Microsoft on Friday announced its intention to fully support the RSS Web publishing standard in its next generation version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, along with plans to help application developers more easily create RSS-enabled applications for Windows.

Officials said the company is proposing its own Simple List extensions to RSS that will better allow the technology to support ordered lists of information. Presently, RSS feeds are sent and received as streams of messages with their order being determined only by the time they were sent. Microsoft's extensions are reportedly offering a way to add ordering information so RSS feeds can more intelligently handle, for instance, a Web site's list of best-selling items.

"The RSS [Simple List] extensions we are developing can allow a content publisher to enable a Web site to publish feeds that represent ordered lists of items. We will make these extensions widely available to developers through the Creative Commons [license]," said Megan Kidd, a group product manager on the Windows team.

Microsoft has already done some "baseline work at the platform level" that supports a range of basic functions that are contained in all applications that support RSS, which should help lighten their overall development effort.

"RSS feeds now come through Weblogs but it will go way beyond that. For instance, if you are at a conference and go to that Web site, subscribe to a feed that has all the conference information, you can have an RSS feed right into your calendar application like Outlook that will automatically update you on all changes being made at the conference like keynotes and sessions," Kidd said.

Some industry observers were encouraged not only by Microsoft's endorsement of the technology, but also because the software giant appears uninterested in dominating the technology and is being proactive in trying to help create commercial opportunities for other application developers.

"When Microsoft would talk about embracing and extending a technology, many would interpret that as engulfing and devouring. In this case, they seem to be really going out of their way to talk about extending but not co-opting this technology. The fact they are releasing this under the Creative Commons License, the same license that RSS is released under, is a pretty big deal in and of itself," said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president and research director at Jupiter Research.

Another upside for Microsoft, according to Gartenberg and others, is that the inclusion of RSS in Longhorn, along with the commitment to help ISVs create compatible applications, is that it builds more interest around Longhorn among developers and users, something the upcoming product needs.

"This should get developers a little more pumped up over Longhorn," Gartenberg said.

The downside about the move however, is that many smaller developers with RSS technologies will have the added pressure of having to be more innovative with their applications in order to stay ahead of much larger developers as RSS-based products become more of a commodity.

Asked about Microsoft's plans to incorporate RSS support into its upcoming Office 12 suite of desktop applications, Kidd said, "you can expect to see some functionality with Outlook," but that the company has yet to formulate any specific plans.

Microsoft will also make it easier for users to discover feeds within their browsers by illuminating icons that allow them to easily see what RSS feeds are available to them at any given moment. The company will also allow users to view the feed live from within the browser, which Kidd said is not available today.

"They will be able to actually see the feed, pick the one they want to subscribe to. We want to make it a one click experience," Kidd said.

Microsoft is expected to make the announcement Friday at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle.

Via InfoWorld

 

Wouldn't it be nice if you could turn your plain old Web pages into something more exciting? Isn't it time to inject some life into your decade-old Web technologies? If you feel the need for the fresher, richer, and more interactive Web experience, get to know AJAX.

If you use Google Maps or the Gmail Web client you actually have experienced an AJAX-based solution already. AJAX, which stands for asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a conglomerate technology that enables dynamic, asynchronous behavior on Web pages without the need for annoying browser page refreshes. Utilizing AJAX, users can interact with Web pages almost as they would with rich clients.

AJAX is a simple technology that all the major browsers already support. As you will see shortly, the only prerequisite for AJAX implementation is knowledge of JavaScript.

How AJAX Works

If you've used the Gmail Web client or Google Maps you probably noticed that you can scroll over the map or spell check the typed text, respectively, without page submits. AJAX, the technology behind this behavior, handles the requested operations in _JavaScript and asynchronously invokes the server-side operations that provide the desired results.

Introducing the XMLHttpRequest

At the core of AJAX technology is a JavaScript object: XMLHttpRequest. This object has been supplied through browser implementations—first through Internet Explorer, and then through Mozilla/Safari. At the time of writing this article, version 8 of the Opera browser supplied a compatible implementation. However, Opera has had a somewhat rocky history in terms of the stability of its XMLHttpRequest implementation.

