when I Re-View

I am not out yet !!!

2010-07-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

Guys - I am not out from the Blogging Spcace however I have moved myself to www.geekdeck.com , follow me there .. rgds Jibran

Creating WebSlice for Blogger

2010-01-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

I have shared the way and code on http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/bloggerwebslice Please visit..

where i have been during last few months....

2009-12-14T02:00:00.000-08:00

From the eye of Camera!!...

"Windows 7 Launch for Channel Partners"

"Business Intelligence Lab for Partners"

"Blogger's Corner @ Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 Pakistan Launch"

"MSPK Team @ Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 Pakistan Launch"

"Microsoft Community Bootcamp"

"Microsoft Academic Festival"

"Microsoft Academic Festival"

"Microsoft Consumer Day"

"Microsoft Consumer Day"

Microsoft Certifications discount vouchers

2009-11-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

Being a Microsoft Certified Trainer, i am able to offer discount vouchers provided by Microsoft. So if you intend to appear for any Microsoft exam, i may be able to provide you with a discount voucher for it.

Check below the various categories:

This offer is on a personal and community basis ..

Windows 7 launch, awareness sessions in Pakistan (Academia)

2009-10-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

Windows 7 is on it's way, currently a lot of You have experienced the Product's RTM and other's will soon on Oct 22nd when it will be launched for everyone! GA. I am really having some good time with the Product, i have been using it since last 7 - 8 months since it's beta and due to great focus on Planning, Customer & Partner feedback and Addressing critical pain points, to me it will the most successful OS on the Planet and would be soon taking over Market Share of all other MS & non - MS Operating Systems.

As far it's execution in the academic sector is concerned we have already started and on 6th OCT our first event took place at MAJU - Karachi, as per the guidelines provided to Me by Naveed Bajwa, DPE Lead & Shoaib Khalil, Marketing Lead many other sessions have been planned in this month few at the MIC under the banner of various UG's and MIC it's self and few at other Uni's like CBM, Bahria, UIT, SSUET etc..

For the Audience interested in knowing a few basic things on Windows 7, i am uploading my Presentation on the link below:

http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Documents/Windows%207%20Overview.ppsx

A few snaps taken at MAJU - Karachi during Windows 7 event..

Complimentay DreamSpark Codes

2009-09-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

DreamSpark is a Microsoft Academic initiative specially designed for Students to enable them to download and use various Microsoft Tools for free and offers them much more...

To explore the Program kindly visit:
https://www.dreamspark.com

To apply for the DreamSpark complimentary code kindly visit, http://jibranjamshad.tech.officelive.com/DreamSpark.aspx

* Only Students from Pakistan should apply through this portal

Secure portable drives (USB) with BitLocker to Go; feature of Windows 7

2009-09-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

Today, USB drives are probably the most preferred medium of porting and backing Data from a location to another. I don't think so that highlighting their benefits is required over here, everyone of us knows that as everyone of us have them... Now what happens if someone you know takes your USB w/o permission or someone you don't know takes w/o permission.. if the person who has taken the USB is a known one, you will get it back else case you will report it stolen or lost.. So what's the worst that's going to happen you loose your asset of few dollars?? obviously NOT!!! EVERY ONE OF US IS CONCERNED MORE WITH OUR DATA RATHER THEN THE PORTABLE DRIVE, is true always in the case of a Business!

To me a data always has a cost associated to it and you have to pay if someone else get's it..

Windows 7 Enterprise comes with a feature known as BitLocker to Go helps you to protect your USB Drivers and System Drives (Protecting System Drives was even possible with BitLocker in Windows Vista Ultimate, now in Windows 7 Enterprise you can also secure your USBs alongwith Hard Drives) with Password or through Smart Card so even if you by chance someone get's hold of your USB they are not able to use it unless providing the Password or Inserting the particular Smart Card.

So Now, How does that Happens....

1) Insert a USB drive, right-click on it and select the Turn on BitLocker

2) BitLocker To Go will begin initializing your USB drive

3) Once the initialization process is complete, BitLocker To Go will prompt you to set up a password that you will use to unlock the drive. If you have a smart card, you can use its PIN to unlock the drive

4) After you set up a password or use a smart card, BitLocker To Go will prompt you to store a recovery key. You can use the recovery key to unlock your drive in the event that you forget the password or lose your smart card.

5) When you create the password and save your recovery key, you’ll be prompted to begin the encryption process

6) During the encryption process, you’ll see a standard progress monitor that will keep you apprised of the operation. The amount of time that it will take to complete the process will depend on how large the drive is. As you can see, there is a Pause button that will allow you to temporarily halt the process should you need to perform another task.

7) Once the encryption is complete, BitLocker To Go displays a confirmation dialog box and changes the icon associated with the encrypted drive

Now when you plug-in this encrypted drive to any Windows 7 PC it will allow you to access data after providing the password.. however on Windows XP or Vista, this program will take control of the USB drive and you have to launch it and enter the password and then you will be able to see the data in read only mode and you can copy files from the USB and can paste it to the target machine..

References:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=1176
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7/features.aspx#bitlocker

Microsoft SearchTogether (Beta)

2009-09-14T04:31:00.000-07:00

Few days back i came across this wonderful tool from Microsoft Research which runs on IE7 & later named Search Together.. one thing i will want to highlight is that it not only uses Live Search as a Search Engine but you can also use Google and Yahoo.

What is SearchTogether?

Microsoft SearchTogether is a free Internet Explorer plug-in that allows groups of people to collaborate on Web searches.

Who can benefit from using SearchTogether?

SearchTogether can benefit any group of people who are interested in investigating a topic together, such as students working on a group report, colleagues working on a joint project, or friends planning a shared vacation or other social activities. SearchTogether supports both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration styles.

Where did SearchTogether come from?

SearchTogether is a project from Microsoft Research; it is part of Meredith Ringel Morris's research project on collaborative Web search. The original SearchTogether concept was presented in this UIST 2007 paper and video. Thanks to the efforts of developers Piali Choudhury, Matt Maddin, and ThuVan Pham, the original prototype was transformed into an IE plug-in.

Do visit the following link to download this IE Pulg-in and start search together with your online friends during your different assignments, projects, tours etc and etc..

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/searchtogether/

Dont's on Social Media

2009-09-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

Just now i came across this article, highlighting the impact of social media on their jobs due to their high engagement on social networking websites passing various comments on their co-workers and sharing their job updates with other people & networks..

Although this article doesn't mine any thing new, but still highlights the stuff with some live examples of the stuff most of us do on those sites knowing it's consequences probably just for drawing 'social attention'

LINK: http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-1953-Workplace-Issues-Social-Media-Pitfalls/?sc_extcmp=JS_1953_spotlight&SiteId=cbmsnsl41953&ArticleID=1953>1=23000&cbRecursionCnt=1&cbsid=4de132a477d24147ba94e086c87dc381-305954193-RM-4

Few dont's which i liked from this article are follows:

Don't announce interviews, raises or new jobs

Don't mention your job search if you're still employed

Facebook Fired Stories

Kimberly Swann, a former employee at Ivell Marketing & Logistics of Clacton, U.K., thought her job was boring -- and she said so on her Facebook page, according to an article in The Daily Telegraph. Swann was called into her manager's office and handed a letter that cited her Facebook comments as the reason for dismissal:

"Following your comments made on Facebook about your job and the company we feel it is better that, as you are not happy and do not enjoy your work we end your employment with Ivell Marketing & Logistics with immediate effect."

An MSNBC article tells of Kevin Colvin, the legendary young intern who e-mailed his boss, claiming a "family emergency" would keep him out of the office around Halloween. His co-workers (and Facebook friends), however, saw a photo of Colvin dressed as a fairy at a Halloween party time-stamped on the same day of the "emergency." Colvin's boss responded to him with an e-mail CC'd to the entire company, firing him and including the incriminating fairy picture.

In March 2009, the same MSNBC article cites Dan Leone, a Philadelphia Eagles stadium employee, who was fired after slamming the football organization for trading a player in this status update:

"Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver. . .Dam Eagles R Retarted!![sic]"

Two days later, the head of event operations said they needed to talk about his Facebook status; instead, he got the boot.

Firstly i don''t like the idea of blaming employers, if you don't like, leave the job and if you have already left,your blaming will bring no good to you! and especially in the case of global brands it depends upon from person to person and we will always find pro and anti groups for a same brand crowded largely!

Agents based Systems, is it real?

2009-09-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

In today's market, still we look for reasons to justify the software engineering practice! even in a bunch of core IT guys one term which is still anonymous to us is "software agents" or "agent oriented software engineering".. When we say software engineering we are always referring to the Object Oriented aspect of it and think that OOSE (Object Oriented Software Engineering) is the only form and application of software engineering and it is the end...

Probably because the books written in 1980's on this domain are still valid in our institutions and we always wait for research and practices to be implemented by vendors and learn and implement them once they are a JOB REQUIREMENT!

The story is different in other parts of the world, where the academia comes up with research and aid the vendors to make it a standard and same is going with the software engineering domain.

There the agents have replaced the objects and object orientation is transformed in to agent oriented domains.

(The following paras are applicable to those who understand what Object Oriented S/W Eng is)

So what is a Software Agent?, A Software Agent is a computer program which works toward goals in a dynamic environment (where change is the norm) on behalf of another entity (human or computational), possibly over an extended period of time, without continuous direct supervision or control, and exhibits a significant degree of flexibility and even creativity in how it seeks to transform goals into action tasks..

Where as on the other hand, an Object works in a pre-determinant environment and its just their to perform certain actions based upon the encapsulated attributes and interacts with another objects..

