xpherion - technology blog

Data warehouse market got a jolt today. Microsoft today announced that it intends to acquire DATAllegro Inc., a provider of breakthrough data warehouse appliances. According to industry analyst this will trigger data warehouse vendor consolidation. This is a great move by MS after the sad saga of MICROHOO. DATAllegro acquisition buys Microsoft is new visibility and credibility in the DW market. DATAllegro was one of the first-mover vendors in the DW appliance market, and, though it has largely been out-developed, out-marketed, and out-sold by Netezza in this segment, still has considerable mind share, more

Technorati Tags: Data Warehouse, Microsoft, DATAllegro, Technology, SQL, Database

Visual Studio 2008 will be available for download from msdn subscriber download on November 19th, 2007. Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5 enable developers at all levels to rapidly create connected applications for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, mobile devices and the Web. Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team System is also expected to ship by the end of November. more

Technorati Tags: microsoft, visual studio 2008, orcas, .net framework 3.5

WebApps directory unveiled today by Apple is nothing more than a fancy version of Apple’s bookmark list. Apple has neatly brought together a selection of company-approved apps that should function fine in Safari, without any new functionality. So iPod touch / iPhone users now have a central hub to go to for links to web applets. Apple is still blocking native 3rd party application support outside of its browser. Offline webapps that rely on aps or php clearly won’t work here. Directory is not even tweaked for mobile safari. It’s pretty weak, just a bunch of links to web portals, not native apps. more

Technorati Tags: apple, applications, facebook, iphone, ipod touch, IpodTouch, SDK, webapp

Microsoft is releasing the .NET Framework reference source code under the Microsoft Reference License. This will give developers the opportunity to understand more about .NET. Scott Guthrie, general manager of the Microsoft .Net Framework in Microsoft’s Developer Division, himself explains, the Microsoft Reference License allows viewing of source code, but not modification or redistribution. The source code will be downloadable and viewable by anyone who accepts the license agreement. This is another step in Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative. There is already a set of open-source programs, Mono, that let you develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows and Unix. Mono is sponsored by Novell. It’s led by noted open-source developer Miguel de Icaza. The Mono code is covered by three different real open-source licenses. The C# Compiler and tools are released under the terms of the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License); the runtime libraries are under the LGPL 2.0 (GNU Library GPL 2); and the class libraries are released under the terms of the MIT 11 license. Mono is also working on porting Microsoft’s Silverlight 1.0, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering richer Web user experiences in a project called Moonlight. I think this is a really positive step forward. Tools like Reflector already do this, but it’ll be nice to have this integrated into Studio directly, not to mention the ability to view source comments. But this will create confusion in mono project. This is a very restricted license and it is not OSI approved, so in terms of a “new open source trend” this is not a good idea. However, even if it’s not “open source” it is still a step towards a more open Microsoft. This will no doubt be very useful for many people. Whoever is pushing these things in Microsoft, keep pushing. I hope to see a fully open source .NET framework in future, today we have moved a little closer to this.

Reference : Scott Guthrie’s Blog, eWeek

Technorati Tags: microsoft, .net, dotnet, framework, opensource, osi, mono, silverlight, moonlight, linux

I am getting into the facebook hype. I used step by step process to create a “hello world” facebook application. I only had php4 through hosting provider (discountasp). This application uses php5, so I had to get a free php5 hosting (atbhost). Also you need to download facebook-platform and tutorialapp files. Next step create a data driven (mysql) facebook application. Link to my “hello xpherion” application.

Technorati Tags: technology,social networking,programming,facebook

SQL Server 2008, the next release of Microsoft SQL Server, provides a comprehensive data platform that is more secure, reliable, manageable and scalable for your mission critical applications, while enabling developers to create new applications that can store and consume any type of data on any device, and enabling all your users to make informed decisions with relevant insights.

SQL Server 2008 capabilities deliver on the four key areas of the data platform vision.

Mission-Critical Platform – SQL Server 2008 enables IT groups to be more productive by providing a more secure, scalable, and manageable platform. It includes a new policy-based management framework that shifts from managing by scripts to managing by rules. SQL Server 2008 also protects valuable information in existing applications and disconnected devices. In addition, SQL Server 2008 delivers predictable query performance with an optimized platform.

Dynamic Development – SQL Server 2008 along with the .NET Framework enables developers to build the next generation of applications. Developers are more productive because they work with business entities instead of tables and columns. They can build applications that enable users to take their data with them and synchronize their data with back-end servers.

Beyond Relational Data – SQL Server 2008 enables developers to consume any type of data, from XML to documents, and build applications that incorporate location awareness.

Pervasive Business Insight – SQL Server 2008 provides a scalable infrastructure that can manage reports and analysis of any size or complexity while at the same time empowering users because of its close integration with the Microsoft Office System. This enables IT to drive business intelligence throughout the organization. SQL Server 2008 makes great strides in data warehousing, enabling users to consolidate data marts in an enterprise data warehouse. more

Technorati Tags: programming, technology, microsoft, database, sql2008, sql, windows, data, security, business

Microsoft Silverlight is next-generation, cross-platform, cross-browser web client runtime. Silverlight (previously codenamed “WPF/E”) is a lightweight subset of XAML for building rich media experiences on the web.

Silverlight and HTML integrate seamlessly together. Every XAML element can be accessed or manipulated from the same client-side JavaScript that would be used to interact with any DHTML element: there are no artificial boundaries or barriers, and you can even overlay HTML elements on top of Silverlight content (simply by creating a windowless frame). We’ll also make it very easy for an ASP.NET AJAX developer to add Silverlight content, more

Technorati Tags: internet, technology, software, web, asp.net, silverlight, ajax, web2.0, css, javascript