John R. Durant's WebLog

The Innovation Decision

John R. Durant — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:42:27 GMT

For over a decade I have enjoyed so very much being a leading voice for custom solutions that integrate with Microsoft Office. The last 7 ½ years of that time have been as a Microsoft employee gleefully carrying my blue-badge with me all over the world. I’ve gone many places and talked with thousands of people about developing custom productivity solutions. Above all, I’ve been continually amazed and impressed with the many ways our customers extend and customize Office, SharePoint, Exchange, and the rest of the platform to suit their business needs. I remain as confident as ever in the value of Office 2010 and related products to Microsoft’s customers.

Beginning in September, I will be giving voice to new ideas, topics, and initiatives as I begin working for Savvy Sherpa, the best strategic research and business development firm in the world. I’ll be working with valued clients in a variety of industries to incubate and pilot new business products, campaigns, and processes.

Given the changes, I’m retiring this MSDN blog as of today, 11 August 2010. There will be no more updates, and comments will be turned off, but I’ll leave the content as it is. And, I have a new blog oriented around innovation and looking at a variety of problems in new strategic ways:

http://ideasareeverything.wordpress.com

You can also follow my new updates on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/johnrdurant

Here is the final Rock Thought of the Day (unless someday I become a writer for Total Guitar magazine<wink>):

The Heavier Side: Top Ten Songs and Why--

10. Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love by Van Halen— Strangely this song still conveys some element of pop, but it’s actually a very heavy song, loaded with attitude, anger, and isolation. Eddie’s guitar work is unmistakably his own. Re-recorded today it would sound richer and more forceful.

9. Don’t Forget Me by Red Hot Chili Peppers—This song evokes such desperate colors, one of the finest examples of musicians exhibiting maximum trust—trusting the notes and tones to do their job. It very patiently builds layers of dissonance, loneliness.

8. Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin—This is the band in full flight—all the swagger, the seduction, the psychedelic trip. The rhythm section is utterly unshakable allowing Jimmy and Robert to take us places we’ve never been before or since.

7. United States by The Smashing Pumpkins—This song shouts so loud that you are forced to hear. It’s 11 minutes of wrath unleashed. Billy and Jimmy tear down every wall with this one. As my readers know, it’s hard to pick only one SP song, because Geek USA, Silverf***, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Everlasting Gaze, and Marquis in Spades, Tales of Scorched Earth, and so many others are so very good.

6. Tom Sawyer by Rush— This song takes an ingénue and casts him against a backdrop of modern confusion where he’s threatened, ready to strike back. It crashes like a wave on the shores of our innocence.

5. I’m Broken by Pantera—If you ever wondered why Dimebag Darrell is so revered, just listen to the first two bars, and you’ll know—it’s riffing at its best. The whole song is a megaphone of distressed indignation.

4. Judas Rising by Judas Priest—Relentless and fierce. Metal posers of the last 20 years need to use this masterpiece of smoking hot rage as the measuring stick for their efforts.

3. Centuries of Sin by Probot—This is David Grohl’s homage to his metal heroes, and Cronos does the vocals. The song is almost painfully tight, and the energy is frantic. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. A real standout in a world of white-hot wildness.

2. Jambi by Tool— It is one of the few songs I can listen to multiple times in succession and never tire of a single note. It’s as close to a perfect song as mere mortals can write.

1. Blackened by Metallica—In my mind still the pinnacle of their song writing. Metal was never better before or after by any band.

Rock On

Promoting Office 2010 in Peru

John R. Durant — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:56:44 GMT

I just completed a much-needed 2 week vacation in Peru with one of my sons. While there, I wore my Office 2010 t-shirt as well as my Office branded hat, and it prompted some conversations about the products--- even while hiking over a mountain pass or two!

While I was away, I wasn’t blogging or even reading email, and that was great!

Now, I’m back, and the blog entries will begin to flow once again. If you’d like to see the brief video montage of my trip, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BFTw_CmZQI

(created using Microsoft Movie Maker as part of the Windows Live Essentials beta)

Rock Thought of the Day: The National have produced something innovative and fresh with their recently released album “High Violet”. In a world where so-called “indie” bands are sounding as conventional as the over-packaged bands during the final gasps of the Giant Label Era, The National are doing what any great band should do, irrespective of how they strike a distribution deal: Make music that takes us on a new journey.

Rock On

Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011: Which Band Should Perform?

John R. Durant — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:35:04 GMT

As you all know the SharePoint Conference last year in Las Vegas was a great show (here are links to broadcasts of several of our sessions). I followed the show with a ticket to see U2’s 360 concert (unlike any other spectacle in rock-and-roll).

Since then, I’ve often been asked, “Is there going to be another SPC in 2010?”. The answer is: The next one is October 3-6, 2011 in Anaheim, California.

The weather in Cali is truly unbeatable, and the conference is sure to be another smash with great content all around.

I’d like to know, if we have a band perform at the attendee party—which band do you want to see?

Registration will open Spring 2011. Add yourself to the “keep me notified list” to stay up to date on all conference announcements at www.mssharepointconference.com.

If you have further questions about the show, you can email: SPC@Microsoft.com

Rock Thought of the Day: Of course, I would want to see Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins play, and SharePoint Conference 2011 would be on the map as the “Woodstock” of tech conferences! The biggest issues would be budget and scheduling. I would consider other bands, but it is not just about getting the biggest name. The selection has to work in the context of the overall conference. Other options I would consider (not necessarily in order of preference):

311
The Thermals
The Black Crowes
The Raconteurs
B-52’s
Dave Matthews Band

Rock On

Microsoft Office 2010 General Availability

John R. Durant — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:11:18 GMT

So, I was at TechEd 2010 talking a lot about Office 2010 solutions development last week and love was in the air…mostly because I gave out hundreds of t-shirts with our www.iheartmacros.com URL on them. I would say to people coming to our kiosk, “This shirt loves you” and hand them a shirt. But, I digress.

I did an interview for Channel 9 that’s getting lots of view. In it I discuss what’s new for solution building with Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. I really like the way this video was produced. Check it out here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/TheOfficeBlog/Developing-Solutions-for-Microsoft-Office-2010/

Also, today Office 2010 is generally available, and I have to say that the overall vibe at the kiosk last week was “rationally exuberant”. People are genuinely excited about what we’ve done in Office 2010 including the tighter integration with SharePoint 2010. Here are a two resources/cool materials related to the product that have shown up in the past few days:

1) Great blog post on how to view broadcast presentations on a mobile phone.

