Bits from the software front...

Humans and Human body as the final Architectural reference point.

2012-02-02T21:59:00.000+05:30

Its an interesting perspective to consider humans, their means of interaction with others including other humans, animals, machines, their growth, evolution, human anatomy among others as a software architecture reference point. Given a scenario for high load data transactions that come in, how would a typical single human handle it? How would many humans handle it? In case of multiple humans

COTS Architectures - sure shot architecture anti-pattern.

2012-01-01T15:51:00.001+05:30

The typical trend in software architecture definitions of these days appear to be what I prefer to call 'COTS Architectures'. Why 'common-off-the-shelf' ? You take these architecture 'solutions' and it appears to be applicable for nearly all enterprise requirements!. These COTS Architectures appear to be used right from pre-sales proposals and typically would have the following (in a logical

Rooting days are here again - custom ROM, S-OFF and some free time -> God Mode

2012-01-01T13:35:00.000+05:30

It is definitely quite an experience to root an Android device with all sorts of custom ROM readily available. Reminds one of the early slackware days at college when getting to see the console itself was termed a success. With my HTC Desire HD having seen enough of its stock ROM and with some time at hand , it was yet that time again ! Rooting was pretty straightforward while religiously

Distributed apps and the browser

2011-09-11T08:39:00.001+05:30

Wondering what the possibilities of exploiting the browser are to execute distributed applications, hopefully extending around http://des.codeplex.com Would be cool if browser users could voluntarily share their machines computing power for distributed application needs. Why browser ? Simply because that is the most used app in an internet connected environment. Possibilities : 1.)

ConsistentHash implementation in C# 4.0

2011-08-16T08:06:00.006+05:30

For those not familiar with ConsistentHash, start here: Consistent Hashing The following is an attempt to implement the functionality using features of C# 3/4. I needed this functionality for the distributed cache project that I was working on (Available at HoC ) namespace HoC.Common { public class ConsistentHash : ICloneable { SortedList itemCircle = new

Object Pool - Quick and Short in .NET 4.0

2011-08-10T10:01:00.000+05:30

A simple object pool that could be used to maintain a set of objects readily available in memory, especially if you see that the object creation time is heavy. Eg:- creation of a MemoryStream on a need basis is typically time consuming in a server based app. In this case, it could best to have a set of MemoryStream objects readily available in memory. But, we definitely have to make sure to

Tree-Of-Trust

2011-07-15T21:31:00.001+05:30

Overview Enterprise applications of today are no longer independent, but dependent on other applications, services and components for completing their functionality. Authenticating/Trusting another application typically requires having a new authentication/identity management module written for each new application that is integrated. With the advent of claims based/token based authentication,

Enterprise Architectures - skills, perspectives and insights - Tom Graves replies

2010-11-20T22:14:00.001+05:30

Tom Graves has given deep insights (bit philosophical, but reality ) on building up skills on enterprise architecture from a professional and personal perspective; a query I had raised him earlier. Read more here : http://weblog.tomgraves.org/index.php/2010/11/20/creating-a-career-in-enterprise-architecture/

HoC is up on codeplex

2010-10-05T19:48:00.000+05:30

HoC - A distributed cache implementation using .NET 4.0 is now available for download with source at http://hoc.codeplex.com/ HoC = Herd Of Cache.

Azure opens up for Private cloud - Windows Azure Platform Appliance

2010-07-13T14:47:00.002+05:30

MS announced yesterday that Azure would soon be available for deploying on your local datacenters. Effectively, you could soon create private clouds using MS Azure. This is a great move especially if you were concerned about data security in the public cloud and subscription costs. But still, the upfront cost could be high; this is not yet published. Check more here This is also interesting

Cloud Thoughts - 2

2010-06-15T16:38:00.000+05:30

What if there was a mechanism to provision PaaS cloud environments (say MS Azure ) on public servers? Theoretically, if I had a free server(/cloud), I would install the "Azure runtimes" and add it to an existing cloud for others to use. Registering a server to this free public cloud would then be a voluntary effort. This could have been a possibility if Azure allowed in-premise setup in the

Cloud Thoughts - 1

2010-06-14T15:31:00.000+05:30

A few cloud related thoughts Cloud Cumulus A single cloud access point that internally seamlessly talks with the subscribed cloud providers. Eg:- Subscriber A could subscribe to the services of Amazon, Google and Micrsoft (yes, Subscriber A is quite well off) cloud services. Subscriber A would deploy the same app on each of these servers and provide a single service URI. Subscriber A's

Everyday Enterprise Architecture - The book - full download

2010-06-14T14:48:00.000+05:30

It appears that Tom has put the full version of his new book for download for a limited period of time. Check out if it is still available here Note: though the page might say its a preview edition, its actually the full book.

