Vinod Kumar Mindmap : TechMela

Virtual TechDays is Back - Sep 2008

vinodkumar — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:21:00 GMT

Virtual TechDays - April 9 & 10th

vinodkumar — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:27:00 GMT

With Windows and Visual Studio writing their track I wanted to talk about our very own wonderful 3 tracks of SQL Server session each having 4 sessions each. The first track is "BI and Admin" track. As much as these both require their very own tracks we...(read more)

Back to homebase

vinodkumar — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 15:08:00 GMT

After a wonderful 3 hectic days I am back to Bangalore and it feels really good. But there is tons of work pending and this week is gonna be hectic too ... But I will get my summary of TechMela in a couple of days with the links. An hey dont forget to attend my webcast series scheduled for this week too.

2 Days to go !!!

vinodkumar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 03:11:00 GMT

Well I am all set to hit the roads for the next mega event TechMela. So hoping to see you all at the event. Feel free to stop by at the Office Track or the DB & BI Track to have a word with me. Cya all at the event !!!

Excel Services - Office at TechMela

vinodkumar — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 08:44:00 GMT

In this segment I wanted to talk about the Excel Services part which I mentioned when I wrote the Excel Post. Though we are not talking much on this topic at TechMela, I thought it is important to understand this nevertheless. So here we go !!!!

Excel Services, part of SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), extends the capabilities of Excel 2007 by allowing broad sharing of spreadsheets, improved manageability and security and the ability to re-use spreadsheet models through a scalable server-based calculation service and interactive web-based user interface. Excel Services provides both a web-based UI for browser-based access and a web services API for programmatic access that have robust options for controlling what data is available to users and applications. As part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Excel Services also takes advantage of the other capabilities of SharePoint including the enterprise content management features such as: check-in/check-out, auditing and versioning capabilities. This is huge ...

The Excel Services architecture consists of a web front end and an application-server tier. The Excel Calculation Server loads requested spreadsheets and performs any calculations required. Excel Web Access renders the results in HTML, while Excel Web Services provides a Web services interface to allow applications to access the spreadsheets. The application server contains Excel Calculation Service which loads spreadsheets, calculates them, and provides access to external data. Either or both of these tiers can be scaled up or out, including scaling to high-performance computing clusters. Excel Services supports configurable load balancing and a number of options that can improve performance. Excel Services is one app that you can think when it comes to implementing and testing your HPC ideas.

Excel 2007 also includes a simple means by which spreadsheet authors can make use of Excel Services. Using the File | Publish menu option, a new menu item called “Excel Services” enables the user to save the spreadsheet to a SharePoint (or any UNC path that is accessible by the server) server. While a full copy of the spreadsheet is copied to the server, the Excel Services Options dialogue enables the author to specify what aspects of it are accessible to users from the web browser.

Excel Services draws its mechanisms for authentication and access permissions from MOSS 2007. This allows spreadsheet authors to grant users Reader rights, Contributor rights, or Administrator rights (full control). In addition to these rights, the new Viewer right allows authors to lock down spreadsheets for server-only viewing through a Web browser. Next, the mechanism for controlling who can act as an author for spreadsheets available under Excel Services is managed by a system of trusted file locations, which can be designated as SharePoint locations, UNC paths, or HTTP paths.

Excel Services supports getting external data from the same data sources Excel client supports, such as SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Server relational databases and other database platforms using mechanisms such as ODBC and OLE-DB. Data can be returned into PivotTables or new formulas that can access SQL Server Analysis Services data. One powerful way of governing access to external data sources by Excel Services is by using the Data Connection Libraries (DCLs). Created by database administrators, DCLs contain .ODC (Office Data Connection) files that persist specific data connections, enabling business users to take advantage of them, using the Excel client via a directory service operated by the server. I would urge you to use this because the DCLs help you centralize all your connections in one repository under MOSS.

So this is a quick tour of what we have, but I have not talked about the Authentication models for queries, content approval process, using it as BI reporting and dashboards, Web Services API's available, User-defined functions etc. But these all fall under this big umbrella. So before I sign off, let me give few interesting links that might interest all:

*** Grano Salis

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Beta) SDK

SharePoint Server 2007 Developer Portal

Downloadable SharePoint Server 2007 SDK

LuisBE on Services

Excel Services Technical Overview

Using Excel Web Services in a SharePoint Web Part

Deploying and Optimizing a SharePoint Web Part That Calls Excel Web Services

SharePoint Server 2007 Sample: Web Part That Calls Excel Web Services

Excel Services Information Center

Introducing Excel Services

Extending the Excel Services Programmability Framework

Sherman On Excel and BI Technology

Though we are not talking on this very topic, feel free to catch me on the Office System Track and we can discuss during TechMela. Cya all in a weeks time :).

