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Sunbelt W2Knews™ Electronic Newsletter
The secret of those "who always seem to know" - Over 500,000 Readers!
Mon, May 31, 2004 (Vol. 9, #22 - Issue #478) |
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Feel free to forward this newsletter to interested colleagues.
To read online or subscribe, go to http://www.w2knews.com/?id=478
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BIG News from Tech.Ed 2004 |
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This issue of W2Knews™ contains: |
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- EDITORS CORNER
- Tech·Ed 2004 Was A Big Success
- TECH BRIEFING
- Tech·Ed 2004 Personal SuperComputing Demo
- 'High Performance' Windows
- Redmond Bundles Its Firewall With Hardware
- MS Small Business Server: Unqualified Success
- NT/2000 RELATED NEWS
- BIG News from Tech·Ed: 10 Year Support Term
- Exchange 2003 Gets Basic Spam Filter
- Microsoft's New Caller ID Against Spam
- First Demo Of "Client Inspection And Isolation" Tool
- OK, So How Is Redmond Going To Make Life Easier?
- Another Freebee From Seattle
- NT/2000 THIRD PARTY NEWS
- Double-Take Wins Best of Show at Tech·Ed 2004
- Tech·Ed System Tools News Roundup
- W2Knews 'FAVE' LINKS
- This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff
- PRODUCT OF THE WEEK
- BOOK: Hardening Windows Systems
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EDITORS CORNER |
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Thanks for visiting our Booth at Tech·Ed last week! We hope you like your "hack my network and die" T-shirt. Visiting the Sunbelt Booth gets you your free subscription to W2Knews, the world's largest e-zine for system admins.
Sunbelt will follow up with a separate email that allows you to download iHateSpam for Exchange, Servervision and the Sunbelt Network Security Inspector for your 30-day evals. And here is your W2Knews Tech·Ed Special!
Tech·Ed 2004 Was A Big Success
Looks like the shine is coming back to IT. We've had a few lean years but if this year's Tech·Ed shows the future I need my shades! It was sold out with 11,000 attendees, the sessions were filled up, the tradeshow was busy all the time and most people visiting were more upbeat about their prospects compared to last year. There was a tremendous amount of news at Tech·Ed and I'm going to limit this issue to news relating to system management stuff mostly. I did take a few shots of the Trade Show of things I thought were interesting:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531ED-TechEd
A short Editor's Corner this time. Let's have a look at all the Tech·Ed News, but first, here is another fave RSS feed. It's called Tech·Ed Bloggers. You should REALLY get yourself an RSS reader and get your fave sites hooked up, including W2Knews! Here is the feed:
http://techedbloggers.net
Quote Of The Week:
· "Funny, I don't remember being absent minded." -- Unknown
Warm regards,
Stu
(email me with feedback: feedback@w2knews.com) |
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TECH BRIEFING |
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Tech·Ed 2004 Personal SuperComputing Demo
There was a special booth at Tech·Ed. They called it the "cave". It was three screens rigged into a 'right-view, left-view and floor' setup, so you looked into a corner of a virtual world. (See the picture in the Tech·Ed Shots towards the end.)
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531ED-TechEd
Redmond likes developers to start porting and testing apps and drivers for 64-bit. That's why they put this pretty cool booth there. Only a couple of years ago it would have required a multi million dollar supercomputer to do the kind of demonstrations they gave. Now it is possible to do it on standard hardware and software at a fraction of the price.
They were running several simulations: Walk through of architectural structures and water flow simulations. The architecture simulations allowed us to walk around and into buildings as well as interact with the exterior and interior. The hardware it ran on was a HP cluster of totally 16 Itanium 2 processors. Each with 4 GB Ram (64GB). The clients were Intel pre release machines with Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology, however they were running them as standard 32-bit machines. The clients each had an nVidia Quadro FX 3000 card. The results of the simulations were rendered by the three client workstations, each being responsible for projecting a 3D image to the screens.
Windows XP (with SP2) ran on the clients and the servers ran W2K3 Enterprise Edition, for 64-Bit Itanium-based Systems Covise from the HPC department (HLRS) of the University Of Stuttgart. According to IDC 80% of all new servers will be 64-bit capable by the end of 2005. In fact, we know that almost all volume servers (dual proc) will be 64-bit capable already by the end of 2004.
'High Performance' Windows
Redmond is going to work on a version of the OS, specifically for computers that are geared for speed. The initiative is generally seen as an attack on Linux, as current super computers are often created from cheap Linux clusters. MS created a new High Performance Computing team, and the version is going to be called 'Windows Server HPC Edition'. More at News.com:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531TB-High_Performance
Redmond Bundles Its Firewall With Hardware
Redmond announced at Tech·Ed that it would start selling its ISA Server network security software pre-installed on computers, moving into a market dominated by appliance security vendors.
They said they are working with hardware partners such as HP and will launch the bundle later this year. Jonathan Perera, senior director at Microsoft's security technology unit, said the software was designed to run right "out of the box" without complicated installations. "It's really the first turnkey solution that we're going to deliver to our customers as a security appliance," Perera said. MS and HP said that in some environments with the ISA Server running on an HP blade server, the thing was up and running in three minutes. ISA Server 2004 will be available in the third quarter of 2004, at a price of $1,499 per main microprocessor chip, per server.
MS Small Business Server: Unqualified Success
A few weeks ago, Sunbelt Software and the Yankee group did a survey among small business users. Here are the results!
Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Small Business Server 2003 is an unqualified success with Small and Midsize Business (SMB) customers, Microsoft Value Added Resellers (VARs) and consulting partners alike.
That’s according to the nearly 500 responses we received from you in our last joint Yankee Group/Sunbelt Software survey on SMB purchasing and deployment trends. An overwhelming 86 % majority of SMB survey respondents that said they were currently using or planned to deploy Windows Small Business Server 2000 or Windows Small Business Server 2003 SMB shops with 1-to-75 users, are installing Windows Small Business Server in record numbers for its unparalleled functionality, ease of use and economic price tag.
