Gridding .NET

Windows .NET grid computing

Microsoft and grid computing

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2009167,00.asp

and what if MS bought Digipede? I do hope they do!! I've used similar .NET grid computing software before in a financial services environment which could easily saturate 400-500 CPUs of parallel work on 4-5 different OSs and CPU types.

previous posts about Microsoft Windows Grid computing

Is Windows (Vista) getting better than (your) average *ix/ux ?

Monad is better than your average *sh CLI,

Task Scheduler 2.0 will be at least comparable to cron if not better,

inbuilt WS Management beats definitely SSH,

IIS6 is a better web server than apache and IIS7 will be even better,

Transactional File System/WinFS will give Reiser a run for it's money,

the networking stack is getting a huge overhaul ....

And these are only Vista's improved features, probably there are more in Longhorn Server.

easier partitioning(disks)/workload management/virtualization?   perhaps, but not on the cheap *ix/ux ...

Analist gives Microsoft an A for the PDC's shown software

Where MS doesn't take advantage of it's "platform" APIs

Months ago Joel Spoelsky wrote about the API wars and how MS is losing them. While I felt that Joel
was mostly wrong some software is effectively being left behind.
While .NET has brought great advances in the platform API accessibility notably most Windows desktops apps
are being left almost untouched by the much welcomed .NET (r)evolution. Some time ago I mouned about Outlook; that
is being addressed by a late inclusion in VSTO, even if IMHO the update in the OOM (outlook Object Model) does not go
far enough. What I'd like to see is the possibility to have e.g.
a programmable MAPI pipeline ie. being able to easily intercept incoming messages by adding rules for spam detection, classification and other
a provider pattern for archiving/publishing mails to a persistent store (SQL Server, NTFS, Sharepoint, ...)

Another app, part of Office, is Access. While it is not one of the most strategically important apps it has
this unique appealing combination of a DB and a GUI, which has helped many hobbists getting into proper RDBMS.
While I surely don't rate it as a "enterprise" DB, it offers anyhow a convenient persistence store for many
desktops apps. Therefore I don't understand why no effort was made to get .NET to run in it, perhaps by
abstracting the code running engine to keep the existing VBA running and adding the necessary .NET support.

Other two apps which need desperately some rework are the MSN Messenger and IE.
While the first one is still very COM based and allows some customization, the IE browser needs desperately
to expose better .NET API both for it's own sake, but also to fend off competition by Firefox which has already
tens if not hundreds of plugings. While it is true that OS client programming hasn't beeh fashionable in the last
several years, but also why not take advantage of 700 milion + computers running it. Even IE like Outlook needs to get a .NET friendly
programmable "pipeline", to e.g. allow a .NET plugin/proxy like pre-check an URL before rendering it in the browser
or just plain simple applications safely taking advantage ot the browser bar's real estate.

IMHO, fixing up the .NET programmability of these 4 client apps would be more than welcome to many developers
wanting to add some cool little apps to the desktop and generally broaden the appeal of Windows and Office to developers
and end users alike.

Exchange Server thoughts

First I read this
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/rupertgoodwins/0,39020691,39195812,00.htm
then this
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,39020336,39197490,00.htm
then I remembered I wrote this
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/stefandemetz/archive/2005/01/11/43183.aspx

The death of JET database engine

The death of JET database engine

I was reading some posts about the imminent death of JET database engine (JET is the database engine of Access).

http://benjaminm.net/PermaLink.aspx?guid=ea0c72a5-d7e2-4c74-bdcc-475beeba14fd

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/kenbrubaker/archive/2004/10/27/sqlserverexpressvsaccess.aspx

http://ea.3leaf.com/2004/10/sql_express_the.html

One must wonder what will happen to Exchange which used a custom version of the JET database engine. Thinking about it, also Active Directory uses ESE, a version of the JET database.

RSS issues

The evil of wrong Windows base configurations

After reading one the few good articles of the TheRegister http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/02/winxpsp2_security_review/
I have to wholehartedly agree with the article since I like to fiddle with my local policy settings on all machines I run. Its one the
most underused and least understood tecnologies in the Windows world.

Basically it allows following things:

setting account/password options (password strength, account lockout)
disable legacy components(like LAN manager authentication - LM & NTLM used on 9X Windows)
Hardware access
IPSEC filters
auditing
disabling configuration of network, IE, scheduling and other stuff
disabling command prompt and disallow lists of executables
disallow installation of programs
set ACLs
lockdown WMI
harden TCP/IP
and more stuff

I use the Windows Security Scoring Tool from http://www.cisecurity.org to build secure baselines for standalone and networked PCs and even servers sometimes. I' re read somewhere that even Dell ships some workstations with
such a baseline switched on. The CIS tool contains excellent templates which are recommended by organizations like NIST, NSA, DISA, SANS, and CIS

Microsoft and open source

After reading a bunch of posts from josh
http://weblogs.asp.net/jledgard/archive/2004/08/20/217992.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/jledgard/archive/2004/08/24/220028.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/jledgard/archive/2004/08/25/220716.aspx
especially this one
http://weblogs.asp.net/jledgard/archive/2004/08/27/221716.aspx
and articles
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1640591,00.asp

I believe that MS is moving in the right direction in regards to OSS.