So Agents are meant to work where environment keeps on changing, they develop a notion of learning based upon their experience but objects don't, moreover agents can provide reasoning (which you have seen in AI) which objects don't.. while execution agents have their own thread of control while objects have a single thread of control in the system. Objects always say a "Yes" and "No" is treated as an ERROR while Agents have the right to say "No" based upon the conditions..

Agents are far more liberal and can play a different role in different domains, Objects are invoked while Agents react to the environmental happenings. and many more ...

Software Agents can be considered as enhancement over Software Objects as both don't anything about the system they work and works through encapsulation (hiding their data) interacting with surrounding elements.

Lot of tools supporting modeling and development through AOSE are available but are yet to be commercial, few years down the road this will be the way Programs for Devices & Machines are going to be written..... (continued....)

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~bimlesh/ametrics/findings/Differences%20between%20objects%20and%20agents.pdf

Inspiration from my teacher "Leon Sterling"...

Windows 7 Launch Party

2009-09-03T22:05:00.001-07:00

Windows 7 Launch Party

Windows® 7 is coming, and hosts around the world will be among the first to see it, use it, and share it with their friends. If selected to host, you'll receive a special Signature Edition of Windows® 7 Ultimate and your very own Windows® 7 Party Pack to share with your guests. It's a global Launch Party, and you can be there!...

Shared via AddThis

Microsoft Faculty Connection (complimentary code available)

2009-09-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

What is Faculty Connection? (http://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection)

MSDN Academic Alliance
Microsoft Faculty Connection is designed to address the challenges you face in teaching technology students. It takes time and preparation to keep students engaged while giving them a fundamental understanding of theory, to provide labs and assignment that inspire innovation and to integrate professional tools and skills that will prepare students for successful careers.

To aid your preparation and save you time, Microsoft’s Faculty Connection features content and valuable tools that are exclusive, free, and designed to support technology educators like you. The site offers curriculum, free software, members-only forums, insight into Microsoft’s latest initiatives, as well as, access to regional events and training.

Articles
Staying current with Microsoft educational programs and initiatives can be a challenge. To help you stay current with opportunities to participate we will bring the news to you, all in one place. If you see something you like (or don’t like) let us know about it in the Forums.

Academic Resource Center
Your source for curriculum content and materials including hundreds of topics relevant to today's academic teaching requirements. Search, review and download full courses or just a module. You can freely use these materials as is or edit them to meet your personal educational objectives.

Software
Software products, technologies and tools continue to improve. As we develop new technologies and release new product/versions, we are committed to providing you with the latest for academic evaluation and use. To verified members, Faculty Connection provides free Microsoft software and development tools.

Forums
The Microsoft Faculty Connection Forum allows you to connect with your colleagues to share knowledge, concerns, challenges and successes. Submit your ideas, collaborate with your peers, and get the information you’re looking for – in real time.

Events
Technology and industry developments for educators are changing all the time. By attending key events, you can convene with other leaders in your field and stay on top of emerging technologies. If you don’t have the time or budget to attend, we will make the event content available to you and keep you up to date with what’s going on.

Newslink
The Faculty Connection Newslink is an easy way to see what is new from Microsoft in education. Each month we will include new features on the site and recap some the more interesting discussions and submissions.While Faculty Connection is a free resource we have reserved some of the features exclusively for faculty. Become a Faculty Connection Member to take advantage of the full set of materials provided.

Reference - http://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection/articles/articledetails.aspx?cid=57&c1=en-us&c2=0

For Registration: You will be requiring a code, so if you are a faculty and locate in Pakistan then contact me or Naveed Bajwa to get access to the code and register for free and start enjoying the above benefits...

Gmail outage deprives millions of e-mail

2009-09-02T01:27:00.000-07:00

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-09/02/content_11984270.htm

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/current-gmail-outage.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10323837-265.html

Google has confirmed its e-mail service GMail was unavailable to the "majority" of its 150 million worldwide users for nearly two hours on Tuesday. The cause of the outage has been identified and the company says problems are unlikely to happen again.

It is not the first time GMail has suffered from an outage. In May a major technical issue affected millions who were unable to use GMail, Google News or its main search engine. Similar outages also occurred in February and March this year.

On its official blog Google's Engineering Director David Besbris said, "We know many of you are having trouble accessing Gmail right now - we are too, and we definitely feel your pain," The free GMail service has been ranked as the world's third most popular e-mail program, behind services provided by Microsoft and Yahoo.

Users around the globe first experienced problems at 19:45 GMT on Tuesday with both email and chat facilities being affected. According to the company the "widespread outage" lasted about 100 minutes. Google said it took the matter extremely seriously given that many people relied on the service for both personal and professional communications "I'd like to apologize to all of you — today's outage was a Big Deal, and we're treating it as such," said Ben Treynor, Vice President of Engineering and Site Reliability Czar . Following a thorough investigation Google said it was compiling a list of things that needed to be fixed or improved.

One compelling factor to use Hotmail i always see is it's Security, Availability & Reliability.. and that really matters a lot in such situations. If you are using Hotmail you also get a flavor of different addresses such as @live, @hotmail, @msn etc and further the Outlook also functions with Hotmail just after installing Outlook Connector so even if you are not online you can access your downloaded mails and many more benefits which outlook provides you as compared to browser based interface......

