications. Usually caching is employed in application to improve the performance and scalability. Good candidates for caching data is static or master data e.g. product list. Recommended practice is to cache master or reference or lookup data as it hardly changes over time but at times scenarios exists where transactional or session specific data needs to be cached for valid reasons.

Continue reading "Caching Controversy!!!" »

Posted by Sudhanshu Madhaorao Hate at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

During the beginning of this decade as Visual Studio and .NET created  waves in the industry for its robust infrastructure and rapid application development and interoperability, Microsoft came up with its “Solutions Framework” (MSF) to catalyze its adoption. Microsoft Solutions Framework addresses the concerns of Developers, Agility and Processes.

Now, it’s time to think big. Microsoft Operations framework (MOF) addresses the entire gamut of challenges cutting  across CIOs, managers, admins and developers.

Continue reading "Plan, Deliver, Operate, Manage – Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)" »

Posted by Venkatesh Rajagopalan Narayanan at 06:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)