Bill O'Brien's WebLog

evangelism can't last forever

2006-10-13T13:54:00Z

As you've probably guessed, I'm no longer posting on Architecture topics.

I'm still with Microsoft but I'm no longer the resident evangelist. Instead I've taken on the challenges of security and platform strategy (you'll have to ask me in person what that means).

So that means we are hiring an Architect Evangelist! If you think you can be the voice of Architecture for Microsoft, enjoy presenting, discussing and most importantly 'doing' architecture, then please review the job spec and apply. If you want to contact me to discuss please don't hesitate.

Otherwise farewell from this medium and thanks for reading.

Bill

VB.net team coming to town

2006-04-03T15:28:00Z

The VB.net team is coming to Dublin next week. They will be joined by our own Rob Burke and Dominick Baier, a security expert from Develop Mentor. There will be one-day technical seminars held in Belfast and Dublin on April 10^th and 11^th respectively. These events are free and include lunch.

I know there are lots of VB.Net developers out there so please sign up.

Web Developer competition for Ireland

2006-03-03T18:09:00Z

My team-mates Rob and Clare have just announced a great competition for web developers in Ireland. So if you want to expose your team to web development, try out some free (as in beer :-)) software and potentially win some great prizes then check it out.

Architect Forum - slides and comments

2006-03-03T14:13:00Z

Thanks to everyone for a fantastic turnout at the 'Software Factories' Architect Forum on Wednesday last in Dublin. We had 90 Architects listen to Beat (his blog has the 'why restaurants aren't run by developers story) and Ingo discuss this in some depth. As requested the slides are available to download (beware it’s a 23MB .zip file).

You will have heard reference to Jack Greenfield’s book on the same subject and that’s a great way to delve deeper. The guidance automation toolkit and the DSL tools are also available in preview form if you want to start playing around with the tools.

After the session we discussed an Irish Architecture special interest group. We have a great core of volunteers ready to speak and there are some nice ideas about making it interactive and a vehicle for developers who want to move into architecture. Expect an announcement on our first event soon.

Architect Forum - Dublin, March 1st, Software Factories

2006-02-14T18:35:00Z

Great news, the Architect Forum, such a success over the past 3 years is back in Dublin on March 1st. Attended by 75 of Irelands leading Architects, this is a great way to meet your peers and discuss an architectural topic with some leading speakers.

This year we have my colleague Beat Schwegler and Ingo Rammer form ThinkTecture disucssing Software Factories, an effort underway at Microsoft to evolve beyond the universal one-size-fits-all approach to constructing, deploying and managing software.

This event is typically invitation only but I have some open spaces for the community, I felt the fairest way was to make it first come first served so please register now as I expect it will fill up quickly.

Office 12

2006-02-03T16:34:00Z

I'm researching Office 12 at the moment. Looking at Office as a solution developer, things got really interesting with Office 2003. The core scenarios moved from document CRUD to include collaboration via Sharepoint integration and the Information Bridge Framework suddenly made the 'Office as Smart Client' concept more capable.

Well Office 12 ups the ante again with server based scenarios.......... oops, I had a paragraph of juicy information here but I've just checked and its internal only at the moment - sorry I'll just have to promise to come back to it soon. As a colleague told me, the office clients (word, excel, etc) are just the tip of a very large O12 iceberg.

New Architecture Forum

2006-01-06T14:35:00Z

Belated happy new year. I had a tech free Christmas break :-( but now that I'm back its time to get stuck in to content development for a series of Architecture talks I'm hoping we can run in the community over the next few months. If you are interested in talking to your peers about a topic of interest to Architects please let me know.

The new resources for Architects keep coming from Microsoft. Following the new Architecture Centre last year a set of Forums dedicated to Architecture has just been launched. Some interesting Microsoft Architects are moderating so please post and have fun - you never know who is listening :-)

Bill

New PAG guide

2005-12-14T12:08:00Z

A new Patterns and Practices guide "Web Services Security" has just been released. Its based on WSE 3.0 but as always with the PnP material it focuses on best practice and design fundamentals that can be applied in other scenarios, such as Windows Communications Foundation.

