Moved: http://alexanderj.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/das-erste-buergerrecht/

Moved: http://alexanderj.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/die-groesste-gefahr-fuer-unseren-rechtsstaat/

So, PDC09 is not far away. But, sadly, I’m not going to make it this time.

I had thought for a longer time about posting some pictures from PDC08 as kind of a retrospective – but you know how it is, other things coming up, not much time, well.

And then this nut showed up, hijacked my blog and posted this nonsense about some crime that should have happened last PDC? Come on! Here’s the list of what I can only call a real good example of real dumb accusations:

• PDC08 – the unrevealed crime (featuring Anders Hejlsberg)
• Part 2: Management Panics (featuring Ray Ozzie)
• Part 3: Early Responses (featuring Bob Muglia, Steven Sinofski, and others)
• Part 4: One Special Response (featuring Chris Anderson and Don Box)
• Part 5: The Investigation (featuring Channel 9 and the audience!)
• Part 6: A Copy Cat (featuring Scott Guthrie)
• Part 7: The Revelation (featuring Bob Muglia again)
• Part 8: The Guilty (featuring Don Box – talk about nuts)
• Part 9: Aftermath! (featuring PDC, L.A. and Halloween)

Let me stress that again: There is no proof whatsoever to this story! As I see it, all these accusations are groundless, all people addressed are innocent victims. So, please, do not accuse anyone of installing LINUX on somebody’s machine if you don’t have proof. Much less on the grounds of this story!

All that remains for me is some complementary pictures:

 Windows Azure was THE big announcement at PDC08, and it’s going to be one of the major topic for PDC09. Microsoft really has something here that might change a lot in the long run. If they remove the two road blockers, that is: One, they need to make this infrastructure available for enterprise customers to lower the barrier to entry. Two, they need to do what they always did: attract developers and create a prosperous community of enthusiasts around Azure. To achieve that, they need to offer the platform for free. All with reasonable constraints of course. And this is just my opinion.   

Oslo, and M, was another major topic. But I can’t help thinking that this was mainly because it was the “Don Box-Topic”. It’s been relatively quiet around it since then, and unfortunately this also includes the somewhat related “Dublin”, which I think is a very important step in the services area.

Hands-On-Labs was as always the best way to lay your hands on the stuff you heard about for the first time just this very morning. If you had the time.

Talking about the location, the first and the last thing you saw about PDC was L.A. …

the Convention Center…

… and if you didn’t use the shuttle system, it was probably Pico Station, featuring a great view at Downtown.

However, I have been attending 3 PDCs so far, all of them in L.A. I’d really like to see some other city next time? (Microsoft, I could give you a list of areas in the U.S., I haven’t visited so far ).

So much for my little retrospective. CU at PDCnext… .

That’s all for now folks,
AJ.NET

Moved: http://alexanderj.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/der-luegen-limbo-der-ursula-von-der-leyen/

Moved: http://alexanderj.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/heute-mal-drei-kreuze/ (including comments)

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I’ve said it in an earlier post: I like working for SDX. In fact my work has become even more challenging due to a changed job description (with the unfortunate side effect that I have less time to spend on this blog). Anyway, we are looking for people (don’t look at the date of the post; if you are reading this in a year the statement will still be true). Well, here’s a short description of my latest project to give you an idea on some of the work we do for our customers…

I just completed a pilot study for one of our major customers, running about 3/4 of a year. Starting point was a system consisting of a non-trivial database and of two VB6/ActiveX/DHTML applications. Initially created a decade ago as replacement for a simple MS Access application, it had grown organically into a multi-purpose-application and a very vital, central data pool for “quite a few” stakeholders.

Since Microsoft has decommissioned VB6, the customer decided to do a VB6-to-.NET migration. My job as responsible architect was designing the target architecture, and coming up with a migration path that supported parallel operations of old and new world during the anticipated two years time the migration would take.

Of course in a decade the world has changed, so has the business and the way software has to be built to honor that. Globalization, European Union, changed customer’s perceptions, constantly changing demands, the way software is built, maintained, and operated.
So the job quickly grew to include a new domain model, adjusted business processes, better business alignment. So far the demands.

The agreed on strategy we came up with is an ecosystem of applications. One core application implements the main parts of a new domain data model, ensures consistency and — essential in any distributed system and surprisingly difficult to achieve at times — provides stable identifiers. Circled around this core application is a number of other mutually independent applications. (The possibility to do this of course relies on the business requirements being mutually independent.)

This approach is driven by

• the separation of the monolith in as many as possible disparate applications (pardon the exaggeration, but it is a fair number),
• defined ways of interaction between these applications (including off-the-shelf-software),
• and providing a sound basis to support building the custom-made family members.

This strategy provides the flexibility to build each application according to demand of specific stakeholders, even allowing for contradicting business demands of different departments. The set of applications can change in the future to address changed needs. Future technology changes can be applied in small steps (lessening the chance that will build the next Moloch). Maintenance should get better, because each application is less complex (simpler architecture, less business functions). And it conforms with Roger Sessions works on complexity of software systems.

Of course, a small but rigid set of rules and governance has to be implemented to ensure peaceful coexistence and avoid “chaotic growth” of our application family in the future. Especially the growth of interdependencies between the applications has to be watched carefully.

Next steps will be applying for the budget at the top management and then hopefully building that system. Of course with my and SDX participation .

