April 28, 2007
Tools & Code: Compare Microsoft’s 2 Message Queing Frameworks
Microsoft Queuing Frameworks: SQL Service Broker vs. MSMQ
Click title for source at DevX.com…
Not quite a knockout, SQL Service Broker beats MSMQ at its own game.
by Michael Jones
Microsoft offers two queuing frameworks to its ‘brand’ of developers: MSMQ and SQL Service Broker. These two frameworks offer many of the same features, but differ in some important areas that might affect which you choose for your queuing project. MSMQ is a time-tested technology, while SQL Service Broker is new to most developers. This article outlines some of the differences and may help you to make an informed choice when selecting a queuing technology.
Queuing frameworks are still among the most underutilized frameworks for building enterprise applications. Used properly, they can improve user interface interaction by making long-running resource requests asynchronous, distribute workloads across several servers or services, provide disconnected applications with asynchronous connectivity, enable loose coupling between clients and servers—and the list goes on. The real benefit to developers is that the majority of the heavy lifting to provide these services has already been written by Microsoft. You don’t need to author data schemas and stored procedures to manage hand-built queues using SQL Server. There are other queuing services available to Windows developers, such as IBM’s MQ Series and BEA’s MessageQ, but MSMQ and Service Broker are the two most likely candidates for developers who use Microsoft tools. The cost of MSMQ, the ubiquity of SQL Server availability to Microsoft developers, and the wide range of Windows client platforms supported by both make MSMQ and SQL Service Broker easy choices.
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April 27, 2007
Security: Businesses Becoming Complacent With Security… Probably Because It’s Boring…
Are businesses getting complacent on security?
Click title for source at ZDNet.com…
April 26th, 2007
Posted by Larry Dignan @ 4:57 am
Security has fallen out of the top 10 business priorities and complacency may be setting in without big attacks grabbing headlines.
That was the message from Gartner security analyst John Pescatore, arguably the best observer in the firm. At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Pescatore raised a host of interesting issues. “We haven’t had a major worm outbreak in the last two years,” said Pescatore. “And CIOs seem to be feeling safe. Maybe it is safer out there.”
Meanwhile, CIOs top priorities are improving business processes, controlling costs and retaining customers. Security fell out of the top 10 priorities.
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April 25, 2007
Opinion: The Virtues of MonoCulture.. or How I Learned to Love The “Dark Side”
The Virtues of Monoculture
Click title for source at OReillyNet.com…
Tuesday April 24, 2007 8:41AM
by James Turner
I’m probably not saying anything that hasn’t been said before here, but I thought I’d share a few thoughts on why people seem to be drawn to the Microsoft Way. I recently did something at the ‘day job’ that I’ve thought about doing for a long time, but never quite worked up the steam to follow through on, I signed up to participate in a a Microsoft-centric project, and to learn .NET.
I have made abortive stabs in the past to learn to code in the Microsoft Universe. I made a stab back in the bad old COM days, but the number of hoops I was being asked to jump through was more than I wanted to bite off at that time. Since then, I’ve carried that bad taste in my mouth, and resisted adding any Microsoft skill sets to my repertoire, even though it was sometimes a gap in my resume.
I’ve worked frequently in environments where there was the one Microsoft Guy, the evangelist who would constantly tell you how much easier it would have been in .NET. I’ve written them off as Kool-Aid drinking Gates worshipers. But, at the end of the day, I felt that if I was going to criticize them, I really needed to understand where they were coming from. Know thy enemy, and all that.
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Security: Mac OS-X Hacked!!!
Mac Hacked by QuickTime Bug “As Serious as ANI”
Click title for source at SecurityWatch.Ewwek.com…
Researchers have confirmed that a QuickTime bug was the Achilles heel that felled a MacBook Pro last week in the Pwn-2-Own contest at the CanSecWest security conference.
Dino Dai Zovi, a principle at security firm Matasano and the hacker who wrote the exploit, told me on Friday that a flaw in Apple’s Safari browser was what brought the machine down. After more analysis, ZDI—the research unit at TippingPoint, which put up $10,000 as a reward in the contest—has found that it’s actually a Java-based vulnerability in QuickTime that got the machine, owned by Dai Zovi and his online accomplice, Shaun Mcaulay.
Dai Zovi, who is also still researching the flaw, told me today that the vulnerability affects not only Safari but also Firefox on Mac OS X. Firefox on Windows may also be at risk, he said.
