SharePoint Designer Offered as Free Dev Tool


3 April 2009 · by Kurt Mackie

Go to article source here…
Download SharePoint Designer here…


Microsoft on Wednesday announced that its SharePoint Web portal design tool is now available as a free download, which can be accessed here.

Microsoft decided to offer Office SharePoint Designer 2007 for free because it didn’t want price to be a barrier to SharePoint users, according to Tom Rizzo, senior director of product management for the SharePoint team. Microsoft has so far sold more than 100 million SharePoint licenses, he added in a video announcement.

SharePoint Designer 2007 was still listed at Amazon.com for $238.49 on Friday, but it is being removed from Microsoft’s price catalog and will only be available from Microsoft as a free download as of April 1.

In addition, Microsoft eventually plans to make its Expression Web product compatible with SharePoint. Expression Web is developer tool for creating dynamic Web sites using ASP.NET and PHP scripting, but it currently “does not directly support SharePoint,” according to a SharePoint team letter. The letter didn’t say when that SharePoint compatibility would be enabled.

For those who just bought SharePoint Designer 2007 and have Software Assurance licensing for that product, Microsoft is making a concession of sorts. The company is offering Expression Web to those who had Software Assurance licensing as of April 1, 2009 — to “make it right” for those customers, according to a Microsoft Q&A.

Both dev tools — SharePoint Designer and Expression Web — trace their lineage, in part, to Microsoft Office FrontPage, which is a “legacy” Web development tool. Microsoft’s mainstream support for the current FrontPage 2003 product will end on April 14, 2009, with paid extended support ending on April 8, 2014, according to a Microsoft lifecycle page.

Expression Web licensees have the right to use FrontPage 2003, if they prefer that dev tool, according to the Q&A.

Microsoft plans to ship the next version of SharePoint Designer with the next SharePoint release. That next release, called “SharePoint 14,” may appear in beta form in “the next several months,” according to a blog by Guy Creese, vice president and research director of the collaboration and content strategies service at Burton Group.

Microsoft will allow Windows 7 users to downgrade to XP


April 6th, 2009
Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:04 am

Go to article source…

Microsoft and its PC partners are going to allow Windows 7 users to downgrade not just to Windows Vista, but also to Windows XP, Microsoft officials are confirming.

Some company watchers have been wondering about the downgrade rights that Microsoft will offer when Windows 7 ships. When AppleInsider reported this weekend that HP was going to offer Windows 7 users the ability to downgrade to XP, I asked Microsoft about the story.

Here’s what a spokesperson representing the company’s Windows client division told me via e-mail on April 5:

MJF: Does Microsoft have downgrade rights for Windows XP planned as part of Windows 7?

Microsoft spokesperson: Yes. This is not the first time that Microsoft has offered downgrade rights to a version other than its immediate predecessor and our Software Assurance volume-license customers can always downgrade to any previous version of Windows. (Note: Microsoft changed the statement from “Software Assurance” to “volume license” Monday afternoon.)

(The spokesperson clarified later that downgrade rights allow users to install previous versions of Windows, not just the most recent predecessor. In other words, a Software-Assurance-covered volume-license user who wanted to downgrade from Vista could, technically, go back to Windows 2000 or even Windows 95, not just XP. Who knew?)

MJF: Is Microsoft cutting these kinds of rights deals with each OEM individually? Has it made such an arrangement with HP?

Microsoft spokesperson: Downgrade rights policies are the same for all of our main OEM partners and what you are talking about is not a special arrangement. Since the End User right to Windows XP Professional is part of the license terms for these editions, it’s really about making facilitation options easier for our OEM customers and End Users.

(It’s worth noting that the only two versions of Windows Vista for which Microsoft and its PC makers provide downgrade rights are Vista Business and Ultimate — and those must downgrade to XP Professional. I’d think similar limitations would be likely with Windows 7.)

The AppleInsider report claimed that Microsoft and HP had agreed to provide downgrade rights from October (one rumored launch target for Windows 7) and April 30, 2010. Microsoft officials did not comment on whether either date is real. And HP didn’t respond to my request for comment at all. (I am doubtful about the April 30th deadline. Why only provide downgrade rights for a handful of months?)

Update: The Microsoft spokesperson said the April 30 cu-off date in the original story is not something the company is ready to discuss. The exact quote: “No dates have been announced for the end of Windows 7 downgrade right facilitation to Windows XP.”

Update No. 2: An HP spokesperson responded Monday afternoon, concurring with Microsoft’s statement that Microsoft terms and conditions are consistent across OEMs. The spokesperson declined to provide any details, citing “confidentiality” of HP communications.