AJAX in Action

In order to demonstrate AJAX, this tutorial implements a common portal scenario: e-mail message previewing. (Click here for the application source code.) Most Web portals allow portal users to preview the contents of their e-mail inboxes from the main page. In order to view the body text in their messages, however, users need to click on the individual messages—one by one, refreshing the page each time. This case study demonstrates how to practically accomplish richer Web client behavior, similar to what rich clients like Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird provide, utilizing the existing Web technologies of AJAX.

Read | DevX

 

More than a year ago, Microsoft released SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services as an add-on to SQL Server 2000. Today, Microsoft announced the newest features in Reporting Services Service Pack 2 (SP2), so I thought now would be a good time to clear up a few misconceptions about Reporting Services 2005. Half the people I talk to think that the next Reporting Services release will be a whole new product with dramatic core changes. The rest of the people I talk to think that because we've seen so much added functionality in Reporting Services 2000 SP1 and SP2, Reporting Services 2005 will be the same as Reporting Services 2000. Although Reporting Services' core architecture isn't changing, the next release has plenty to get excited about. Recently, I talked to Microsoft Group Program Manager for Reporting Services Brian Welcker, who confirmed that the company is adding lots of functionality to Reporting Services 2005; it's worth the upgrade.

You can consider Reporting Services 2005 an entirely new product because it's finally fully integrated with SQL Server 2005--the platform it was originally paired with. Welcker talked about how Reporting Services integrates deeply with the Analysis Services Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) to offer true enterprise reporting from OLAP. (I covered this integration last month in "Analysis Services Integrates with Reporting" at http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=8469:7B3DB .) Some other new Reporting Services 2005 bells and whistles include a date-picker, multivalue support for parameter selection, in-report resorting of data, a new XML data provider that permits data access from a URL or Web service, and full 64-bit support. Reporting Services can run natively on an Itanium-based server and natively (or in the Windows-on-Windows or "WOW" virtual machine) on Opteron and Xeon-extended machines.

Another great new feature in Reporting Services 2005 is the Report Builder, an ad hoc reporting tool that lets end users intuitively navigate data sources to build and share reports--reports that let them drill down from summary data into granular details. Note that Report Builder will be available only in the Enterprise Edition. Welcker walked me though the process of using the Report Builder Semantic Modeler to generate a semantic data model on top of a SQL Server or Analysis Services data source. Once you have the data model, end users can perform ad hoc data exploration using a lightweight browser-deployed .NET smart client interface against a semantic query engine that generates T-SQL or MDX queries against the underlying database.

Welcker also talked about Visual Studio 2005's embedded reporting capabilities. Visual Studio 2005, which Microsoft is developing and releasing with SQL Server 2005, will offer Reporting Services Report Controls that let applications process and render reports with or without access to a Reporting Services Report Server. This opens many doors for developers to use Reporting Services with OEM applications in unique high-security environments and deploy reporting for SQL Server Express. Interestingly, Microsoft has switched the Report Manager application to use the Visual Studio Report Controls, helping the development team test and optimize the Report Controls.

Many folks have asked me about what it will take to upgrade their Reporting Services environment to 2005. According to Welcker, "Everything will be upgrade-in-place for Report Server. Reporting Services 2000 reports can be run on 2005 though there won't be support for any features that are new in 2005. Reports will be automatically upgraded if opened in the 2005 Report Designer." I think there's a lot to get excited about in the new Reporting Services. Get the April Community Technology Preview (CTP) and be on the lookout for SQL Server 2005 Beta 3 to get started with Reporting Services and Report Builder.

 

This article is the second article in the series of introductory articles that I am writing about Mono, the "open source development platform based on the .NET framework". In this article we'll take a look at how to get going with ASP.NET on the Mono platform. Although ASP.NET is not part of the ECMA and ISO standards mentioned in the first article[^], it is still one of the major selling points of the .NET platform and provides an extremely flexible and powerful platform for developing web applications and Web Services upon. Although you can develop ASP.NET applications for Mono on a number of different operating systems this article will focus mainly on Linux, although, in saying that, I do look briefly at getting XSP running on Windows. The reason I will concentrate on ASP.NET on Linux is because those people interested in ASP.NET on Windows have an extremely powerful option at their fingertips in the form IIS and I would whole heartedly recommend using it for ASP.NET on Windows.

Where does ASP.NET stand with Mono??