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R&R: Earth Like Planet Found… Let’s Go Visit…
Found 20 light years away: the New Earth
Click title for source at DailyMail.co.uk…
Last updated at 13:24pm on 25th April 2007
It’s got the same climate as Earth, plus water and gravity. A newly discovered planet is the most stunning evidence that life – just like us – might be out there.
Above a calm, dark ocean, a huge, bloated red sun rises in the sky – a full ten times the size of our Sun as seen from Earth. Small waves lap at a sandy shore and on the beach, something stirs…
This is the scene – or may be the scene – on what is possibly the most extraordinary world to have been discovered by astronomers: the first truly Earth-like planet to have been found outside our Solar System.
The discovery was announced today by a team of European astronomers, using a telescope in La Silla in the Chilean Andes. If forced bookies to slash odds on the existence of alien beings.
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Careers: US IT Appears To Be Doing Well Since Bust In 2000
Tech Industry Boasts Biggest Job Growth Since Bust
Click title for source at EWeek.com…
April 24, 2007
By Deborah Perelman
Though still down a total of 809,100 jobs, or 12 percent of its work force since 2000, the high-tech industry has made great strides in the past two years towards recovering this loss, finds the Cyberstates 2007 report, released on April 24.
According to the report, released for the tenth consecutive year by the AeA, a Washington D.C.-based high-tech industry trade association, the high-tech industry added 146,600 jobs, or 3 percent of its work force, between 2005 and 2006, bringing total employment to 5.8 million in the United States.
“This is the second year in a row that high tech has added jobs, this more emphatically than the last. This growth of over 140,000 is going a long way to make up for the loss of one million jobs between 2000 and 2004,” William T. Archey, president and CEO of AeA, told eWEEK.
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April 24, 2007
CodeProject; Tools & Code: Working With Active Directory In C#
Howto: (Almost) Everything In Active Directory via C#
Click title for source at CodeProject.com…
Introduction
When it comes to programmatically accessing Microsoft’s Active Directory a lot of people seem to have quite a difficult time tying all the pieces together to accomplish exactly what they want to. There are so many technologies available for communicating with LDAP that many programmers end up with a mix between COM+ ADSI calls and .NET class calls mixed into their code. ADSI code is so difficult to understand and follow that the creator of that code usually owns it for the entirety of it’s lifecycle since no one else wants to support it.
This article attempts to tie together the most commonly used elements involved in Active Directory Management in the simplest, most clean manner possible. I interact with Active Directory in nearly all of my applications (web & forms) and I have had to solve a lot of integration issues for many customers. When I was starting out with this technology I had a lot of growing pains so this is an attempt to help those programmers who may have a need to interact with the Directory but do not want to have to become an expert in the issue. However, certain rudimentary knowledge and concepts are required in order to utilize the code. You must be firmiliar with such terms as: distinguishedName, ldap paths, fully qualified domain names, object attributes (single string & multi-string), and general knowledge of ldap schemas.
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Tools & Code: AJAX Does Windows…
vegUI For Browser Based Windowing
Click title to go to vegUI site…
Welcome to the “vegUI”, the AJAX framework and widget-collection that allows you to build dynamic web applications that are also fast and flexible.
vegUI was originally developed to serve as a foundation for the online browser-based mmorpg Lands of Kazram. So it was developed with 4 core features in mind:
Speed
Compact Design
Total control over appearance, flexibility
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Linux: Sun Supports Ubuntu Linux With Java Stack
Java Technologies Extend Global Distribution with Canonical’s Latest Ubuntu Linux Release
Click title for source at Sun.com…
Sun supports GNU/Linux community by distributing a complete Java stack, including NetBeans, packaged for Ubuntu 7.04
SANTA CLARA, Calif. April 19, 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and Canonical Ltd., today announced the immediate availability of a complete, production quality Java technology stack and developer tools with the latest release of Ubuntu, v7.04, making it easier for GNU/Linux developers to leverage the Java platform in their applications. This stack, which is comprised of key popular Java technologies such as GlassFish v1 (the open source Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 implementation), Java Platform, Standard Edition (JDK 6), Java DB 10.2 (built from Apache Derby) and NetBeans IDE 5.5 — will be available in the Multiverse component of the Ubuntu repository on April 19. These technologies will be available for Ubuntu users to install easily over the network with apt-get and other standard software management tools.
“Sun and Canonical are working together to bring the full power of the Java platform in a fully integrated and easy to install fashion to the free and open source software communities,” said Ian Murdock, chief operating systems officer, Sun. “Sun is committed to open source and will continue to promote transparency in software development by facilitating creation of innovative technology with the help of the developer community.”
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