I demo’d this extensively at TechEd, and it was a big winner. Nothing beats creating presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint, but we should be able to see them anywhere. Now, that’s easier than ever.

2) Adding to the PowerPoint goodness are these: Some exceedingly attractive PowerPoint 2010 templates with embedded videos and innovative animations.

Here’s the maxim to remember: Every effective custom solution has to start with a truly great user experience.

IOW: users love and are familiar with the Office applications. The primary benefit of custom solutions in Office is to allow users to work in that familiar way while connecting their experience to more corporate resources such as workflows, databases, and more.

Rock Thought of the Day: Is The Cure’s Disintegration one of the best rock albums of all-time? I would argue that it is. It still occupies an artistic level that few of the best bands in the past 30 years will ever achieve. Now—you can get the 3-CD deluxe remaster with rarities of this album—supervised by Robert Smith himself (who else?).

Also—I’ve become rather intrigued by the work of the increasingly well-known artist Guillermo Kuitca. Check out his work with maps, print, and spaces.

Rock On

Open XML at TechEd 2010

John R. Durant — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:38:10 GMT

Open XML was a big part of my first session at TechEd 2010 called, "Office 2010: Developing the Next Wave of Productivity Solutions". The thing that gets the biggest reaction is the Open XML SDK 2.0 "Productivity Tool"-- especially the ability to reflect over an Office document to produce C# code that will produce the target document. Here's the scenario: I have a Word document (Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint deck) that a user produced manually. I want to be able to produce that same document via C# code. To do this, you point the Productivity Tool at the doc and then choose Reflect Code menu in the tool. In the pane on the right will appear the full C# code you need to produce the doc.

From there, you can paste the code into a fresh Visual Studio project (say a commandline project). You can press F5 and see the doc get produced. From there, you can alter the C# code to suit the needs of your specific business solution. Zeyad and Brian has blogged extensively about this tool and the SDK.

Attending my session was Mike Huguet, a consultant and trainer with SparkHound. He does a ton with Open XML, and I chatted with him for 2 minutes on video which you can see below. Apologies that my voice sounds a bit thrashed, and it was noisy on the expo floor. But, you can still hear how Open XML is being used by customers as Mike describes it.

Discussing Open XML

Rock Thought of the Day: Check out LCD Soundsystem "All I Want" from their album This is Happening. Also, got get The Dead Weather's "Die By The Drop". Jack White is starting getting very close to making my list of top rock artists of all time. He is endlessly interesting, compelling, suprising. "I'm going to take you for worse or better"

Rock On

Microsoft Office Programmability Delivers for Consultant’s Customers

John R. Durant — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:03:56 GMT

I’ve talked with with many dozens of customers here at TechEd 2010 about Office 2010 and shown them a lot of demos at the kiosk. As they arrive I hand them a www.iheartmacros.com t-shirt (hugely popular, btw). Very often the response is: “This is great. I actually do love macros and VBA”. I’m not surprised.

In the following 2 minute video clip I talk with Mike Corkery, a consultant and IT trainer who specializes in Office development and training. He mentions how a relatively small amount of Office code simplified a more time-consuming and complex process for one of his customers. You can contact Mike at mjcorkery@cssiofma.com.

Enjoy!

TechEd 2010: Office Delivers for Consultant’s Customers

Rock Thought of the Day: I’m rocking to some Judas Priest while creating this blog entry. Songs like “Living After Midnight” and “Screaming for Vengeance” are acetylene-powered rock and roll. Heavy metal has never been better than this.

Rock On

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,Office,Microsoft,Developer,VBA

New Office VBA site launch on MSDN

John R. Durant — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:25:55 GMT

MSDN now features a special site (also accessible via www.iheartmacros.com) dedicated to Microsoft Office VBA - an important part of the Office 2010 value.

The site presents a clear path for technically savvy users to begin learning how to customize the Office applications to meet their needs. This new MSDN site highlights content for:

What you can do with VBA
How to get started
Key blogs
VBA tips & tricks
Access to a new interactive training tool, the Office Developer Atlas.

In addition to previously published VBA content the site features new videos, samples, and articles to enrich the knowledge of VBA users across the learning spectrum.

Head to the site, check out the content, and tell us what you think!

Rock Thought of the Day: I am so happy to own Volume 1 of the Smashing Pumpkins “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope”.

It comes in a screen-printed wooden box containing a polished stone, the CD, and a vinyl 45 of one of the songs. The packaging and the songs have that Billy Corgan touch as the whole ensemble is surprising, unpredictable, multi-layered, and serving up just great rock-and-roll.

Rock On

Office 2010 & SharePoint 2010: Platform for Innovation

John R. Durant — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:30:09 GMT

There's a great new article by Michael Desmond in Visual Studio Magazine called "Office Alignment: Why Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are poised to unleash a new wave of developer innovation". Read it and you'll get Michael's always engaging insight into the new products investments in this release, and you'll read about some key customers who have leveraged the platform to drive their business.

I've been reading a lot about innovation, and it can be a topic that begins to elude us when we get too theoretical. The bottom line is that it means coming up with something new that drives forward the goals of an organization in an identifiable, measurable way. Customers who use Office and SharePoint as the backbone of their business productivity need to do more on a tighter budget. They need to get more out of the all of the investments they make, including IT. To me, that's an opportunity.

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are extensible, which means you can program them to do more than they do right out of the box. Developers can leverage the APIs and services in SharePoint and Office through Visual Studio .NET to tailor the software to meet the needs of specific users, departments, or a whole organization. For example, IT can connect SharePoint to line-of-business data sources such as accounts receivable/accounts payable and serve up the data in a customized way as a SharePoint site. Then, they can connect this to custom experiences right inside the Office client applications like Excel, Word, Outlook, etc. Moreover, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can create solutions that leverage the same infrastructure to serve a world-wide set of customers.

If you want to get an overview of "what's new" in Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Visual Studio 2010 for developers and also see how these translate into real advantages for customers, this Visual Studiio Magazine article is a great place to start.