Whatz in Office XML - Office System Track

vinodkumar — Mon, 28 May 2007 04:27:00 GMT

Back to the Office track :). Now let me move my focus into the session I plan to cover under the Office System Track with Deepak Gulati (deepakg.com/blog). This session would be on Office XML format and working with it. Microsoft Office 2007 introduces new default XML file formats for Microsoft Office Word, Excel spreadsheet, and PowerPoint presentation use. Giving it a XML variation really is a boon to the developers. The new Microsoft Office Open XML Format introduces a number of benefits that will accrue not only to developers and the solutions they build, but also to individual users and organizations of all sizes.

I see these formats realy useful - Unlike in the Binary formats this format will reduce the risk of lost information due to damaged or corrupted files. This format uses compression technologies and hence lower footprint for the document size. Once it becomes a compressed XML files, these documents can easily sent across firewalls without much problems thus increasing the robustness of these formats.

Each file is composed of a collection of any number of parts; this collection defines the document. Document parts are held together by the container file or package using the industry standard ZIP format. Most parts are simply XML files that describe application data, metadata, and even customer data stored inside the container file.

With previous Office versions, developers looking to manipulate the content of an Office document had to know how to read and write data according to the structured storage defined within the binary file. This was the primary cause of corruption of documents when they modify the code for some automation. Moving to the ZIP architecture, there are many tools available today to work with the ZIP format, and using ZIP provides a flexible, modular structure that allows for an expansion of functionality easily. Importantly, Non-XML parts supported as native files (images, OLE objects) and are stored as-is.

As part of security enhancements, the default Office 2007 documents saved in the Open XML Format are considered to be macro-free files and therefore cannot contain code. This behavior ensures that malicious code residing in a default document can never be unexpectedly executed. While documents can still contain and use macros in Office 2007, the user or developer will be required to specifically save these documents as a macro-enabled document type. Now this brings us to the various formats available:

Microsoft Office Word 2007

Word 2007 XML Document - .docx
Word 2007 XML Macro-Enabled Document - .docm
Word 2007 XML Template - .dotx
Word 2007 XML Macro-Enabled Template - .dotm

Microsoft Office Excel 2007 File

Excel 2007 XML Workbook - .xlsx
Excel 2007 XML Macro-Enabled Workbook - .xlsm
Excel 2007 XML Template - .xltx
Excel 2007 XML Macro-Enabled Template - .xltm
Excel 2007 Binary Workbook - .xlsb
Excel 2007 XML Macro-Enabled Add-In - .xlam

Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007

PowerPoint 2007 XML Presentation - .pptx
PowerPoint 2007 Macro-Enabled XML Presentation - .pptm
PowerPoint 2007 XML Template - .potx
PowerPoint 2007 Macro-Enabled XML Template - .potm
PowerPoint 2007 Macro-Enabled XML Add-In - .ppam
PowerPoint 2007 XML Show - .ppsx
PowerPoint 2007 Macro-Enabled XML Show - .ppsm

So from a developers perspective we can do tons while working with these documents. So during TechMela, we will take a tour from an Dev angle to extending and connecting to Office XML documents. You can take a look at Deepak Gulati's blog on querying Excel (http://deepakg.com/blog/archives/20.htm) for upload of data. More such tips and tricks to be shown during our fun filled session.

So mark the session on "Office Open XML File Format Fundamentals" on the Office System Track ... And cya soon :) ...

Always-On in SQL Track

vinodkumar — Sat, 26 May 2007 17:14:00 GMT

hmmm ... By now you must be wondering why is Vinod not talking about SQL in TechMela. You bet, I kept the best for the last :). Hehehe ... As guessed, I would be owning the “DB & BI” track too. Super excited and most importantly, I managed to get some rockstar cool speakers to deliver too. So I am excited. As I have done for the other posts, here in this post I will concentrate on one aspect session on the SQL Track. Let me start with the enterprise credible High Availability session + Always On session.

In this topic we can talk on various HA options inside of SQL Server. The common ones being:

Failover clustering
Database mirroring
Log shipping
Replication

Let me quickly talk on each of them.

