Adnan Masood's Weblog! عدنان مسعود

Jan 20th - Windows Server AppFabric and “Velocity” w/ Jon Flanders

2010-01-19T08:36:26.696-08:00

Update: This meeting was canceled due to weather conditions in Monrovia. This is now rescheduled to Wed 17th Feb.

Tomorrow Jan 20th, our user group will be hosting an evening with Jon Flanders who will be speaking about Windows Server AppFabric and Velocity Project. He is an amazing speaker and a developer extraordinaire so if you live in the San Gabriel Valley Area, please swing by to the meeting. The event is free to attend and pizza is provided. Here is a brief abstract for the talk.

Abstract: Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies that make it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on IIS. For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data. This feature was previously codenamed "Velocity". “Velocity” is a distributed in-memory cache that provides applications with high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data. Client applications that utilize the cache may be distributed across multiple computers or processes. Jon will be exploring the feature of Velcoity in detail.

For further details please visit the user group website.

10 Immutable Laws of Security

2010-01-18T08:22:31.5757329-08:00

Read the following "10 Immutable Laws of Security" on technet recently, thought they are definitely worth sharing; old but worthy gems.

Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore

Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it's not your computer anymore

Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore

Law #4: If you allow a bad guy to upload programs to your website, it's not your website any more

Law #5: Weak passwords trump strong security

Law #6: A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy

Law #7: Encrypted data is only as secure as the decryption key

Law #8: An out of date virus scanner is only marginally better than no virus scanner at all

Law #9: Absolute anonymity isn't practical, in real life or on the Web

Law #10: Technology is not a panacea

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know

2010-01-07T07:58:31.079875-08:00

During my recent Borders’s-browsing, I came across Richard Monson-Haefel’s book, 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know with the tag line, “Collective Wisdom from the Experts”. The book is interesting and even though it falls short in providing details, gives a good overview of architectural principles. Mind you, this is not a book with case studies or principles of how to define an effective interface with example but more of a 10K ft view of software architectural “principles”. Recently I have seen few books which belong to this genre of collective wisdom aka geek interviews such as “Secrets of the Rock Star Programmers: Riding the IT Crest” and “Coders at work”. I think 97 things is a good addition to this observe-and-report tradition from people presumably working in the trenches of software development.

Following is the table of contents and I have highlighted the chapters/metaphors I liked.