Now, if that sounds like a challenging and interesting project; if you happen to be willing to work in the Rhein/Main area, Germany; if you could envision yourself working for the same company as I do … (not necessarily in that project!). Well then pay a look at http://www.sdx-ag.de/jobs.aspx (German language skills mandatory!).

That’s all for now folks,
AJ.SDX

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear http://ajdotnet.wordpress.com/ …

Damn, that bulky name spoiled it.

Yes, roughly a year ago I startetd this blog. When I began blogging I had no idea, how long it would take until I ran out of topics. Similarly I had no idea whether anybody would actually read my blog (apart from the few people I could force to ). And now I’m 55 posts, nearly 100 comments (some controversial), over 4000 spam comments, and more than 22000 views from all over the world (kind of) older. Seems somebody is actually interested in what I have to say…

The evergreen of my posts is certainly ASP.NET 2.0 DataBinding Examined. Only moderately rated on dotnetkicks.com it is constantly among the top 3 posts.
IDisposable – 1, 2, 3, … on the other hand is the shooting star. No other post got that kind of feedback or went up that fast and high in rating. Actually I find that a little curious because it “only” subsumes stuff that is available in the documentation.
Not surprisingly, the little excursion into the java world is among the least viewed posts.
My personal favourite (and that of some people whose opinion I value) however is Frameworks – don’t let ‘em frame you!.

When I began blogging I also made a promise to myself that I would seriously reconsider writing this blog somewhere down the road. And since I’ve run out of topics lately anway, this is the perfect occasion. (This is not to say there are no topics. Actually I have been enganged in too many things at the same time during these last weeks, with not enough time to properly contemplate the ramifications.) 

Well, if you’ve got any suggestions or general feedback (including ”Stop pestering us!” – just phrase it politely ;-) ) this is your chance. Just don’t expect a quick answer, for I’ve earned my vacation

That’s all for now folks,
AJ.NET

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“The basis of a democratic state is liberty.”
– Aristotle

“Homo homini lupus”
– Thomas Hobbes

Something not to be forgotten…
AJ.NET

This is some news for our german readers…

<language culture=“de-DE“ />

Der Web-Auftritt von SDX ist komplett überarbeitet, runderneuert und neu gestaltet worden.

Für den Auftritt wurde diesmal eine Marketingagentur mit eingespannt (unsere Kunden kommen zu uns wenn sie professionelle Hilfe brauchen  – warum sollten wir das anders halten?).
Die Agentur hat dann allerdings erstmal dafür gesorgt, daß wir alle den Kopf hinhalten müssen… . (Die Erfahrung war’s wert, aber ein Jobwechsel kommt nicht in Betracht.)

Viele Stunden und einige Abende gingen dann noch für’s Texten drauf — kein SDX’ler der nicht seinen Anteil daran hätte — und é voilà, das neue www.sdx-ag.de.

Und Schuld an allem ist diese Dame! (Ehre wem Ehre gebührt! )

http://www.sdx-ag.de/jobs.aspx

</language>

That’s all for now folks,
AJ@SDX

Last week I did a little talk (about half a day) about XML. Nothing fancy, just trying to raise the level of basic knowledge for some people. I based this talk on a workshop I did early 2000. Which reminded me of the situation we had back then and how it evolved until today…

Early 2000 was in the middle of the XML hype, XML was the silver bullet.
Today we don’t even mention XML anymore, we just use it.

Early 2000 we had the core XML standard, yet the other family members were still in their infancy, which usually led to the usage of precursory — read inconsistent and proprietary — technologies.
Today we have what I call the XML family, namely XML, XML namespaces, XSD, XPath, and XSLT, and everybody has agreed on those.

Early 2000 we built a prototype application that had a server part serving XML (read Web Service), used heavy scripting in IE, exchanged XML data asynchonously with the server, and provided rich editing capability known the only in rich client applications. Then we abandoned it. Proprietary technology.
Today the dead horse (read AJAX) is riding again and even triggered a new hype. And it’s probably here to stay.

Early 2000 we had another hype called WAP — which burned out and died. But in this context we also speculated about push technologies as replacement for SMS.
Today we have blackberry.

Early 2000 we were in the the middle of the “Battle for the Middle Tier“, seeing the two major camps — Microsoft with COM based (read whatever you like) MTS/COM+ against EJB — fighting for the application server market, Microsoft on the loosing side.
Today Microsoft has caught up with .NET, the java community has rediscovered light-weight approaches, and heterogenous environments where both camps work nicely together are far from unusual.

Early 2000 we had a little hype about SOAP and an early notion of WebServices. Mainly it was a protocol intended by Micrososft to gain access to the java world, supported by IBM to gain access to the Microsoft world… . This hype would have died, had it not had such prominent supporters that kept it alive until additional technologies had been set up to constitute the next hype: SOA.
Today we have SOA, used to cultivate heterogenity on the technical level, but more importantly to reshape whole companies on the business level.

Early 2000 I thought I allready know a lot about technology.
Today I know how much I did not know then. Which makes me wonder about the years to come.

What else did I learn from these observations?

1. Hypes come and go. They are important, they take us somewhere, surprisingly mostly forward. Unfortunately you never know where “forward” actually is until you are there.
2. Fighting over technologies isn’t worth the effort. Any technology with serious support is likely to stay, technologies without will die. This is only loosely related to the quality particular technologies.

Sorry if I got a little nostalgic, maybe due to the change of the year and my approaching birthday…

That’s all for now folks,
AJ.NET