With Windows 7 looking good (even at this beta stage), why would users want to downgrade to XP, you may wonder. For many businesses, supporting a slew of different Windows releases is a nightmare. They’d prefer to have all their users on one (or possibly two) different versions.

If Microsoft ends up finding a way to insure that legacy Windows apps work on Windows 7 — beyond supporting them with a combination of Virtual PC and MED-V, another option available only to users who buy Microsoft’s Software Assurance licensing — downgrading to an older version of Windows from Windows 7 could look a whole lot less appealing.

Meanwhile, in related news, TechARP — the site that brought us the still-unconfirmed-but-likely-true report that Microsoft is planning to offer PC buyers a free upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 if they purchase new systems starting this summer — is now reporting that users who downgrade to XP also will be eligible for free Win 7 upgrades via the Windows 7 Upgrade Option program.

Mary Jo FoleyMary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 20 years. Don’t miss a single post. Subscribe via Email or RSS.

Got a tip? Send Mary Jo your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. For disclosure on Mary Jo’s industry affiliations, click here or to see Mary Jo’s full profile click here.

IT failure contributes to UK bank collapse


April 1st, 2009 by Michael Krigsman



A failed business strategy involving a large IT blunder contributed to the collapse of Scotland’s largest customer-owned lender, the Dunfermline Building Society. As a result, the Society is writing off a £9.5 million IT loss, despite total profit for the year of only £11 million.

The UK government will pay Nationwide Building Society 1.6 billion pounds ($2.3 billion) in cash to purchase the troubled bank.

The Financial Times reports:

Jim Murphy, Scotland secretary, said the previous management had made “reckless decisions” because of its over-exposure to commercial loans, involvement in the subprime market and unfortunate decisions on technology. Dunfermline was forced to make a £9.5m write-off on last year’s £11m profits because of a failed IT system.

Finextra reports that the company lost focus by attempting to establish a software business selling mortgage-processing systems to other banks:

The company poured £31 million into the loss making Dunfermline Solutions unit, which was set up to develop a mortgage IT system that could then be sold to other financial institutions.

Scottish newspaper, The Herald, describes the misguided business strategy behind this software solutions endeavor:

One expert, who has been involved in advising building societies on their accounts for the past 15 years, told The Herald this week: “The Dunfermline was never a particularly profitable organization. The IT loss was pretty huge compared with the size of their profits – so their buffer against further losses is not as good as it could be.”

He went on: “They have a good brand, healthy margins on their residential lending, but venturing into anything beyond housing association finance risks losses on property development type loans. It is easy to grow your balance sheet by lending to property developers, but it is quite unusual for that size of institution. If you are anything less than a £10bn society, the solution is not to get involved in anything other than simple basic commercial loans.”

THE IT FAILURES ANALYSIS

Dunfermline made several key strategic blunders with respect to this project:

• Selecting a software vendor’s unproven product for a mission critical application
• Paying insufficient attention to substantial project risks
• Relying on the promise of customization to backfill functionality gaps in the off-the-shelf software
• Most significantly, becoming distracted away from the organization’s core banking business by attempting to convert itself into a specialized software vendor

Unproven software. Despite the scale and strategic importance of Dunfermline’s project, the organization selected unproven banking software from Temenos, which may have contributed to the failure. Market analysts, TechMarketView, came upon a 2004 article in the International Banking Systems Journal, describing risks associated with Dunfermline’s implementation:

While Darlington [another UK bank society] has opted for a tried and tested solution, Dunfermline Building Society is doing the opposite, having signed for Temenos’ Globus at the end of 2002. This will be the first UK building society to use the system, but the Dunfermline is confident of its applicability, to the extent that it has created a subsidiary company with the intention of marketing the system on an outsource basis to other societies once it is live.

As a development partner hoping to sell the processing services to other societies, the Dunfermline is probably bound to put a positive spin on things, but the flip-side of this is that it is unlikely to have opted for such a project were it not confident of a successful outcome. While there may be more risk attached to this implementation than to that of the Darlington, the Dunfermline may also have potentially more to gain.

Insufficient attention to project risk. An interview with Dunfermline’s director of operations, published in the Temenos corporate newsletter, suggests the bank recognized it was taking substantial risk implementing unproven software for this strategic project. This is a rather extraordinary admission, especially in light of the current failure:
The strategic review brought significant changes for the Dunfermline. ‘I would liken it to starting a brand new company with radical changes made to the way we were doing business, including among other things, the adoption of new software. The Society was using a number of in-house systems, with an additional element from Unisys. The review of our IT solutions showed that they couldn’t do everything we needed. We had the business aspirations, but we didn’t have the solution to support our values,’ says [director of operations] Stewart Cooper.