1. Don't Put Your Resume Ahead of the Requirements

2. Simplify Essential Complexity; Diminish Accidental Complexity

3. Chances Are, Your Biggest Problem Isn't Technical

4. Communication Is King; Clarity and Leadership, Its Humble Servants

5. Application Architecture Determines Application Performance

6. Seek the Value in Requested Capabilities

7. Stand Up!

8. Everything Will Ultimately Fail

9. You're Negotiating More Often Than You Think

10. Quantify

11. One Line of Working Code Is Worth 500 of Specification

12. There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Solution

13. It's Never Too Early to Think About Performance

14. Architecting Is About Balancing

15. Commit-and-Run Is a Crime

16. There Can Be More Than One

17. Business Drives

18. Simplicity Before Generality, Use Before Reuse

19. Architects Must Be Hands On

20. Continuously Integrate

21. Avoid Scheduling Failures

22. Architectural Tradeoffs

23. Database As a Fortress

24. Use Uncertainty As a Driver

25. Warning: Problems in Mirror May Be Larger Than They Appear

26. Reuse Is About People and Education, Not Just Architecture

27. There Is No 'I' in Architecture

28. Get the 1,000-Foot View

29. Try Before Choosing

30. Understand the Business Domain

31. Programming Is an Act of Design

32. Give Developers Autonomy

33. Time Changes Everything

34. "Software Architect" Has Only Lowercase a's; Deal with It

35. Scope Is the Enemy of Success

36. Value Stewardship Over Showmanship

37. Software Architecture Has Ethical Consequences

38. Skyscrapers Aren't Scalable

39. Heterogeneity Wins

40. It's All About Performance

41. Engineer in the White Spaces

42. Talk the Talk

43. Context Is King

44. Dwarves, Elves, Wizards, and Kings

45. Learn from Architects of Buildings

46. Fight Repetition

47. Welcome to the Real World

48. Don't Control, but Observe

49. Janus the Architect

50. Architects' Focus Is on the Boundaries and Interfaces

51. Empower Developers

52. Record Your Rationale

53. Challenge Assumptions—Especially Your Own

54. Share Your Knowledge and Experiences

55. Pattern Pathology

56. Don't Stretch the Architecture Metaphors

57. Focus on Application Support and Maintenance

58. Prepare to Pick Two

59. Prefer Principles, Axioms, and Analogies to Opinion and Taste

60. Start with a Walking Skeleton

61. It Is All About The Data

62. Make Sure the Simple Stuff Is Simple

63. Before Anything, an Architect Is a Developer

64. The ROI Variable

65. Your System Is Legacy; Design for It

66. If There Is Only One Solution, Get a Second Opinion

67. Understand the Impact of Change

68. You Have to Understand Hardware, Too

69. Shortcuts Now Are Paid Back with Interest Later

70. "Perfect" Is the Enemy of "Good Enough"

71. Avoid "Good Ideas"

72. Great Content Creates Great Systems

73. The Business Versus the Angry Architect

74. Stretch Key Dimensions to See What Breaks

75. If You Design It, You Should Be Able to Code It

76. A Rose by Any Other Name Will End Up As a Cabbage

77. Stable Problems Get High-Quality Solutions

78. It Takes Diligence

79. Take Responsibility for Your Decisions

80. Don't Be Clever

81. Choose Your Weapons Carefully, Relinquish Them Reluctantly

82. Your Customer Is Not Your Customer

83. It Will Never Look Like That

84. Choose Frameworks That Play Well with Others

85. Make a Strong Business Case

86. Control the Data, Not Just the Code

87. Pay Down Your Technical Debt

88. Don't Be a Problem Solver

89. Build Systems to Be Zuhanden

90. Find and Retain Passionate Problem Solvers

91. Software Doesn't Really Exist

92. Learn a New Language

93. You Can't Future-Proof Solutions

94. The User Acceptance Problem

95. The Importance of Consommé

96. For the End User, the Interface Is the System

97. Great Software Is Not Built, It Is Grown

Note to Self - Helpful links in getting MVC to work on IIS 5.0

2010-01-04T08:34:39.736125-08:00

Helpful links in getting MVC to work on IIS 5.0

Using ASP.NET MVC on IIS 5

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/dorony/archive/2007/12/15/using-asp-net-mvc-on-iis-5.aspx

and if you encounter the same error as I did

ASP.NET 2.0 Application on IIS 5 Resulting in Error (aspnet_wp.exe (PID: XXXX) stopped unexpectedly.)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/233478/asp-net-2-0-application-on-iis-5-resulting-in-error-aspnetwp-exe-pid-xxxx-s

SQL Azure Talk @ Orange County SQL User Group

2009-11-06T07:36:24.255-08:00

Last night I spoke to Orange County SQL user group on SQL Azure, Microsoft’s cloud based relational database. SQL Azure, dubbed as re-launch of SQL Data Services (SDS) (and later SQL Services) is a cloud-based service from Microsoft offering data storage capabilities for Azure Services Platform. In the talk I discussed the challenges of putting a relational database in the cloud and Microsoft’s adaption to user feedback that they wanted SQL server in the cloud and not a schema-less entity-attribute value tables as offered by other vendors and previously was the main focus of SDS. Azure team changed course for a better customer targeted implementation catering to the relational cloud even though conventional wisdom states that relational databases aren’t as scalable as the schemaless Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) tables used by Amazon SimpleDB, and Google’s BigTable and the App Engine’s data store.

Slides SQL Azure Presentation.pptx and code sample Connectivity.rar

Not surprisingly, a lot of focus during these talks are put on short-comings of the SQL Azure instead of the wonderful capabilities it offer. Being a VLDB aficionado, I found the attempt of putting the relational database in the cloud quite heroic to be honest. Like any v1 product, there are certain limitations but again IMHO, community needs to understand the large scale distributed database implementation issues and therefore comparing it against SQL 2008 on premise is not really an apple to apple comparison.

Along with slides and code samples, I demonstrated the connectivity from SSMS (workaround for connecting with SQL Server Management Studio), discussed SQL Azure Pricing and SQL Azure SLA (Service Level Agreement) for which “Monthly Availability” of 99.9% with a 9.99 fee, is pretty awesome.

Web Edition: Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month
Business Edition: Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month
Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

The new and improved control panel allows to do simple tasks such as firewall IP additions, connection strings and database provisioning quite easy.

When connecting to SQL Azure, please ensure that your firewall settings (as shown below) includes the IP range you are trying to connect from.

Feedback from Attendees (in the order of strong opinions)

· Connectivity with SSMS needs to be fixed ASAP to avoid the workarounds

· 10GB is too small and makes the v1 not enterprise ready.

