One day of work

Phew,today I decided to get into my development environment in Windows 7 and fix it up for good.

SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, which I had installed previously had issues with the SQL instances. I ran 'services.msc' to find that SQLExpress was not running. I tried reinstalling SQL Server a couple of times from the CD, before realizing that it did not include SQLExpress server.

I then had to download it from the Microsoft Website and install it. Before installing it, I removed my existing installation of Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2005 as well. It must be noted that for Windows7, it is mandatory to install SP3 of all SQL Server components. So, I did that and finally(by afternoon), got it running.

Next issue was with SSIS itself. Through some googling, I got to know about derived transformations and lookups. I just managed to finish up a partial setup of my required workflow, a few minutes ago. Rest of it, I have to continue from office, after some discussion with my senior. Some alternative solutions exist for it. Btw I will briefly explain the required workflow here. It might be pretty easy for those used to SSIS, but as a fresher it was pretty tough for me.

An excel file contains about 5 workbooks, each to be migrated to corresponding SQL tables, with additional fields of IDs,Creation/Modification Timestamps and By info. Also, to be implemented is a history mechanism, which just means that whenever a field in excel file is modified, the package must detect the change, and update the table with changed data, and insert that info into the history table. This needs that every update to transaction table be clubbed with an insert to history table. I am clear with the requirement,but neither the workflow design nor which transformations can help me achieve these.

Lets see...btw here is a screenshot of the workflow designed so far

Flat Curves

Hi,
There was a beautiful talk by Stefan Sagmeister on TED, on three phases of your career- Learning phase,Working Phase and then Retirement.
He mentioned that the learning phase occurs till around 25 years of age,but as it is, I am already working and nowhere near 25. So, am I in learning or working phase??

I would say partially in-partially out, of both the phases. I ain't learning much to talk about,but learning enough to explore day-to-day work. And I ain't working much to create stuff that would blow away minds,but working enough to get more stuff to learn ,while earning of course.

With respect to my learning curve, it is a 'relatively' flat phase. I meant that w.r.t technical stuff only,otherwise it is one-helluva learning experience going on.

Technically, now I am more into managing large pieces of code, doing proper impact analysis on bug fixes and new features and, of course implementing them.
The technologies I am involved with are the bit outdated, Microsoft ones, like IIS 7.0, .NET 2.0 framework with VB.net and ASP.net. I have been doing some nifty new features with Office automation and Visual Source Safe libraries.

The main involvement is with SQL Server 2005, with its Reporting,Analysis and Integration Services plus linked servers,scheduled jobs etc etc. It is a thoroughly enjoyable job to work with complicated SPs,functions and services.

On the sidelines, I manage to put some effort into COM based communications, tcp/ip related issues, kernel concepts and of course, my favourite, network hacking! The methods for these vary from simple casual talk to brainstorming sessions with colleagues who might be like-minded or have issues in these fields.

Will put up something on these topics in coming days.. in the meantime, I am open for discussion
Follow me on Twitter,or put comments in this blog.

Microsoft Beta

Oh well, I thought I would just write about some of the new Microsoft products I have been trying.

From my old setup of Windows XP age, I have now moved to Windows 7, thanks to my new laptop. So, along with the new OS, I had to shift my preferences of a few other software as well. Though I haven't ventured out much to acquire the 'best' tools out there, I do have made changes where I required it. I don't fancy downloading and testing all the software out there.

So, this time I decided to get myself the new Office 2010 Beta version. I thought it would be cool to try. I got this idea while attending a training session on .NET 4.0 at office. When you need something and its freely available out there, why hesitate?

Over the past 3 days, I finally finished downloading the following:
1) Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
2) MS SQL Server and Studio Enterprise Edition
3) MS Office 2010 Beta
4) Visual Studio 2010 Toolkits(Azure and Silverlight)

I installed the first 3 and I would like to consider only Office here.

I had not read any reviews/previews before installing,so I had expected more eye-catching stuff. I must admit that I was disappointed to see the new layout. I loved that circular button. Not many interesting changes were registered at first sight.

I had to run Excel 2-3 times to observe some of the new cool features in it. It definitely boosts ease of use. I liked the additions in Powerpoint also. Word looks very much the same though. And this time, I even tried out something I have never used before--Outlook. And that turned to be a waste of my time. I couldn't get to like it,when compared to Gmail interface. But, on any given day, I would prefer Outlook to Lotus Notes used at Office.
The beta testing is still in progress, so I might write another post if I find really good stuff.