[W]e selected TEMENOS, despite its lack of users in the building society market. Was this a risky decision? We accepted that the selection of any software partner incurs risks. Additionally, we were concerned about the lack of local market knowledge and potential implementation risks, combined with the prospect of being the only UK customer in this market.

Customizing packaged software. Customizing software creates complexity and adds cost to any software project. In addition, adding customizations to standard, off-the-shelf software increases risk, cost, and time during future upgrades. In general, this is a dangerous strategy. The Temenos newsletter describes Dunfermlin’s cavalier attitude toward these risks:
To sum it up, we felt that TEMENOS had the best software solution and, in the areas where
functionality was missing, it could be developed in partnership to do what we wanted.

Strategic business distraction. Fundamentally, a misguided business strategy guided this poorly conceived project. The Temenos newsletter again offers insight into Dunfermlin’s poor judgment as it tried to diversify from banking into becoming software vendor:
[W]e have set up a subsidiary company, Dunfermline Solutions, to enable us to offer the product on an outsource basis. There is clearly nothing in the UK marketplace that can match the system and there is a clear opportunity to offer the product and to provide administration of back office services

My take. In the 200r Temenos newsletter, Dunfermline summarized its view of the project:

In any project you have risks but, provided you identify them and manage them, the project will be successful. We have a major project that covers system and organizational change and a ‘new’ company! At times this has been a roller coaster ride, but we identified the risks and we managed them and I don’t regret it in any way.

Obviously, Dunfermline substantially underestimated the large risks associated with its extravagant business strategy and this mismanaged IT project. This story reminds that human hubris, even among sophisticated men and women, knows no bounds.

[Warm thanks to ZDNet colleague, Dennis Howlett, for bringing this case to my attention. I'm always grateful for anonymous or attributed failure submissions. Image from iStockphoto.]

Michael Krigsman is CEO of Asuret, Inc., a software and consulting company dedicated to reducing software implementation failures. Click here to discuss this post with him on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Massive Chinese computer espionage network uncovered

Paul Harris in New York
Sunday 29 March 2009

Go to source here…

Need Solid Ajax In Your ASP.NET App?
Skip JavaScript
Write C# or VB.NET

It has been a while since I posted anything to TECH-NOTES. It has been a rough past few months. And like many of my colleagues in the Software Engineering field, I too am currently looking for new work as the result of a layoff in January. I am hopeful as I see signs of a strengthening US market which is showing some activity in the IT area. At least I am getting the calls.

In the meantime, I have made good use of my extra time by completing some web-site work I have wanted to get to while at the same time tinkering with some AJAX frameworks to see what all the hype has been about.  And after reseraching quite a few I have only found one of which is worth working with.

If you haven’t tried the wonderful “Gaia AJAX” framework then you are missing out on probably the most advanced AJAX framework available. Unlike so many other AJAX tools, Gaia lets you work with their AJAX controls the same exact way you would with any other .NET server control in ASP.NET. Simply add one to your web-page, fill out the necessary properties and you are in business. That’s all there is to it…

There are no requirements for web-services or web-methods. The Gaia AJAX Framework takes care of all that for you. All you have to do is continue what you have been doing when working with standard ASP.NET server controls.

Don’t believe me? Then give it a try…

Go here to download the best AJAX Framework on the planet… http://gaiaware.net/

Microsoft details WCF and WF in next-gen .NET

Go here for article source…

By David Worthington

October 1, 2008 — Microsoft has detailed some of the .NET 4.0 feature set, and how it will evolve Windows Server to host composite applications by extending the Application Server Role.

Today, the company announced its road map for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and an update to Windows Server 2008, code-named “Dublin.” Community Technology Previews of the new technologies will be released at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference at the end of this month.

Microsoft is concentrating on making the creation of representational state transfer-style applications easier by including templates and deeper integration with ASP.NET, said Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft. Sample code will be accessible on CodePlex, Microsoft’s open-source project hosting website, he added.

Another design goal is to make integration between WCF and WF more seamless than it is today, he said. Microsoft is leveraging Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) to deepen that integration, using it as a common model stack for applications, he noted. “[Developers] will build the entire applications declaratively in XAML.”

“This is an important step toward capturing the entire application definition in a single format (XAML) that can generate different views of that definition,” wrote John R. Rymer, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, in an e-mail.

WF itself will be expanded to support a greater number of workflow models and enable more complex business rules to be built with it, said Kawasaki. It will also include a broader set of pre-built activities.

Deploying applications without putting the onus on developers to write complex infrastructure code is another objective of the .NET 4.0 wave. Dublin extends the Application Server Role with infrastructure code to handle asynchronous long-running processes that are common in workflow-centric applications, said Kawasaki. Microsoft’s objective is for its customers not to have to learn new runtimes and tools, he added.