Review - Book - CLR via C# 3rd Edition by Jeffrey Richter

2010-05-10T12:11:00.000+05:30

Having been a die hard fan of the second edition of CLR via C#, couldn't wait to get hold of the third edition. The third edition keeps up to the Jeffrey standard on covering from the basics to the internals of .NET 4.0 with C# 4.0. Starting with the rather interesting foreword by his wife, this book can be read end to end if you are already comfortable with .NET and have enough time to read

Setting Physical Memory Limit for a .NET application

2010-03-23T09:49:00.002+05:30

We needed to limit the physical memory used by a .NET application as it was taking too much of it and the other apps appeared to be in a struggle mode. The straightforward way appeared to use Process.GetCurrentProcess().MaxWorkingSet. Strangely, no matter what we tried, this never worked. Yet to figure out why it does not work - if anyone has a clue, please ping. Anyways, looking at options we

Exploiting ObjectFromLresult() to get the IHTMLDocument2 from a window handle

2010-03-18T14:32:00.002+05:30

Assume you have a window handle to a html control (which implements IHTMLDocument2) within a browser page (which is an IWebBrowser2), how would you access the HTML elements? This is interesting as with just a window handle, it was relatively unknown on how that can be mapped to an object. What you need to do is this: 1.) Register the windows message WM_HTML_GETOBJECT 2.) Send this message to

Azure Computing Usage, Metering etc and how MS gets richer

2010-02-24T11:20:00.002+05:30

As per the MS release, the azure usage is to be calculated based on the 'compute instance'. $0.12 per hour it appears is for the 'small compute' instance size. For others, multiply this by the number of CPUs as per the below image : Source ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/popup.aspx?lang=en&locale=en-US&offer=MS-AZR-0003P ) Caveats Based on your requirement, you could go for

Quickly calculate Azure ROI/TCO

2010-02-24T11:11:00.003+05:30

Interested in quickly calculating the ROI/TCO for your application once it is deployed in Azure? Check out these two:1.) http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/tco/2.) http://neudesic.cloudapp.net/azureroi.aspx

View/Query tables/data in Azure Dev Storage

2010-02-24T11:09:00.002+05:30

When deploying application on the development fabric, you would usually need to actually view the dev storage - say check out the tables, write a couple of SQLs against it etc. OOB, there isn’t any support in VS2010/tools from MS. Note that development fabric is different from the Azure Storage in the cloud. Development fabric, dev storage resides on your local machine.

Concurrency & .NET

2010-02-05T13:44:00.003+05:30

With each versions of the windows programming libraries, the options for concurrent programming seems to be on the rise. Gone are the days when you had to start with a plain CreateThread() Win32 call (remember setting all those security attributes?). Then came the wrappers right from CThread in MFC, TThread in VCL (a more elegant version - Delphi ruled those days). With earlier versions of .NET,

DES R2

2009-10-31T00:25:00.003+05:30

DES R2 (Distributed Execution System Release 2) released to http://des.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/33784Core enhancement - support for child tasks, concept of collection gate, design changes/refactoring etc

Making sense of Contravariance and Covariance in C# 2.0/4.0

2009-06-18T19:32:00.008+05:30

IntroductionIn simple words, covariance refers to the fact that you can use a type or one of its descendants when the specific type is expected. Say for the following class hierarchy: Doberman -> Dog -> Animal, where Animal is the root/super parent class. If you had a function public static Dog ProcessDog(Dog myDog){return new Dog();}In all versions of C#, Dog returnDog = ProcessDog(new Dog()); /

Two events and a PG course

2009-04-19T10:49:00.001+05:30

Basically three things which could interest a software engineer based out of Bangalore :1.) Great Indian Developer Summit : Happening on days April 22, 23, 24 appears to be the place to be for any software engineer in the .NET/Web/Java streams. Look forward for talks on upcoming cutting edge technologies.2.) Like to meet geeky innovators who have taken the turn with their startups ? This is the

DES Uploaded to CodePlex

2009-04-17T06:54:00.003+05:30

Have uploaded the initial version of my hobby project Distributed Execution System to http://des.codeplex.com/Check the homepage at http://des.codeplex.com/ for a brief summary of the project.