As you want to learn more, here are some great places to go:

MSDN for Office: http://msdn.microsoft.com/office

MSDN for SharePoint: http://msdn.microsoft.com/SharePoint

Office Developer Atlas: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/en-us/office/media/Atlas/Default.html

Office Developer Guild on FB: http://www.facebook.com/officedeveloperguild

Keeping It Real With Microsoft Office: Asking Questions About Solution Design

John R. Durant — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:38:00 GMT

I just finished a whirlwind swing through Amsterdam, The Hague, Antwerp, and finally Vienna Austria. I've already blogged about the first three cities, but this last one is the focus of this post.

I went to Vienna mainly to meet with some customers in order to provide guidance around Office solutions and also to gather input and feedback. Most of my time on Friday 2 April was spent meeting with Rubicon (www.rubicon.eu), one of our Gold Partners based in Vienna. Thomas Kuhta, CEO for Rubicon, and his team including Markus Leimhofer and Ernst Scheithauer, along with representatives from Vienna Insurance Group and Business Insurance Application Consulting (Martin Bischof) showed me the details of an elaborate Microsoft Office-based solution called ECMS. This solution is designed to meet the needs of customers across many different geographies and includes a mobile-user option.

You can read more about it here: Customer- wr städtische Partner- rubicon

It's all in German, but using Bing Translator you get a pretty good rendition in English or the language of your choosing.

What impresses me about all of this is the final value things like Open XML in Microsoft Office bring. For developers, there's always a temptation to get caught up in the excitement of a given technology-a mostly intellectual enterprise. I made this mistake earlier in my career, and it was costly. Fortunately, I gained wisdom and learned that we need to 'keep things real' and always focus on what the final value is on a number of important fronts. Below are a few considerations.

As you approach a given task or project, force yourself to ask the tough questions such as:

-- Will what I'm doing make life easier for a non-technical person? Even if it will, can I move their experience from good to better to best?

Most business solutions built on Microsoft Office are designed to save users time, reduce complexity, or automate steps in a long process. But, that's the minimum requirement. Reach farther.

-- Is what I'm about to code have an inherent ability to adapt to new business needs and new requirements?

Business solutions are often out of date soon after they are rolled out. That's OK, and it's to be expected. Business needs change, and your design has to take this into account. At the same time, don't fall into the trap of over-engineering things. You want to build in flexibility without trying to create nearly infinite adaptability which will ultimately add milestones to your schedule.

-- On a scale of 1 to 10, to what extent is the technology I'm using in this solution untested, untried, or just a fad?

This one is tricky. New things are not necessarily to be avoided. But, to figure out which new technologies to bet on, take into account the big picture. See how the new technology or software fits into the broader context of where the industry is going. It's analogous to being a trader on Wall Street. Many traders desperately and usually fail to pick out of nowhere the next "big thing" and cash in on that IPO or stock. The risks are huge. Taking a similar approach to software technologies is foolish at best, because no CIO's can take those kinds of risks in their IT infrastructure. But, that doesn't mean you need to sit on your hands and wait until a technology is super popular to get started. You might miss some important opportunities. So, to mitigate the risk, get informed (just like a stock trader should!). Learn as much as you can not just about the technology but even more about the overall market and industry. This will help you avoid costly mistakes.

-- Does the functional design build on existing user experiences or does it require a completely new set of UI and software requirements?

People love the user experience in Microsoft Office. Why not build on that rather than creating an application with completely distinct UI and flow? Many of our partners, like Rubicon, do just this. They leverage the familiarity of Microsoft Office to land an augmented experience through a custom solution.

So-as I sat in the beautiful offices of Rubicon there in Vienna Austria I was struck by how well they had made the right calls, in my personal view, both technically and strategically. Later on, I was able to see the city, and I must say it is one of the cleanest European cities I have ever seen. The architecture is distinct and classy. I could sense the history of the place-a palpable desire to reach higher. Even the taxi driver who drove me to the airport for my trip home at 4am was so excited to have me listen to his "Learn English on CD" training courses. He was thrilled to be learning something new and couldn't wait to try it out on me at 110 decibels!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office,Developer,Productivity

Connect Microsoft Excel To SQL Azure Database

John R. Durant — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:17:57 GMT

A number of people have found my post about getting started with SQL Azure pretty useful. But, it's all worthless if it doesn't add up to user value. Database are like potential energy in physics-it's a promise that something could be put in motion. Users actually making decisions based on analysis is analogous to kinetic energy in physics. It's the fulfillment of the promise of potential energy.

So what does this have to with Office 2010? In Excel 2010 we made it truly easy to connect to a SQL Azure database and pull down data. Here I explain how to do it.

By following these steps you will be able to:

1. Create an Excel data connection to a SQL Azure database

2. Select the data to import into Excel

3. Perform the data import

All mistakes herein, if any, are my own. Please alert me to potential errors.

Import SQL Azure Data Into Excel

You need to be running Excel 2010 (post-Beta 2 builds) for these steps to work properly.

In Excel 2010 select the Data tab on the Office Ribbon. Choose Get External Data and then press From Other Sources. In the resulting list select From SQL Server.
The Data Connection Wizard launches. Add the server name (for SQL Azure), user name, and password. Then press Next.
The wizard will then let you choose the table or view. Choose a table or view and press Finish.
The Import Data dialog lets you select where you want the data to land in Excel. Choose a location and press OK.

The designer will display your tables. You can close the designer after adding the tables.

Now, the user can work with the data just as with any other collection of data in Excel. Excel can save your connection information as a *.odc file so that you can re-connect any time.

Resources

· Getting Started Integrating Windows Azure with Microsoft Office Solutions

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,Devleoper,Excel,Productivity,Windows Azure,SQL Azure

Rock Thought of the Day: Listen to the Song "The Weary Kind" from the film Crazy Heart. This is what country music is all about at it's core. It's not pop glitter or just a lazy twang, my friends. It's about heart-ache and pain, about loss and yearning, about trying to measure up in our hearts to what our dreams tells us we can be. Country music was my first music love-affair. I listened to Trini Lopez, George Jones, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and so many more. Their songs had soul and stirred something in me that has never settled down going on four decades later.

Rock On

Microsoft TechDays 2010 in Antwerp Belgium

John R. Durant — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:53:36 GMT

I caught a train from Den Haag to Antwerp in Belgium on Wednesday afternoon. You can see the Dutch countryside in this short clip.

Traveling by train to Antwerp.