Now I am more interested in looking for Windows 7 tweaks and combining my Linux and Windows development environments.

Brain v/s Technology

What I want to blog about today has its cause and roots at my Windows work environment(:D)

My idea of a software engineer is that of a person who uses software and technology to provide solutions to problems in businesses/industries.

The general conception of

Software Engineering Equals Coding,Coding and more coding

is absolute bullshit as far as I am concerned. An engineer must be involved in the design of a solution and implementation of the same using the right tools and technology.And, to aid the engineer in building his solutions quickly/easily/efficiently an industry itself thrives to provide tools,frameworks and platforms. A lot of big and small players are involved in this industry,with varying degrees of success and market penetration. Each player remains in market owing to some specialty they are able to provide to their customers which the others are not able to match.

Now,from the point of view of an engineer who is interested in developing products/solutions for solving a set of problems,lets observe the requirements of a tool he/she would want to acquire.
1)Ease of use
Intuitive UIs,complete and concise manuals
2)Features that aid reduction in production time
Methods to accelerate commonly used operations
3)Facilities to let developer focus on business logic
Abstraction of internal technological details(left to developer to choose)

We see these things implemented with varying degrees of effectiveness in the various tools,IDEs,frameworks and platforms that are popular in the market.

The whole idea is that the developer's brain,effort and time has to be devoted only to solving the given problem logically and not in fiddling with the tool/technology itself. Its for this reason that companies are ready to invest on costly development environment like the ones ###@#@$*** Microsoft sells. But .NET and its accompanying tools are so royally messed up that a developer ends up wasting almost half of his/her time circumventing some technical issues or hacking it(as it is called). And it has to be done so frequently and in inexplicable ways that if the software moves to a maintenance team,the developer will have to make sure not to come in contact with that team(if he values his life i.e).
If I start listing the stupid and frustrating bugs that come up with Visual Studio, I can fill pages(that too in this short period of exp).

Another fact that I would like to point out here is that,though bug circumventing and hacking of tools are needed in other platforms as well,a few well placed Google searches can place you at a good position in those cases. In case of M$, for most of the crazy problems, you can only see questions been posted by poor developers like yourself. No official solution or usually ANY solution at all are usually present. If something is present, it might be either someone saying "I too have this problem..Please Help!",or someone pointing to something that does not work at all or some troublesome suggestions like reinstall framework/IDE or even OS :D :P.

So now I am getting to know in First Person why M$ development environment is royally ****ed up. They should realize that developers are people with brains and should let them utilize that more to solve more and more problems with more efficiency. The current state of affairs only aid in frustrating the developer and stealing his valuable time and clarity of thought. They should seriously stop imposing the junk technology on smart people.
Maybe they are just afraid that once people use their brains more,they will migrate to other platforms :P :P
Adios....

Obama brings in change

So thats it, Barack Hussein Obama has been sworn in as the 44th President of the US of A. I watched the speech yesterday evening,and it was very interesting. It's not Obama's policies or what he is going to do or not do that I am gonna write about..its about his association with new technologies.

That is the change that Obama seems to have brought, and with good effects as well. From the time he began his campaign, the utilization of the web facilities made him pretty popular among the people who support and embrace such facilities of the internet. The facilities he used included Social Networking sites,blogs,dedicated sites for reaching out to supporters,forums,and even channels in Youtube. His attachment to the blackberry too was in the news for sometime.

Though America is far ahead of us in terms of technology penetration and quality of service, unlike us, there are many there who do not trust/understand such technologies, in spite of being well educated. Many people who use these technologies do not understand the reasoning behind them(not technical), and hence can't think beyond what is provided to them.

With his intelligent campaign, I feel Obama has reached out to the vast population online and even proved a point or two to the people who believed that web and its facilities cannot be used for uniting people for a common cause. The use of such technologies also meant, many of his supporters got a chance to understand and appreciate the underlying technology and its capability to be used in innovative ways.

I was surprised and even amused by the amount of effort that has been put by his campaign teams in utilizing the resources of the web and high end technologies for the campaigning purpose.Even after being elected, his public activities were religiously followed by groups and forums consisting of his ardent supporters and blogs were constantly buzzing with his whereabouts. Even tech bloggers found enough material to write about this man.