Boxed & Secured Execution Of a .NET Type

2009-03-24T21:35:00.000+05:30

One of the usual needs in an application developers world is to instantiate a .NET type in a boxed/contained/isolated environment with zero impact to the current application process space. How do we do that? This article solves this in an easy manner, adoptable easily. Usual Solution The immediate answer is to use an Application Domain - create new application domain and instantiate the type

Chrome crashed

2008-10-16T21:45:00.008+05:30

In fact I thought Chrome would never crash when one of the tab got screwed since there was this concept of each tab executing within a different process. A behaviour easily verified by browsing to about:memory and cross checking the PID with the windows process ID.Sadly this near perfect browser crashed today :(Should have noted down the steps that caused this. Have now enabled chrome to

WCF Service and a SilverLight 2 beta 2 Application

2008-10-12T14:39:00.015+05:30

While trying to call a simple WCF service from a silverlight application, not everything goes smoothly from within VS 2008. Though coding itself did not take more than half an hour, to hack the stuff to work good took me around a day.You would usually require to get past the following hurdle's:1.) The default binding for the WCF service appears to be secured - wsHttpBinding, which is not

Bounce that spam please!

2008-03-09T06:47:00.003+05:30

Looking at the number of spam emails (approximately 3 spams for 1 good email!), something needs to make sure that the same sender does not send a different spam. To handle this, we could have an auto-bounce feature such that once a spam is marked manually for auto-bounce, the next spam from the same user results in an 'invalid email-address' or 'inbox full' kind of messages. The only issues we

Injections

2008-03-05T13:00:00.001+05:30

Dependency Injection: Dependency Injection refers to the process by which functional components ('concerns' in AOP terms) are induced into an object such that the object could use its functionalities. Say, you had a Customer Management module and one of the function it does was audit the name of all users who updated a customer record. On the simplest terms, we might have the following classes :

Revisting Workflows in Sharepoint - Part 2

2008-03-03T11:11:00.003+05:30

Creating workflows using Sharepoint DesignerIt should be noted that any workflow you create using Sharepoint Designer is effectively a sequential workflow, wherein you define the sequence of the steps to be performed. Each step being composed of actions and conditions. Any new functionality would require you to create new custom activity in VS.NET and deploy it as an action such that it could be

Revisting Workflows in Sharepoint - Part 1

2008-02-27T15:05:00.000+05:30

There are quite a few stuff which remains to be talked about workflows in Sharepoint, the ones we did not cover in the earlier posts (filter the blog posts by the WWF tag). Lets revisit some of these in this post.We now know that workflows act as a facilitator for automating system (including human) interactions and let you define the business process. WWF being the framework provided by

Webparts in MOSS 2007 - Part 4

2008-02-26T18:00:00.000+05:30

The examples we have seen until now talks about webparts that worked independently (and good :)). Assuming we need to get two webparts to talk with each other, you need to follow this : 1.) Setup a data object interface which would be shared by the two webparts.public interface ISharedData{ string data { get; set; }}2.) On the source/provider webpart, perform the following actions : a.)

Webparts in MOSS 2007 - Part 3

2008-02-26T17:00:00.000+05:30

We might have user customisable properties within our webpart which we think could be customised during design time. Here design time means the mode when you add the webpart into the appropriate webzone from the webpart gallery. At this point, all properties which had the WebBrowsable attribute set (check out Part 1) are available for customization.For simple properties (say integers/string etc),

Webparts in MOSS 2007 - Part 2

2008-02-26T12:00:00.000+05:30

In the first part, we talked about creating the simplest of WebPart and the classes of concern. This time, lets render something meaningfull in our webpart. How about the list of all the users in the system ? We would be using the MOSS libraries to get this information. StepsAs usual, create a blank class derived from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart and override the render method as :

Webparts in MOSS 2007 - Part 1

2008-02-25T08:00:00.002+05:30

Webparts can be considered as reusable widgets (similar to the yahoo ones) which work independently (though they can communicate) and are individually configurable. This makes the task of showing up of different logical sections on the same web page easier; especially while doing independent development. Brought out initially with Sharepoint 2003, it was supported in ASP.NET extensively and now

MS Sync Framework

2007-11-28T13:36:00.000+05:30

To prove that they are everywhere, they have now brought out a framework just for synchronising stuff across two domains. Based on a provider model, this could be extended to sync any data (files, tables,). Sync services for ADO.NET is one provider which you could readily use to sync data from your client machine to the DB server. The other one readily available being the file services

SLP Services

2007-11-28T13:19:00.000+05:30

Security services in .NET goes to the next level now with the introduction of these services. Obfuscation had until today been one of the most commonly used methods to hide your source code while SLP appears to use a new approach altogether.The new set of keyword to learn for the day include:SLP (Software Licensing and Protection) - The service itself.SVML (Secure Virtual Machine Language) -