I belief facts mentioned in the link speak more then my blog!

Explore more: http://home.live.com/

Designing Prototypes using Sketchflow

2009-08-31T05:52:00.000-07:00

Expression 3 -- > Blend 3; wow! .. Although i didn't got the opportunity to explore a lot of features in it but one thing which i was able to explore is self sufficient to compell you guys to download a 60 days trial version of Blend 3 and experience it.

Recently i was in a meeting with two of the Managers at Microsoft regarding the development of a web based portal a lot of work was being done on copy & glass board, at the end i was held responsible to show some initial model / prototype of this portal. Fair enough, i knew what i was supposed to do, i would have unless Naveed Bajwa had asked me, How are you going to show us the model and my reply was "a piece of the art using Visio"..........

Visio & others are a great tools but don't actually target Prototyping and then i came to know that if i was suppose to build some phase1 (RE) diagrams it was perfect, but since i had to show prototypes which are suppose to be the simulation of actual software and need to give a look & feel of reality and have to be interactive and user should be able to provide their feedback on them and ............ so i started exploring Sketchflow Project using Blend 3 as adviced by my senior.

Sketchflow allowed me to do the following:

Developing a site map which cleared the site flow

UI Screens using, actual controls and drawing tools

Programming & Scripting the controls & screens

Interconnecting those screens

Developing component screens, to be called on other screens

Running the output in a test player (browser)

Getting the end user ink feedback on my screens and saving that feedback and sharing internally

Automatically generating the document of my prototype project

Some helpful searches to get relevent material :)

1) Starter kit of Sketchflow

2) Sketchflow from Concept to Production Video

3) Microsoft showcase, Sketchflow part 1 Video

Link number 1 is a 127 mb starter kit developed by AIG, do explore it....!!

Happy Prototyping.!

IE8, Whats in it for Developers?

2009-07-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

IE 8! wow! fantastic ... not going into the security, performance, UI, UX everyone claims to have these implemented since a decade ... being a developer my major chunk of applications run on Browser be it IE, FF, Chrome, Safari etc etc.. To me since a long time there was a compelling need of a direct interaction between the Developer and the Browser.. to be precise i am referring to the Developer features introduced in IE8. Slices, Accelerators and Visual Search Suggestions.

The trend of browsing has been changed, go to the IE8 Addon Gallery download a slice, accelerator or search provider and feel the difference.

Slice as per the name is a small part of the webpage located at your tool bar just click and view the required info without browsing and loading that site. such as we developed a slice for a leading newspaper in pakistan and one can view the latest 'n' news by just clicking on the slice instead going to the actual website.

Accelerator ! wow ! .. lets say what ever terms i don't understand over the web, i go to bing.com, typein there and search them .. but once Microsoft will give me the acclerator for bing.com and even i am on msn.com i will just select that term right click and will search it with bing. my results can be shown in a pop-up on the same page or in a new tab. like this i can have my fav search or definition provider right there on every page i visit over the web.

Last but not least Search Suggestions, they can just be text or text + visuals, let's say i am an ebay lover now after installing ebay search suggestion i just need to write my desired item in the search box lets say iphone 3g and it is going to query the search suggestion file if it founds the required item it will bring along with the text + visual + description (whatever i provided).. So ebay fans using IE8 are enjoying benefits from it and same goes for a newspaper or tv channel their stories, news can be visually searched using IE8 search suggestion feature.

In Pakistan we are focusing on its implementation under the guidance of Naveed Bajwa, DPE Lead, MSPK and any queries on this are most welcome. Lot of samples alongwith videos are available on IE8 official website.

Presentation available for download:

http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Documents/IE8-DevFeatures.pptx

Team Foundation Server 2008

2009-07-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

This often becomes a little difficult to convenience users to migrate from VSS to TFS as VSS is probably there with us since far more long time and is pretty handy to use, but the problem arises in the following areas:

1) Scalability
2) Operations & Management
3) Recovery
4) Extensions
5) Performance

Many more areas can be added to the above list to prove that TFS is far more ahead then VSS, but how? Firstly if you see it doesn’t talks about only Source Control but it talks about Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) which covers the process straight from writing the very first development document what so ever it may be. VSS was all used to be a code repository and giving one many features to manage code libraries, users, rights, backup, recovery and etc etc. But TFS is certainly a broader picture of the game since it introduces a concept of ALM let’s see what it provides:
1) Source Control (what VSS was doing)
2) Management of Work Items, Bugs, Scenarios etc
3) A SharePoint site for every Team Project which focuses on Team Collaboration
4) Fast SQL Reporting of Bugs, Remaining Work, Resource Allocation etc
5) Proper Management of Development Documents
6) Team Build and Release Automation
7) And many a more which are there to be explored

The point 1 covered what VSS was doing even the source control in TFS is far more advanced and mature as compared to the one we use in VSS with the improved productivity of features like locking, change sets, comparisons and branching.