I used to live in Belgium when I was a missionary for my church 25 years ago, and I fell in love with all things Belgian! It's one of the great gems of Europe. Anyway, I delivered my standard "What's New In Office 2010 for Developers" but I added some new demos to keep it fresh. The session was a huge success, and there were good questions. I must say that I had a U2-size screen as my display screen for the session. It's the biggest I've ever had during a show. You can see it during the intro to my session here:

The Jumbotron at TechDays 2010

Here's a quick 30-second interview with Katrien de Graeve who drive the developer content at the TechDays show. We need her in Belgium helping get the word out, but she'd be successful working at Microsoft's corporate office helping drive things from there, too!

Katrien de Graeve gives her reaction to the TechDays 2010 show

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office,Developer,TechDays 2010

Rock On

Microsoft DevDays 2010 Day #3 with Open XML

John R. Durant — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:40:14 GMT

I've been running at a fast pace for the past few days, so I'm going to add a few posts here to catch up.

Day 3 of the DevDays event in the Netherlands was a success. I delivered a session on "Open XML Solution Building With Word and Excel Services". Huge thanks to Zeyad Rajabi for pulling together some of the server-side demos I showed.

Among the 10 or so demos I showed I showed people how to connect to a datasource and start pumping data into a document. For example, what about connecting to a database and producing a Word document through Open XML? It's a common scenario, and there are lots of blog entries out there that show how to do this. Well, here's another one!

A common developer task to produce Word documents based on data in a database. I'm going to show you how to pump data into a table in Word with some formatting.

By following these steps you will be able to:

1. Create a new project for your Open XML Solution

2. Add the proper references

3. Connect to a database (in this case SQL Azure!)

4. Loop through LINQ query results

5. Add a new table to the document with columns and rows

6. Test the application

All mistakes herein, if any, are my own. Please alert me to potential errors.

Set Up The VS Project & Debug

Before creating this solution, make sure you have installed the Open XML SDK 2.0. Also, make sure you have access to the AdventureWorks database. You can still install this database from here: http://sqlserversamples.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=SQLServerDatabasesandSamplesOverview.

In Visual Studio, create a new C# console application project called WordDBMerge
Add references to: · DocumentFormat.OpenXML · WindowsBase Right click References in Solution Explorer and select Add Reference.
In the Add Reference dialog box choose the two components for DocumentFormat.OpenXML and WindowsBase. Then, press
Add a LINQ To SQL class by right-clicking the project in Solution Explorer. Choose Add New Item from the context menu. In the resulting dialog box, add a LINQ to SQL class named AdventureWorks.dbml.
Visual Studio will display the designer for your LINQ to SQL class. From the Server Explorer drag the following tables to the designer surface: · Contact · Employee · Sales Territory · Sales Person
The designer will display your tables. You can close the designer after adding the tables.
Add a class by right-clicking the project in Solution Explorer. Choose Add New Item from the context menu. In the resulting dialog box, add a class named SimpleWord.cs.
Make sure your using statements include a reference to Open XML.
In your custom class add a procedure that kicks off the doc gen process by creating a new Open XML package.
Every Open XML file has a main document part. You'll add a new one of these to the newly created Open XML document. The code also calls another method to the main work of adding content from the database to a table. This procedure is GenerateMainDocumentPart2Content.
Add the code from this file to your class to fill out the GenerateMainDocumentPart2Content method.	File
Add the code from this file to your class to fill out the GenerateContent method.	File
Add the code from this file to your class to fill out the AddTable method.	File
Now, open the Program.cs file and add the following two lines of code to the class constructor.
Press F5 to debug the project.
Look in the Debug folder for your project and open the output.docx file.

Now, you can alter the code in the GenerateContent procedure to alter the formatting, add new columns etc.

Resources

· Brian Jones & Zeyad Rajabi's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/

· Eric White's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ericwhite/

· Open XML Web Site: www.openxmldeveloper.org

· Open XML on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb265236.aspx

Here's a vide of two people I meet at the show in the Netherlands. They are both very smart and very nice!

Mirjam and Marianne at the Netherlands DevDays 2010

Technorati Tags: Open XML,Office 2010,Office,Microsoft,Developer,TechDays 2010

Rock On

Microsoft DevDays 2010 Day 2

John R. Durant — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:54:15 GMT

I delivered a session today that describes what's new in Office 2010 for solution developers. It's a session that I have evolved over the past year. My core demos have also evolved, and I'm pleased with the impact they make. The session was well attended, and I was pleased to see plenty of enthusiasm for Microsoft Office solutions from the good folks in the Netherlands.

My demo image is still based on Office 2010 Beta 2, and that's something I'm already in the process of changing. I'm moving to RC (then RTM) bits for the demos so that they perform faster and look sharper.

Here are two videos from the show today. The first is of "XBox Row"-long bank of XBox kiosks so people can get their gaming fix. I have to confess that my gaming level ends at Minesweeper in Windows. My sons have tried to teach me to play XBox, but I simply stink, and I'm not willing to dedicate myself to learning more. I'm comfortable being left behind in this area of societal trends.

XBox at DevDays 2010

The second brief video features two attendees to my session-Jasper and Ivo. They were extraordinarily welcoming, and we had a great lunch together talking about cultural perspectives in the United States and the Netherlands.

Netherlands best!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,Devleoper,Office,Productivity,Windows Azure,SQL Azure,DevDays 2010

Rock Thought of the Day: Can you dig the opening guitar riff in Journey's "Stone in Love"? Memorable opening, and the song just kicks tail all the way through. There were actually quite a good number of solid songs in the 80's. Melloncamp laid down some great tracks as did Van Halen, Judas Priest, Metallica, Scorpions, Queen. Good times.

Rock On

Getting Started Integrating Windows Azure with Microsoft Office Solutions

John R. Durant — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:53:00 GMT

Nearly everyone starts learning anything new by beginning with something simple and adding incremental knowledge. One of the biggest challenges with Windows Azure and SQL Azure is that the simple beginning seems a bit more elusive. The "Hello World" application in the new world of cloud computing, while not overly complex in concept, requires a good measure of preparation and configuration.