Dublin will ship as an add-on for Windows Server 2008 and will be shipped with the Server product in later releases of Windows Server, according to Kawasaki. Future versions of Microsoft Dynamics AX and CRM applications will also be built using Dublin on the back end for improved management and scaling, he said. Microsoft partners, including AmberPoint, an early adopter, will be releasing SOA governance products that build on Dublin.

Dublin also has facilities for “Oslo,” a multi-product effort to develop new technology for customers to build, deploy, design and manage composite applications. Developers will create models within Visual Studio, and Dublin will serialize the models from a repository into a XAML-based format to be executed by the Application Server, Kawasaki explained.

“Microsoft has never referred to any of its software as an ‘application server’ before, even though they’ve had one since Microsoft Transaction Server (aka ‘Viper’). Rather, Microsoft has always bundled its app server software with Windows Server. This may change. Dublin is a pragmatic way for Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division to introduce its latest ‘foundation’ developments to market without having to wait for a new release of Windows Server and BizTalk Server,” Rymer noted. He added that a standalone “application server” product would free Microsoft to more easily deploy to a variety of Windows configurations ranging from devices to large data centers.

“For many of our clients, .NET 3.5 is still very new, and so Dublin will be ‘too much, too soon.’ But there’s always the crowd that is hungry for the next set of improvements and new features that will jump on Dublin to start their learning processes. The core goal of CSD [Connected Systems Division]—to simplify creation, deployment and maintenance of SOA applications by using executable models—still must be proven. If Microsoft gets it right, the results will be very useful for developers. But this has never been done before. Dublin is the first step on this path, with much more still to come,” he concluded.

Go here for article source…

.NET Making Gains Against Java, Survey Says

by Stephen Swoyer
30 September 2008


Who’s ahead: Microsoft Corp.’s .NET or Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE)?

Five years in and counting, the battle still rages with no clear victor. However, according to a new survey, .NET appears to be widening its lead over Java EE, as the latest revision of the erstwhile Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification is now called. Given the volatility of the .NET/Java EE match-up, that could easily change.

Last year, for example, a survey from development consultancy Evans Data Corp. identified a clear trend in favor of Java development, even though .NET still retained a narrow lead. Thirty-one percent of developers said they planned to tap .NET as their platform of choice for SOA development; 28 percent cited Java.

Evans Data flagged a steep decline in the percentage of developers who expressed a preference for using .NET as a platform for their SOA activities, citing a 20 percent drop in just a six-month period.

This year, the reverse seems to be the case.

According to a new survey from Evans Data, .NET is once again outpacing Java. The survey, which polled 350 developers at enterprise shops with 1,000 or more employees, found that three-fifths (60 percent) of respondents indicated that their .NET investments were growing; fully half said they planned to add additional .NET development personnel.

“These survey results confirm that .NET applications are pervasive in large enterprises and their acceptance and dependability is continuing to increase,” said Mike Allen, director of product management for CA Wily Technology, in a statement. CA Inc. — which markets application performance management (APM) tooling (and which claims that the Evans Data results underscore the importance of effective APM programs) — is a sponsor of the survey.

There might be something to CA’s claims. What’s surprising is how much enterprise IT organizations are spending on their next-gen application architecture investments — particularly for .NET products. More than half of respondents said they’re spending about a quarter of their IT application budgets on .NET development or support, while a staggering one-fifth of respondents say they’re spending between 75 and 100 percent this way.

Also surprising is the non-partisan heterogeneity of today’s enterprise application architectures. Many shops are supporting mixed .NET and Java EE deployments, Evans Data said. A clear majority of respondents said their organizations maintain both .NET and Java groups, for example.

It’s a sign of the times, according to industry veteran Jasmine Noel, a principal with consultancy Ptak, Noel & Associates.

“An increasing number of enterprises are realizing the benefits of deploying applications built on both .NET and Java. However, with those benefits come the challenges of managing a heterogeneous environment coupled with the unique issues of both development architectures,” Noel said in a prepared statement.

Elsewhere, .NET developers are far more likely than Java coders to blame changes — at both the application level and in the back-end — for slowdowns. Java users, on the other hand, disproportionately cite memory leaks and out-of-memory conditions as triggers for application failure.

.NET users were also more likely to cite issues with connectivity to back-end transaction systems, including mainframe systems. Java users, conversely, seem to generate or encounter more bugs. They’re also more likely to find fault with JVM or architecture issues than are .NET users (with the .NET CLR, that is).

