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My current project uses some interesting technologies. A little background. The client bought into a technology that was demonstrated in a prototype of our project developed by a group at a University in California.
This technology, called OWL (Web Ontology Language) allows the client to build a knowledge base of domain-specific information which is very quickly searchable.
From the W3C site: "OWL is intended to be used when the information contained in documents needs to be processed by applications, as opposed to situations where the content only needs to be presented to humans. OWL can be used to explicitly represent the meaning of terms in vocabularies and the relationships between those terms. This representation of terms and their interrelationships is called an ontology. OWL has more facilities for expressing meaning and semantics than XML, RDF, and RDF-S, and thus OWL goes beyond these languages in its ability to represent machine interpretable content on the Web"
So Ontology is a way of representing relationships between objects. And using these relationships, OWL allows very complex searches to be performed on the data contained in the knowledge repository.
The drawback.... There are not really any good .NET libraries available to read/write/search OWL, so we are using a few JAVA libraries to write some custom JAVA code to perform these functions, and the JAVA code is wrapped with a Java WebService.
The JAVA libaries we are using include Jena (the API for OWL), Jastor (business objects to interact with Jena), JAXB (for serializing and de-serializing XML to and from our application), and AXIS2 (for web services on Tomcat Web Server).
So this presetns a bit of a logistical challenge as we are interoping with Java through a web service facade. Good stuff. I need to hop on a plane now, but more later. I promise...
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Well I started on a new project this week. Big client. Potentially huge for the West Region, so I am stoked. Being on the bench for 2 months, though it allowed me to train and get certified, is a bit much for me. I go absolutely stir crazy at home, so you can imagine how jazzed I am. ANYWAY... On this project we are using SCRUM, one of the Agile methodologies. I should say that we are using OUR version of SCRUM. We took the tools and techniques of pure SCRUM and have adapted them to our project. The really cool part? The client requested it as they are also ramping up SCRUM development internally. So we are working with them to determine what works best. The planning for Sprint 0 (S0) is complete, and we began working the tasks on Thursday of this week. S0 is all about environment setup and domain knowledge transfer, so light on development, but heavy on learning and infrastructure. Stay tuned to this blog for my observations on the methodology. It's not a normal Avanade practice, so it should be interesting. It IS, however, catching on. The other really neat thing about this project is our use of Ontologies to enable very rich search and metadata within the application. these two items are at the top of the list of features that are needed by the customer, and to date, I have not ever used ontology. I've taken it on for S0 to learn what it is we are using, including the tools and techniques required to make it work well. So again, stay tuned to this blog for more information about what we are doing, how we are doing it, and what the results are. Happy to be productive once again...  Technorati tags: agile, scrum, ontology
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I received this from a colleague today. I just recently started focusing on BI, so I find this pretty exciting and a good reason to continue along this path.
Last week, Gartner held their annual Business Intelligence Summit. Microsoft presented PerformancePoint and their end-to-end BI platform offering. Judging by the reaction from analysts AND customers, Microsoft BI “has arrived”…See below for some compelling quotes from Gartner BI Analysts’ at last week’s conference, and keep in mind that Gartner has not been a big fan of Microsoft BI in previous years (when I receive the conference presentations, I’ll post them somewhere)…
1. With recent announcements, Microsoft must now be considered a feasible BI player and a serious competitor in the market.
2. At this point, current Microsoft customers of other BI and performance management products will probably only consider Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 if they have a strong enterprise-wide commitment to SQL Server 2005, SharePoint and Office/Excel.
3. Microsoft’s combined value proposition has always been user friendliness and low (or comparatively low) pricing. Therefore, even with deeply discounted offerings, classic BI vendors will be hard-pressed to compete on price. Microsoft is applying the commodity business model to BI, forcing established players to offer more complex, premium products and services.
4. Microsoft has developed a good set of reporting, analysis and data integration BI capabilities, which levels the playing field for the BI market.
5. Microsoft will become a globally dominant BI vendor, with top-five market share by the first quarter of 2009 (0.8 probability). It’s also only a matter of time before Microsoft challenges Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, and other BI vendors for best-of-breed status in such things as CPM.