Calling IT Pro's

2005-12-09T15:58:00Z

Many of you have been using our MSDN connections experience to keep updated on events that we run in Ireland. This is going from strength to strength and you can still sign up.

Lacking so far, has been something similar for what we call IT Professionals. This includes infrastructure architects, support engineers, network designers, system administrators etc. Well we've just launched a portal and Technet Flash - newsletter that will help keep you informed and its just for the IT Pro's among you.

Bill

The Vista is fine when the Momentum is good

2005-12-02T15:41:00Z

Thanks to the members or Momentum for the opportunity to speak about Windows Vista last week. I was asked to follow up on some questions. Sorry for the delay but it took me a while to get to them. As I researched these areas it really brought home to me the huge changes taking place to the fundamental design and behaviour of Vista that will make its day to day reliability and manageability radically better. At the moment many vista demos show whiz-bang graphics or consumer apps. That’s fine but the main message is that Vista is more reliable, secure, and capable: this is often just slide ware with no demo and I think fails to show the depth of change to backup the story of improved fundamentals. The answers to these questions are really encouraging for me as it shows the breath of work going on to make Vista a great platform.

File Metadata - I was asked a great question about how the metadata is associated with files and the relationship of this metadata to the OS. To paraphrase - how does Vista know what metadata is available for each file type and can this be customised? At the time we supposed that it was probably something to do with the registry. That’s part of the answer but the whole is more interesting. PropertyHandlers are registered (yep in the registry) for each file type and they form the basis of how the various parts of Vista interact with the file. e.g. the Indexer calls the handlers to get the properties of the file. They are a very important concept and if you want to add file types or customise the handling of existing files you can read from the guru Marc Miller here.

A follow up question was if the existing Vista File explorers default search folders can be configured. The answer is no BUT you can achieve a similar result I would assume through a custom file type and your own applications.

I demoed the new event viewer which has been well described elsewhere. I mentioned that events can now be forwarded to a central server for monitoring/recordkeeping. I was asked how this works, and was it file based? The answer is that the each machine still stores its local event log (not as XML but can be rendered or exported as such) and it can be configured to forward these events to a central server. The news got even better when I delved in and found that this is supported by WS-Management and WS-Eventing. This was discussed in PDC05 session FUN316 if you access to the DVD's.

I was then asked if there are improved backup capabilities in Vista. Yes!

SafeDocs - file based backups for people without servers. It can be used to perform incremental scheduled backups of files.

System Restore - As the name suggests - allows you to restore a system to an earlier state. This uses Shadow Copies of volumes for restore. This is already in XP but it’s improved in Vista [If you restore and individual file using File Shadow Copy it can make the System Restore as well as SafeDoc versions available to choose from].

File Shadow Copies - similar to Windows Server 2003 where shared copies of documents can be restored if accidentally deleted or wound back to earlier versions.

Bill

Cork questions

2005-11-08T15:12:00Z

Thanks to everyone in INDA Cork for a great turnout last night for the community launch of Visual Studio 2005. For those of you wanting more please do attend the official launch in December in Cork. Sorry that I couldn't show more in the short time, I deliberately focussed on the team collaboration aspects, if you want to see SQL and Biztalk and the great new developer capabilities then the December event is a must. Note - the event is full so please register and go on the waitlist.

I got asked some good questions that I promised to revert to you on. Firslty "will there be a migration tool from NUnit to the integrated test tools in Team System"?. There is one in the works already. In a similar vein I was asked about migrating existing Visual Source Safe projects into VSTS. There is a process - there is some manual activity (actually quite a lot of it) but the nice thing is that it should preserve the history.

Finally I got asked a question I get asked at nearly every session in one form or another. The specific question was about the best SQL hardware environment and why on a multi proc box they were seing only one proc being exercised. A good pointer on the multi proc issue is here.

The more generic question is "How do I tune, design, install my SQL Server to run fast/exercise the hardware/ensure resposiveness and on what hardware/configuration/cluster etc." As you can probably tell there is no one answer to this question. and its my least favourite question as my answer is always "it depends" which often dissapoints. People expect a silver bullet and even if there is one, I can't possibly find it without examining the environment. Here is what I recommend in general

1) Check the resources - SQL documentation is excellent use it.