At $599 for the base-level Standard Edition and $1,499 for the Premium Edition, there is simply nothing like it for the money. For that matter, there is simply no bundled package that can match Windows Small Business Server at any price in the SMB space.
The product is actually a collection of application server software. It incorporates the following: Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft IIS, Shared Fax Service, Shared Modem Service, Microsoft Front Page, the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and the Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA) in the Premium Edition and a variety of tools and utilities.
It is an incomparable bargain and there is simply no other bundled offering that rivals Windows Small Business Server in the SMB space. The survey also found that Linux and Open Source vendors have no products that individually or collectively can compete with the bundled feature set of Windows SBS 2003, customers say. Small businesses and Microsoft VARs and consultants also told the Yankee Group that Windows SBS 2003 has a near immediate ROI.
Survey Highlights
The survey netted approximately 500 responses from SMB customers. The largest majority of respondents -- 80 % -- have one to 30 computers at their sites. The results showed strong support for Windows Small Business Server 2000 and Windows Small Business Server 2003.
Among the survey highlights:
- 21 % said they are presently using or plan to purchase Windows Small Business Server 2000
- 51 % said they are presently using or plan to purchase Windows Small Business Server 2003
- Only 3 % said they plan to purchase Novell Small Business Suite
- And only 11% said they are using or plan to purchase Linux. At this point, the respondents indicated that their Linux servers are mainly used as Internet gateways or Web servers.
- Cost is by far the primary purchasing inhibitor by a wide margin. Some 53 % of customers cited cost of licensing and 36 % said overall cost might keep their firms from purchasing Microsoft Small Business Server. Security was surprisingly far down on the list and was cited as a concern by only 18% of companies. Only 14 % of organizations are concerned about support -- so that is a big plus for Microsoft.
- Ease of manageability and compatibility were called out as potential migration inhibitors by 23 % and 22 % of companies, respectively. Ease of use doesn't appear to be much of an issue, only 18 % said that it might keep them from migrating to Small Business Server.
The survey also highlighted some key SMB purchasing trends and underscored the fact that SMB networks are becoming extremely sophisticated in scope.
- For example, 42 % of the small business respondents said they have dedicated network administrators. An additional 22 % said they have a combination of internal staff and external system administrators.
- A majority 85 % of the SMB customers said they have a network with a central PC or server to store files and share printing loads.
- And as for purchasing trends: 45 % of the SMB companies indicated they plan to upgrade their network or PC; 33 % said they will add additional PCs; 7 % will purchase their first server or dedicated file share PC and 15 % are undecided as to their next purchase. The timeframe for these upgrades is within the next 12 to 15 months.
Laura DiDio
Senior Analyst
The Yankee Group |
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NT/2000 RELATED NEWS |
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BIG News from Tech·Ed: 10 Year Support Term
Microsoft announced a new long-term support policy at Tech·Ed. Andy Lees, their Veep of server and tools business, said they will now guarantee a minimum of 10 years of support for all business and developer products. That's big news, and very welcome to boot.
Redmond currently shuts down most basic support levels after eight years, to everyone's chagrin. Lees stated the new policy provides more reliability for corporate customers. "From the time of shipment, you can guarantee a much more predictable level of support," he said.
The news was part of a blizzard of product announcements and technology demos that included the release of Redmond's new "Common Engineering Roadmap" and a preview of the refresh for Windows Server 2003 that is due out next year. More at the SearchWin2000 site:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531RN-10_Year_Support
Exchange 2003 Gets Basic Spam Filter
Exchange has an impressive 31 % share of the corporate messaging software market, and by year-end 2004 it is estimated the corporate Exchange installed base will total 114.2 million mailboxes. Exchange V5.5 currently accounts for 40 % of the corporate installed base. MS Outlook accounts for 74 % of the worldwide corporate e-mail client installed base. At Tech·Ed it became clear that Redmond will allow all Exchange 2003 customers to download and install the Intelligent Message Filtering (IMF), an add-on that blocks spam. They expanded this from only customers enrolled in the expensive Software Assurance licensing plan.
The change is part of the release of E2K3 Service Pack 1, the first major bunch of updates. A spokesperson said: "given the customer needs we're seeing around spam, we decided IMF needed to be available to all customers". Ummm, well if that were entirely true they would have bent over backward and also worked out something for E2K and Version 5.5. As I see it this is just as much a carrot to entice people to upgrade faster to E2K3. But the IMF really is very basic. Some "first look" observations are:
- Not granular (it's an all or nothing approach)
- Difficult to get a good handle on message scores for tuning, can't tune on an individual or group basis
- No custom rules, just global whitelist/blacklist
- User only get whitelist/blacklist if they use OWA or Outlook 2003
- Appears to require all Exchange Servers be 2003, no E2K boxes will work
There are still questions about its usability regarding POP users, mailboxes accessed by multiple people, public folder support, discussion list whitelisting, and centralized quarantining.
It assigns a Spam Confidence Level (SCL) based on Microsoft's SmartScreen technology (an SCL is basically like iHateSpam's spam threshold score).
There are two levels of filtering -- at the entry point, and then at the client level. At the entry point, you can have an email archived, deleted, rejected, etc. based on meeting the SCL. It works with Outlook 2003/OWA 2003, integrating with the Junk Mail folder, Block Senders and Allowed Senders. However, you do not need Outlook 2003, but then you do not get whitelist and blacklists. The IMF is basically a tab in a dialog box, with just a couple of settings. No word yet as to how they are going to keep it updated; it will probably provide decent spam filtering, but a spam filter like IHS SE layered on top of it will result in extremely high detection and way more granularity.