Few people truly take the time to watch over their health. Most spend more time analyzing baseball stats and the problems with their cars than their own health issues. The result is that many people then rely on their doctors for that aspect of their lives and in a rational, more functional planet than that of Earth, this is the way it should be. Unfortunately, for us who dwell here on this “rock”, the sad story is that much of medicine, especially in the United States, has been converted into a revenue producing business which promotes the “bottom line” to the top priority in such an environment and far above that of an individual health.

The result is that many Americans, and many more should, have already taken the pro-active stance of doing their own research and turning to what we like to call “Alternative Treatment”; those that rely on natural supplements and herbal remedies instead of traditional prescription drugs.

Years ago Americans could rely on the FDA to do a somewhat reliable job of regulating the pharmaceutical industry in order to keep harmful drugs out of the public domain. However, this is no longer true since the ideology of free-markets has consumed the attention of politicians since the Reagan years. Unfortunately, such an ideology, which is quite good for the private sector, as long as companies are kept to much smaller sizes than they have been allowed to grow to, it has done very little to promote rational government which has an overriding concern for the public interest.

In fact, you will find no evidence to date that can dispute the statements just made as the corroborative documentation is now overwhelming. The same trend is also occurring in the United Kingdom and has been ongoing for years. It is now making its face shown in France. However, its lifespan is somewhat questionable as the French are impassioned about their society as it has been and as they should be. France, for instance, has one of the finest educational systems in Continental Europe. Why should it change simply for the rational of free-enterprise. It’s not as if it is going to get better than “the best”…

In the article that follows, Beth Stackpole, makes some very good points about the ailments that can afflict software engineers. However, I would be very wary of running off to your doctor in an attempt to rectify existing conditions with the use of prescription drugs.

Harvard researchers have found that in the past 20 years there has not been a single significant drug attributed to true health care that has been introduced into the American environment. Instead we get designer drugs to cure ailments instead of disease.

For example, one of the the most popular distributed prescription drugs today are those that promise re-invigorated sexual health for men… These drugs, like so many others have serious and very harmful side-effects that can raise long-term, deleterious health issues that avoiding and having a less active sex life now may prevent harm later in life.

“Erectile Dysfunction”, the symptom that such drugs are designed to treat is not a health problem as it is so often inferred. It is a natural symptom of aging that any respectable medical journal will inform you of the same. This “symptom” of aging is a direct result of the lessening levels of testosterone in our bodies as men age. The result, is that to truly eliminate this symptom you must first find a safe aging-inhibitor for the Earth bound Human male. Using Viagra and other such drugs will do nothing for your long term health.

Prostate Cancer is another health concern that much of the pharmaceutical industry is promoting for the sale of such drugs as “Flomax” which claims to reduce the size of a male prostate which tends to increase in size with aging and again, the lowering of testosterone in our bodies. The size of one’s prostate is not necessarily an indication that you may have prostate cancer but it is cause for concern.

The prescription drugs that you may take for this ailment should also be cause for concern as they have been found to actually be a potential cause for promoting prostate cancer instead of reducing it.

Mammography for women, long held to be the premier methodology for finding cancerous growths in women’s breasts, is now being found to actually be a possible factor in the creation of such growths.

I mean, think about it, blasting a lady’s breast with radiation, one of the most harmful substances the Human body can be exposed to on Earth, no matter the dosage, just to get a picture has to make one take some pause. What do you think could happen? What, radiation is safe?

The point I am trying to make is that there are still many doctors in the United States and elsewhere that are working daily with the best interests of their patients in mind. However, the tools they are being given to combat disease and other related issues have been substantially reduced in quality over the years.

It would be good then to begin a reconstruction of any health regimen in the same fashion that Europeans and the Chinese have long done so, by researching the many natural products that are available to support quality health and without the side-effects. And this also includes natural products to help with that most sought after of pastimes, sex…

If you have questions or concerns, of course seek advice from your doctor but do your homework. There are plenty of reputable sites that provide a tremendous amount of documentation on an entire range of health issues including well-known medical journals. You will be much healthier for it…

Go here for article source…

Health hazards for IT workers — how that desk job wears your body down

Too much junk food, too little exercise and a 24/7 tether to technology? Your body ain’t happy, friend. Let us count the pains.

Beth Stackpole

October 1, 2008
(Computerworld) Let’s say you’re a young IT manager, in your 20s, 30s or even early 40s. It’s not unheard of for you to put in 10-hour workdays in front of your computer, or some other user’s.

You try to eat something at least halfway healthy when you make it to the company cafeteria, but most days, you’re crashing by 4 p.m., which means a trip to ye olde vending machine for a Jolt or a Snickers (or both). By 6 p.m., you’re sprawled out all over your desk, ergonomics be damned, still typing furiously (and simultaneously) on your laptop and BlackBerry, wondering if you’ll ever get out the door.