The latest stable version of Mono, version 1.0.5, has a fully functional implementation of ASP.NET. This includes full support for ASP.NET Web Forms and Web Services. This essentially means that more or less any ASP.NET application that you have developed using with the .NET Framework will work with Mono. Obviously there might be changes needed, such as data access changes, removal of any reliance on .NET Framework BCL types that are not implemented in Mono yet, and also the removal of any code that makes use of platform invoke and so on. At this stage the ASP.NET support in Mono can be considered as excellent and a lot of publicly available web applications already make use of Mono's ASP.NET support. According to the Mono site the Mono Web Services stack is being used in the source control application Vault[^] by SourceGear and aspects of Mono's ASP.NET implementation are also used in the Virtuoso[^] product from OpenLink.

What are XSP and mod_mono?

There isn't much point in developing web applications and Web Services if you have no way of serving them, is there? Traditionally you would use IIS to host ASP.NET applications on Windows, although there are some other free ASP.NET web servers available such as Cassini[^]. However, when using ASP.NET with Mono you have two main options as regards which web server to host your ASP.NET applications in:

• XSP
  
• Apache

In this article we look at using both XSP (on Windows and Linux) and Apache to host your ASP.NET web applications and Web Services.

XSP

XSP is a "light-weight web server" capable of hosting and serving ASP.NET applications. It is written using C#, making extensive use of the classes in the System.Web namespace, and the source for XSP is available for download from the Mono download page[^] . It is also interesting to note that the XSP web server runs on both the Mono runtime and also on the .NET runtime which means that if you are looking for a light-weight ASP.NET web server for Windows but you don't want to use or you don't care about Mono, you could still make use of XSP. The Let's get XSP up and running section runs through how to install and use XSP on Windows and Linux.

Apache

Apache is probably the de facto standard web server used on Linux. Apache makes extensive use of modules to enable it to host and serve web applications developed in a multitude of different web programming languages and scripts. Those of you familiar with IIS but not so familiar with Apache can think of these modules as the equivalent of ISAPI extensions. So, by this stage I assume you can guess how Apache can host and serve ASP.NET application? Yep, using an Apache module. This module, called mod_mono, allows Apache to serve ASP.NET pages "by proxying the requests to a slightly modified version of XSP called mod-mono-server". mod-mono-server is installed when you install XSP. At the time of writing the current version of the mod_mono module for Apache only works for Apache on Linux and not for Apache on Windows. For this reason, when we look at ASP.NET on Apache in the Apache with mod_mono section we only look at it in the context of Linux. If you do wish to serve ASP.NET content from Apache on Windows have a look at this article[^] on CP, which shows how to use configure Apache to use Cassini to serve ASP.NET content or have a look at the Apache HTTP CLI[^] project.

What you need to know

This article assumes that you have Mono installed and working on your desired platform. The first article in this series, Introduction to Mono - Your first Mono app[^], explains how to get Mono up and running on Windows and Linux so if you have not yet done so have a look over that article. I also assume that you are familiar with ASP.NET and the semantics of ASP.NET programming as this article primarily looks at getting ASP.NET working with XSP and Apache, not at ASP.NET programming.

Lets get XSP up and running

In this section we will look at getting XSP up and running on both Windows and on Linux. Installing and running on Windows is "tackled" first simply because I want to get it out of the way and because chances are that you already have XSP on Windows considering the fact that you should have Mono already installed. Then it's on to Linux and getting XSP up and running there. To be honest, if you already have Mono running on Linux, which you should as it's one of the prerequisites for this article, then it should be relatively easy.

XSP on Windows

The first article[^] in this series ran through installing Mono on Windows. It mentioned that during the install process the installer gives you the option to select which components to install. By default, XSP is installed along with Mono but if you decided to not install XSP during the install then the easiest way to get XSP installed is to uninstall Mono and then reinstall it again. Here are the steps explaining how to install Mono and XSP on a Windows 2000 or above machine:

1. Download the Mono Windows Installer from the Mono download page. The file I am working off is http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.0.5/windows/mono-1.0.5-gtksharp-1.0.5-win32-0.1.exe
   
2. The installer is a standard Windows installer so you can simply run it once it is downloaded by doubling clicking on it.
   
3. Once the installer begins, click on next to go to the License Agreement page.
   
4. You'll probably notice on the License Agreement page that there are a number of different Licenses that apply to the different components of the install. While I understand that most people simply agree and click on next, it would be irresponsible of me if I didn't recommend that you read the License Agreement before agreeing to it.
   