We are working on a good amount of additional functionality to IHS SE such as antivirus (using multiple engines), content filtering and content auditing. Spam detection is only becoming a starting point for mail hygiene/security -- now the goal is to completely secure and protect enterprises from email-borne threats and nuisances. And in our case, we'll do it effectively and inexpensively. Look out Trend, Sybari, Symantec... [grin]
You could use IMF on a gateway server to reject a percentage of messages and then let a third party spam tool like iHateSpam Server IHS do the fine work, but then you'd need to buy a license of E2K3 for that Gateway and that is expensive. Hmmm. Here are the release notes of Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531RN-Exchange_SP1
Microsoft's New Caller ID Against Spam
Redmond is working on technology to verify the sender of a message, and in that way enable you to block "spoofed" junk messages. They plan to release the technology next year in the new Exchange Edge Services. The latter is a security-focused add-on for Exchange that you will hear more about soon, but here is a preview on the MS website:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531RN-Edge_Services
First Demo Of "Client Inspection And Isolation" Tool
The first major change in W2K3 will have a cool new piece of software thrown in. It inspects PCs trying to connect to your corporate domain (including VPN's) to make sure that the PC that tries to connect is correctly configured for basic security. They described it as: "You get to frisk the client, make sure it's clean...before you let it into your network." If that machine is found lacking a security feature, like the AV software is not updated, you can tell the server to remotely update it before allowing the PC to connect to your domain. Sounds promising but I would not want that thing to turn of the new WinXP firewall automatically because that could break a whole bunch of existing applications.
OK, So How Is Redmond Going To Make Life Easier?
It's called "Common Engineering Roadmap". At Tech·Ed they rolled out their long-term initiative fully named the Windows Server System Common Engineering Roadmap. It's geared to make certain chunks of code of ALL Microsoft servers internally consistent and/or standardized with each other to simplify things.
The Common Engineering Roadmap (CER) is also their way to implement their Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), that I told you about earlier. DSI is Redmond's version of self-managing and self-healing systems. The CER criteria are going into effect Jan 1, 2005. To make this a bit more real here is an example. One of the criteria is to include using MOM 2005 to remotely manage and monitor all Windows servers. (If you can afford MOM, that is)
Redmond told attendees that the criteria are a form of integration that we often complain is lacking. They also announced general availability of Windows Storage Server 2003 Feature Pack that will integrate with E2K3 and store Exchange database and log files on NAS devices to consolidate storage.
Oh, and don't forget the SQL Best Practices Analyzer Tool, run it and you may be surprised what you can do to improve your SQL installations. Get it now and play. The results might shock you.
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531RN-Analyzer_Tool
Another Freebee From Seattle
In the same vein as the item above, MS released a new tool announced at Tech·Ed called the Server Performance Advisor 1.0. It is for Windows 2003 server only, not W2K.
Service Performance Advisor is a server performance diagnostic tool developed to diagnose root causes of performance problems in the W2K3 operating system, particularly performance problems for IIS 6.0 and the Active Directory® directory service. Server Performance Advisor measures the performance and use of resources by your computer to report on the parts that are stressed under workload. Other server roles include system overview (hot files, hot TCP clients, top CPU consumed), print spooler, context switch data and preliminary File Server trace data.
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531RN-MS_Freebee |
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THIRD PARTY NEWS |
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Double-Take Wins Best of Show at Tech·Ed 2004
Windows & .NET Magazine Network announced the winners of the Best of Tech·Ed 2004 Awards in 10 categories. The field included more than 260 entries, and the judges evaluated products based on their strategic importance in the market, competitive advantage, and value to the customer.
The Windows Infrastructure Solutions (Software) category winner was Double-Take. "Double-Take offers an inexpensive solution for geographical replication of database servers and a range of offerings for customers," said Chernicoff. "This product provides the most functionality to the largest number of IT professionals."
Winners in the other categories were often new companies no one ever heard of, but the editors must have seen exciting new features and ideas in them, so if you want to read about these, go to:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531TP-Best_of_Show
At the same awards ceremony Windows.Net Mag announced that they will change their name to Windows IT Pro and released some survey data showing the current pain points of the Windows IT Pro:
- Spam
- Limited budgets and expanding responsibilities
- Security and system hacking
- Patch Management
- Outsourcing
- Explaining IT ROI to management
- Keeping up with technology
- Interoperability and legacy systems
- AD and Group Policy
- Mobile and remote
- NAS and SAN storage
- Open source
Sounds familiar? [grin]
Tech·Ed System Tools News Roundup
Here are short takes of a whole bunch of add-on company product news and other things worth knowing:
AutoProf announced its Group Policy-based patch management solution called Policy Maker Software Update -- Winternals Defrag Manager achieved W2K3 Certification -- ConfigureSoft's new Configuration Manager Module ensures SMS is properly installed and configured -- Ecora released the Beta of their Patch manager V4.0 -- ScriptLogic announced the new generation of their Desktop Authority -- Security vendor Shavlik Technologies announced commercial availability of a new, agent-based patch management tool -- Advanced Systems Concepts announced V 5.0 of its ActiveBatch product, a cross-platform job scheduling and management app -- Sybari Enterprise Manager, Advanced Spam Manager, and Antigen 8.0 for Exchange and SMTP Gateways are now available as Release Candidates -- LEGATO Software and NSI Software both announced support for the Windows Storage Server 2003 feature pack -- Polyserve announced their Matrix Server product that allows you to build 16-node clusters hooked up to a SAN -- NetIQ unveiled a security suite, which bundles their latest Vulnerability Manager, Patch Manager and Security Manager -- PatchLink and Harris Corp announced a partnership to make their products operate together -- With the acquisition of Aelita, Quest Software now offers the industry's broadest set of Active Directory solutions |
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FAVE LINKS |
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This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.
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PRODUCT OF THE WEEK |
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BOOK: Hardening Windows Systems
This brilliant new offering is written with a passion for security that will help you make the necessary upgrades and take the necessary steps to secure your Windows systems. The concise and consistent approach breaks down security into digestible parts, giving you actions to take immediately, information on hardening your system from the top down, and finally when to go back and make further upgrades. Recommended.