The inaugural function was streamed using Microsoft Silverlight technology, which made quite a news. Read M$ press article But later, to assist Linux and MAC users, it was made available via Moonlight technology. There are also many sites that cover the function completely as streaming video as well as pictures. The Official Presidential Inaugural Committee too has online resource to guide supporters who wished to come to DC for the event. It contains maps,contact informations and guidebooks.

It seems Microsoft and Google are stealing the limelight in Obama's victory as 'technology partners'. Here is an article on CNN-Microsoft collaborative Photosynth that covered the Inaugural ceremony. Here is something about Google's youtube.

That's all for now folks..lets hope the change is positive ...

My first ILUG

Oh God!What a day it was....

On Sunday the 26th of November 2006,I and Nikil went for our first ILUG Cochin Chapter meeting.I had raised great objections to this meeting from the start as our exams were set to begin by 5th dec and I haven't covered portions enough.But by Nikil's pressure I accepted the offer and we met at Menaka by 2 pm.

The it was a tough job to find the old building in which the meeting was held...

When we entered it,what I saw was an old fashioned building housing an internet cafe` with many old furniture and wooden roof.The lighting suggested a kind of intellectual workplace,which actually it was.Two guys looking like nerds,one bearded and the other with a kinda stressed look were talking.We introduced ourselves and entered and took our seat.We had expected a large hall with lots of tech enthusiasts of our age asking doubts and solving tech problems..but this was too different.

I tried to observe the surroundings and the atmosphere...Many empty packs of AMD processors and graphics cards were stacked at one place and the cafe` was like a club with many machines strewn along with lots of cds,books..posters ....all such stuff.Then entered Jay Jacob(the Cafe` is named Jay's Internet Club),the co-ordinator.
He looked intelligent and techy with his stout and fair face.He was a very lean guy but his eyes had the glow of an intelligent person.

That day's meeting was important as I later came to know that the Asst. commissioner of Kerala Police was visiting them to talk about the transfer of all computers in the police dept to Linux OS.

Then came the most astonishing and different person,Balakrishnan sir.He was a old person(maybe in 60s)with thick white beard like that of a saint.He entered with two packs one which he revealed to be Ubuntu cds.He seemed to be the intellectual lighthouse of the ILUG cochin chapter.

Two-three more guys entered the room and took their places.We were quickly introduced to them and the matters in the agenda were put forward to discussion.The first one was the transfer of JAVA to GPL.I didn't understand much at first,but soon I was in the stream.According to them,it was a reason to celebrate also...so I feel I am getting into the mainstream linux discussion now.That is fine and I am happy about that.I was really enthusiastic about the ideals and the methodologies they discussed though the technical parts were not all too easy.But we two didn't open our mouths in the meeting,it would be too early.I wanted to wait and know each of the members and then start working actively by S4.

Then came the tea break,when tea was ordered for all and the second pack from Balakrishnan sir was opened.It had cream biscuits.We all ate it and soon we two were mingling with the team.

The next topic was quite sticky and tough to understand.Through his meticulous explanation Jay sir made the history of things clear with frequent clarifications from Bala sir.It was the possible inclusion of MS coding into Suse linux.This is seen as a serious threat by the community.They were holding many hypothetical situations to suggest foul play by MS.But I didn't think like them.MS may have a foul play int he deal with Suse,but then it can't be as serious as they were suggesting.Well,my inexperience in this field could be the reason for such judgements..so I decided to keep quiet.

Anyway by 4.00 the commissioner called up to inform that he would be there immediately.Me and Nikil felt that we had enough for a day so he was pricking me for some time.Many other members were outside talking in their mob phones,and 2-3 were inside discussing about their suspicion and contempt of MS and its tie up with Indian Govt(donno why this ppl 'hate' MS).Their attitude seemed to hostile to any corporate..(so I even doubted their communist side of thinking)

I got a call from home and had to go.So I went inside and told Jay sir that I need to go.He inquired whether I could be available for the expo on 30th.I informed him of our tight exam schedules due to which we couldn't help him and made our way out.

The stress of all that made me sleep for long and I studied ET(alternators,1phase induction motors) at night and went to sleep.

Edited note: These r my feelings of the first meeting at ILUG, which I soon began to respect and co-operate with.Now we are in good contact with many active members.