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 Reflector is not a Microsoft tool. But you can bet it is in my top 10 tools that can't do without. The good news of the day is that Reflector 5 is out! And the best .NET Developer tool around has some useful new features!
- Reflector 5.0
- Reflector 5.0 Add-Ins @ CodePlex
- Reflector 5.0 New Features (PPT)
You can now use uri's to let Reflector navigate to a method or property. For example : code://nunit.framework/NUnit.Framework.Assert/AreSame Just great for searching documentation or articles on the web. A few other things Reflector 5 supports: - C# 2.0 and 3.0 support
- Use multiple Windows, analyzer and disassembler open at the same time.
- Shell integration
- "Instantiated By" and "Exposed By" searches.
- String or Constant search.
- And... it works under Vista.
You can update using Reflector using Help -> Check for updates. Lutz really is a champion of developers. His free tool probably gets more use than most retail tools. And it works GREAT. Thanks, Lutz!
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Update is fully compatible with Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system; new licensing updates enhance opportunities for virtualization. Key enhancements to SQL Server SP2 include the following: Data Mining Add-ins for the 2007 Microsoft Office system enable data mining functionality from SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) to be used directly within Excel® 2007 and Visio® 2007. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) compatibility with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 provides integration with the Report Center in SharePoint, enabling the seamless consumption and management of SSRS reports within SharePoint. SQL Server Analysis Services improvements for Excel 2007 and Excel Services relate to performance and functionality. Data compression (varDecimal) is an important feature for data warehousing scenarios, requiring less disk storage of decimal data and increasing overall performance. Manageability enhancements, based on customer feedback, provide management capabilities for database administrators such as improvements in database maintenance plans, enhanced management reports and a new copy database wizard. Management reports added to SQL Server Express Edition enable customers to get insights into the performance of their Express Edition and SQL Server Compact Edition databases. Interoperability improvements including Oracle support in the Report Builder feature enable customers to use its functionality on top of Oracle data sources. Customers also have access to SQL Server Reporting Services to build reports on top of Hyperion’s Essbase cubes. Customers can download SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 immediately from http://www.microsoft.com/sql/sp2.mspx. Source: Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2
Originally published on Mon, 19 Feb 2007 17:00:00 GMT
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Some good press for our fellow Avanauts Chris Peiris, Dennis Mulder, Amit Bahree, Shawn Cicoria,and Aftab Chopra. I went on a book binge this week and have had my nose buried in WCF all week. There's a lot of really good stuff out there, but without a doubt, Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation by Chris Peiris is probably my favorite. Overall, the book is just over 400 pages but the author says quite a bit in those 400 pages. The coolest part is that they go over just about every topic that the MSDN Documentation is short on. I found that a lot of things that I stumbled my way through were covered there as well. ...All in all, this book was pretty impressive. They do mostly real world stuff and while they certainly talk theory, they stick to stuff that you'll encounter in your day to day development. You can only take so much theory and I've found that the documentation on MSDN is really heavy on theory and not enough implementation. This book will bridge that gap. Scott Klein's WCF book will help quite a bit too but won't be out for another month or two. Source: Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation
Originally published on Sun, 18 Feb 2007 23:41:00 GMT I recommend visiting the blog for the full posting. When I saw the book at Barnes and Noble this weekend, I had to pick it up and show my wife... "These guys work for Avanade" I said. She said "Cool. What's WCF?". Nice.
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I found this posted over on TheServerSide.NET. It's a good resource if you are not up to speed on LINQ (like me). It consists of a series of links (no pun intended) to a varioety of resources, including word docs, webcasts, code sampels, etc. From the site: Language changes are a two-edged sword, as learning cuts into your time but sharpens and future-proofs your skills. Some new features are minor and can be gradually integrated into your routine, while others quickly impact your approach to coding. LINQ (Language Integrated Query) is a set of .NET framework extensions that will definitely impact how C# and VB developers work with data in the future. These extensions provide a way to natively query any type of data without having to resort to other languages such as SQL or XQuery. This learning guide provides a quick look at the LINQ extensions and the upcoming release of C# 3.0 in general. Table of Contents > General information
> Articles
> Webcasts
> Downloads
> Code Samples
> Community Enjoy!