Weekends mean family obligations, household chores and a few hours stolen here and there to catch up on key projects from work. There’s no time or energy for exercise more rigorous than mowing the lawn or riding bikes with the kids.

In your heart of hearts, you know the long days, heavy workload, poor eating, lack of exercise and cruddy posture add up to a pretty stressful work environment — and that’s before factoring in your boss’s notoriously short temper. But hey, you’re young, you can handle it, right?

Wrong.

Fat, sore and stressed

Keep it up another 10 years, and you could be looking at a host of ailments, from nagging aches and pains on up through serious, life-threatening conditions, according to a host of medical experts we spoke with.

(To see just how much damage the IT lifestyle can inflict, check out our head-to-toe chart).

The combination of a sedentary workday and poor eating habits can lead first and foremost to obesity, which can put your heart at risk and lead to a litany of other diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, in 2005-2006 the prevalence of obesity among adult men was 33.3% and 35.3% among adult women.

Obesity, in turn, increases the risk for conditions like hypertension (high blood pressure), Type 2 diabetes, stroke, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea, respiratory problems, certain cancers and cardiovascular disease.

“A phenomenal amount of people die [every year] from cardiovascular disease, which is very preventable,” says Susan Levin, M.S., R.D., and a staff nutritionist at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. Desk-bound workers are particularly at risk, she says. “If you have risk factors — you’re male, you’re a person of increasing age, you lead a sedentary lifestyle and you’re overweight — you need to take control.”

Your sedentary, stress-filled job wreaks havoc inside and out.
Click to view the pain points up close and personal.

The office life is also hard on your muscles and skeleton, thanks to the prolonged computer use that’s so common among IT workers. When the body is still, circulation slows, reducing the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the muscles. This scenario, coupled with poor posture, can produce a number of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which manifest with pain, tingling, discomfort, numbness and swelling in the joints and muscles. Most are temporary, but others can be permanent.

Finally, work-related stress, while motivating in manageable doses, can grind down your health over time. Undue stress can lower your immune defenses, increase the risk of heart disease and bring on anxiety, depression and difficulty sleeping, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Scared yet? For more details, here’s a head-to-toe look at the health dangers lurking for the typical IT desk jockey.

Eyes

The good news is there is no evidence that staring at a computer screen degrades your vision permanently. But short-term symptoms are common.

According to the American Optometric Association, people who use computers daily at work or at home could suffer from computer vision syndrome, which leaves them vulnerable to problems like dry eye, eyestrain, neck and backaches, light sensitivity and fatigue. Many of these symptoms result from poor workstation configuration and improper work habits, the AOA says.

The AOA’s 2007 American Eye-Q survey reveals that 41% of Americans experienced eye strain after prolonged computer or handheld device use, while 45% cited neck or back pain. While many of these symptoms cease once the sufferer is off the computer, some people will continue to experience visual problems, such as blurred distance vision.

Altering viewing distance, changing the screen setup, ensuring proper lighting and monitoring the ergonomics of the desk environment can help. But taking frequent eye breaks is just as important. The AOA suggests practicing the “20/20″ rule — look away from the computer every 20 minutes for 20 seconds to minimize eye-focusing problems and irritation caused by infrequent blinking.

Mental health

Working 10-plus-hour days and maintaining a 24/7 umbilical cord to your BlackBerry amounts to some serious overstimulation for the brain. Without implementing a consistent exercise regimen to boost brain endorphins or allotting the proper downtime for mental relaxation, overworked IT professionals leave themselves vulnerable to increased stress.

During times of stress, the brain releases adrenaline and other hormones to heighten senses and boost strength. While experts consider the normal stress response healthy, chronic stress can harm the immune and cardiovascular systems, and increase vulnerability to heart disease, depression, exhaustion, sleep deprivation and overall malaise, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Undue stress can also trigger anxiety, which can cause its own set of physical and emotional symptoms, including abdominal pain, dizziness, muscle tension and headaches, decreased concentration, irritability and sexual problems. In an extreme form, anxiety can even increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, MSDs, psychological disorders, even suicide and some cancers, according to the International Labour Office’s Encyclopaedia of Occupational Safety and Health (subscription required).

High levels of stress and anxiety can also provoke more minor conditions, such as hives, contact dermatitis, heart palpitations and headaches. It can also lead to mindless overeating, which, in turn, can lead to weight gain and its related medical risks.