VSS was for small – mid teams but TFS is scalable, VSS Security was Application specific but TFS relies on Windows based security hence the security becomes easy to manage task if you have the AD & proper policies in place, the data stored in VSS was in file system but in TFS it’s in SQL Server which makes reporting, recovery and readability much more enhanced.

TFS is such a strong product was it follows a proper process template, understands different Application Lifecycle roles (PM, Analyst, DBA, Dev etc) and helps everyone to be the part of process further uses the key technologies like SharePoint & SQL Server which are already running in many Data Centers and are not new to IT guys and they can extend & scale the existing functionality of TFS by using its strong API and having in depth understanding of the technologies running at the backend so at the end of the day to me it’s just a scalable tool with front end on SharePoint, VS and backend on SQL Server..

There is a lot which is unwritten like its interop behavior where this multipurpose tool has the power to interact with non MS products and heterogeneous platforms.
I got the chance to understand this product after attending a few sessions of Naveed Bajwa and then I conducted a couple of seminars on this and a PoC & real time deployment at a Customer location. It is really a fun and worth it exploring & implementing it.
I can be contacted for any problems or material required during an part of TFS but only on MS community platform :)

Again; attached is my presentation given on TFS:http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Documents/TFS.pptx

User Experience (UX) at Microsoft

2009-07-13T02:30:00.001-07:00

During April Michael Koster, Designer Marketing Manager, Microsoft CEE HQ visited Pakistan and brought a new concept of "User Experience" into my life, he was supposed to deliver trainings on Expression Studio covering WPF, Silverlight etc but the way he started off with things was really fantastic. I got the chance to grasp this concept from him and was later able to share this within the community..

The UX some what tells us that designing great sofware is not only the science but is an art activity too and too often we miss or ignore the Art part of any application or software which ends up increasing User's frustration and the Users claim our application as to be unintutive, ugly and low performance however we have putted in our best of the best which designing and developing them.

One thing which we are required to understand being an IT application developer that we often miss the user while developing a craft but the Users don't they really care about it and the "Experience of the User is the Product". If it's good your product is good, if bad then bad.

The attached presentation highlights 4 basic elements of the UX which are fucntionality, beauty, affinity and the story which revolves around.

Most of the people think while sitting at MS one shouldn't not be taking about the UX i think this is not appropriate our transition from XP to Win 7, from Office 2003 to 2007 the UX has been taken care a lot, which can be proved and seen from the attached presentation.

Microsoft Expression Studio is an excellent product facilitating the Designer & Developer workflow, which helps designer & developers to stay in their own world, work with their own tools in their respective way but can easily share their deliverables with each other and can easily integrate their work pieces with other deliverables.

I presented on UX & Expression Studio at Sheraton hotel during i guess April end where around 60+ Customer Organizations were present. The main theme of the session was "Microsoft Developer Network" MSDN. Naveed Bajwa, DPE Lead MSPK was the key speaker of this seminar giving a great presentation on Visual Studio Team System 2008 and discussing it's Architecture and Technical aspects where as he was also facilitated by Viqar Madni, Partner Account Manager, MSPK who helped customers to develop a good understanding on licencing and deployment model of VSTS within their organization.

My presentation was of around 30 mins in which nearly half of the time was taken developing the base on UX and rest exploring different products under Expression Studio 2. A small live demo on developing a WPF application by a designer and developer was also given to the audience in order to further brush-up the discussion.
Presentation: http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Documents/UX%20Introduction%20and%20Overview.pptx

BI as I see ....

2009-07-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

Today Business Intelligence (BI) is considered to be one of those technologies who have got the required acceptability from Vendors and has been implemented as a part of modern data management & warehousing systems. I would not say that this is the most latest technology on which computer programmers are working if i give a compare shot against AOSE; CLP or Semantic Web... but the edge which now a days is being given to BI is not available to the above mentioned and many a more. This is because that this technology is out of schools unlike others and is implemented in all time great products from commercial vendors and is filling the required gap.

Countries which are not considered to be the part of 3rd world have computer systems in place atleast since 2 decades and coming at this point they have their Data in TBs or atleast GBs, but in various formats, various locations.

One might be aware of statistical, mathematical tools and theories to dig and mine information out of the data but it sometimes becomes useless when your data is not:

1) Integrated

2) In the required Analysis format

3) Reportable

SQL Server 2005 and later versions comes with a BI Studio which helps an enterprise to easily integrate data from various datasources tailor it for DW, perform mining and analysis and then report in the desirable formats.