· Error log un-availability in V1 could be a deal breaker for some DBA’s.

· SQL Agent Support is an absolute must have from a DR and on-premise replica standpoint.

· Programmatic way of finding the size of database

· Linked Server Support is really important.

· CLR Support is needed for a lot of practical purposes.

· SQL Profiler support should be there.

The slides, code samples and links from the talk are as follows.

· SQL Azure Home

· SQL Azure, Let’s get started - Lynn Langit

· SQL Azure Training Kit

· SQL Azure Explorer Add-in

· SQL Azure Migration Wizard v1.9

· SQL Azure Explorer on Channel 9

· David Yack on Starting with SQL Azure

· geekSpeak: REST and the Windows Azure Services Platform with Adnan Masood

· Getting Started with SQL Azure | David Gristwood | Channel 9

· Hands on with SQL Azure (CTP 2) | David Gristwood | Channel 9

· Billing system testing behind Microsoft's SQL Azure outage this week

· Amazon Attempts to Preempt PDC 2009 Release of SQL Azure with MySQL 5.1 Relational Database Service

· SQL Data Services Abandons REST for TDS API and Knocks My Socks Off

· Frequently asked Questions about SQL Azure

· Stephen Forte`s Blog - Building a RESTful application with SQL Azure

· SQL Pass Summit on Azure

· Project Rivera, Windows Azure Code samples

PS. Conveniently Amazon attempts to Preempt PDC 2009 Release of SQL Azure with MySQL 5.1 Relational Database Service Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) Beta, announced on 10/27/2009, which delivers pre-configured MySQL 5.1 instances with up to 68 GB of memory and 26 ECUs (8 virtual cores with 3.25 ECUs each) servicing up to 1 TB of data storage

Why is naïve Bayesian, naïve?

2009-11-04T10:15:05.4217839-08:00

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me this question, I would have enough money to buy Trevor Hastie's The Elements of Statistical Learning Second Edition :). Anyways, here is a good explanation from Algorithm's of the intelligent web on what is so naïve about naïve Bayesian?

"This is the calculation of the conditional probabilities p(Y|X) . The term naïve has its origin in this method. Note that we’re seeking the probability of occurrence for a particular instance, given a particular concept. But each instance is uniquely determined by the unique values of its attributes. The conditional probability of the instance is, in essence, the joint probability of all the attribute value conditional probabilities. Each attribute value conditional probability is given by the term (aV.getCount()/concept-Priors.get(c)) . In the preceding implementation, it’s assumed that all these attribute values are statistically independent, so the joint probability is simply the product of the individual probabilities for each attribute value. That’s the “naïve” part. In general, without the statistical independence of the attributes, the joint probability wouldn’t be equal to that product."

And the interesting part is

"We use quotes around the word naïve because it turns out that the naïve Bayes algorithm is very robust and widely applicable, even in problems where the attribute independence assumption is clearly violated. In fact, it can be shown that the naïve Bayes algorithm is optimal in the exact opposite case—when there’s a completely deterministic dependency among the attributes"

BTW, Algorithm's of the intelligent web is this excellent book by Haralambos Marmanis and Babenko Dmitry; recommended reading.

Theory Day @ Georgia Tech - Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization

2009-10-23T15:34:11.5656025-07:00

ACO, a multidisciplinary PhD Program in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization at the Georgia Institute of Technology, will be streaming live lectures by four prominent computer scientists. Live web streaming available at no charge.

Theory Day Celebrating 50th Anniversary of Foundations of Computer Science and 20th Anniversary of the ACO Program at Georgia Tech Held in conjunction with FOCS 2009 on Saturday, October 24, 2009 in the LeCraw Auditorium on the Georgia Tech campus. The event will be webcast live from the link below and will consist of one hour lectures by

12:30-1:30 Richard Karp, University of California, Berkeley         What Makes an Algorithm Great?

1:50-2:50 Mihalis Yannakakis, Columbia University          Computational Aspects of Equilibria

3:10-4:10 Noga Alon, Tel Aviv University           Disjoint paths, isoperimetric problems, and graph eigenvalues

5:00-6:00 Manuel Blum, Carnegie Mellon University          Can (Theoretical Computer) Science come to grips with Consciousness?

The times listed are EDT, same time zone as New York.

To register, for more information and to watch the lectures live please visit

    http://www.aco.gatech.edu/conference/focs-aco/

Videos of the lectures will be archived at the same location.

