CLaueR's Blog

The Middleware Company publishes an update J2EE/.NET benchmark

We all remember the first TMC benchmark published on TheServerSide.com in October 2002. TMC publishes an update benchmark which addresses the critics that the first version received from the Java community. he tests have been conducted using four different J2EE application servers, and all implementations (J2EE and .NET) were tested against Oracle 9i and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 databases. It's a fantastic work, and worth reading it's 58 pages.

No doubt that we will hear about it for a while. Top hot question in the next days: "Who are X, Y, Z and W?" :-)

Eric Sink may not be a Software Legend, but...

Ryan Brase: "C# is just Java…only a little worse"

This is a quite old article published on ZDNet Australia that has been translated in French lately. The author, Ryan Brase is a Java guy, so obviously, his arguments are a little biaised.

For Ryan Brase, the ability to use unsafe code, the ease of COM Interop -- as compared to Java JNI, and operator overloading make C# and also .NET applications more error prone. Obviously, I do not agree with this point of view ;-)

For a more fair comparison of Java and C#, you should have a look to Dare Obasanjo's paper "C# from a Java's developer perspective", which has been translated and enhanced in French by the guys from DotNetGuru.org.

Wininformant About Sites Switching from Linux to Windows Server 2003

As Stephen posts about a recent article by Wininformant about sites switching from Linux to Windows Server 2003, one number got my attention. The July 2003 issue of the netcraft report - on which the Wininformant is based - says that sites switching from Linux to indows Server 2003 in the three last months are about 5% of the total actual number of sites running the latest Windows Server OS.

It's commonly accepted that IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 supports up to 3,000 applications on one box -- which btw is a lot more than what IIS 5 and Windows 2000 could do.

If I do the maths, 5% of the actual Windows Server 2003 sites are about 8,000 sites. In three month, it does not represent more than one server a month moving from Linux to Windows Server 2003...

Ok, this is certainly not the case, and the physical number of servers than have moved is certainly more than three. But I just wanted to remind that before presenting conclusions, one should try to really understand what numbers really mean.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the new design and capabilities of IIS 6.0 - I presented the IIS 6.0 session for Windows Server 2003 launch event in France - but I would prefer that we celebrate IIS 6.0 success with much bigger numbers ;-) May be it's just too early.

(I would have said this in a comment on Stephen's post, but unfortunately, his blog engine has decided that comments are an useless feature and have stopped functionning for an unknown reason ;-))

[Update]: Whao, may be it's seven servers in fact... I was not that wrong ;-)

"The study also says that 8,000 Web sites have also switched during that time frame from Apache/Linux-based systems to IIS 6. That was not any one provider, but represented seven different providers, three of which accounted for the largest number of those migrations," O'Brien said.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1201809,00.asp

C#Builder Personal Edition is a free download for non-commercial use

C#Builder personal edition (free for non commercial use) can be obtained from here. You'll need to create a (free) account to BDN, and answer a quick survey. It will install the .NET Framework 1.1 if you haven't got it on your machine.

Going back to my tests ... ;-)

EMEA Architects Tour as a bonus on the Football247 DVD

If you had a chance to pick up one of the blue DVD entitled "Microsoft Football 24 7" at TechEd Barcelona, besides it's excellent primary content, you'll find in the bonus section the sessions of the "EMEA Architects Tour" recorded with Microsoft Producer (voice, slides and images synchronized). This bonus includes the following tracks:

Day 1

• Opening Session & Introduction - Arvindra Sehmi
• Architecture Selection - Henry Payret
• Service Orientated Architectures - Clemens Vasters
• Pattern Layering - Arvindra Sehmi
• Effective Architectures For Distributed Systems - Gianpaolo Carraro
• The Microsoft Frameworks (MSF & MOF) - Rafal Lukawiecki

Day 2

• Security in .Net for the Enterprise - Rafal Lukawiecki
• Architecture for Autonomous Computing Agents - Arvindra Sehmi
• Smart Clients Architecture - Gianpaolo Carraro 
• Architecting an Interoperability Framework - Arvindra Sehmi & Gianpaolo Carraro 
• Aspect-Orientated Programming & Meta-data Driven Infrastructures - Clemens Vasters

Great contents on this DVD. I'm keeping my second sample until it becomes very expensive on eBay ;-)

ASP.NET Web Matrix add-in documentation is coming

If - like me - you are a Web Matrix lover, you'll be happy to see that things are coming about the Add-in documentation. Colt has announced that there's an article from Carlos Aguilar from the ASP.NET team about writing, installing and using add-ins in Web Matrix. There's also an answer in the Web Matrix forum that says that the add-in documentation is in progress.

Carlos has also written a nice DB Diagram add-in for Web Matrix. I've tried it on the Community Starter Kit DB and it proved to be useful.

If you cannot wait to see the add-in documentation to start hacking around, reverting the DBDiagram add-in to source code by using Reflector or Anakrino might be a good idea. It gives some hints in the internal model of Web Matrix. For instance, these few lines of code test if a database table is opened as a document before the add-in launches:

protected override AddInForm CreateAddInForm()
{

TechEd '03 Europe Post Mortem and my Wish List for next edition

public void TechEd.Terminate()
{
   Attendees.Dispose();
}

Well, it's over now, and I'm back home. That's the best moment to look back and give a feedback on this great week. I heard from several people that it was one of the best TechEd in their 10 years history.

A speaker told me that for some details, the organization was even better than for the Dallas edition. This just to say to the European attendees that this TechEd in Barcelona was not a cheap one as compared to the US version, so do not be jalous ;-)

As Tom said, except some problems with the wireless LAN, everything was near perfect.

Here is my wish list for the next edition :

• A better Wireless LAN, and if possible, lots of cheap RJ45 ethernet hubs for those who need a stable connection to do VPN
• One more year in Barcelona. I heard rumors saying that next edition would take place in Amsterdam, but I really prefer Barcelona's climate and night life.
• Better promote the "Chat and Talks" sessions, since many attendees expected a normal session from these open discussions, and as a result, the evaluations were not so good
• Please do not schedule Don Box's session on the first slot, the morning after the TechEd party ;-) It's too tough
• A Compact Framework application instalable on PocketPC having a wireless connection to fill the evals
• Rent segways to ease deplacements in the conference hall ;-))
• Last one is not an easy one: More days and less sessions in parallel. Nor I will have to fork()
  

Don Box's session this morning about Web Services

It's always a great moment when Don Box comes and speaks. Though his session was pretty early this morning, starting at 8:30 - we had the TechEd party til late yesterday - the room was quite filled.

It's nearly impossible to sum up what Don said in this more than an hour and a half talk,  and one has to come and listen to fully benefit from it.

I do not subscribe to this SOA vision