I got the chance to conduct a 3 days comprehensive hands on session for one of the Partners attached are the presentations i compiled and delivered during those 3 days and for Hands on Labs i can be contacted directly but would not be able to share here!.

http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Documents/BI%203%20Days

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

2009-07-02T03:56:00.000-07:00

During last fiscal year i got the opportunity to communicate with around 20 faculty members from around 8 institutions of Sind region for a 3 days learning get together on .NET Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008. The workshop started from the zero point and covered nearly all the basic concepts of .NET Framework and then jumped on to latest tools and libraries including AJAX, WCF, WPF, Threading etc and etc.
Where as the basics is concerned attached is the presentation i delivered during the first half on day 1.
http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Documents/DotNet%20Concepts.ppt
Any discussion and queries on this are welcome.

SQL Server 2008 (Management Studio)

2009-07-02T03:42:00.000-07:00

I conducted 3 days HoL for Faculty on SQL Server 2008 in Dec '08

SQL Sever 2008 comes with a bundle of fearures making the life of developer's and dba's quiet easy, the management studio is aided with some powerful tools and operations by which it becomes much more seucre and managable as compared to ever before. This year few of it's features were deeply discussed during Microsoft Academia in a Box Training and Enterprise TechTalk seminar held at the MIC, i conducted both these events the features under the discussion were Policy Management, Resource Governor, Change Data Capture (CDC), Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Management Data Warehouse (MDW) etc.

The presentation attached with this note contains very relevant information with respect to Microsoft Data Platform vision and Modern DBs. Further it also targets those users who are currently working on Non MS DB Platform and want to migrate to SQL Server, for them SSMA ( SQL Server Migration Assistant) is the right tool for seamless migration with around 90% + accuracy on an enterprise level DB. As far as my personal experience is concerned it has worked more than 98% + Accuratley while Migrating from Oracle (9i, 10g) to SQL Sever 2005.

Addressing the Developers at Enterprise TechTalk semiar held at MIC

Any discussions on any content of this presentation are welcome.

http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Documents/SQL%20Server%202008.pptx (Download Presentation)

SQL Server, always my first choice...

2009-07-02T02:44:00.000-07:00

Through last 5 years i have been a dedicated resource on MS Platform except one year stay at Melbourne Uni, SQL Server and me have always been remained together whether it be a role of Developer, DBA, Lead or Consultant. At Microsoft i got further exposure of this product and became MCTS for BI Development in last one year i have dozen of SQL Server engagements with Microsoft community out of which mostly took place at MIC. These trainings, seminars have addressed around hundreds of community members inlcuding Students, Academicians, Developers & IT Pros. In my coming blogs i would be uploading some demos and presentations related to my work on SQL Server during last one year which will be covering the roles of BI, Developer & DBA.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Seminar held at Microsoft Innovation Center, Pakistan on Jan 15th '08

2009-07-02T01:21:00.000-07:00

Referenced from MIC Annual Report

This seminar was exclusively organized for the students from different universities which covered the history and evolution of different versions of SQL Server. The emphasis was on exploring and getting familiar to SQL Server 2005, understanding how it is meant for developers and how can we leverage its rich features and capabilities. The discussion led to a live demo focusing on BI Development Studio and how to use “SSIS” SQL Server Integration Services. Later on there was a small talk on upcoming products & certification. Jibran Jamshad, Technology Consultant MIC - Pakistan was the speaker of this seminar. (Presentation is available for Download)

http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Documents/SQL%20Server%202005.ppt

Inspiration ... by Faiz A Faiz

2009-03-06T03:30:00.001-08:00

Installing SQL Server Compact Edition on Wondows based Mobile device

2009-03-06T02:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, i had some fun playing with SQL Server compact edition and installing it to my windows based mobile deivce, simple steps required to perform are:

1) Download SQL Server Compact Edition
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=85e0c3ce-3fa1-453a-8ce9-af6ca20946c3&displaylang=en

2) Install it to your machine (Simple Installation Process)

3) Once it is installed, you are required to copy a three cab files to your mobile and install them (Engine & Query Analyzer)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171875.aspx
http://www.christec.co.nz/blog/archives/253
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms172361.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171773.aspx

4) To connect your mobile device to your PC you need ActiveSync software
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/help/synchronize/device-synch.mspx

5) On every step do visit the link posted under it.. Good Luck :)

Play with Query Analyzer on your machine, Connect your compact edition from SQL Server Management, BI and Visual Studio environments...
http://www.devx.com/MicrosoftISV/Article/34341

Things you need to check while purchasing IMate

2009-03-03T21:34:00.000-08:00

I have been an IMate user since a long time and have used some of their devices, there are a few issues and problems which are common in their platform, hence while purchasing your IMate phone have a look around below points:

1) It must be running Windows Mobile 6, as there is a huge difference btw the performance of windows mobile 5 & 6.

2) Speakers are usually of low quality and the result is poor when you take a call on loud speaker

3) Low Battery Life as compared to other mobile phones.

4) GPRS hangs after regular intervals and phone service is required to be restarted.

5) In Country like Pakistan there is no direct support for IMate and they partner with service providers like UM so once there is a problem, your life is likea Hell ! unless you get in touch directly with their Dubai office for support but that is delivered via service partner.

6) The life of screen is not that much again and can give you trouble.