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040531PW-Hardening |
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ABOUT W2KNEWS™ |
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What Our Lawyers Make Us Say
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These documents are provided for informational purposes only. The information contained in this document represents the current view of Sunbelt Software Distribution on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Sunbelt must respond to changes in market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Sunbelt and Sunbelt cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.
INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT.
The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of this document. This document may be copied and distributed subject to the following conditions: 1) All text must be copied without modification and all pages must be included; 2) All copies must contain Sunbelt's copyright notice and any other notices provided therein; and 3) This document may not be distributed for profit. All trademarks acknowledged. Copyright Sunbelt Software Distribution, Inc. 1996-2004. |
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NEWS.COM
Mounties Charge Teenage Virus Suspect
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have charged a teenager in connection with a worm that could be used to create an army of zombie computers for delivering spam.
Read more...
INTERNETWEEK
Malicious Worms Still Probing LSASS Vulnerability
A trio of malicious worms is taking advantage of a month-old vulnerability in Microsoft Windows operating systems, evidence that not all systems have been patched. Read more...
TECHWEB
Porn Spammers Thumb Noses at CAN-SPAM
Spammers pitching pornography are largely ignoring the Federal Trade Commission's recent requirements. Read more...
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TIP OF THE WEEK
BY: BRIEN POSEY / POSEY ENTERPRISES
Getting Help With Exchange Errors
When I was first introduced to Exchange, one of the things that I had the most trouble with was the cryptic nature of the error messages that Exchange produces. At that time (version 4.0), Exchange would simply display a message that said something like “Error -1018”. There would be no explanation of what that number meant, no apologies, and no help. Well, actually you could get help if you wanted to spend a couple hundred dollars to call Microsoft Product Support Services and ask them what the error meant.
A lot of years have passed since Exchange 4.0 was released, but sadly, even the newer versions of Exchange still use those cryptic error codes. However, there is some good news. You don’t have to spend a small fortune calling Microsoft to find out what these error codes mean. There are plenty of resources available that can help you interpret these codes for free.
Before I show you how to get help with Exchange error messages, I want to explain that none of the sources of information that I am about to show you are completely comprehensive. However, if you are getting a strange error message, it is likely that you will be able to find help from at least one of these sources.
The first place that you should always check for help is the Application log found in the Event Viewer. Granted, Exchange does not log all of the errors messages that it displays, but if you are fortunate enough for an error message to be logged, the Event Viewer will usually give you a little extra help deciphering the message. Read more...
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Brain Boggler
A cubical box contains 27 congruent large balls; its twin contains 64 congruent smaller balls. All the balls are made of the same material. Both boxes are filled to the top. In each box, each layer has the same number of balls, and the outside balls of each layer touch the sides. Which box is heavier?
Do you know the answer? First 3 readers to email Erin_Haverman@nminet.com with answers will receive a T-shirt! Past bogglers here. |
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Dear Manuel,
Here's what's been happening this week in the world of Microsoft Development and on the DNzone, some fun stuff and the address to send any feedback that you want to tell us.
» Hooray! The market for database server software, seen as a barometer of overall software market health, grew last year and The global PC market will experience double-digit year-over-year growth in 2004 and 2005. Trebles all round.
» CSS guru says "Tables for layout not evil" shocker! DNzone's friend, Dave Shea (curator of the CSS Zen Garden) caused a right storm in a teacup by saying that sometimes, a simple table for layout will not cause the sky to fall in. Hurray for commonsense.
» New version of Netscape to be released.
» 80 /20 Influential Web People - 80% of all important web design information comes from twenty people.
Check out our Discount Coupons. Buy a coupon for a certain number of articles, then just click to ‘cash one in’ and download the tutorial article of your choice. Save time since you do not have to make a separate purchase for each article and save money, too!
This week's tutorials:
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Beginner's SQL: Aggregates and Grouping |
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When you create a database-driven Web site, you will encounter a number of common data retrieval scenarios. Simple lists, header/detail listings, row difference calculations, and reports with subtotals can all be satisfied using fairly basic SELECT queries. But when you move on to functions that aggregate data - to find sums, averages, counts and the like, there's a few gotchas that can baffle the newbie and trip up even the experienced developer. Wave goodbye to Aggregate and groupings gotcha misery with Rudy's easy-to-follow tutorial on some of SQL's powerful aggregating functions! |
Last week's tutorials:
The Zone was built in ASP, but the foundation is the help, support and feedback that you generously give us. Please let us know what you think about anything in the news or in the Zone by writing to Bruce Lawson.
Thanks for your participation at www.dnzone.com.
We couldn't do it without you!
The DNzone Team |
How we rebuilt DMXzone in CSS and XHTML
Our sister site, DMXzone, recently redesigned using only XHTML and CSS.
Read for free the trials and tribulations of our intrepid tech team as they wade through 6000 articles-worth of tag spag hell, nested table horror, and emerge victorious with a fully validating CSS and XHTML site that loads twice as fast, renders better and is more maintainable!
The ASP and JavaScript we used to convert the all our articles into xhtml and the full DMXzone.com CSS file is included for download too!
by George Petrov and Patrick Woldberg.
ASP.NET: Uploading an Image and creating a thumbnail
During the course of this tutorial you will learn how to provide users with the facility to upload files to a remote server using an HTML form; specifically this tutorial will focus on uploading image files to an Images directory and saving a proportionally-sized thumbnail of the uploaded images in a Thumbs directory, the code presented here is able to identify if an image is landscape or portrait and adjust the dimensions of the generated thumbnail accordingly. This is a very common scenario on a typical e-commerce site where a product list page would show the thumbnail images and the detailed product info page would show the larger image. This tutorial demonstrates how to code the ASP.NET for uploading gif and jpg files.
By Kevin Marshall
» How to make friends by telephone - a 1940s guide.
» Feral Cheryl - this anti-Barbie doll dreadlocks her hair, wears simple rainbow clothes, has piercings and a range of tattoos.
» World's Largest Collection of World's Smallest Versions of World's Largest Things.