“What leads to all this disease is trying to function at [a high] level, 24/7,” says Howard Waldman, M.D., Ph.D., medical director of the cardiac catheterization lab at the North Shore Medical Center in Salem, Mass., and co-director of the center’s Heart Center. “When your BlackBerry is buzzing and you have constant e-mail, it’s a sickness.”

Posture

Much progress has been made in the past decade in addressing carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries through the use of ergonomic keyboards and computer stands. But less focus has been given to correcting how people sit in front of their screens all day, according to Brian McKeon, M.D., chief medical officer for the Boston Celtics and an orthopedist at the Boston Sports & Shoulder Center. Poor posture, coupled with the natural process of losing bone density and flexibility as we age, sets up a perfect storm for a host of back, neck and shoulders problems, such as rotator cuff disease, McKeon says.

Turn yourself around

These small adjustments to your workday can add up to a happier, healthier you.

And the increasing popularity of portable computers only compounds the problem, because “the design of laptops violates a basic ergonomic requirement for a computer, namely that the keyboard and screen [be] separated,” according to the Cornell University Ergonomics Web, which recommends a host of posture-positive tips for laptop users.

Poor posture can lead as well to digestive problems such as indigestion and constipation, McKeon explains, as well as pulmonary disease as lungs become restricted, making it harder to breath. “Bad posture is something we don’t take seriously — most people don’t see surgeons for these problems, and we just tend to neglect it,” McKeon says. “If we treated posture aggressively from the outset, shoulder, elbow and hand injuries would dramatically decrease.”

Back

Without the proper ergonomic setup, deskbound workers like IT professionals run the risk of back and spine injuries, McKeon says. Problems can include anything from cervical radiculopathy (a compression of the nerve roots in the neck) and bursitis of the shoulder on down to pulled or strained muscles, ligaments and tendons in the lower back.

Ironically, the risk of injury is actually compounded when a mostly sedentary worker makes an attempt at exercise. “The desk jockey realizes they’ve got to exercise so they do things like play tennis or do pushups, but those don’t do anything for exercising their back muscles,” McKeon says. “They set themselves up for muscle imbalances and can sometimes make things worse.”

More than 1 million people lose time from work each year due to musculoskeletal disorders, which can be easily avoided with proper attention to workplace ergonomics and with regular exercise that includes back-strengthening routines, according to “Musculoskeletal Disorders and the Workplace,” a report published by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

Arms, hands and elbows

There’s been a decrease in the past five years in carpal tunnel syndrome, but there are still plenty of other prevalent repetitive stress ailments afflicting the hands, arms and elbows as a result of prolonged computer use.

Hand and wrist tendonitis, tenosynovitis (also known as DeQuervain’s tendonitis) and ulnar nerve entrapment are just some conditions that could be in store for you if you spend too much time at the keyboard without a proper eye to ergonomics.

The text messaging and other handheld-based activities that IT professionals hold so dear make them more vulnerable to developing symptoms ranging from hand throbbing and swelling to tendonitis, according to the American Physical Therapy Association’s Occupational Health Special Interest Group. When text messaging, people tend to tense their shoulders and upper arms, which cuts down circulation to the forearm at the time when the consistent movements of the thumb and fingers require increased blood flow, the APTA says. Also, because so many PDA users are middle-aged businesspeople, overuse can inflame underlying arthritis, further increasing the risk of injury.

There’s a quality-of-work component to extremity injuries as well, according to the musculoskeletal report from the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. “High job demands and high job stress are work-related psychosocial factors that are associated with the occurrence of upper extremity disorders,” the report notes. In other words, somewhere down the line, you’re potentially going to feel that stressful job in your hands, wrists, elbows, arms or shoulders.

To cut short that damage before it happens, check out recommendations for a more ergonomic workstation setup from the Occupational Health & Safety Administration.

Heart

Nearly one in three adult males in the U.S. has some form of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the single leading cause of death of American men, according to the American Heart Association.

Statistics published on the AHA site show that the lifetime risk of developing cardiovascular heart disease after age 40 is 49% in men and 32% in women. Besides heart attack, CVD can lead to other cardiac-related events such as angina, stroke, high blood pressure and peripheral vascular disease.

While some of the risk factors that contribute to that risk for cardiovascular disease — such as age, sex and genetics — are beyond an individual’s control, behaviors like smoking, exercise and diet have a significant impact on increasing or decreasing a person’s risk profile.

The first step in the battle is to know your risk factors, says the North Shore Medical Center’s Dr. Waldman. “People, by age 40 or so, should know what their lipid profile is,” he says. “Awareness sometimes ignites change, and people may start to make better choices.”

Gut

Over the years, a lifestyle of poor food choices and lack of exercise pretty much guarantees weight gain and loss of muscle mass. And IT workers in particular are at risk of gaining weight.