Failover clustering: Failover clustering provides high-availability support for an entire instance of SQL Server. A failover cluster is a combination of one or more nodes, or servers, with two or more shared disks. An application can connect to the failover cluster instance by referencing the failover cluster instance name. The application does not have to know which node hosts the failover cluster instance. However, a failover cluster does not protect against disk failure.

Database mirroring: New with SQL Server 2005 SP1, DM is primarily a software solution to increase database availability by supporting almost instantaneous failover . It can be thought as a mixture of replication and log shipping: all transactions are moved (log shipping) on a transaction level (replication) to a mirrored copy of the database.

Each database mirroring configuration involves a principal server that contains the principal database, and a mirror server that contains the mirror database.
You can also have an optional witness server in the High-Availability mode for aiding in automatic fail over question. So we have 3 modes in DM as:

High Availability: This operating mode option allows you to synchronize transaction writes on both servers and enables automated failover . For this option to work, you must also have a witness server. Even a SQLExpress Edition can be used for Witness and a single witness can be used for monitor multiple DM servers.

High Protection: This option allows you to synchronize transaction writes on both servers, but failover is manual.

High Performance: This option does not care if the writes are synchronized on both servers, therefore offering some performance gains.

To support automatic failover, the MDAC provides a new parameter on the connection string that allows for automatic redirection when a failure occurs. A typical connection string would look like:

"Server=MyServerA; Failover Partner=OtherServerB; Database=TechMela; Integrated Security=True;"

There is more to talk here, but I will write them as a separate article on my website (I promise :)).

Log shipping: Old and a much proven method in the market as far as SQL Server is concerned. Like database mirroring, log shipping operates at the database level. Log shipping can be used to maintain one or more warm standby databases, referred to as secondary databases, for a corresponding production database that is referred to as the primary database. Each secondary database is created by restoring a database backup of the primary database with no recovery, or with standby.

Log shipping has its own characteristics that makes it different from DM like it involves a user-modifiable delay between when the primary server creates a log backup of the primary database and when the secondary server restores the log backup. Before a failover can occur, a secondary database must be brought fully up-to-date by manually applying any unrestored log backups.

Although similar in concept, asynchronous database mirroring and log shipping have key differences.

Supports multiple secondary databases on multiple server instances for a single primary database.
Allows a user-specified delay between when the primary server backs up the log of the primary database and when the secondary servers must restore the log backup. A longer delay can be useful, for example, if data is accidentally changed on the primary database. If the accidental change is noticed quickly, a delay can let you retrieve still unchanged data from a secondary database before the change is reflected there.

An advantage of database mirroring over log shipping is that high-safety mode is a no data loss configuration that is supported as a simple failover strategy and moreover immediate transparent client redirection.

Replication: Most commonly used since the SQL Server 2000 days. Replication uses a publisher-subscriber model, allowing a primary server, referred to as the Publisher, to distribute data to one or more secondary servers, or Subscribers. Replication allows real-time availability and scalability across these servers. It supports filtering to provide a subset of data at Subscribers, and also allows partitioned updates. Subscribers are online and available for reporting or other functions, without query recovery. SQL Server offers three types of replication: snapshot, transactional, and merge. Transactional replication provides the lowest latency and is most commonly used for high availability. Something new that was introduced with SQL 2005 is the non-SQL Server subscribers, Oracle publishing, and peer-to-peer transactional replication.

Peer-to-peer transactional replication is designed for applications that might read or modify the data at any of the databases participating in replication. All nodes in a peer-to-peer topology are peers: each node publishes and subscribes to the same schema and data. Changes (inserts, updates, and deletes) can be made at all nodes. Replication recognizes when a change has been applied to a given node, preventing changes from cycling through the nodes more than one time.

...... I can keep on going. But let me take a stop and not take away the thunder we will have in the session at TechMela. You will see them in action ...

In general this is a cool topic and guess what, we will have almost 3/4th of the time for demo's in the session talking about Always-on Technologies. So that is the plan ... So dont miss on this session and the event in less than 18 days to go :) ... Countdown has begun ...

More on the SQL track coming your way soon ...

IIS 7 in Web Track

vinodkumar — Fri, 25 May 2007 09:05:00 GMT

The countdown has begun and the heat is on. In this post I thought of writing about a topic that I would be talking at TechMela. This would be on IIS 7.0. There is tons and tons of new features that we can highlight when it comes to working with IIS.

Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6.0) was developed around four main areas, or pillars. Those are security, realiability, scalable and system management. I must admit we did some remarkable work in that release with HTTP.SYS, Compression, fault-tolerance etc. But we had to go even beyond this experience and IIS 7.0 features surely are giving me enough confidence that we are on track.

To start with, IIS 7.0 is completely modular. Close to 40 different modules and redundant modules are consolidated giving a completely managed pipleline to work with. Now once you become modular you can exactly pick-and-choose what you want even inside of IIS. This goes to the first pillar of security - reduce the surface of the server for attack.

IIS7 integrates the ASP.NET runtime with the core web server, providing a unified request processing pipeline that is exposed to both native and managed modules. Integrating the two pipelines allows services provided by both native and managed modules to apply to all requests, regardless of handler. Some of the other things that were interesting for me are:

URLScan is integrated into IIS 7.0. URLScan is widely used to filter requests by URL.
New public APIs that can be used to extend the server. Modules can be written using managed or native APIs.
New configuration system

To extend the schema, a XML file must be created and placed in the appropriate folder. All we need is a XCOPY for deployment :)
new configuration system is integrated: configuration of IIS and ASP.NET is now in one place
Cool File-based Management as you can create, backup, modify, and deploy the entire server configuration via a single XML-based file.

IIS Manager is also available from the command line in the appcmd.exe tool

There is yet another world that is wonderful is the FTP enhancements with IIS 7.0. I will not be talking on this during TechMela, thought I pen down some interesting work nevertheless:

SSL FTP – also known as FTPS. You can choose if you want to encrypt just the control/authentication channel or both it and the data channel.
Non-Windows Authentication – You can create your own users in IIS which is completely separate from any windows authentication. Cool ain't it?
Virtual Host Names – You can have two separate “virtual” FTP sites on the same IP and port. You will get redirected to a particular site based on the username and virtual host name you login with.
Disk Quotas – You can combine the power of longhorn’s disk quotas with FTP.

Another new thing that you will come across is Windows Activation Service (WAS). WAS is a Windows Vista / Longhorn Server system service that provides process activation and health management services for all types of message-activated applications. WAS provides applications with intelligent resource management, on-demand activation, health-monitoring, and automatic failure detection and recycling. Cool stuff !!!

Before I sign this thread off, I would want to mention briefly on the Diagnostic enhancements. IIS 7.0 includes a new Runtime State and Control API, which provides real-time state information about application pools, worker processes, sites, application domains, and even running requests. This COM API is being exposed via WMI, the new command-line utility, and the new administration tool for quick and easy status regardless of the management environment. IIS 7.0 also includes detailed trace events throughout the request and response path, allowing developers to trace a request as it makes it way to IIS, through the IIS request processing pipeline, into any existing page level code, and back out to the response.

Oh boy, let me stop here and not give away the stuffs I plan during my session. There is enough interesting demos we will have around IIS 7.0. So dont forget to attend my session on "IIS 7.0" :). Cya at TechMela.

Excel 2007 - Office System

vinodkumar — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:02:00 GMT

Here we go again !!! 20 more days to go ... In TechMela I am the owner for the Office System track and I thought it is high time I wrote something on Office here. There are tons and tons of cool stuff I can write from sharepoint to various pillars of Office system suite. I thought I will write on Excel first because I love this data visualizing tool.

So, whatz new in Excel 2007 that hits you first? I am sure many will talk about the UI. I will keep the discussion around Ribbon and the focussed result oriented interface for another day because there is some good work behind the scene happening as I write this post from the product team from an dev angle. Excel as such is a wonderful tool+Application one can use in the daily life. We have done some wonderful enhancements for the graphics and formatting part of the worls. I will highlight some of the capacity side of things like:

The total number of available columns in Excel is now 16,384 (was 256).
The total number of available rows in Excel is now 1,048,576 (was 65,536).
The number of unique colors allowed in a single workbook is now 4.3 billion (was 56).
The number of levels of sorting you can perform on a range or table is now 64 (was 3).
The number of items allowed in the Filter drop-down list is now 10,000 (was 1,000).
The total number of unique cell formats in a workbook is now 64,000 (was 4,000)
The maximum number of characters allowed in formulas is now 8,000 (was 1,000).
The number of levels of nesting that Excel allows in formulas is now 64 (was 7).
The maximum number of items returned by the Find command is now 2 billion (was 64,000).
The number of rows allowed in a PivotTable is now 1 million (was 64,000).
The number of columns allowed in a PivotTable is now 16,000 (was 255).
The maximum number of unique items within a single PivotTable field is now 1 million (was 32,000).
The number of fields that a single PivotTable can have is now 16,000 (was 255).
...
... and many more.