ACO is a multidisciplinary PhD Program in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

via Jeff Bergman

Debugging Tips & Tricks with Paul Sheriff - SGV.NET User Group Meeting - Wed 21st Oct 2009

2009-10-20T08:23:28.168-07:00

Paul Sheriff will be speaking to our user group Wednesday night on Debugging tips and tricks. With his interactive and easy to understand presentation style, his sessions are highly recommended. Details below.

Debugging Tips & Tricks with Paul Sheriff
Wed 21st Oct 2009

Abstract: If you have not really dug into the VS.NET debugger, then this seminar is for you. You will explore all the various breakpoint, tracepoint, data tips, and the myriad features that this powerful debugger let’s you use. You will see how to set conditional breakpoints, learn to filter threads based on their thread id, and learn the difference between the Watch window, locals and immediate window.

You Will Learn:

   1. Set breakpoints with hit counts, filters, conditions.
   2. See how to use data tips, visualizers, and make object ids
   3. See when objects are about to be garbage collected
   4. Learn how exception handling can be used as a debugging aid

About the Presenter: Paul D. Sheriff is the President of PDSA, Inc. (www.pdsa.com), a Microsoft Partner in Southern California. Paul acts as the Microsoft Regional Director for Southern California assisting the local Microsoft offices with several of their events each year and being an evangelist for them. Paul has authored several books, webcasts, videos and articles on .NET, SQL Server and SharePoint. Paul can be reached via email at PSheriff@pdsa.com or at Paul Sheriff's Inner Circle (www.PaulSheriffInnerCircle.com).

Meeting Agenda:

    * 6:00p Mixer/Networking/Pizza
    * 6:30p Presentation Starts
    * 7:30p Break
    * 7:45p Presentation Resumes
    * 8:45p Raffle

Directions: Park in parking structure at 570 E Huntington Dr, Monrovia, CA 91016 . Meeting is across the street in 605 E Huntington Dr. Once parked, use the overhead walk way to get to the building. The meeting will be right inside the door after the walk way.

This is a Green Dot Corporation sponsored event. There is no entry fee and the event is free for attendees.

Web Application Testing using WATIN - Speaking to South Bay .NET User Group

2009-10-07T15:47:16.9-07:00

Tomorrow I will be speaking to the Southbay.NET users group in Torrance. Following is the abstract of my talk. For details and directions, please see the link below.

Web Application Testing using WATIN
Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 6:30 PM

Web application testing is a tough task especially in the ASP.NET web forms environment where model‐view‐controller boundaries intermingle. To solve this presentation is a premier to WatiN (inspired from WatiR, its Ruby counterpart), a feature rich and stable framework. WatiN is developed in C# and aims to bring you an easy way to automate your tests with Internet Explorer and FireFox using .Net. Watin is open‐source functional testing tool for web‐applications which simulate the user actions (filling/submitting form), drives the browser and allows you to do your web application testing in a convenient and developer friendly way. This talk focuses on how you can use WatiN to do web application testing and integrate it with your acceptance testing framework. The presenter provides a step by step guide to build test frameworks for your website using WatiN. This is a code intensive talk so those allergic to slides are encouraged to come.

For details and directions.

Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp - Free Training

2009-09-24T11:48:36.5726821-07:00

Free Developer Training for Windows 7 Developers in LA Area.

"Jump-start your Windows 7 experience by joining some of the top Windows 7 engineers, including Mark Russinovich, Landy Wang, and Arun Kishan, for an intense, high quality boot camp. Whether you are looking to create more performant, reliable, or secure applications, or you are an application developer looking to leapfrog past your competition, this FREE Boot Camp can get you from zero to hero in less than eight hours! This fast-paced Windows 7 marathon will cover it all including: (1) Kernel and architectural improvements, (2) new shell integration points: taskbar, libraries and search, and (3) applied tips for getting the most out of today’s hardware with the sensor & location platform, multitouch, and the new graphics libraries (Direct2D, DirectX 11) that take advantage of the GPU. Whether you’re a C++, C# or Visual Basic developer, building a .NET or a Win32 application, we’ll give you actionable tips to get the most out of the Windows platform."

How to Register:

Yes, you'll have to register through the regular registration site. Simply select "pre-conference workshop only" as your registration type and when you get to the workshop selection page of the registration form, you'll be able to pick the Windows 7 bootcamp as a free item. The workshop is indeed on Monday Nov 16th.

Details here: http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/WKSP08