The following content is designed to aid you in getting started with Windows Azure and SQL Azure in the spirit of "Hello World" beginnings. By following these steps you will be able to:

1. Get a Windows Azure account and purchase a (free) plan

2. Set up your development environment locally

3. Create a simple cloud service with an accompanying ASP.NET application that will serve up some data

4. Test the application locally

5. Publish the application to Windows Azure

6. Test the application in the cloud

7. Create a SQL Azure database

8. Migrate a local database to SQL Azure

9. Configure an ASP.NET application to consume the SQL Azure data

I wanted to thank every person whose content on the Internet helped me when I was getting started with Windows Azure, but the list actually became really long. So, if you are one of the intrepid souls who has posted a blog entry about Windows Azure in the past 12 months, there is a good chance I read it, and I thank you! I've added links to some of that content at the end of this post.

All mistakes herein, if any, are my own. Please alert me to potential errors.

Set Up Environment

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/getstarted/

Requirements
OS	Windows 7, Windows 2008 Server, Windows Vista (SP1)
IIS	IIS 7 with ASP.NET and WCF enabled
SDK	Install SDK 1.1

Purchase A Plan

Introductory Special
Compute	25 hours
Storage	500 MBs of storage
Storage Transactions	10,000 storage transactions
SQL Web DB	1 Web Edition db less then 1GB
Access Control	100,000 Access Control transactions
Service Bus	2 Service Bus connections

Note: You'll need a Windows Live ID to purchase plan and get things going.

Create Service In Azure

Make sure to run Visual Studio as Administrator
Give your service a meaningful name and description
Configure the service · Give it a public service name · Make it not restricted to any location unless you think you need it. ·
Press Create

Create Visual Studio Cloud Service Project

Make sure to run Visual Studio as Administrator
Choose File \| New \| Project in Visual Studio
Add Web forms to Web Role
Add Code

Test Cloud Service Project

Press F5 to debug
View Web role in action

Publish Cloud Service Project to Azure

Select Cloud Service project and press Build \| Publish
Go to Windows Azure control panel and in Hosted Service section, go to Staging and press Deploy.
Specify the Configuration and Definition files in the console
Navigate to application

Create SQL Azure Database

In Windows Azure console go to SQL Azure section and choose Create Database
Give your database a name
Configure admin credentials

Connect to Local Database in Visual Studio

For example: add LINQ to SQL class
Connect to local database table(s)
Add table(s) to class
Configure code to serve up the data
Test Web role project

Move Local Database to SQL Azure

Prepare database for migration	· Each table must have clustered index · SQL Azure does not accept all commands
Use SQL Management Studio
Optional: Use SQL Azure Migration Wizard. Major props to Wade Wegner for taking this on.
Optional: Script database	· Generate script for database from SQL Server · Alter script to conform to SQL Azure restrictions
Change connection settings in Web.config file for Web role project

Publish Updated Cloud Service Project to Azure

Select Cloud Service project and press Build \| Publish
Go to Windows Azure control panel and in Hosted Service section, go to Staging and press Update.
Specify the Configuration and Definition files in the console
Navigate to application

From here, we need to now hook this database up to our Microsoft Office 2010 solution. That part is actually much easier than you may think! I'll show you now next.

More Resources

Samples: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazuresamples
SQL Azure Samples: http://beyondrelational.com/wikis/sqlazure/sql-azure-samples.aspx
Decent tutorial on how to get started: http://ed.mldconsultants.com/?p=45#more-45
Rob Bagby's very solid intro: http://www.robbagby.com/azure/azure-application-part-1-setup-and-running-hello-world
Northwind on Azure: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/archive/2009/09/10/restful-northwind-on-sql-azure.aspx

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,Devleoper,Office,Productivity,Windows Azure,SQL Azure,DevDays 2010

Rock Thought of the Day: Listen to The Thermals "Power Doesn't Run On Nothing". This song is like a transplant from 1978 into 2006-very punktastic.

Rock On

To Catch A Thief at Microsoft DevDays 2010

John R. Durant — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:17:02 GMT

Here's a quick update. I was down at a nice reception at the hotel for the conference speakers when a door is violently thrown open and a guys goes running through and down the hall. Following closely behind was a security guard. I immediately took off running after both of them. We tore down a long hallway and out the door of the hotel into the street. I had caught up to the security guard, but the thief had put a little distance between himself and the guard. The guard gave up the chase.

The crook (definitely not representative of the amazingly generous people here in Holland) had attempted to steal one of the computers we have at the conference. Fortunately, it was tethered with a security device, and the theft was not successful. My adrenaline was juiced. I was ready to throw down.

Here's a quick video I took of the security guard-a very nice man. He said, "Just doing my job."

Just doing his job!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,Devleoper,Office,Productivity,DevDays 2010

Rock Thought of the Day: Here's a song for the man who was takin' care of business: http://www.last.fm/music/Bachman-Turner+Overdrive/_/Takin%27+Care+of+Business

Rock On

Microsoft DevDays 2010 Day #1

John R. Durant — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:57:41 GMT

It's been an eventful day here at Microsoft DevDays 2010, and the show hasn't even officially started! First item of business is to get to a hotel for rest and get some great food-not necessarily in that order.

My flight was as good as one can expect- the guy next to me, Jim Anderson, was affable but not overly chatty, and he's a soundman on European tour with The Sonics. Jim was the house-sound guy for the Crocodile Café for many years, and it was great to talk to a guy who loves audio like I do.

Finished a great book on the plane: The Lords of Finance about the leaders of the biggest banks in the world and the monetary decisions that led to the Great Depression. Very timely topic. It is truly remarkable how so much of human history is affected on a grand scale simply because two powerful people didn't share the same communication style or a preference for when to take tea.

Arrived in Amsterdam and a car was waiting for me. The long ride in a taxi cab with several hundred cartons of cigarette smoke residue embedded in the upholstry made me wonder if I wasn't getting more osmosis-nicotine than if I had worn the Nicorette patch. Anyway, I shared the ride with Microsoft MVP Scott Allen, and he was truly great company. We had breakfast at a cool place called "Tasty". I then went for a nice walk around The Hague and took this short video of a cheese shop:

Tasty Cheese!

I came back to my room and worked for a while, then slept for the first time since Saturday night. I got three hours of sleep. I've been catching up on email-the currency that I trade in my job. I'm something of a Hedge Fund manager in email messages to my inbox.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,Devleoper,Office,Productivity,DevDays 2010

Rock Thought of the Day: Love some of the songs on the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack. The movie was a 2.5 stars, however (don't worry folks-I saw it for free on the plane).