According to a May 2008 CareerBuilder.com survey of approximately 7,700 employees, 34% of respondents who identified themselves as IT workers said they had gained more than 10 pounds in their current job, and 17% had packed on more than 20 pounds. While IT workers’ weight gain was less than those in financial services and government, it was still above the average, for all workers who took the online survey, where 26% said they had gained 10 pounds and 12% had gained 20 or more.

The same survey showed that a mere 9% of all workers head out to the gym during lunch breaks to work off those calorie-laden restaurant lunches (38% eat out twice or more per week) or frequent snacks (66% of those surveyed snacked once a day, with nearly 25% indulging twice a day or more).

Weight gain, particularly when around the middle, where it tends to collect in middle age, has been directly linked to metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that increase propensity for heart diseases and diabetes, among other problems. Diabetes, in turn, opens the door to a host of other issues, including blindness, sores that don’t heal and more serious maladies. Type 2 diabetes occurs most frequently in people who are 45 or older and overweight, according to the American Heart Association.

Have your say

Share the pain — has your job taken a toll on your health?

Another unpleasant side effect of obesity, especially as it relates to diabetes and metabolic syndrome, is testosterone deficiency, which can lead to erectile dysfunction and lowered libido, according to reports from endocrinologists.

Legs

If you’re stuck behind a desk all day, the lack of exercise over time can lead to loss of muscle mass, and losing muscle mass decreases a person’s ability to keep weight off, NSMC’s Waldman says. “When it comes to muscle mass, if you don’t use it, you lose it,” he says, “and muscle is far more effective at metabolizing calories than fat.”

Just as cardiovascular disease, brought on by poor diet and insufficient exercise, can affect the arteries around the heart, so too can it affect blood flow to extremities such as the legs. Office workers with a poor diet and insufficient exercise can over time develop peripheral vascular disease, a serious condition that affects some 8 million Americans and can lead to a heart attack, stroke or diabetes.

For healthy adults aged 18-65, about 30 minutes or more of moderate-intensity physical activity five days of the week can protect your heart and consequently help stave off lower-extremity diseases, according to the latest guidelines (PDF) issued jointly by the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Age, gender and genetics are outside your control, but lifestyle and eating habits are well within your purview to change. With a few well-chosen modifications, which don’t even need to be extreme, you can alter your health profile.

Physicians like Waldman say it’s imperative for IT workers and other deskbound professionals to take the time to pay at least some attention to diet and exercise and their physical workstation setup in the office.

Making small changes — cutting back on red meat, reducing portion size or taking regular, 10-minute exercise and stretching breaks — can be just as effective over time as radical changes like taking up running or abruptly switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet. The trick, the experts say, is to make changes that will stick. (See “Five easy changes for better health now” for suggestions.)

Mentally, you need to find a way to respect your body’s limitations as well as its strengths. “If you’re asking a lot from your mind and body, you must be prepared to properly nourish it too,” notes Robin Foroutan, a nutritionist and holistic health counselor certified by the Institute for Integrated Nutrition in New York. “That means downtime, exercise, stress release, quality time with friends and loved ones, adequate sleep and healthy foods.”

Beth Stackpole, a frequent Computerworld contributor, has reported on business and technology for more than 20 years.

Construx Software is a leader in software engineering practices and implementation. Stephen McConnell, its founder, is a leading software engineering analyst and is known for his 1996 classic, “Rapid Development”, which details the best practices and techniques to easily turn your IT organization into a software engineering entity.

More recently Stephen has published “Code Complete”, a compendium of best practices and techniques for developing high quality code along with his most recent publication which is an update to software project estimation which was included in his first book, “Software Estimation; Demystifying the Black Art”.

Below, you will find the latest software engineering tips from Stephen’s company. They are worth a look…

White Papers

It is common requirement at times to send data in Excel output to a client on the web. The problem however, is how do you do this, have access to cell-level formatting, and do both without using the Excel Office object on the server?

If you don’t need any formatting you can simply use the “HttpResponse” object to send formatted strings against the “Excel” content-type for a simple Excel spreadsheet. However, if you require more than you must use something that will provide you with access to the Excel objects but without using Excel for obvious performance reasons.

The answer is Carlos Aguilar Mares’ “ExcelXmlWriter”; a freeware component that is easy to install and just as to use. Light and fast it allows you to avoid the usage of the heavy Office components that weren’t designed for server usage in the first place.

Before you rush to the site to download this excellent piece of software please note that the only line of code that should be in your “aspx” page should be the “Page” directive. All other HTML code should be removed, otherwise you will experience HTML conflict errors.

Go here to download software…

Library to Generate Excel XML Workbooks in .NET