7) Guys sitting at UM & IMate are really helpful, if you are able to approach them, i have experience this twice.

8) No body agrees to buy your 2nd hand IMate phone.

9) Camers quality is not upto the Mark.

10) While transferring the objects via bluetooth with any other cell phone you can get some hard time.

IMate offers you cheap windows based mobile solutions but the advance features of these phones can start bugging your passion !.....

This review has been taken by using IMate JAMA, JAQ3, SPL.....

Simple approach towards Software Project Management

2009-03-03T01:59:00.000-08:00

Presentation which will be helpful for your initial understanding on the domain on Information Technology, Software Project Management, material from some websites & books is been used in this Power Point. It is only targeted towards the learning purpose.

You can download the presentation & can have a look around the basic concepts...
http://cid-866cd84756fa9077.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Documents/Blog-PM.ppt

Let's talk, if you have questions on this ... !

Migrating your database to SQL Server

2009-03-03T01:01:00.000-08:00

New compelling features and functionality introduced by SQL Server in its releases of 2005 & 2008 have made people think and migrate their Data Platforms, So if you're using Oracle, Sybases or even MS Access you need a lot of help in Migrating your Database to SQL Server and if its a live production system have data in TBs with hundreds and thousands of Stored Procedures, Functions, Tables, Views, Constraints etc .. then what would be coming in to your mind?, exactly ! after migration affects, consistency, durability and ensuring that every bit and piece has been migrated properly..

Such a case makes life miserable and its a huge work load to migrate your systems running since years & years and nobody knows the success ratio ...

Microsoft ships a tool with the name SSMA and it has different versions for Oracle, Sybase & Access, i have had the chance to play with SSMA for Oracle, a simple tool very easy to install, you are simpy required to connect your Oracle database and SQL Server Database in two panes, once it is connected, Select objects from Oracle first Migrate the Schema & then Click Migrate Data. It is a simple click process, time depends upon the complexity of objects .. the oracle datatypes are smoothly converted into SQL Server equivalent Datatypes and same is the case with other objects like SPs and Functions, even the business logic is also transformed ...

The suceess ratio varies around on an average and mostly is 100% but the best part it the Analyzer provided in this tool actually highlights those objects which are unable to be transferred accurately..

May be 2 to 3 % of Migration needs to be done manually depending upon the way you have been using the Database, however such a tool is a great blessing when one needs to migrate live running production systems to a new DB Platform ..

Using the same tool test cases can be developed and executed to confirm your migartion success.

For further details visit http://www.microsoft.com/Sqlserver/2005/en/us/migration.aspx

Here you will find Case Studies, Success Stories, White Papers and Manuals to facilitate you using this tool..

Any help you require while using SSMA for Oracle, hit me back !

Semantic Web, What difference will it make ?

2009-03-03T00:35:00.000-08:00

No doubt ! Web 2.0 has been a great turnaround in the history of web computing, technologies like AJAX, RIA, SOA, CSS, Silverlight, Mashups, Web Slices, RSS and XML have been the front runners for this newer version of web. Products and Services like Facebook, Flickr, iTunes, MapQuest, Windows Live, GoogleMaps, Virtual Earth, YouTube, Orkut etc have not been possible without the advent of Web 2.0.

However on the other hand it gives me a feeler that these Internet Applications, Community based websites, Photo Albums, Rich Maps, Blogs and Video based portals just gave the Web a great look and feel on both the application design and performance scales. However, they did not contribute towards the robustness and intelligence of the engine itself.

I am one of those learners of the modern web who claim Web 2.0 to be the “people oriented web” and Semantic Web to be the “machine oriented web”.

During your university coursework, you are convinced with thousands of examples which highlight the importance of the application of data mining, machine learning, software agents, logic based programming, constraint based Programming, P2P and grid computing in our computer program and systems. We all agree on how Machine Learning can find hidden patterns and discovers the facts which would never have come out of the terabytes of the data within an Enterprise. Grid computing can easily share the processing workflow amongst multiple physical machines and saves you cost and time. Software agents deployed on the target machines have the ability to learn and make decisions based upon logical reasoning without the knowledge base. When it comes to the real world application you will definitely find these implementations but in a limited scope and mostly on private systems such as an airline software, medical research tool, analytic software, a robotic solution etc. Hence, here one thing is pretty much clear that we have the concepts in grip and there is an implementation as well but the scope is pretty limited and is segregated.

However the case would have been strong if the scope had not been limited and such implementations would have been the part of the World’s largest and fastest growing network, which resides billions of web pages, targeting millions of users, catering thousands of businesses categories, developed using hundreds of various modern tools and technologies, the Internet. Unfortunately the current structure of the Web is targeted towards the people and focuses on rich, user friendly and robust applications but completely ignores the concepts such as data mining on the Web, which has been the core implementation coming out from the concepts of machine learning, logic based programming and software agents.