The right strategy would be to offload non vital technologies to a "pool"/foundation of all MS partners like ISV,OEMs and large system integrators, so that it can be regulated by some form of commercial contract.

The benefits would be several:
1) redeployment of precious programming resources onto more important things like LH, Yukon and Whidbey and Windows security.
2) better community, developer and ISV relationships
3) perhaps better products(documentation, testing, less bugs) where software original project was underresourced
4) good PR (why not)

My favorite technology to drop off would be WMI,
1) because it's a VERY buggy (just see all the fixes in XP SP2)
2) clumsy, if not badly designed

PHP vs ASP.NET Oracle FUD

Bertrand Le Roy fights back Oracle's article about ASP.NET vs PHP  with a rebuttal .

On the security of Apache/PHP vs ASP.NET/IIS  I have posted this:
http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/stefandemetz/posts/10465.aspx
http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/stefandemetz/posts/10388.aspx

Microsoft and the API War

API Wars UPDATE: http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/stefandemetz/archive/2005/08/27/132177.aspx

Joel Spolsky wrote a recent article "How Microsoft Lost the API Wars"

While I think that .NET has been a huge improvement to the scattered Windows APIs..NET hasn't impermeated yet all software coming from MS, even considering Longhorn and its subsystems.I'd say about 60% is done by the time Longhorn is out.

I am not so bothered about compatibility, more about the difficulty in swapping VBA/VBS with .NET code.There are still a huge number of MS appplications relying on these VB dialects. One of the most important one are Office, Access especially. There is currently NO .NET in access, NO possibility to add .NET code inside Access and No replacement of Access and NO alternative to the easy of building forms like Access has in .NET.

Another issue is a lack of widely available consumer(non IT pro) oriented .NET desktop applications and freeware,
be it that .NET code is easily decomposable.

A third issue are managed API able to use the most used MS applications coming with the default Windows installation: IM(Messenger), and Outlook(before the W2K version). Without these it is very cumbersome to build interesting add-ins to these apps. APIs are also missing for P2P, BITS and other interesting tecnologies installed on XP. Groove or a potential Sharepoint (a personal edition with desktop 2 desktop) are good, but not widely used by consumers.

One glaring miss is the unavailability of a Patching API: It should be pretty easy to classify(by OS version and level) and expose the patches and their path with a webservice,to be run on the desktop with minimal fuss. It surely would be a huge hit.

Also other areas need improvement:
Exchange server has a huge installed base, but no managed APIs to use.
Desktop management has almost no managed APIs, unless you count WMI and ACLs with v2.0

Now, MS biggest API foe is the Apache Foundation, collecting a bunch of non-MS technologies API, ranging from Java, PHP and other programming languages which are available on all on non MS OSes.

What MS should do in the short term:
1) to wrap legacy APIs with managed code even if only as beta quality first 
2) bundle all the scattered managed APIs of its products(like Sharepoint,Bilztalk, MMS, MCMS et all) into one neat pack for download
3) favour packaging and distribution of .NET open source libraries developed by MS(Application blocks), its employees(like Ghenghis By SellsBrothers, .TEXT) or well known community members.

Longterm , IMHO, Longhorn will do the rest and prove Joel Spolsky wrong.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/dbox/default.aspx?key=2004-06-17T09:05:03Z
http://weblogs.asp.net/rholloway/archive/2004/06/16/157725.aspx
http://weblog.sinteur.com/index.php?p=5585
http://weblogs.asp.net/tmarman/archive/2004/06/16/157148.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/pgielens/archive/2004/06/16/157297.aspx
http://www.oliviertravers.com/archives/2004/06/17/microsoft-lost-the-api-war-not-so-fast/
http://www.rittman.net/archives/000958.html
http://pdcbloggers.net/Longhorn/3219.item
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/06/19.html
http://denrael.typepad.com/the_denrael_project/2004/06/joel_on_softwar.html
http://www.blogpulse.com/04_06_17/link_4.html
http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2004/06/scobles_respons.html
http://redmonk.net/2004/06/17/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war
http://patricklogan.blogspot.com/2004/06/microsoft-has-chosen-their-own.html
http://pdcbloggers.net/Longhorn/3219.item
http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2004/06/18/3731.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/kennykerr/archive/2004/06/17/158272.aspx
http://www.cowpimp.com/archives/2004/06/17/api-wars/
feedster links
http://www.feedster.com/search.php?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=api+wars&sort=date