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Infragistics has released the first Beta version of their NetAdvantage for WPF product. The Beta 1 release of the NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 Volume 1, including the xamDataGrid and xamDataPresenter controls, is a milestone in the development of the NetAdvantage for WPF product line. This release gives you the first opportunity to preview the next generation in NetAdvantage controls, designed and developed specifically for the WPF platform, and to experience the possibilities of Windows Presentation Foundation. Highlighted Features - Built from the ground up to leverage WPF platform features, including high resolution graphics, rich styling and animation capabilities and integrated UI virtualization technology.
- Developed specifically for the WPF platform, the controls are written entirely in C# and XAML, exposing a friendly and logical object model.
- Architected for maximum styling flexibility, utilize numerous templates and styling points to create unique user experiences, tailored to your audience.
- XBAP compatible controls mean you can deploy rich client apps easily through the browser.
- Over 15 different visual styles, including Windows and Office themes.
- Samples browser demonstrating many of the powerful features of the NetAdvantage for WPF controls
It's about a 36MB dopwnload and requires registration with the Infragistics site. But looking at some of the sample screenshots they have posted, it is worth the time and effort, especially if you are developing WPF applications today.
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Great VS reference poster from Rob Caron and company. Be sure to click on the link under the picture and not the picture itself. Do you prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard when working in Visual Studio? If so, you'll appreciate this new cubicle art we posted last week that you can now download and print at your convenience: 
Visual Basic 
Visual C# 
Visual C++ Source: Free: Keyboard Shortcut Reference Posters for Visual Studio
Originally published on Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:32:18 GMT
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It's not much, but here is some free training available for ASP.NET Ajax. There are also some video tutorials available on the http://ajax.asp.net site. InnerWorkings is delighted to offer all GotDotNet developers 1 hour of FREE learning material on Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX. This free offer teaches you to use UpdatePanel, the central control in ASP.NET AJAX and makes it super-easy to add AJAX capabilities to a web site. InnerWorkings offers developers a challenge-driven, hands-on approach to mastering new .NET technologies by writing code and solving problems within Visual Studio. Source: Free ASP.NET AJAX Learning from InnerWorkings
Originally published on Tue, 23 Jan 2007 19:15:30 GMT
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ASP.NET AJAX has just RTM-ed. Even cooler than that is the release of the SharePoint AJAX Toolkit on CodePlex, which uses the ASP.NET AJAX framework. This sounds very promising, especially with all of the SharePoint work we have going on. Daniel writes: ASP.NET Ajax Extensions (aka Atlas) have been released (finally!), and I've been saving up some code for the release which I'll post shortly. (Get the 1.0 RTM bits here: ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0)The SharePoint Ajax Toolkit is also ready for release and is available as a WSP (SharePoint Solution Package) here with some nifty new features, including a Solution Package based installer that allows FULL no-touch deployment and registers the Atlas httpHandlers, as well as a Refresh interval programmed into the XmlWebPart (a great solution for SharePoint list RSS feeds). Included is one web part, the Xml Web Part (with a default RSS reader XSLT which can be set to auto refresh), and the core framework for AJAX developers. The source code is recommended for SharePoint developers. There'a a lot of goodness coming out right now. It's a very exciting time to be who we are!
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Either that was the fastest RC1 EVER, or I was slow getting on the RC1 boat... hmmm... UPDATE: Yeah, it was me. I looked at the date of the blog I was quoting... Jan 14. HELLO!! Still, though, one week, seems to be seriously fast for RC1 to release. Anyway, ASP.NET Ajax acheived version 1.0 status, meaning it's FINALLY released to the web. From the website: ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework for quickly creating a new generation of more efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers. With ASP.NET AJAX, you can: - Create next-generation interfaces with reusable AJAX components.