» Soy Sauce made from human hair. Mmmm!
» Impossible Objects. |
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Developer Central
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May 27, 2004 - Vol. 3 #28
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In this issue :
1) Editorial Chatter
2) Review: STYLEVISION 2004
3) Review: VisualMake
4) Review: InstallShield X
5) Five Questions: Philip Best
6) Improving Software Development: A Young Classic
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9) Reader Mail
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Editorial Chatter:
So, it's Tech Ed time again. If I was going to go to one conference a year, this would be the one, but I'm happily retired from conference attendance. (Sometimes people ask why; as one data point, this Tech Ed has about one third as many people as the entire population of the county where I live. And parts of this county are too crowded for me).
Fortunately, with an Internet connection and the patience to skim lots of RSS feeds, you don't really have to be at Tech Ed to get the news. As a data point, people were posting summaries of Steve Ballmer's keynote on their weblogs while he was still talking. The posting furor hasn't slowed down much since then, although apparently the show's wireless network is badly overloaded.
The big announcement so far for developers is the launch of the Visual Studio 2005 Team System (or VS2K5TS; life's too short to keep typing the full name, no matter what Microsoft's trademark lawyers would prefer).
VS2K5TS is layering a whole batch of capabilities on top of Visual Studio, including:
- A real source code control system with a SQL Server backend
- Workflow and task tracking
- Profiling
- Built-in testing tools
- Static code analysis tools
- Modeling tools
Microsoft announced four editions of VS2K5TS, which they describe this
way:
- Visual Studio 2005 Team Architect Edition, visual designers that enable architects and lead developers to design service-oriented solutions that can be validated against their operational environments.
-Visual Studio 2005 Team Developer Edition, advanced development tools that enable teams to incorporate quality, early, and often throughout the life cycle.
-Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Edition, advanced load testing tools that enable teams to verify the performance of applications prior to deployment.
-Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation, server-based team collaboration tools that enable organizations to effortlessly manage and track the progress and health of projects.
Significantly missing from all of the hoopla so far has been any discussion of pricing, though I've seen assurances that MSDN Universal subscribers will continue to get the whole kit and kaboodle.
So, what does all this mean? Today, it means pretty slides and demos at Tech Ed, as well as white papers to tell us all how great things will be when it all ships. Next year - who knows. If you're an MSDN subscriber with a good Internet connection, you can download the May 2005 Community Technical Preview build, which weighs in at 2.5GB or so and includes at least some of the Team System features. Beta 1, likely much more useable than the CTP, will be along presently for those who don't care to be on the absolute bleeding edge.
And tomorrow? VS2K5TS means that Microsoft has matured even more in the way it delivers a development message. Ten years ago, they released compilers and let us figure out what the heck to do with them. Three years ago, they added Patterns & Practices guides to give us prescriptive advice on how to set things up. A year from now, the promise is, they'll build the best practices right into the tools, and software development will be much easier. I hope they do a darned good job of it. But in the back of my mind I can hear Harry McClintock's "The Big Rock Candy Mountain"...
"I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work In
the Big Rock Candy Mountain."
But then, I've seen enough software to become a professional cynic. If you'd like to read lots more on VS2K5TS, I recommend a visit to the MSDN Visual Studio Developer Center at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem/default.aspx
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Beware, as always, of long URLs below. They may well wrap to the next line. You might want to take a look at Chris Sells' UrlRun
(http://www.sellsbrothers.com/tools) which can help with this problem.
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Review: STYLEVISION 2004
STYLEVISION 2004, starting at $249
Altova, Inc.
Beverly, Massachusetts
(978) 816-1600
http://www.altova.com
STYLEVISION is a graphical designer for XSLT stylesheets - among other things. A part of the XMLSPY line of products from Altova, the new 2004 release offers a wider variety of ways to look at XML data than ever before. You begine the process of working with STYLEVISION by loading a schema file and some sample XML data. At that point, the tabbed interface has six different tabs:
- Design: This is where you build up your stylesheet by dragging and dropping elements from a treeview of what's in the schema.
- Authentic Preview: This view is unique to the Altova products. It provides a formatted, editable view of the underlying XML.
- XSLT Stylesheet: This is the raw XSLT.
- HTML Preview: This is the result of applying the XSLT to the XML.
- XSL-FO: This is the raw XSL-FO file generated from the design.
- PDF Preview: This is an Adobe Acrobat file produced by applying the XSL-FO to the XML. Using this tab requires you to have an XSL-FO processor installed; Altova's Web site will let you download the Apache version wrapped in a nice installer.
STYLEVISION is well-engineered to let you display data the way you'd like it. It's easy to format the resulting HTML (and the PDF is usually quite close), to display repeating data in a table, or to insert images.
In Authentic view, a change in one part of the XML (such as the name of a linked graphic) can result in an immediate change in the on-screen display.
Even spiffier, this latest version adds database compatability. Instead of starting with a combination of XSD and XML, you can start with an ADO connection to a database. STYLEVISION will determine the structure of the database and use that as a schema, and use the actual data as the source for the views. Among other things, this gives you an easy way to get PDF report output from any reasonable database. (The database functionality is only available in the Enterprise version, starting at $599).
This version also adds a command line interface that lets you perform all of STYLEVISION's major operations from a batch process without showing any user interface. And of course everything works in concert with Altova's other major products, notably XMLSPY. If you're looking for a flexible way to deal with XML data, this is one good place to look.
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Review: VisualMake
VisualMake 3.0, $499
Mobi-Sys Software Products Inc.
Richmond, British Columbia
(604) 318-1798
http://www.visualmake.com
VisualMake is a GUI build tool aimed specifically at people using recent Microsoft development products. Specifically, it supports VB5, VB6,
VC++6, VB.NET and C# projects. For source code control, it has built-in
support only for Visual SourceSafe (though you can use command-line tasks to interact with any source code control system that has a command-line interface). The user interface gives you several views of your workspace, including a simple list of the projects to be built and a treeview that shows dependencies and other useful information.