Rock On

Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office Is Live

John R. Durant — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:55:35 GMT

I speak with customers every day about the productivity solutions they build using Microsoft Office. Rarely now do my conversations not include a discussion of Open XML. This is because it is such a powerful way to work with Office documents as a data source.

Basically, developers can shuttle data in and out of Office documents by working with the underlying document XML without invoking the Office object models. The documents can then be more easily integrated in platform agnostic kinds of ways. Users get to work with the documents in the applications they love, and developers can leverage the document content anywhere it is needed.

Now, developers working with the Open XML file formats in solutions like this have more powerful tools and guidance via the Open XML SDK 2.0. Check out Zeyad Rajabi's excellent session from SharePoint Conference 2009 where he demonstrates the SDK and Open XML with very compelling demos.

What is the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office?

The Open XML Format SDK 2.0 is a superset of the Open XML SDK 1.0. It contains a collection of classes that let you create and manipulate Open XML documents - documents that adhere to the Office Open XML File Formats Standard. The SDK provides an API that lets you manipulate Open XML documents directly outside the context of the client products in both client and server operating environments.

We've added support for .NET Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) and classes to construct and query the contents of parts within a package. We've expanded the number of tools and resources to improve programmatic document processing thus making a task of the developer more efficient and with less code.

Microsoft has released an RTM version of Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office today, and here's where you can get the download & online versions:

	Download the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office This download provides strongly typed part and content classes for use with Open XML documents. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c6e744e5-36e9-45f5-8d8c-331df206e0d0
	MSDN Online version of the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office This reference provides strongly typed part and content classes to manipulate Open XML documents. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb448854(office.14).aspx

Distribution and requirement notes

· Open XML SDK 2.0 is freely redistributable by any solution provider implementing the formats.

· Office applications are not required to use the Open XML SDK 2.0, and no software purchase is required. Developers can freely use the Open XML SDK to build document processing solutions for Microsoft Office files and for other implementations of the IS29500 standard.

Rock Thought of the Day: Been listening to the spectral song Flume by Bon Iver. There's something so powerful about collapsing days and hours of emotion into one moment of expression.

Rock On

Microsoft Office Developer Sessions from SharePoint Conference 2009 Now Live

John R. Durant — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:36:02 GMT

Readers of the blog know that SharePoint Conference 2009 had some pretty memorable highlights. Now, we're excited to announce that five key Office developer sessions are now freely viewable online. Here's the list of sessions:

What's New in Office 2010 for Developers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ff436077.aspx

This session gives you insight into the investments we've made in Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Visual Studio 2010 to improve the Office solution development experience.

Access Web Databases: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ff436079.aspx

This session provides insight into our Access investments in this release. Biggest item is that you can publish the DB to SharePoint. But, there's more news.

Excel and Excel Services: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ff436080.aspx

Excellent way to understand the improvements we made in Excel Services.

Backstage View and Ribbon: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ff436081.aspx

Learn how to extend the Office UI to create productivity solutions, especially the new programmable Backstage view.

Open XML and the Open XML SDK: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ff436082.aspx

This session was the biggest hit at the show. Zeyad delivered in a huge way, and it's an excellent session in every way.

The only draw back is that these are recordings of live sessions where the presentation isn't really tailored for re-broadcast. But, you'll get the gist of things and they're worth even just having play in the background while you work.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,Devleoper,Office,Productivity,SharePoint Conference

Rock Thought of the Day: Can't get better than Holy Diver from Ronnie James Dio and group. Up the irons everyone!

Rock On

Microsoft Office 2010 Developer Video Shoot

John R. Durant — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:25:31 GMT

I just felt like doing a different kind of post today.

I spent some time on camera yesterday as part of video you'll see when Microsoft Office 2010 launches. I didn't get as much make-up applied on this video, so I'm worried I'll look as tired as I felt. There's a lot that goes into preparing marketing videos that make the right impact. Because I address a more technical audience, there's always a challenge of striking the right balance between going way technical or just providing what developers routinely call "marketing fluff". Developers typically don't relish being marketed to, but they crave information and data. I'm a very technical guy, so I usually appreciate more the in-depth content rather than mere sound-bites at a very high messaging altitude.

However, there is a need to communicate the overall picture, the context, what all of the technical stuff really adds up to. And, that often means not talking about APIs or checksums. I was thinking about this as I walked through the store yesterday. There were shelves and shelves of books, most of them with a glossy image on the front. It's pretty amazing when you think about it, but for those images to be effective they have less than a second to do their job. That job is: distinguish Book X from every other book on the shelf. All of the words inside (the technical detail if you will) mean little if no one gets around to reading them.

The idea behind dust-jacket design (the highest altitude message I can think of at a bookstore) is to get shoppers to take a closer look at a given book. Once they pick up the book, the reviewer's quotes and other things on the cover are designed to get shoppers to open the book and look at a few pages or, better yet, make the leap to the purchase decision. I respect what the book jacket designers do even if I find some of the jacket images often trite and sometimes ridiculous (How about those romance novels covers?). Fortunately, none of the marketing we do is on that level!

The video I just completed for Office 2010 launch has some of the mid-altitude messaging, but it also contains some excellent examples from the real world that lend credence to the value of Office 2010 extensibility. And, they're fun to do. I think we struck the right balance.

I've included here two quick audio clips from after the shoot. The first is with Barbara Terzieff, who directed the whole affair. She's truly charming and very skilled at keeping us all on task.

Speaking with Barbara about video shoot

The second playful clip is with Chris. He handle the main camera, and he was very easy going.

Speaking with Chris about video shoot

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,Office,Productivity

Rock Thought of the Day: Very pleased with Stitch In Time from The Smashing Pumpkins. Give it a listen.

Rock On

New MSDN Office Developer Center Update

John R. Durant — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:47:14 GMT

Erika, the site owner for the MSDN Office Developer Center, announced today an important visual update to the site.

There are brand elements all over in here that match our branding guidelines for Microsoft Office 2010. One could call it a purely cosmetic change, but it signals something even more important at work. We've been steadily making improvements to MSDN that benefit Office developers particularly. For example, we've added a truly colossal amount of content, and we've organized things differently to make things more discoverable. There are still things on the To-Do list, and we'll get there. Share your feedback and wishlist with us for MSDN.