2) Get training - SQL tuning/admin courses are highly recommended. Here is a list of the certified training partner in Ireland (see under CPLS section). Also check out the new certification programs announced recently.

3) Get help - there are some excellent SQL experts who can work with you to examine your environment and see what the best solution is. Everyone's environment is different and its the main reason I can never give a satisfactory answer to the question "How do I make SQL Faster" on the spot. If you want to engage Microsoft Consulting in Ireland let me know and I can give you pointers.

Bill

Windows Workflow Foundation

2005-10-21T17:30:00Z

At PDC, Windows Workflow Foundation was announced. I got my first look at Don Box and Dharma Shukla's talk which was excellent.

All our applications contain workflow, some is associated with the application itself such as screen transitions etc., but the interesting stuff is the stuff we code. When we write logic into our forms or web pages to perform calculations or manipulate data we are writing "activities", when we stitch these together with if, then, else, while logic and code up a "process" we are really writing workflow. The power comes when we can un-embed these activities from our apps and stitch them together in reusable workflows. The concept is powerful and is the reason for the success of Biztalk. Writing apps in this way was not an option for developers until now, Windows Workflow Foundation, is part of WinFX and makes it available to developers.

During the talk Don and Dharma built a simple workflow. They included a pause activity. Then they remotely viewed the workflow from another mahcine using only a browser, they edited the workflow, and then they were able to view the in memory jobs in train and sitting at the pause step and apply the new changes. It brought the house down.

I've been playing around with it for the past two days and its very powerful. You can choose various different formats including State Machines and its relatively simple to use. If you want to get started then there are some great resources here (this is where devs are going to share their activitites). If you start looking and wonder, "Hey, this is Biztalk" then get a good overview of the differences here.

Microsoft Ceritication and The Open Group Compared

2005-10-13T17:42:00Z

Microsoft MCAP and The Open Group Architect Certification compared:

Last week the ICS launched their IT architects network. This seems like a great idea and we should all support. I spoke alongside James De Reeve from The Open Group about the topic of Architect Certification. I’ve documented the talk and questions below. If you are new to this area you should check out the excellent summary on the Microsoft website. If you are like me, then you’ll probably want to jump to the key differences between the two at the tail of this post.

Here is a summary of both our talks:

Microsoft - Bill O'Brien (Me)

Industry wants certification

so they can identify those with Architectural skills

Hire them, or contract them on their projects with a certain sense of security that they can do what they claim to do.

Individuals and System Integrators want a certification because:

Allows those with Architectural skills to validate and differentiate their capabilities with a publicly recognised qualification

Microsoft is driving it because:

We want to be seen as thought leader among Architects

We believe it’s good for the IT industry and the professionals in it.

The certification is for a highly experienced group. We expect to certify approx 3000 Architects over 6 years
The Competencies and Common Characteristics we expect to test are based on a 2 years of research into the skillset of practising Architects. They are well documented here.
The process involves application, acceptance onto the program, working with a mentor and finally a certification review/exam. Crucially this is done by peer certified architects.
The candidates will:

be working in IT for 10 years

be an Architect for at least 3

can demonstrate the competencies as required.

Candidates can sign up online, or be referred by existing certified arch’s. This process will open in the first half of next year.

The Open Group - James DeReeve

Exists to foster information flow via a set of common standards. (I was interested to learn that they own the Unix trademark)
They are addressing the same business/industry demand as us.
HP proposed the certification directly to the Open Group. (Its interesting that HP CTO Tony Redmond is quoted, acclaiming both qualifications)
IBM customers often turn down offers of free Architecture consulting as it’s viewed as IBM technology only. They are keen to drive a broader industry recognised certification.
They evaluate an 'experience profile' which is akin to the artefacts that we require.
Open are limiting their submission to 55 pages. I believe that Microsoft's limit will be lower than this.
Their is two paths to entry, direct and in-direct. Direct is where The Open Group runs a board directly. Indirect is where third parties certify you.
In the future, they envisage two levels, level 1 and level 2. The current certification will be grandfathered into level 2, essentially they will have a lower level qualification (level 1) at some stage. [Microsoft is also planning a training path from Senior Engineer into Architect that may involve a more basic certification]
The Open Group is explicitly courting local partners, that’s why they were speaking at ICS in Ireland. They see phenomenal demand in India and China that they just cannot meet (Open group has 45 full time employees) so they require partners

Audience Questions

There were some great questions. I captured the following:

Q) This process represents a huge investment of time from individuals and their employers.