5. Once you pass the License Agreement section you are presented with some general information about the install.
   
6. Click on Next and select the install location.
   
7. Click on Next again to bring you to the Select Components page. You are free to customize your installation but make sure that you install XSP. As I will be using all the components of this install in other articles in this series I would suggest that you accept the default "Full installation".
   
8. Click on Next again and you can customize the name of Mono folder that appears in the Start Menu.
   
9. The installer will now ask you which port you want the XSP web server to listen on. Generally this will be port 8088 but you can change it to any free port on your system. When you are ready click on Next.
   
10. Finally, click on Install to install and configure Mono and XSP on your Windows machine.

Those of you who read the first article will notice that I more or less ripped the instructions from that one... I'm not lazy, just no point in rewriting what has already been said! The next step in using XSP on Windows is to run it. The Running XSP section explains how to run the XSP web server and looks at some of the command line options that you can use to alter it's default behaviour.

XSP on Linux

As with installing Mono on Linux, which we examined in the previous article, things are slightly more complicated on Linux then on Windows. However, as I already mentioned, if you have Mono installed, then getting XSP installed is going to be a breeze for you. I'm installing XSP on the same systems that I used for installing Mono in the previous article. A quick recap of what exactly I used is in order so: I used Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and created two identical virtual PCs. I then installed SuSE 9.2 Professional with ACPI disabled and I used the default package selection when installing. In the last article I went through how to install Mono using the pre-built packages from the Mono site and also I ran through how to install Mono from source. So for the purposes of this article I will be installing XSP on a SuSE 9.2 Professional with the default package selection with Mono 1.0.5 installed along with any additional packages or programs that were installed during the Mono install.

In this article we will again look at installing from both the pre-build packages and from the source.

XSP using pre-built packages

As I am sure you can remember from the first article (if you read it that is), installing using the pre-built packages from the Mono site is one of the easiest ways of getting Mono up and running. The same thing applies to getting XSP up and running. So, head on over to the Mono download page (http://www.mono-project.com/downloads/index.html[^]) and see if there are pre-built packages for your particular Linux distribution or if there are packages for a distribution that you know will be compatible with your distribution. If there isn't a package that will work with your distribution just jump ahead to the XSP from source section where I will run through installing XSP from the source which is a simple process.

Lets get going:

1. On the Mono download page, click on the "Packages" link beside the Linux distribution that you believe to be compatible with your distribution. I simply selected the link beside SuSE 9.2
   
2. This should bring you to a page which lists a lot of different packages that have been compiled and packaged for that particular Linux distribution.
   
3. Before we install XSP we need to install two other pre-built packages. These packages include files that XSP is dependent upon.
   
4. The first package we need to install is the "Database Core" package that can be found in the database section. The exact name of the package will vary depending on the packages link that you selected initially but in general the name will start with "mono-data". The package I downloaded for SuSE 9.2 was http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.0.5/suse-92-i586/mono-data-1.0.5-1.ximian.10.4.i586.rpm.
   
5. Once you have downloaded this file, open it and it will launch the package manager for your distribution. At this stage simply follow the instructions to install the package.
   
6. After you have installed the "mono-data" package you now need to download the "mono-web" package which will be listed under the "Web Applications, Web Services" section. The package I downloaded for SuSE 9.2 was http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.0.5/suse-92-i586/mono-web-1.0.5-1.ximian.10.4.i586.rpm.
   
7. Next, as with the "mono-data" package, simply open the package and follow the instructions to install it using the package manager of your distribution.
   
8. Finally we are ready to install XSP itself. So just head back to the "Web Applications, Web Services" section of the package download page and download the "xsp" package. The package I got was http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.0.5/suse-92-i586/xsp-1.0.5-1.ximian.10.1.i586.rpm.
   
9. As with the two previous packages, simply open it and follow the instructions of your package manager to install XSP.
   
10. All going well, you should have XSP installed now!

At this stage XSP should be installed on your system so you can jump ahead to the Running XSP section which gives an overview of how to use XSP. If you are having difficulty installing XSP from the packages have a look at the next section, "XSP from source", which might be able to help you out.