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,Office,Microsoft,MSDN

Rock Thought of the Day: Listening to Transformer (Rarity/B-Side) from The Smashing Pumpkins while I catch up on email today.

Rock On

Social Networking and Workplace Productivity

John R. Durant — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:45:41 GMT

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace-these are common social networking sites/services that are on the tip of the tongue nowadays. Beyond their relative novelty, they've brought fresh attention to long-standing questions and engendered new ones. Recently, Takeshi Numoto, Corporate Vice President of Office Product Management Group, submitted a post, "Productivity + social media = goodness for the workplace". In it, he suggests that, "if leveraged in a strategic way, [social media] can help businesses be more efficient and productive." He suggests the social media help people in the workplace form "communities" outside of their own immediate workgroups that fosters a culture of diversity, respect, and openness. He also advances the idea that these communities in turn foster "faster discovery of data/insights/opinions that impact personal and professional decision making." Finally, he recommends that social media impacts collaboration among employees such that it increases "the ease and speed of sharing and cross-pollinating ideas that may now only exist in pockets throughout the organization."

Do these ideas hold true? Can we measure the positive impact of social media in the workplace? What are the downsides? Do they negate the potential advantages of social networking in the workplace?

Perhaps the questions aren't completely new. They may in fact be existing questions re-cast to address new technologies. For example, I recall back in the 90's when some companies were moving toward putting employees in large collective work areas rather than in separate offices. Many organizational behavior specialists sought to determine if this helps or hinders productivity. Long before Facebook came on the scene, two

Ray Reagans (Carnegie Mellon) Ezra W. Zuckerman (Stanford) published a scientific study in 2001: Networks, Diversity, and Productivity: The Social Capital of Corporate R&D Teams. In their study (Organization Science/Vol. 12, No. 4, July-August 2001). They tested two hypotheses:

The greater the density of a team's internal network the higher its productivity.
The greater the network heterogeneity of a team, the higher its productivity.

Now, they were studying R&D teams, and the needs and behaviors of an R&D team do have some unique properties. But, their conclusions are likely application outside the context of R&D. I won't go into the scientific setup of their testing and measuring. But, here are their conclusions:

"Teams that average more frequent communication among their members achieve higher productivity. Better communication links among members of a group enable its members to achieve a greater degree of coordination, and hence a level of productivity that is unattainable by teams that are less well connected."

"Communication ties which cut across demographic boundaries-and the different sets of information, experiences, and outlooks that such boundaries divide-enriches the research process and promotes greater productivity."

Their conclusions appear to be congruous with what Takeshi suggests, that social networks in the workplace can make people (and thus the business they support) more productive. Social networking applications undoubtedly make it much easier to initiate communication between team members across geographies, departments, divisions, and job functions.

A key success factor for social networking at work lies in the phrase Takeshi uses as the lead in, "If leveraged in a strategic way.."

Technorati Tags: Office,Microsoft,Social Networking,Social Media,Productivity

Rock Thought of the Day: More (down tempo) Songs For Your Consideration

I'm still in that "Ryan Adams" kind of mood. So, while I usually amp it up to some Zakk Wylde, I take things down a notch with these beautifully textured songs:

The Horrors: Scarlet Fields (on album "Primary Colours")

Devotchka: How It Ends (on album "How It Ends")

Hey Marseilles: Marseilles (on album "To Travels & Trunks")

Mojave 3: In Love With A View (on album "Excuses For Travelers")

Rock On

Excel Open XML & LINQ Part I

John R. Durant — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:24:31 GMT

In the next few posts I'll roll out a little project for Excel that uses Open XML and LINQ. The scenario for this little Office solution has to do with my massive collection of music. I've collected over 1000 albums of music both from CDs and from purchases online.

[SideNote: Purchasing music legally is so easy and so cheap. Come on, everybody, let's get legal!]

Well- I wanted a way to query, sort, and work with my music inventory in more flexible ways than the Zune software will allow. The Zune application is really just about the listening experience. It's not intended to be a customizable database application. So, I decided to export my music inventory to Excel. This would allow me to see, sort, and work with my music in the rich goodness that is Excel. Here you see an image of my band list in Excel, and I can sort by artist, album, or song:

While Excel is great for sorting and working with the data in many ways, but imagine that I have plans for using the data that go beyond just working in Excel (and imagine that I also needed some practice working with Open XML!). To fulfill those additional requirements, I decided to create a Winform app. I'll wire the app up to the Excel spreadsheet via Open XML. Here you can see the application running:

I'll spare you the details of how I do the export of my music library. Suffice it to say that I use System.IO to recursively roll through the music library directories and create XMLElements for each of the artists, albums, and songs. Once that is complete, it's an XML file that I can open in Excel 2010. My application relies heavily on the LtxOpenXML Namespace that features a number of extension classes (big thanks to Eric for all of his posts on Open XML). These classes greatly simplify the amount of code you need to write to walk and search through spreadsheets in Open XML. I could have written all of the code to talk to the TableRows in the spreadsheet, but the LtxOpenXML classes make it so much easier.

Read Eric White's blog post to find out more about this.

Alright-so here's how it works. First, I have a procedure that picks up the search term from a text box on the form. It also checks to see what kind of search is being performed (Band, Album, or Song). The procedure is nearly identical for all three types of searches. I'll show just the album search.

        public void QuerySimpleTable(searchType sType, string searchTerm)
        {
            using (SpreadsheetDocument spreadsheet =
                SpreadsheetDocument.Open(filename1, false))
            {
                // search for songs that match search query criteria

                if (sType == searchType.Album)
                {
                     var r = from c in spreadsheet.Table("Bands").TableRows()
                        where (string)c["Album"] == searchTerm
                             select new BandRecord()
                             {
                                 Band = (string)c["Band"],
                                 Album = (string)c["Album"],
                                 Song = (string)c["Song"]
                             };
                     ListResults(r);
                }
            }
        }

As you see, the code does the following:

1) Opens the spreadsheet using the DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging API.

2) Uses LINQ to create a new query that targets the "Bands" table defined in the spreadsheet and brings back the tables rows matching the search criteria.

3) Associates the search results with an instance of the BandRecord class.

4) Calls a procedure to list all of the results into the form's listbox.