This is from a desktop client side. There is another spin to the whole tool when you start working with Sharepoint. We have introduced a new concept called as Excel Services. One that allows you to do excel calculation from server side and render in the client as a web-based workbooks. Very very powerful aspect. Dont forget to catch me at TechMeal to know more on this new feature. So you can see we do have some dependency with Sharepoint. So here is a quick pointers which tell you which features of Excel are gonna be dependent with Sharepoint:

Publish spreadsheets to Excel Services
Web-based spreadsheet access
Web-services interface to the spreadsheets
Ability to create custom Information Property Panels with business logic using InfoPath (helped by forms server)
Ability to see a document requires workflow actions (approve, sign, etc.)
Ability to see a document is locked and requires check-out to be modified
Ability to see relevant corporate policies right in Office

Not to forget the client side add-in we have for datamining and analysis. It blows away peoples imagination whereever I have showcased them. And the list keeps on increasing.

BTW, dont forget to attend the session on "Tips and Tricks with Office System" which I will cover with a complete 1 hrs demo + fun filled stuff ... Meet you at the event :) ...

TechMela 2007 - TechEd Redefined

vinodkumar — Thu, 17 May 2007 05:26:00 GMT

Yes. This time it is just not TechEd for us in India. It is really big and we are doing TechEd + MEDC + ITPC + Desginer + Enthusiasts Event. This has just got bigger. Let me outline some of the interesting stats we to why we are saying it is big in India.

More than ~100+ Breakout sessions
21 different tracks in 3 days
~30+ Chalk talks sessions
~50+ HOLs during the event
Wonderful set of Subject-Matter-Experts with folks from the Product Team also arriving just for this event

Compared to what we had last year with just 40 sessions with 8 breakout sessions, we have made a giant leap. You can run or you can hide, but if you miss this mega event you surely are missing out something big.

Now this doesnt include the 1 day we dedicated to the Business folks. That is a different ballgame by itself.

What am I Doing:

I am content owner for two tracks namely the "DB and BI Track" and the "Office System" Track. I am super excited and I am doing just one session totally on these two tracks. Details to be outlined later. I am also doing two sessions on other tracks though. But I plan to do quite a few Chalk Talks during the event. And I am all game and ear to comments from you. What would you like to listen as informal chalk talks. I will be more than happy to squeeze the same.

TechMela 2007 - A Mega Event !!!

vinodkumar — Wed, 16 May 2007 13:31:00 GMT

	Calling all developers, IT pros, architects, designers and technology enthusiasts... Here's all you wanted to know about TechMela 2007
	TechMela is a fusion of the latest technologies, business gurus, and structured learning experiences - all you can ask for, in one grand, mother-of-all-tech-events! Creating many pathways to knowledge exchange, TechMela comprises of technology presentations, scenario showcases, experience zones and discussion forums and parallel hands-on learning sessions, besides lots of networking opportunity, and of course - tonnes of fun! This is one event you simply can't afford to miss - no matter which technology stream you work in, or which level you work at.
	3 Days \| 4 Theatres \| 7 Streams \| 21 Tracks \| 150 Sessions \| 300 Labs... One place, at one time! Agenda

Participation Fee
INR 9,000/- per participant

Early Bird Offer
INR 1,000/- off on the Individual Conference Participation Fee (offer ends 22nd May, 2007)
For group discounts, write to techmela@endtoend.in

Star Speakers

Bijoy Singhal, Developer Evangelist
Derek Snyder, Product Manager - Mobile and Embedded Devices Group
Gurpreet S Pall, Director
Janakiram M S V, Developer Evangelist
Loke Uei Tan, Technical Product Manager - Mobile and Embedded Devices Group
Mel Sampat, Program Manager - Windows Mobile
Mike Hall, Senior Technical Product Manager - Mobile and Embedded Devices Group
Pandurang Nayak, Developer Evangelist
Ranjana Jain, IT Pro Evangelist
Ravi Shankar, IT Pro Evangelist
Vignesh Doraiswamy, Embedded Developer Evangelist
Vineet Gupta, Dev Evangelist
Vinod Kumar, IT Evangelist

For further details or queries, email techmela@endtoend.in

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