- Enhance existing Web pages using powerful AJAX controls with support for all modern browsers.
- Continue using Visual Studio 2005 to take your ASP.NET 2.0 sites to the next level.
- Access remote services and data directly from the browser without writing a ton of complicated script.
- Enjoy the benefits of a free framework with 24x7 technical support provided by Microsoft.
Download it now! More information on http://ajax.asp.net. Next time, I'll try to keep up with the blistering pace of development. In the meantime, enjoy!
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RC1 of the ASP.NET AJAX framework is ready for download: We are making great progress with ASP.NET AJAX and are definitely winding down to the home stretch. I'm happy to announce immediate availability of ASP.NET AJAX RC 1. Here is the blurb from the www.asp.net homepage: ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Release Candidate is now available for download. ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework for creating client-centric, interactive Web applications that work with major browsers and operating systems. New features include additional globalization support, dynamic invocation of web service proxies, and substitution logic, compression and caching support for the Script Resource handler. The RC release is the final preview of the fully supported version of ASP.NET AJAX, scheduled for release in January.
The Microsoft AJAX Library is also available in an easy-to-install, standalone package for development on non-Windows systems. For more information, visit the ASP.NET AJAX site.
To help you get started with ASP.NET AJAX, virtually all of the “How Do I” with ASP.NET AJAX videos have been updated for the Release Candidate. 
Source: ASP.NET AJAX RC 1 is here! Download now
Originally published on Thu, 14 Dec 2006 23:12:00 GMT
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Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate UPGRADE Limited Numbered Signature Edition DVDs are available to purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Ultimate-Numbered-Signature/dp/B000M2WPIQ/ref=pd_sim_sw_2/104-1611751-7630347 It looks like there are going to be 20000 such DVDs, signed by Bill Gates. Product description from Amazon: The most comprehensive edition of Windows Vista, Vista Ultimate Upgrade Signature Edition (DVD-ROM) is the first operating system that combines all of the advanced infrastructure features of a business-focused operating system, all of the management and efficiency features of a mobility-focused operating system, and all of the digital entertainment features of a consumer-focused operating system. For the person who wants one operating system that is great for working from home, working on the road, and for entertainment, Vista Ultimate is a no-compromise operating system that lets you have it all. Sounds pretty good to me. And it's signed by Bill Gates. Did I mention that already??
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From IT Wire: A new survey of more than 40 blogs and 156 websites has found that the public is in no rush to upgrade to Windows Vista, with a clear majority in no plans to upgrade in 2007 The survey, conducted between January 4 and 10 by Internet market research group Vizu Answers, found that 59% of Windows users do not plan to upgrade to Vista in 2007. The survey also found that Vista is perceived to be slightly more secure than previous editions of Windows, with 38% thinking it will provide better protection than previous editions of the operating system. However of those that were aware of the new security features, only 24% believe they will have a lasting effect. Only 5% of the 2221 respondents to the survey plan on upgrading to Vista on their business or home machines. In contrast, 55% of respondents who plan on upgrading will not do so until they purchase a new computer. Well, this is a little misleading. They are basing their research results on a sampling of 2221, and they don't mention who actually responded. How can they make such a definitive statement about the general public?? They can say for certain about the 2221 respondants. But extrapolating this to how many millions of Windows users? My feeling is that Vista will be a BIG hit with businesses, and that ordinary consumers (not geeks like me) will in fact be slow to upgrade, especially since XP SP2 will be supported for the forseeable future. I count ordinary consumer as people like my parents who use their computer for email and games and surfing the Internet. Yes, there is a bit of a hardware crunch, especially if you have an older computer, but you CAN run Vista without all the bells and whistles turned on. In fact, the OS is smart enough to know what capabilities your computer has and will not switch the cool features on if your system won't support them. Bottom line: we have to wait and see how the general public responds to Vista, but already, businesses seem to be catching on: http://kaschimer.com/blogs/way2early4this/archive/2007/01/11/vista-s-business-sales-stronger-than-expected.aspx
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