Delivering business processing logic through RIA (Rich Internet Application) format is very attractive to architects, developers and operators of IT shops. RIA combines the richness of the desktop application with the ease of deployment, ubiquity and...

I recently spoke to a customer who wanted to know if Silverlight extracts the dlls (from the XAP) and stores them in the temp directories before building the type system in memory. The reason for the question was that they have a monitoring system that...

I was helping one of the customers on a proof of concept (POC) for an InfoPath based Office Business Application (OBA) and came across a feature request to display InfoPath from inline with the email message in Outlook. Providing a consistent user experience...

I recently was asked a question on the difference between entity service and a task service and how they differ from the service consumer and the provider perspective. Here is my definition of a task service: "A task service encapsulates a business process...

(Note: The following instructions are for information purpose only and correspond to Apache 2.2 on Windows. It should be pretty straight forward to translate them to LINUX and other UNIX variants. The guidance shown here has to be thoroughly tested in...

Thanks to the hype generated by the analyst community and followed by the vendors, every customer Enterprise Architect has gotten a directive from the above to create an SOA strategy. Often the directive is not a result of the realization of the need...

  I was impressed with the MAT tool that encapsulates all the information one has to be aware of, before attempting the application migration to Windows Azure platform. The tool addresses migration considerations including app server, database, integration...

I have heard intense debates on SaaS and SOA with no winners at the end. Some argue that SaaS and SOA are the same and some try to convince others that SaaS is different from SOA. I am one of the guilty parties who participated in the above debates one...

In this post we will look at one of the architectural aspects of the enterprise class applications - application partitioning. Application partitioning is done for variety of reasons including the following: To optimize download times To chunk the application...

IE9 was available for download globally at www.BeautyOfTheWeb.com at 9PM PST today. The following are a few aspects of IE9 that will surprise you:  1. IE9 is the fastest adopted beta in IE browser history .  With over 40M downloads and a usage...

Windows Azure PDC Announcements Here is a list of PDC announcements (excluding AppFabric) made by Bob Muglia during the PDC 2010 Keynote which can be viewed on demand at ( http://www.microsoftpdc.com ): Calendar Year 2010 · Virtual Machine (VM) role ...

Here are a list of products, in no particular order, which will help improve the quality of end user experience for Azure hosted applications. This list is an organic aggregation of tribal knowledge and is not a definitive one. If you have any suggestions...

At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference today, Microsoft announced IIS Smooth Streaming through Windows Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network) infrastructure. Previously Windows Azure CDN only supported structured and unstructured file...

Last week I was at US National Architect Forum ( http://www.architectforum.net ,Vail Cascade resort, Colorado ) facilitating roundtable discussions and architect panels. As expected SOA was a topic intensely discussed. The participating architects wanted...

I stumbled upon this cool training on Office 2007: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5cb386ff-1b77-4adc-a42f-f5ea375e4ed1&displaylang=en The training covers all the major sub products including: Word Development, Sharepoint...

Considering Silverlight being in its 3rd rev, end users often come across scenarios where a web browser need to render pages composed from applications compiled against different Silverlight versions. As only one version of the Silverlight plug-in can...

Distributed in-memory cache from Microsoft at last! Velocity is the code name for this distributed in-memory cache with the following features: Distributed in-memory cache A cluster of cache hosts provides fault tolerance Supports optimistic as well pessimistic...

CEO of Salesforce.com suggests that Microsoft hates everyone( http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/03/salesforcecom-on-microsoft-they-hate-everybody/ ) by suggesting that we are not an open cloud platform. His assertions are debatable and even his love to everyone...

Microsoft Azure Services platform allows the creation of logical application ecosystem from the applications spread across proprietary data centers. This reduces IT inertia in meeting the changing business needs and thereby improving business agility...

Anne Thomas Manes, a well respected SOA analyst from Burton Group ( http://apsblog.burtongroup.com/2009/01/soa-is-dead-long-live-services.html ) talks about SOA (as originally envisioned – to reduce costs, increase business agility, compose solutions...

Here is a list of the recently published PHP virtual labs for those who wants to learn about running PHP applications on Windows Server: · TechNet Virtual Lab: IIS 7.0 Access Control Features for PHP Applications · TechNet Virtual Lab: Migrating PHP Applications...

The following couple of postings explore the business challenges associated with the building of next generation data centers: Designing Generation 4.0 Data Centers: The Engineers’ Approach to Solving Business Challenges - Part 1 Designing Generation...

  There has been lot of talk on the definition of Cloud Computing and the fundamental differences between public and private clouds in the architect and decision maker community. The definition I like for Cloud Computing is: “On-demand utility computing...

The following videos were recently published; I am posting here so that I can find them some day!   Windows 7 Feature Overview http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9670048&clcid=0x409 Demo 1:  Introducing DirectAccess http://go.microsoft.com...

The best all-up run-down of all the features (WPF, ASP.NET, WinForms, VS etc.) can be found on Scott Guthrie’s blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/05/12/visual-studio-2008-and-net-framework-3-5-service-pack-1-beta.aspx Tim Sneath's write...