XSP from source

Installing XSP from the source should be breeze if you have installed Mono from source by following the instructions in the previous article[^]. Let's jump straight in:

1. The first thing you need to do is download the source. Once again, head on over to the Mono download page at http://www.mono-project.com/downloads/index.html[^].
   
2. In the source code section click on and download the "XSP web server". I downloaded http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.0.5/xsp-1.0.5.tar.gz.
   
3. Once the file has been downloaded, go to a console for the remainder of the process
   
4. You can decompress the downloaded file using the command tar -xvzf xsp-1.0.5.tar.gz where xsp-1.0.5.tar.gz is the name of the file you downloaded.
   
5. Next, switch to the directory where the source code has been decompressed to by typing cd xsp-1.0.5 or cd followed by the name of the directory that you decompressed the file to if it is different from mine.
   
6. Now, before we can compile the source you need to configure the make files. To do this simply type ./configure --prefix=/usr. This will take a bit of time. I am assuming here that there were no errors and that the ./configure --prefix=/usr went ahead without issue.
   
7. When the the ./configure --prefix=/usr completes you are free to go ahead and compile and install the source.
   
8. To actually compile the XSP source you need to run the make command.
   
9. Root privileges are required for the next step. If you have just installed Linux as a standalone machine you can usually give your account root privileges by typing the sudo bash command and entering the root password.
   
10. Finally, to install, for lack of a better word, simply run the make install command. This will deploy the compiled binaries, libraries and other bits and pieces to the correct directories.

Congratulations. You should not have the XSP web server installed on your system. The next section looks at how to run and use the XSP web server.

Read | Code Project

 

 

Although you do not need to write overloaded operators every day, this feature certainly puts the latest version of VB.NET (whether you call it 2.0 or 8.0—there is some confusion in this area) on par with even the most powerful object-oriented languages. This article demonstrates a step-by-step process for writing custom operators, including a brief explanation for neophytes. Of course, if you didn't like VB.NET because of its differences from VB6, you probably won't get too excited about the ability to overload operators in VB.NET 2.0.

What Operators Are and Why You Overload Them

Programming has a rich history based in mathematics. Mathematics is steeped in meaningful symbols, operators, and operands. Operators are symbols that perform a function and operands are the things on which operators operate.

Operators typically indicate how many operands they use. Usually, you'll encounter unary, binary, and ternary operators. Unary means one operand, binary means two, and ternary means three. "Not" is an example of a unary operator; "+" is an example of a binary operator; and "?:" is an example of a ternary operator. (I have never seen a quaternary operator.)

Operators are convenient because they are quick to write and they are familiar, especially in arithmetic operations. For example, "&" and "+" are Boolean and arithmetic operators, but you can also used them to perform string concatenation for string operands. Clearly, operators have had multiple—or overloaded—meanings for some time. A natural evolution is this ability extending to us programmers.

Read | DevGuru

 

Whether or not you missed TechEd 05 held last week in Florida, you might want to check out these video podcasts from the floors of teched. Microsoft is providing video podcasts from the floors of TechEd.  The podcasts includes interviews with presenters as well as vendors on the exhibition floor.  In addition the Regional Directors held “Grok Talks” from the floors -- these were 10 minute presentations on varying .Net related subjects including SQL 2005, ASP.Net 2.0, Visual Studio Team System and much more.  Currently only six of these presentations are available but they promise to make additional presentations available as they editing process is completed.  These videos are provided as video streams from the Grok Talk Blog.  For the Microsoft Podcasts you'll need a podcast client such as Ipodder or Doppler.  For those not familiar with podcasts you may want to read the Getting Started with Podcasts page.

Resources:

• Getting Started With Podcasts
  
• Microsoft Podcast RSS Feed
  
• Grok Talks Blog

 

It seems that everyone is talking about making an SOA and how much it will improve their operations, yet most people are hard-pressed to define not only what an SOA is, but also to quantify what specific value it might provide to their organizations. Many simply assert that their SOA architecture comprises a group of Web services through which they can expose business logic over the Internet.

A service-oriented architecture is comprised of a number of different services that can be consumed by any number of clients. The only assumption made by either party is that communication takes the form of a well-defined and strictly enforced contract.

The purpose of this article is to describe a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in terms of the IT industry. Unfortunately, the term SOA doesn't really have a formal definition. In fact, many people believe that SOA means you have several Web services exposed to clients. Although this is not necessarily wrong, it's not the whole requirement either.