Audience in MOSS

2007-10-15T16:30:00.000+05:30

Concept Audience feature in MOSS should not be mixed up with security features/trimming of data based on the user credentials and the resulting authorization. Instead, 'audience' lets you filter out undesirable data for the current user context. E.g.:- you would want to hide the sales data on the home page if the current user is not part of the sales team; this makes sure the marketing (or

Talking with Exchange Server

2007-07-22T13:43:00.000+05:30

The usual requirements of talking with outlook can be handled by the rather extensive object model which outlook provides. Now, if you want to interact with outlook from a server based application (say ASP.NET or a remoting host), using object model might not be the right solution since you need outlook client installed, you might have to configure individual profiles etc. A better approach could

SSW Code Auditor - a review

2007-07-14T13:31:00.000+05:30

A quick search for code standards review tools for C# lead me to SSW Code Auditor. Among others (FxCop, Standards Master 2005,FMS Total..), this tool appeared to be something easy for an average developer to use from the first day.DetailsOnce the trial version is downloaded, the first thing which would strike you are the pictures of all kinds of fruits (yes! apple, the sign of health to start

SQL Server + CLR -> Stuff noted

2007-06-24T09:37:00.000+05:30

There appears to be many limitations and rules to be followed while using the CLR to write an SQL object:. While using the context connection object via SqlConnection("context connection=true"), make sure only one connection object with this context is open at any point in time. 'Using' should be your friend here.. If you want to initialize application data which needs to be re-used each time

SQL Server 2005 & A Global Trigger

2007-05-28T07:08:00.000+05:30

With the introduction of CLR into SQL Server 2005, the programmer can now write functionalities exploiting the C# language and the vast .NET library. A closer look at integrating CLR trigger handlers reveals many interesting stuff:Classes of concernNamespace Microsoft.SqlServer.Server contains all of the classes we would use in a SQL CLR object. While writing triggers, we would be exposed to:

The Jukebox Issue

2007-05-19T09:13:00.000+05:30

Problem at handWhat we had in place was a jukebox system wherein the client application on user machines would request songs from the main play list on the server. The server would pick up the next song in this queue and play it using media player on the server machine. The sound output is directed to the music system such that everyone around could listen to the many songs requested by

WWF - Persisting WorkFlow

2007-04-19T06:38:00.000+05:30

Why Persist?The workflow host, which could be anything from a console application to a full fledged service application like MOSS, is not expected to maintain the state of the workflow instance in memory all the time. This is simply to save server resources and make them available. This considers the fact that workflows could be running for days.Persisting - The common path To save/persist/

Sharepoint - Integrating MOSS+WWF+ASPX - Part 3

2007-04-18T09:11:00.001+05:30

Exposing our WWF workflow to MOSSThere are two more bits we need to do in the WWF workflow application to make it available to MOSS. We need to declare the feature and the workflow xml.feature.xmlMOSS introduced features for the developers to create site items/functionality which can later be linked with sharepoint collectons/sites. Within this XML file, you would also tell which XML would

Sharepoint - Integrating MOSS+WWF+ASPX - Part 2

2007-04-05T06:00:00.000+05:30

Starting with SharePoint Workflow ProjectOnce you have the sharepoint extension installed, the default project based on these templates would have the OnWorkFlowActivated activity placed as the first activity in the workflow. When Sharepoint initiates our workflow, its this activity it calls as the first step - acting as the entry point into our workflow.Data SharingSharepoint shares data with

Sharepoint - Integrating MOSS+WWF+ASPX - Part 1

2007-04-03T10:55:00.000+05:30

MOSS 2007 brings out the capability to use workflows defined within WWF; though not in the very easiest of ways. The number of steps to perform this action is a bit extensive. Sharepoint by default does let you define simple workflows using the sharepoint designer, but you would definitely have to go via the WWF path if there are too many custom business actions which needs to be performed during

Sharepoint BDC - Easy LOB Integration

2007-04-03T04:16:00.000+05:30

BDCMOSS 2007 brings out new capabilities in integrating third party data sources and line-of-business apps into the sharepoint environment. Once integrated, these data sources act 'quite' similar to the standard sources letting you apply the various sharepoint functions such as list, search etc.There is no need to write complex custom handlers (nobody wants to write one - not recommended by the

Survival tips for the 'common programmer'

2007-04-03T03:53:00.000+05:30

Learn LearnFor the 'common programmer'[R.K Laxman - 'Common Man' variant], the importance of a good foundation in computer science and continuously upgrading your knowledge cannot be emphasised further. The reason for this post are the many interviews conducted over the past few days which have been very disappointing and a few talks with my colleagues.In addition to computer science fundamentals