The current shape of web is quiet unstructured where it has various of web databases, service engines and representation formats which makes searching and comprehending the web a challenge. For the web to reach its full potential, we need to improve the service engines, develop data structures behind the code, align the data presentation formats, data mining and machine learning techniques are to be applied in order to search and find only the useful and relevant patterns, as only a small portion of web pages contain useful and required information.

In a nutshell, the Internet is the world’s largest data store and after typing your query in a search engine, within fraction of a second you are shown thousands and thousands of results, with no guaranteed reliability and success prediction because we have not laid any design and structure of our web portals and there is no machine level information exposed for web crawlers, on which any logical reasoning can be done. There is also a lack of automatically created directory structures, and semantic based query primitives are yet to be worked on.

Hence data mining on the Internet is a necessary ingredient of an intelligent web which works with logical reasoning’s, automated decision making and brings in more relevancy to search but unfortunately it is nearly impossible with the current version of web which is just a stack of HTML pages.

How the Semantic web would likely work?

1. What are the world’s significant events in the last decade?
2. Dentists available on Tuesday’s in Parklane hospital?
3. Phone Number of KFC’s NYC branch?

Finding such an information in a local database is a game of few queries but what happens when you want to explore the whole web network to find your relevant information, how do you tell the web that KFC is a fast food restaurant and NYC is a place in New York which is a part of America, so kindly bring the phone number of this particular entity?. .. For this you need to have some sort of design and information presentation mechanism on web and that’s what Semantic Web has brought!

Key requirements for your web to be smart enough:

1) Provide information in expressions which can be understood and comprehended by the machine. The engine knows where the information for its use lies and what the format is so that it can be parsed equivalently.

2) Represent the data structures in knowledgeable formats such that when you want to express Area, it will be a sub class of City whose parent will be Country and so on, and assign data attributes to Area such as Name, Area, Population, Geographical Location etc.

3) Introduction of ontologies and Taxonomies such as a Software Developer and Software Engineer both fall on the same horizontal level in a Software house staff’s hierarchy and both report to a Project Manager. Computer can only know this if you present alternate words for the same thing in its knowledge format i.e. build ontologies and express the relationships between the different classes and their objects falling in a the hierarchical or vertical structures.

How we can actually achieve the above three requirements and how the presentation of the data and knowledge structures is done on the semantic web, and what tools and technologies will come in to action ? ...... stay tuned!

Handling ASP.NET Browser Refresh

2009-03-03T00:11:00.000-08:00

Introduction

For years, most ASP.NET developers have been coming across the scenario where hitting the browser's refresh button or pressing the F5 key performs exactly the same steps last performed by their .NET code. To be short and simple, let's create a scenario where I have an ASP.NET application that has a form called Add Customer. This form has a button on it and when the user clicks that button, a customer is added to the file. If the user again hits the Add Customer button, another customer is added to the file. However, if the user presses a refresh button or hits F5 key at this point, exactly the same scenario will be repeated and one more customer is added, as well. Hence in ASP.NET whenever you hit F5, .NET repeats its last action. This happens even when the F5 event is not a genuine post-back event. Needless to say, developers want to get rid of this.

Background

The same problem was faced by my colleague a few days back. We tried a lot searching on the Internet, where we found a few solutions, but those were either just the pseudo-code -- i.e. not properly working -- or something like a hit-and-trial. A few of them jumped straight across the head. Unfortunately, there was not a single solution that could be easily implemented in ASP.NET and justify itself.

After two days of searching on the Internet, I came up with just a little clue, although I don't remember the reference. It suggested that we could distinguish between a genuine post-back request and the one generated by browser's refresh. All server-side events that get fired on the post-back get fired on refresh also, but fortunately there exists one event, onsubmit, that only gets fired when there is a genuine post-back request. It is the client-side event of the form placed on your web page.

Using the code

The logic of the following code is to have a hidden control on your web form and every time there is a genuine post-back request, the client script just appends one character to the existing value of that hidden control. At the server side, I take a shared variable that will retain its value through the application's life, i.e. it won't be written off on every page load.

The first time the page_load event is executed, I assign that shared variable the value of 1. As I've stated, the main task is to distinguish between the genuine post-back request and the refresh one on the Add Customer button. The simple logic is that if it is the first time the event has been executed, then my shared variable will be 1. If it is not the first time, then the character length of the hidden control will be one more than its previous length. I can easily obtain the new length of the control from len(control.value).

Then every time a customer is added, I assign the current control length to that shared variable. Hence, the next time a customer is added, your length should be one more than that of the last time. At every genuine post-back request, a value is appended to the current value of the hidden control in the client-side script, called upon at the onsubmit event of the form.

JavaScript

Visual Basic
Points of interest

This solution is appealing in that it is NOT asking you to play with complex things like HTTP headers, HTTP modules, setting sessions from the client, keeping unwanted checks on the code and database level, etc. It can also be applied to any scenario and in any version of ASP.NET where users are facing similar problems. Its solution is very simple and can be understood and applied even by a developer who has just started working with the technology.