TechBubbles

Introduction

Windows Azure is an operating system for windows cloud. This post speaks about key features and how can we use windows Azure.

Read more

Microsoft officially announced new logo for Visual studio suite at PDC 2008.

The logo is on light background and dark background.

Why this logo?

It stands for consistency, robustness and greater user experiences. It is reflected in newer brands such as silver light, surface and more. The letter ‘N’ in the logo will become shorthand for the .NET brand name.

Introduction

The Microsoft Health Common User Interface (CUI) provides a toolkit with controls which addresses wide range of patient safety concerns for Health Care Organizations all over the world. This tool kit allows the developers to build a new generation of Health Care Applications.

With Microsoft CUI you can

• Quickly and easily develop a Health Care Application
• Design guidance for developing the applications
• Develop applications in Visual Studio Environment

Microsoft developing all these controls using Windows Presentation Foundation and Silver light 2.0 technology.

Microsoft Demonstrated the Features of this controls by developing a patient journey application in NHS 2008 summit.

The following are some of the screen shots of the Application

• Dynamic Search and Results slider

Read more

Introduction

The Microsoft Web Application Installer (Web AI) allows you to install Web applications for IIS from other sources. Web AI identifies available applications and the originating Web sites, and asks you to select the application that you want to install.

What does it do?

Web AI downloads the applications that you selected directly from the originating web sites and configures according to your instructions.

Web AI is the easiest way to install the freely available PHP and ASP.NET applications on the IIS Web server.

• Web AI provides support for popular ASP.NET and PHP Web Applications including Graffiti, DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal, OSCommerce and more.

Read more

Microsoft announced that the successor to Windows Vista will be called Windows 7. Microsoft has set 2010 as release target for Windows 7.

Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows Product Management, explained:

"Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We’ve used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or "aspirational" monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista. And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new "aspirational" name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows."

Ultimately, Windows 7 is the seventh release of the operating system, "so therefore ‘Windows 7′ just makes sense," Nash writes.

Introduction

The new version of Internet explorer IE 8 Beta2 providing some cool features like Web slices, Accelerators, Ajax Navigation and Developer tools. More you can find at IE 8 Beta 2 features for Developers.

Web slices in IE 8

In order to have your favorite sites up to date on your favorites is really time consuming. IE 8 brings you web slices  through which you can keep your favorite web sites up to date.

It tracks the web site that you added to the web slices. A flash will appear when ever a update is in the site.

Subscribing to the available web slices in the web site is as simple as adding the sites to the favorites.

Accelerators in IE 8

using Accelerators you can gain access to your favorite online services like searching,shopping and emailing in a click.

You  can search,map,email or translate , share content from any web page that you are currently viewing by just one click. Accelerators are being added to the IE gallery to enhance the user browser experience.

Select the content on the web page that you are browsing and right click on it Accelerator icon will appear as shown above with a set of options like email,map and Blog the text just by a click.

Adding Accelerators to your browser

You can add more accelerators to the browser by clicking on the Accelerator icon on the web page then find more accelerators the say add it will added to your favorite accelerators.

Introduction

IE 8 Beta 2 provided the decent features to the  designers and developers community. If you write the code for IE 8 Beta 2 that can run on anywhere.

It means it is allowing developers and designers to develop applications with Interoperability and web standards.

• CSS 2.1 complainer.
• HTML 5.0 standards supported.
• Ajax navigation and enhancements supported. 
• Implementing DOM storage for HTML 5.0

1. IE 8 is different from IE 7 in AJAX enhancements and Navigations

Enables the in place navigation when you are browsing maps for a particular location you may use the zoom option in the maps. Each and every zoom action will be stored in the travel history which is highlighted in oval.

2. DOM Storage in Connectivity events

When you are writing BLOG post or checking an e-mail at airport if suddenly connections drops then it prompts you to save the typed data on offline. Prompt is highlighted in the oval.

It also allows you cross domain communication and messaging using HTML standards.

3. More Server Connections for better performance. currently allowing 6 earlier it is 2.

4. Document mode Compatibility- No need to write any code for to render the content which is developed in earlier versions of the Internet Explorer. By placing a simple meta tag instructs the IE 8 to render the earlier browser versions content in right format. So IE8 providing full document compatibility mode.

If at all the content not rendered properly in IE8 beta it suggest through compatibility button in address bar to best view version.

5. IE Developer tools- allows the developer to debug the java script and in place HTML and CSS changes. (Shift + F12 ) is the keyboard short cut for opening the debugger tool.

The developer tool looks like

You can view the page in different IE versions using the above tool. we can call this feature as site preview.

5. Profiling the web sites-

we can check application performance and bottle necks using above built in profiler.

6. Extending the service integration through web slices and Accelerators.

    Implementing the web slices and Accelerators is easy.

You can download the Internet explorer 8 beta 2 for exploring the features.

Introduction

This post explains how synch provider communicates with a data source and retrieves information  from metadata store. Sync providers can communicate with other sync providers through a synch session.

You can read the basic understanding about synch framework at Microsoft Sync.

Data Source

is the place where all information will be stored that needs to be synchronized. It can be relational database, a file system, a web service. It is a key component in synchronization process.

Meta Data

Information about data store and objects in the data store  is called metadata and it can be stored anywhere that can be a file, a database.

Versions

Versions are maintained for each item that is being participated in the synchronization process. It records when and where an item has changed, and Itemid has associated with it. In case of database the item can be entire row in a table.

Implementing Versions

• Inline Tracking Change is recorded immediately as the change is made.Example Trigger can be used to update a change when a update action is occurred on the database table row.
• Asynchronous Tracking External process runs and scans for changes. updates found are added to the version information on a scheduled process.

Synchronization Flow

Conclusion

Microsoft sync framework to allow any data store to exchange information and enables conflict detection and allows the application or provider to effectively resolve conflicts.

Introduction

Microsoft Sync Framework is a platform which enables collaboration and offline access  among applications, services and devices. Using Sync Framework developers can build sync systems that can integrate any application with any data using any protocol over the network.

Key concept of Microsoft Sync Framework is creating synchronization provider which contains the repository of information to be synchronized. Provider applies changes to repository both at source and destination places. If the data at the source and destination differ in type or schema provider performs necessary mapping or transformation.

Providers in Microsoft Sync

• Sync Services for ADO.NET- for ADO.NET enabled data sources
• Sync Services for File Systems – for files and folders
• Sync Services for FeedSync- for RSS and ATOM feeds

Read more

Microsoft Visual studio team system 2008 is an integrated Application development and management solution which contains tools, processes and guidance to help everyone on the team to improve their skills and work more effectively together.

VS 2008 Team Suite provides set of tools for architecture, design, development, database development,and testing of applications.Team members can collaboratively work with these tools and effectively contribute in all phases of the development.

Team System 2008 having the following editions

• Database Edition
• Architecture Edition
• Development Edition
• Test Edition
• Test Load Agent
• Team Foundation Server

Team Foundation Overview

The core concept when we talk about Team Foundation is TeamProject.
A Team Project is stored on Team Foundation Server and that can uniquely identify by everyone in the team.The team project provides a central location for everyone to co-ordinate his work.

Read more