The BandRecord class looks like this:

public class BandRecord
    {
        public string Band { get; set; }
        public string Album { get; set; }
        public string Song { get; set; }

    }

The ListResults procedure simply loops through the list of BandRecord instances and adds the songs for the band, album, or song search into the Listbox.

        public void ListResults(IEnumerable<BandRecord> list)
        {
            foreach (var z in list)
                try
                {
                    listBox1.Items.Add(z.Song);
                }
                catch (ArgumentNullException ex)
                {
                    continue;
                }
            int i = listBox1.Items.Count;
            itemCount.Text =i.ToString();
        }

You can see that the code is fairly streamlined, and that's a good thing. Now that the basic plumbing is working, what remains is to add features to the application and make it more useful. Things that are very much needed:

1) Making the search case-insensitive. Right now the query works only if the cases match.

2) Making the search look for any part of the term-basically a CONTAINS keyword search.

3) Provide a better view of the search results. For example, including the track numbers is not really necessary.

4) Extending the application to do more meaningful things.

Those are things that I will cover in subsequent posts.

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,Developer,Open XML,Office,Excel,Microsoft,Productivity

Rock Thought of the Day: The Stars Are Projectors by Modest Mouse

This song is getting a lot of rotation on my Zune player right now even though the album has been out a long time. The dissonance in the first part of the song is so beautiful. Out of the lush clashing of sounds emerges a mix of colors and textures that I believe cannot be found any other way. Give it a listen-- "all the stars are projects, yeah, projecting our lives down to this planet earth."

Rock On

Outlook and LinkedIn

John R. Durant — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:18:06 GMT

Many of you have heard that we announced the Outlook Social Connector back at PDC 2009. The connector works as part of Outlook 2010, 2007, and even 2003, and it allows you to surface activity from your social media networks right inside of Outlook. With this you can connect those networks to your email, calendaring, and other activities. The big news today is that the LinkedIn provider for the Outlook Social Connector is now available. Providers for Facebook and MySpace will be coming at the time of the Office 2010 official release.

Learn more about the announcement today here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2010/02/17/Outlook-Gets-Social-with-LinkedIn_2C00_-Facebook_2C00_-and-MySpace.aspx

And, download the LinkedIn provider here:

http://www.linkedin.com/outlook

You can also create your own provider for the Outlook Social Connector by learning from this article:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee829696(office.14).aspx

If your organization has its own social network infrastructure you can integrate it with Outlook via the connector by creating your own provider.

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,Developer,Office,Outlook,Microsoft,Productivity,Outlook Social Connector

Rock Thought of the Day: Black Label Society

I was listening to Zakk Wylde yesterday (rocking out while riding the bike trainer). His guitar playing is fresh and unique. I'm not sure why he doesn't normally place higher in the annual "greatest rock guitarists" polls that go around. I'd love to play one of his signature guitars-a custom Gibson on my guitar rig. The sound would be so big, monumental and clear.

Rock on, Zakk!

Office Developer Atlas Released

John R. Durant — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:10:53 GMT

The Office Developer Atlas interactive training tool (built using Silverlight technology) is a great way for you to come up to speed on what developing productivity solutions with Office is all about. We've called it an atlas because it's designed to give you a series of training segments that help you orient yourself in the world of Office development.

The first three segments that we have included in the initial release of Office Developer Atlas include:

1) Making users instantly productive through VBA

2) The Microsoft Office Backstage view

3) The Microsoft Office Fluent UI (Ribbon)

In each section, you'll find a short explanatory video, an example that demonstrates the kinds of solutions you can build with the targeted technology, and links to rich content on how to convert your awareness to technical skill. Here are a couple more screenshots:

We'll be adding more modules to the training environment, and all you need is a Web browser to start using it. Enjoy, and please send your feedback and ideas for more training modules.

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,Developer,XML,VBA,Office,Macro,Microsoft,Productivity,Atlas

Rock Thought of the Day: Songs For Exercise

Here are some of the songs I love to listen to when riding my bicycle:

1) Mariah Carey: Migrate

2) Smashing Pumpkins: Cherub Rock

3) Phantogram: Mouthful of Diamonds

4) Anything by Paul Oakenfold

5) Type O Negative: I'm Dead Again

6) Alan Jackson: Good Time

7) Modest Mouse: Teeth Like God's Shoeshine

8) AC/DC: Back In Black

9) Silversun Pickups: Lazy Eye

10) Metallica: Shortest Straw

Rock On

Excel 2010 XML Maps

John R. Durant — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:21:51 GMT

We introduced Excel XML Map objects in Excel 2003. We carried those forward into Excel 2007 and, of course, into Excel 2010. I recently stumbled on an Excel developer blog by Roy Maclean, and I was really glad to see him exploring a scenario and sharing his findings. It'll be great to see his Part 2 of that.

Basically, Roy shows using Excel front-end receiver/exporter for XML-based data. It receives data from XML that is mapped to a schema. It can then pump the data back out in a meaningful context because of the schema mapping.

If you are new to XML Mapping in Excel, then here are a few things to help you:

1) Here's a short video that shows you what it's all about: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb872411.aspx

2) Here's a great intro set of samples you can try to get started: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa203737(office.11).aspx

Couple of interesting things I uncovered as I verified that the items in #2 above work in Excel 2010.

FYI: here's what one of the MSDN samples looks like on my machine today:

We introduced a new object in Excel 2007--- the WorkbookConnection object. Basically, this lets you create a new connection to data. Here's a quick sample:

Private Sub WorkbookConnections()
    Dim myConnection As Excel.WorkbookConnection = _
        Me.Connections.AddFromFile("c:\SalesData.csv")
    myConnection.Description = "Data stored in a CSV file."

    For Each connection As Excel.WorkbookConnection In Me.Connections
        MessageBox.Show(connection.Name + " " + connection.Type.ToString() _
            + " " + connection.Description)
    Next
End Sub

We also introduced a new property--- the Creator property that lets you know which application was used to create a given XMLMap. According to our documentation: This returns a 32-bit integer that indicates the application in which the specified object was created. If the object was created in Microsoft Graph, this property returns the string MSGR, which is equivalent to the hexadecimal number 4D534752. Read-only

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,Developer,Excel,XML,VBA,Office,Macro,Microsoft,Productivity

Rock Thought of the Day: Mouthful of Diamonds by Phantogram

I heard this song on www.kexp.org, and it caught my imagination. Watch them perform it live: