Archives
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Look Mom, I’m On TV
MSDN TV that is, and they got my good side, the back of my head. The clip is Don Box's presentation on SOA at XmlDevCon. You can’t miss me, shoulder length black hair with the black shirt, right in the beginning of the clip. My wife is on the right of me, at the end of the aisle, and Steve Maine is sitting in front of me. Don Smith is in the front row on the right side (the bleached crewcut). Rory is in there too, on the left side.
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Article – Architect Your Enterprise
I recently read the new article by Paul Sheriff in the new Visual Studio Magazine Special Edition issue – “Architect Your Enterprise”, and I consider it a must read for any .Net architect, and especially anyone that is trying to get their company (or their area) to implement a standard architecture.
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Current Reading (or Re-Reading) List
I’ve been concentrating so much time on learning new technologies over the last couple years that I’ve been remiss in reading my non-computer books. So to help get me back in the swing of things, I decided to hit my personal library and pull out some of my favorites from just before I stopped. I got 2 science and 2 business books that I recommend highly.
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Encrypted Connection String Objects – New GDN User Sample
It took a while, but I finally finished a version of my Encrypted Connection String Objects that I could release to the public, and also handles SQL Server Connection Strings. You can get download it over at GDN.
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Converting Excel Worksheets and CSV files to a DataSet
I’ve been working on a bunch of cool new code that I’ll be releasing soon, but here’s an odd ball code snippet that I recently had to create:
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re: PDC Birds of a Feather Sessions
I mentioned the BOF sessions last week, and then Brad and Shawn made similar posts, but I recently found out that there will be no audio visual equipment at the BOF sessions (as per Dave reply to my post on the INTEA forums). IMHO, this pretty much eliminates a lot of the possible benefits of BOF sessions, the way they are setup now. If there will be no access to a/v equipment, they really should change the session setup to a panel discussion format, with one person acting as the MC, and let the audience question the panel. This way you really don’t need a/v equipment, and it would also help foster community involvement. A similar session to BOF was the Panel Discussion at XmlDevCon, and that went over great. The way it is setup now, one person submits a proposal and an abstract, but that person can’t really do a presentation without a/v equipment (nor does it seem that a presentation is really what the BOF sessions are all about). You need some way of including a list of panel members for each proposed session.
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Apress Introduces the Apress Forums
I just got an email from Apress announcing the launch of the “Apress Forums” which was created to help foster a community with their authors, contributors, and readers. As someone who has worked as an Apress tech reviewer, (on Kurt Cagle's SVG Programming book) they are actively trying to get me participate on the forums. Since I’m a sucker for that type of stuff, and I really enjoyed working with Apress, you should see may name there quite often (at least for a while anyway).
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INETA – PDC Birds of a Feather Session Discussion Forum
I totally missed this forum on the INETA site, but if you have suggestions for the PDC BOF sessions, you may want to stop by and make it public. Also, if you see a suggestion that you would want to go to, let them know. The BOF sessions gives us morts a chance to have a voice at the PDC.
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All SQLXML Blog Engine
I don’t know how many of you out there have been to Don Smith’s Dev4Net blog, but if you are into SQLXML, you should definitely stop by, it is written entirely in SQLXML 3.0, and he has made the source available.
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SubscriberTrack – Tracking Who Subscribes to Your Blog
Steve Maine is trying to figure out a way to track who subscribes to his blog. He wants something like Trackback or PingBack, but for RSS subscriptions. He suggests one possible solution using XML-RPC. Check out his blog entry for more info.
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Blogging Reducing the Potential Benefits of the PDC?
I’ll continue the Your Career thread, but with a different twist. First off, I’m going to the PDC, and as an indie consultant, I’m taking the time off (without pay), and paying my own way. The major reasons I go to events like this are:
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Sobering Thought Of the Day
Dr. (colonel) Richard Colin Campbell Ames in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert Heinlein:
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PDC – Paying My Own Way
I’ll be at the PDC. Since I’m an independent consultant I had to convince the world’s toughest boss (me), and the world’s toughest boss’ boss (my wife), of the cost benefit of going, but some how I managed to convince them. All kidding aside, I was going to post a long drawn out post replying to a bunch of the not going posts, but I’ll save the world from dragging this thing on any longer. I’ve known since last year that the PDC was going to be either the end of 2003 or the beginning of 2004, so I’ve budgeted for it.
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XBRL – The RSS of the Financial World?
Do you work on financial systems? Have you heard about eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)? It has been gaining popularity over the last couple years, and has seemed to hit the big time recently. I don’t do a lot of financial statement type stuff, but I bumped into this XML based language while researching some SVG stuff. It can be used to transfer financial statements, performance reports, accounting records, and other financial information between software programs. This royalty-free, open specification is being developed collaboratively to make it less costly for companies to publish financial information in a format that can be easily viewed and used by management, investors, regulators, and all of the participants in financial markets. There are lots of other XML based financial languages (FpML, Fix, FinXML, and OFX), but they are used for transaction processing. XBRL is used just for reporting. Looks to me that XBRL could be the RSS (or Atom) of the Financial World. One of the important uses of XBRL is for EDGAR filings, and XBRLExpress has a great digital dashboard that converts the XBRL EDGAR filings into interactive charts using SVG. It is a very cool example of the power of SVG and XML.
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Sonic Stylus Studio 5.0
I’ve been using Stylus since in was called Excelon Stylus 2.0, and the new Sonic Stylus Studio 5.0 is one heck of a XSLT IDE. In the previous version (4.5) they released a WYSIWYG editor (way before anyone else), and also added support for the .Net XML processor (along with existing support for MSXML, Xalan-J, Saxon, and their own processor), Source Control support, and post process support for XSL-FO via Apache FOP . Now with version 5.0 they have added:
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Article: Debug and Trace Your Code
With all the fuss over Edit and Continue still engrained in our minds, I’d like to take this time to point out a really cool article by Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati in the September Issue of VSMag. The two sharp things that I pull from this article where, the ability to control tracing functionality via the app config file, and the ability to redirect debugging and trace information to a listener application. Really good tools for those extremely complex apps (especially multithreaded apps)