What’s the payback?

A) Both Open and Microsoft stressed that unless we promote the professional status and skills of Architects then we are in danger of damaging the reputation IT architects have built up. In addition the payback for the industry of a recognised standard is great.

Q) Specifically how much more money would I be able to earn!

A) No hard numbers but given the calibre of the qualification we speculate that it will be highly advantageous to have it.

Q) What is the renewal period for re-certification?

A) Open is 3 years, Microsoft is the same

Q) Will any material I submit or topics I discuss be under NDA?

A) Open - Yes, Microsoft - Yes. I also pointed out that if you have the worlds most amazing invention then don’t use it as the subject for your board as you will invalidate any future patent process, as well as it being just a silly thing to do.

Q) How many people will get this certification?

A) Microsoft, approx 3000. [My notes from the Open answer say 100k people but I think I made a typo!]

Q) The Open group refers to 'Formal Methods' what does that mean?

A) This is not Z and predicate calculus. Rather it refers to any broadly recognised SDL C methodology.

Q) How did both organisations bootstrap their initial pool of certified architects?

A) Open worked with partners such as IBM and HP as well as its member base to select appropriate candidates. Microsoft did the same (including HP, Infosys, CapGemini) as well as sourcing lead Architects internally.

Q) Will Microsoft become a third party provider for Open groups certification!

A) Who knows :-)

Key Differences between the two

Microsoft is more expensive, $10,000 versus $2000 approx for The Open Group.
Microsoft assigns a mentor to each candidate. This is a crucial difference and explains the cost differential. The Open group explicitly stated that they are not training Architects; rather they are affirming they have the skills they claim to have. The Microsoft Mentor is already certified and will work with candidates to help them prepare.
The Open Group has a community element. So an Architect can get credit (towards recertification) by engaging in community related activities e.g. sitting on a public certification review board would count. This is a nice idea.
Open allows third parties to certify under the Open banner. This is useful where an Organisation may want to enrich the process and make it Open Group + org. specific stuff. [I believe this could have the potential to weaken the qualification too]
Open had a really nice CD with all the documents and whitepapers. We need some of them for MCAP !

Some myths dispelled

I had thought that the Open Group would allow people with as little as 3 years IT experience pursue the certification. This is not the case; they expect you to have been a practicing Architect for 3 years. (The expectation being that it takes you about 10 get there)

The Open Group was first - Microsoft was first. Who cares! Microsoft has about 50 people already certified, The Open Group will hold its first board in Houston in this week I believe.

Microsoft has sub-categorised into Solutions Architect and Infrastructure Architect. Open hasn't. James pointed out that both types can suceed in thier certification. They examine a core set of skills and the solutions or infrastructure elememtns build on top of this as specialisations.

If you are interested in pursuing certification in Ireland then please contact me and let me know.

Certification questions please

2005-09-28T16:22:00Z

Given that I am speaking on the Microsoft Certified Architect Program (MCAP) next week. Please send me any questions you may have. I will of course include, how to sign up, when it starts, how much it costs etc. However if you have other questions about MCAP please let me know now and I'll get the answer before the talk and include it. I'd also be interested in how you will evaluate MCAP versus other certifications such as The Open Group.

Microsoft Certified Architects

2005-09-27T16:26:00Z

[Fixed the broken link]

I'm speaking at the Irish Computer Society's innagural meeting of the IT Architects Network. The event is free to all and I will be speaking on the new Microsoft Certified Architect Program which I know many of you are interested in. In a double bill, the Open Group will be speaking about their new certification for architects. A great opportunity to compare and contrast in one session.

Details and registration are here - the event is the first listed "IT Architects Network Launch". I believe you register by sending an email to the address listed on the page.