If you're working in one of the supported tools, you'll find quite a few useful features here. One that I like is the support for a variety of build types. You can do a full build, an incremental build of what's changed, or a selective build. You can also specify an unattended build with logging, which is ideal for overnight builds.
VisualMake picks up plenty of information from the source code. For example, you .NET solution configurations are automatically available as configurations within VisualMake. There's also a nice system for dealing with project-level properties such as conditional configuration constants. These are automatically inherited from the native projects, but if you like you can choose to override them at the VisualMake level.
VisualMake will even pick up and execute pre- and post-build tasks defined by Visual Studio .NET.
VisualMake is designed to be used as either a GUI tool or part of an automated process. Support for the latter includes a command-line interface, text log files, and build status configuration e-mails. You can also choose from a variety of versioning schemes.
Overall, VisualMake is a quite functional build management tool, at its best if you're working with the Microsoft tool chain. It appears to do quite well on sorting out dependencies and even finding missing references, and was easy to use and flexible in my tests.
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Review: InstallShield X
InstallShield X, starting at $1199
InstallShield
Schaumburg, Illinois
(847) 466-4000
http://www.installshield.com
InstallShield has once again revised and renamed their flagship product.
Last time around, it was DevStudio 9, which merged the Professional (proprietary script) and Developer (MSI-based) products into the single development tool. With InstallShield X they've gone a step further, by merging in the MultiPlatform and Update Service bits as well. The end result is a setup building tool that covers just about everything you could want to do. I got my hands on a copy and put it through its paces recently.
There's now one IDE for handling everything: Windows, Linux, Unix, PalmOS, PocketPC and Windows Mobile solutions can all be constructed with the same set of tools. They've worked to bring the MultiPlatform version to parity with the Windows stuff, so there's an easy transition path for Windows developers who want to move on to cross-platform work.
If you launch the Universal Installer, for example, it looks very nearly the same as the interface for the Windows installer - except for the page with checkboxes where you can choose to support Unix, Solaris, Mac OSX, and so on.
The new product also includes a starter version of InstallShield's Update Service, which lets you deliver upgraded versions to users when they sign on to the Internet. The Starter Edition will notify users of updates and provide a link back to your Web site for them to download the updates. If you like, you can upgrade to the Professional Edition, which enables integrated download and installation of updates. The Starter Edition is also limited to 50,000 users of your application.
Other new features here include a wizard for installing Windows device drivers, one-click support for the Java Runtime Engine redistributable, the ability to save projects for previous versions of InstallShield to open, a visual dialog editor for the *nix setups, support for configuring SQL Servers and their databases, and better support for installation prerequisites.
If you've worked with InstallShield products in the past, you won't find any huge surprises here; the basic interface is still the same.
You've got the Installation Designer treeview for manipulating parts of the setup, the Project Assistant for organizing everything in a step by step manner, and a direct editor for mucking about in the MSI database (assuming you're working with an MSI-based setup). Help is integrated throughout the product, so although there is a nearly overwhelming feature set, you should be able to find your way around with little trouble. If you're working on a product with complex or cross-platform installation requirements, InstallShield is certainly one of the contenders to consider.
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Five Questions: Philip Best
[Philip Best's job title is "Senior Configuration Manager". As that's a job I've never even seen done (my projects have either been small enough that some developer wore that hat, or large enough that I never dealt directly with the configuration folks), I jumped at the chance to ask him some questions. So, here's Philip...]
1) Can you give us some perspective on the differences between source code control, software configuration management, and general configuration management?
Would you believe that question is debated, sometimes hotly, to this day? Personally, I don't like to get caught up in the semantic furor surrounding the terms themselves. I like to think of them in this way...
Imagine a clock-makers shop. Our friendly clock-maker has a multitude of drawers to contain gears and springs and screws of all sorts. This is source code control. Now, suppose our clock-maker wants to make a clock he's made in the past. He has the plans and specifications and workspace to do it, in the very same location as his myriad of parts. This is software configuration management. Notice, in particular, that these two rely upon one-another. Our clock maker could assemble something with his parts from memory, but the outcome wouldn't be nearly as good. Finally, think of all the other things our clock-maker requires to run his shop.
Ledgers and customer lists and parts catalogs, etc. This is akin to general configuration management. While not exactly clock-making in nature, they are customized to his particular business. They are the things required to make the whole of his shop run.
Naturally, I'm over-simplifying, but I think you get the gist. You'll find that source code control often carries the misnomer of software configuration management, when really, it is a small part of the whole.
Most developers will not encounter general configuration management unless they work for an embedded systems manufacturer or the like. These companies often put schematics and related documents under configuration management as well.
2) What career path brought you to being a configuration manager?
I've long been of the opinion that it is better to be a generalist and adapt to the challenges at hand than a specialist that can't see beyond the deep knowledge he's obtained. To be honest, it's a much longer and bumpier road by comparison; but I was never one to shirk a challenge.
After several years of systems administration and development I stumbled into my passion when no one else wanted to take up the reins. I found that I enjoy the over-arching viewpoint the position gives me and, frankly, I have more creative leeway than in any of my previous lines of work.
3) What's the toughest balancing act between the needs of developers and those of project managers?
I'm a great fan of the work of Hunt and Thomas (The Pragmatic
Programmer) and Alan Cooper (About Face 2.0), among others. Briefly synthesizing their viewpoints, I think developers and project managers reflect their goals and preferences. And, truth be told, they're often at odds. I have to say the toughest balancing act is a developer's goal (some say need) of independence and the project manager's goal of accountability. By accountability I mean capable of accounting (or counting), rather than assigning blame. Configuration management alleviates this conflict by giving discreet, measurable data to a project manager while allowing a developer to work in the manner that she wishes. A good configuration manager can pull this off.
4) Have you ever felt the urge to just walk away from the repository and start all over again?
Oh yes. Do you know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you realize how much refactoring the code you've been assigned to maintain is going to need? It feels a lot like that.