An SOA is much more than mere Web services. In fact, Web services are not a requirement for implementing an SOA; an SOA is about architectural refinement rather than the implementation of one specific technology. This means that an SOA converts your architecture from isolated systems into black box services that can be reused without modification.

To fully implement an SOA, you must move from a monolithic application development model to a publisher/consumer application development model. Developing software to utilize formal contracts and become autonomous removes the dependence on elements outside of the formal contract. Companies developing applications around a publisher/consumer model will find themselves with a flexible architecture, one that is able to provide a large amount of functionality without compromising the core of the system.

Read | Devx

 

At TechEd, Microsoft announced support for outlook in theMicrosoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System Beta 2.   Outlook 2003 add-in  provides tools to develop, debug, and deploy solutions simply and quickly, including a DLL to tie managed add-ins to Outlook. This provides a simpler framework for creating managed add-ins with improved security.

[Read More/Download Beta]

 

Microsoft's CEO announced Tuesday that the company is now shipping Windows Server Update Services, its free patching tool, and is launching the Microsoft Update site, which includes patches for Office and small-business products. As Scott Bekker writes, the launches are part of a larger Microsoft effort to get its patching house in order.

[Read more / Download]

 

In the Tuesday keynote, Microsoft Senior Vice President Paul Flessner announced that SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 will all ship the week of Nov. 7.  All

that's left is "fit and finish," said Thomas Rizzo, director, SQL Server product management, in a follow-up interview. He noted that once Microsoft publishes benchmarks, as it did on Tuesday, "we're close to the end" -- welcome news considering the product has been five years in the making. Microsoft said that, according to three TPC-H benchmarks, SQL Server 2005 (formerly known as Yukon) showed performance up to 162 percent higher than SQL Server 2000 and 38 percent higher than Oracle's best shot on comparable hardware. Numbers like that, along with improvements in manageability and integration with products including Visual Studio and Office, will make for a compelling business case, Rizzo says.

 

Microsoft Answers Call From Businesses With Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0

New features in Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 deliver complete mobile messaging solution, draw industry support.

Today at Microsoft Tech•Ed 2005, Microsoft Corp.’s largest annual technology education conference, Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, announced the Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile™ 5.0, software based on wireless features coming in Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 (SP2) to address requests by business customers for a faster, more direct messaging experience, improved security management, and better cost efficiencies and scalability in their mobile messaging solutions. In addition to providing IT administrators with the ability to better manage and protect information on a device, the feature pack includes Direct Push Technology, which keeps the business user’s Outlook Mobile up to date by delivering information quickly and directly to a Windows Mobile-based device from Exchange Server, without requiring businesses to pay for additional and costly servers or middleware.

Enhancements to Outlook Mobile

The Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0 will offer businesses the premier mobile messaging solution, going beyond plain text e-mail to provide a fast and familiar Outlook Mobile experience. End users will have access to a wide range of business information through the following new features:

• Windows Mobile Direct Push Technology. Outlook information, including e-mail, calendar, contacts and new support for Tasks, is pushed from a direct connection between Exchange Server and a Windows Mobile-based device, providing users with immediate access to Outlook information, without the need for an additional and costly server infrastructure required by other solutions on the market.
  
• Wireless support for contact information. Support for over-the-air lookup of global address list information stored on Exchange Server, a top request from partners, enables business users to access full contact details of co-workers on a Windows Mobile-based device. The feature is broadly integrated throughout the messaging, phone, calendar and contacts experience, providing users with a consistent, productive messaging experience.

Direct Push Technology is even more compelling when integrated with the powerful Office Mobile suite in Windows Mobile 5.0, enabling users to do more than simple e-mail, such as send Word, Excel, PowerPoint, music and video attachments in messages with rich e-mail formatting and no size restrictions.

“Successfully addressing the mobility demands of today’s business market requires a combination of powerful networks, breadth and choice of applications, and clear answers to business issues of security, return on investment and systems integration,” said Vish Sowani, vice president, International Business Marketing at T-Mobile. “The Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0 complements T-Mobile’s successful ‘Office in your Pocket’ suite of Microsoft-based solutions with a compelling messaging product that addresses these critical business needs while delivering mobile professionals much more than simple mobile e-mail. In alliance with Microsoft, we have an opportunity to strengthen our business customer portfolio and deliver another very powerful mobile business solution.”

Better Management and Protection of Device Information

While increasing productivity for end users, the Messaging and Security Feature Pack will also improve efficiencies for IT organizations by streamlining management of device security policies through functionality offered in Exchange Server 2003 SP2. Building on existing capabilities in Exchange Server 2003, IT professionals can manage Windows Mobile-based devices the same way they manage PCs and servers through new features that support the following:

• Remotely enforced IT policy. Via the Exchange Server 2003 console, IT administrators can remotely manage and enforce select corporate IT policy over the air. For example, IT administrators can mandate a personal identification number password to be set for every device and set recommended and mandatory policies, as well as set exception lists for users to be exempt from these policies.
  
• Local and remote device wipe. The ability to remove all information, over the air, and reset a device to its original state enables IT administrators to better manage sensitive information on a misplaced Windows Mobile-based device. In addition, the administrator can choose to have the local memory on a device erased if the correct password is not entered after a designated number of attempts.
  
• Certificate-based authentication. Native support for new certificate-based authentication, a leading security request from partners, utilizes industry security standards to enable users to gain access to their corporate network, without using a separate password, and eliminates the need to store corporate login credentials on the device.

Exchange Server 2003 customers, such as Lifetime Products, are already planning to take advantage of the advanced functionality provided by the combination of Exchange Server 2003 with SP2 and the Windows Mobile platform.

“Providing a mobile computing solution that is cost-effective for our IT department and helps our employees stay connected with each other and their customers, across multiple time zones, is a top priority of Lifetime Products,” said John Bowden, CIO of Lifetime Products. “Already we have experienced an over 40 percent increase in employee productivity due to the combination of Windows Mobile and Exchange Server 2003 and hope to further those benefits with the Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0 and Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2.”

Feature Pack Enables Deployment of More Scalable, Cost-Effective Mobile Messaging Solutions

Beyond device management and security, price and scalability are key concerns for businesses as they consider mobile device deployments. The Messaging and Security Feature Pack will provide a scalable and easy-to-manage mobile messaging solution that gives users a broad choice of device designs and eliminates the need for business to outsource their mobile messaging to third parties and purchase additional middleware software or costly servers. These benefits are realized through the following capabilities:

• Ability to utilize existing Exchange 2003 investments. Direct integration between Exchange Server and Windows Mobile provides businesses with an infrastructure that can easily be expanded to include mobile capabilities and scale as the organization grows, while eliminating the need for business customers to add another server or pay additional client access license fees and an ongoing data service fee to third parties.
  
• Outlook Mobile data compression. Outlook data sent between Exchange Server and a Windows Mobile-based device is significantly compressed, enabling faster transfer and synchronization of data, while providing operators with more room on their networks for additional revenue-generating services. In fact, initial tests conducted by Microsoft have shown network bandwidth savings ranging between 35 percent and 50 percent.
  
• Broad device choice. The consistent Windows Mobile platform enables businesses to provide their employees with a range of unique devices from over 40 hardware partners, while giving the IT department a single software and server platform to manage.

“Through the work from our long-standing relationship with Microsoft, we are setting the bar for what business professionals can do with their mobile devices — reflected by our very successful HP iPAQ handhelds based on the Windows Mobile platform,” said Rick Roesler, vice president, handhelds division at HP. “The Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0 will be an important extension, enabling business customers to enjoy secure messaging, greater flexibility, and an even richer mobile experience.”
 

 

This article provides how-to information and code for two different monitoring systems you can set up centrally to manage reporting of SQL Server 2000 maintenance and disk utilization. The first is a scheme I have used in my role as a DBA, which has helped simplify and speed up one of the more mundane tasks we as DBAs are likely to face: checking overnight backups and DBCC checks. The second is a simple system which centrally collects disk drive utilization data from target SQL Servers. This data can be checked regularly to ensure none of your servers are about to run out of disk space, and it is also retained so you can analyze it for trends and use the results for the prediction of your future disk requirements.

Central Maintenance Monitoring

The objective of this system is to provide an automated, central view of your server’s maintenance (backup and DBCC) results for you to review. The information is collected on a central server using a scheduled job and you can interrogate it using a stored procedure. I embed this in a web page which calls the SP on-demand whenever the web page is browsed, but this is a personal preference.

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