5) What can small groups learn from large organizations in the field?
First and foremost, nightly builds are a patently good thing. Don't argue, just do it. Second, don't underestimate the power of placing your design, even if transcribed from a napkin, "under control". Third, configuration management doesn't have to be a burden. The practice does not have to be oppressive, and in fact can be enlightening.
I will be happy to answer questions and comments that the above generates. Feel free to contact me at philip.best@healthstream.com
[Mike here. Write to me, enclosing a bit of background material, if you'd like to participate in Five Questions yourself. The more the merrier! You probably know by now, but just in case, you can contact me at MikeG1@larkfarm.com .]
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Improving Software Development: A Young Classic
A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits.
- Richard M. Nixon
In 1994, Microsoft was selling MS-DOS 6.22, had just released Windows NT 3.5, and had announced the forthcoming "Chicago" (later known as Windows
95) beta. Meanwhile, Steve Maguire, author of Writing Solid Code and an experienced Microsoft Program Manager, was releasing his second book, Debugging the Development Process. Ten years later, I thought it might be fun to look back at this book and see how it fits for today's developers.
The Market Speaks
Ten years later, MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows NT 3.5 are nowhere to be found, but you can still hop over to Amazon and order a copy of the book.
Clearly, at least some readers are finding value here. With the book being directed specifically at project leads (the subtitle is "Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams"), I suspect it actually sells to developers as well. I can see three reasons for this. First, developers will know Maguire from his earlier book on good coding practices. Second, as he points out in this book, project leads tend to come from the ranks of developers, and if you wait until you're promoted to think about the job it's too late.
Third, this is just a good read; it's light and funny in spots and has plenty of war stories from within Microsoft.
In fact, even if you don't intend to ever run a software development team, you might buy it for the war stories. There's a certain pleasure to be had from reading about some particularly stupid decision and then thinking about how badly those idiots on the Word team screwed up. "It won't be like that in my company," you can vow, as you dream about the day that you too will have forty billion dollars in the bank. Of course, that's the point: reading this book is designed to help you learn from expensive mistakes that others have made.
Basics First
Maguire starts by considering some of the basics required to produce good software on a fixed schedule. It doesn't take him long to get to an important rule that is too often overlooked: "Any work that does not result in an improved product is potentially wasted or misguided effort." One of the big jobs of the project lead is to run interference for the actual developers, protecting them from travel reports and stupid meetings and all the time-consuming trivia that any good bureaucracy will manufacture for its workers. The truly good manager also recognizes his own tendency to create waste heat in the form of excess process, and will fight against that just as hard.
Also on the basics, he talks about setting up simple systems to keep a project on track, both in the short term and in the long term. For example, if you start each day by asking what you can do to help keep the project on track for the next few months, you're much less likely to be blindsided by something in the future.
Scheduling and Slipping
Of course, managing the schedule is a big part of the project lead's job, and it comes in for a big share of the attention here. Maguire is a fan of not working people to death, believing that an 80-hour week probably just has more non-work hours in it than a 40-hour one. He discusses the necessity to push back when management or marketing or other teams want unrealistic amounts of work, and emphasizes the need to protect your developers from such nonsense. Of course, scheduling by milestones also comes in for review here; we had less experience in such things a decade ago, which is why the notion of breaking a large project down into doable tasks can be presented as somewhat of a novelty.
But projects do slip (well, not all of them, but it's a good first assumption), and Maguire digs into the reasons for this and the way in which they can be combated. One thing he recommends against is promoting an attitude of slip hysteria; it's no fun to work on a project where you are told every single day just how far behind you are. Instead, he suggests strategies for getting the schedule back under control. These focus on making sure the workload is reasonable, removing the nonsense from the developers' working hours, and restraining them from pulling all-nighters. He claims to have used these techniques successfully as a sort of roving trouble-shooter within Microsoft, and has plenty of tales to tell.
I've got to add a caveat of my own to this rosy picture, though: when I was subcontracting for Microsoft, a few years after this book came out, death-march schedules, slip hysteria, and overnight coding were still very much in evidence. Perhaps I just didn't have the good fortune to work with any of the teams that Maguire trained.
Shooting Yourself in the Foot
One of the most important chapters here is about dumb attitudes that developers have (Maguire, more politely, calls them "buggy attitudes").
You've likely run into at least a few of these:
- Code that compiles must be correct
- This code is so obvious that I don't need to test it
- Writing the right code will take too much time
- That can't be done in code!
- It's good enough for the end users
- It's better to ship a lousy feature than to wait for the time to do it right
- The users will understand why we ignored their requests
- It's OK to skimp on unimportant parts of the product
- I don't have time to write for reuse
The nice thing is that Maguire discusses each of these with concrete examples, and walks through how he deals with them. This is a good start at a manual for project leads who need to hold design and performance reviews. Even if you're not planning to move into management, you might end up questioning some of your own habits by thinking about how you'd fare in such a review.
A Few Flaws
Of course, no book is perfect. This one is a bit dated in spots, as you'd expect from a decade-old software book. For example, the notion of a "visual freeze" date (the date when screenshots are final so that the printed manual can be published) mostly seems quaint these days. And the note about how important e-mail is within Microsoft seems a bit redundant in 2004; these days we're more likely to want to know how to get rid of e-mail than to depend on it (though the advice about not being interrupt-driven every time a message arrives is still good).
Overall, though, I still like this book. I tend to haul it off the shelf and dip into it about once a year, whether I'm currently managing a development team or not. I doubt that I'm as good a manager as Maguire; it's not been my primary focus. But I know that I'm better at it than I would have been without this book, which means that buying a copy was a good investment for me.
Got project lead war stories of your own? Amused by the very thought of best practices coming out of Microsoft? You can get hold of me at MikeG1@larkfarm.com. I'll use the most interesting comments in a future issue of Developer Central.
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Short Takes
- Active Directory to ADAM Synchronizer Beta - If you're using ADAM to provide directory services for an application, you can now populate your directory with info from the "real" Active Directory for the domain.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=88e72e3f-1dd9-4ccc-a9aa-cac04e0628c7&displaylang=en
- AQTime 4 is the latest version of AutomatedQA's memory debugger and performance profiler, handling both Win32 and .NET applications in a single package. http://www.automatedqa.com/products/aqnet.asp
- BDV Notepad is a free replacement for Windows Notepad, this one offering dockable toolbars, multilevel undo, URL awareness, and other extensions to the basics.
http://www.badevlad.hotmail.ru/new/notepad_en.htm
- "Blind XPath Injection" is a reminder that the state of the hacking art does not stand still. If you're using XPath to query things out of an XML database, your application will potentially reveal the entire database to a determined attacker.
http://www.sanctuminc.com/pdfc/WhitePaper_Blind_XPath_Injection_20040518.pdf
- Business Objects has announced Crystal Enterprise Live Office, which allows Microsoft Office users to embed live reports and report components in Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
http://www.businessobjects.com/TechEd/
- Centerspace and SyncFusion have teamed up for a discount deal. Right now you can purchase the CenterSpace NMath Suite of .NET numerical libraries with the Syncfusion Essential Suite of Windows Forms components and save 25%. http://www.centerspace.net/products.php?page=5
- Exchange Intelligent Message Filter is the server-side spam filtering from Microsoft, now out for the hoi polloi.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C1B08F7B-8CAF-4147-B074-8C9C8F277071&displaylang=en
- "Microsoft Exchange Intelligent Message Filter Deployment Guide" - Read this before you set up IMF on your Exchange servers.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B1218D8C-E8B3-48FB-9208-6F75707870C2&displaylang=en
- Nelson Email Organizer 3.0 is out. NEO provides a flexible way to organize and reorganize the content you have stored in Microsoft Outlook. http://www.emailorganizer.com
- NUnit 2.2 Beta 1 - The new release of this .NET unit testing tool includes Mono support, a lightweight mock object facility, and other good things. http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=377077
- Nyditot Virtual Display offers scrollable or compressed larger-resolution screens for your PocketPC.
http://www.nyditot.com/NVDPage.asp
- OutNote lets you attach notes to Outlook e-mails or contacts. $29.95 shareware. http://www.outnote.com/
- Quest Central for SQL Server is a freeware version of Quest's video-game interface for monitoring SQL Server databases.
http://www.quest.com/quest_central/sql_server/freeware/
- Security Guidance Kit v1.0 - Not entirely clear what's in this, and I don't happen to have the bandwidth to download 150MB at the moment. But at least Microsoft is still trying to find ways to distribute security info.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c3260bd0-2ebb-4496-ad07-7e9d55d0ef1f&displaylang=en
- ShadowStor runs your entire PC as a virtual image, so you can just discard any session that happens to pick up a virus or worm.
http://www.shadowstor.com/
- sqlXpress Diff is a new product to identify differences between Microsoft SQL Server databases and to produce change scripts. In open beta right now. http://www.xpressapps.com/sqlXpress_Diff_Product.shtm
- Threat Modeling Tool is a GUI application to create XML files representing the results of a detailed security analysis. You could create such files with any XML editor, of course, but the help file here is a valuable source of guidance for thinking about the security threats to your application. Freeware from Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=62830f95-0e61-4f87-88a6-e7c663444ac1&displaylang=en
- Trim Troy - MSN UK presents The Iliad in "messenger speak". Someone at MSN UK has way too much time on their hands.
http://entertainment.msn.co.uk/films/troy/trimtroy/Default.asp
- Web Services Enhancements 2.0 add security, policy, and other standards implementations for Web services using the Microsoft bits.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FC5F06C5-821F-41D3-A4FE-6C7B56423841&displaylang=en
- WSE 2.0 Tracing Utility is a standalone client that lets you see what's going on with the new Web Services Extension bits.
http://mtaulty.com/blog/archive/2004/05/25/433.aspx
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Teasers: ADTmag.com Extra Content
Developer Central is more than a newsletter - it's also my corner of the ADT Magazine Web site. You'll find some longer essays, rants, and provocations there. If you want to read what I have to say about these topics, just follow the links:
==========
Timing is everything
Two online essays touching on software patents recently crossed my browser window. The first is Seth Nickell's "Why Mono is Currently An Unacceptable Risk". Nickell is a Gnome developer (that's Gnome the open source software project, not gnome who lives in the garden), and his essay discusses his reasons for not wanting to base any work on the Mono open-source .NET implementation. The second essay is Microsoft's "Patents Pending", part of their continuing "Microsoft on the Issues"
series. Coming two days after Nickell's piece, this will no doubt strike some folks as the official response from Redmond, though a moment's thought will convince most reasonable observers that it must have been planned long before. In any case, this particular bit of tub-thumping argues that software patents are A Good Thing, and that it's good that the Bush administration is planning to spend some money to try to support the overtaxed patent office. ...
Read more at http://adtmag.com/article.asp?id=9451
==========
Sometimes Microsoft can keep a secret
Microsoft proved at the Tech Ed keynote address on Monday that sometimes the company can keep a big project secret until fairly late in the game.
The new Visual Studio 2005 Team System (let's just call it VS2K5TS, OK?) is obviously a substantial development effort, yet beyond vague hints nothing leaked before the keynote. Over the next several days you should expect all of the industry magazines and Web sites to come up with their take on this new product. ...
Read more at http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=9463
=================================================================
News in this newsletter is written and compiled by Mike Gunderloy, mailto:MikeG1@larkfarm.com . I'd love to hear from you. Or for between-issue rants and reviews, visit me at http://www.larkware.com .
Also check out Developer Central and Beyond, my weblog at ADT Magazine's Web site. It's a mix of content you've seen here and Web-only extras.
You can read it at http://www.adtmag.com/newsletters.asp?nl=DEV .
To find out how you can sponsor this newsletter, contact Abraham Langer at mailto:alanger@101com.com
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