.NET From India

A Job you can love

Are you the kind of person who would love to mess up with new technologies, learn new skills, research upcoming technologies, help others master new technologies, then I think you would love to be a part of my team.

I am looking for both highly experienced architects and talented Developers (with 1+ years of experience in programming) to be a part of my team (I have multiple openings at different levels). My team focuses on technologies like Sharepoint 2007, .NET 4.0, Cardspace/Geneva, WPF, WCF, Biztalk 2006 R2 and Cluster based/Parallel computing. Most of the work is related to learning newer technologies and learning stuff fast even if documentation is scarce or sometimes out of date. We move fast, with changes in technology and I expect each person to be a fast learner and very analytical.

All positions will be based out of Chennai, India. But there is usually quite a bit of traveling, both inside and outside India.

If this sounds exciting, then send in your resumes to (anand.m at polaris. co. in) in this blog and mention the URL of this post in the subject, so that I can handle these mails accordingly. Feel free to write why you feel you would love this kind of a job and if you do blog, do not forget to add a link to it.

The new face of .NET

After almost 5 years .NET goes for a facelift. MS has released a new logo for .NET.

The result is a design we refer to as the “wave.” The design is strong, simple and distinctive. The suggestion of the letter ‘N’ in the design will become instantly recognizable over time as shorthand for the .NET brand name.

Read More.

Catch up with Azure

Azure is the new cloud computing platform from Microsoft. I have also found some references being made to it as the new cloud OS..

Now they have some documentations, HOLs and Videos for you to learn about this platform and understand the SDK.

Azure Services Training Kit - PDC Preview

You can register for an account here. After you register you don't get access at once. You are placed in a queue and I expect they will get back to you with actual invite code or access code later.

VS 2010 CTP

MS announce the availability of the CTP for VS 2010. We just got our hands on VS 2008 Gold and now the next version is out. On one side, it excites me to see the innovation and upgrades happining in both .NET and Visual Studio and there is a part of me that say, "ahhh, back to studying something new".

You can download the CTP at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=922B4655-93D0-4476-BDA4-94CF5F8D4814&displaylang=en

Feedback, Forums etc are via the following connect page. Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP Feedback

Free Web Conferencing

I am looking out for a free web conferencing service that I can use for some technology webcasts/webinars for the community. The options that I want are:

1. Do a presentation using PowerPoint
2. Share applications or the desktop to show demos
3. Audio over the Internet
4. Video via a Webcam support (something that is not a must, but I kind of would like it)
5. Recording of the whole conference for later feedback either as WMV or other video formats
6. Unlimited attendees (or atleast a large number of attendees).

I am even fine if there is a low monthly fee, but most of the services either seem to restrict the number of attendees in the free or low cost form and need an enterprise license for the higher attendee support. The reason I want a high attendee count is because this is aimed at the community, it makes little sense if it is restricted to 5 attendees etc. Though I understand unrestricted attendees maybe too much to ask for, I would be OK with 500+ attendee support.

Skypecasts seem to be right for this, but then I found that Skype has pulled the plug on that one.

I kind of like Livemeeting, which is around USD 15 per presenter (in the professional version), but allows up to 1250 attendees per meeting. But you need to buy at least 5 user license. No single user license.

Any ideas anyone? If you/your company do run a webinar service and would like to offer Ad supported service I am OK with that too. Leave a comment, use the contact me link in the blog.

Writing Secure Code - eBook

Writing Secure Code is one of my favorite books. It is a must read for any developer, especially if you are developing on the Microsoft Platform. Though it has quite a number of chapters that focus on secure coding from a C++ perspective, the other chapters including the ones on SQL Server and on .NET makes this worth its weight in gold (It is a very heavy book :))

So I was delighted when I found that MS Learning is offering the eBook free from my friend Manoj Agarwal's Blog. Though this is an old post that I seem to have missed, the offer is still valid. You get a years access to the book that you can read online. Or you can download the whole book as a PDF.

1) Go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/access.
2) Type your access code, 7234-N4E8-4995. (The code is case sensitive.) You will need to accept the License Agreement before you can proceed. Click Send.
3) You will be prompted to sign in using a valid Windows Live ID. If you already have a profile on Microsoft.com, use that Windows Live ID. If you do not have a Windows Live ID, use the options on the page to sign up for one.
4) On the Thank You page, click My Learning to access the e-book.
5) On the My Learning page, scroll to the E-Reference section. Click on Writing Secure Code, Second Edition to access the e-book.

Chapters

Chapter 1: The Need for Secure Systems
Chapter 2: The Proactive Security Development Process
Chapter 3: Security Principles to Live By
Chapter 4: Threat Modeling
Chapter 5: Public Enemy #1: The Buffer Overrun
Chapter 6: Determining Appropriate Access Control
Chapter 7: Running With Least Privilege
Chapter 8: Cryptographic Foibles
Chapter 9: Protecting Secret Data
Chapter 10: All Input Is Evil!
Chapter 11: Canonical Representation Issues
Chapter 12: Database Input Issues
Chapter 13: Web-Specific Input Issues
Chapter 14: Internationalization Issues
Chapter 15: Socket Security
Chapter 16: Securing RPC, ActiveX Controls, and DCOM
Chapter 17: Protecting Against Denial of Service Attacks
Chapter 18: Writing Secure .NET Code
Chapter 19: Security Testing
Chapter 20: Performing a Security Code Review
Chapter 21: Secure Software Installation
Chapter 22: Building Privacy Into Your Application
Chapter 23: General Good Practices
Chapter 24: Writing Security Documentation and Error Messages

Team System - 2008/2005 integration

With Visual Studio 2008 out and a lot of developers moving to it, the back end part of the Team System Block, Team Foundation Server in most enterprises is still TFS 2005. There are a number of problems that can arise when you want to integrate your VS 2008 IDE with TFS 2005.

My colleague, Madhu has written an article on some of the problems you may face and how to get around these.

Download this article here:

Integrating Visual Studio 2008 with Team Foundation Server 2005 (XPS Format)

Get a XPS Reader. If you have .NET 3.0 or above, you already have a XPS viewer and should be able to open this document inside of IE.

MOSS - Great Links

Here are a couple of great links to MOSS resources I came across when searching for some information related to MOSS.

Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007
Clinic 5046: Inside Look at Building and Developing Solutions with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 - Free Elearning course
SharePoint 2007 Developer Resources - A super big list of SharePoint Links
Things to Consider for SharePoint Performance
Sharepoint Developer VPC and Hands On Lab - One of the toughest things with starting off with Sharepoint is to have to setup so many other softwares . This VPC is a great way to start off your learning spree without too much of a hassle. Note this contains only Sharepoint Services WSS, not MOSS

New Project from Exisiting Code

It does happen sometimes that you start off a project write up a few classes and then suddenly realize that you need to break this up into multiple projects or re-organize your solution structure.

So when I saw this post on an option in Visual Studio 2008 that was supposedly called "Project From Existing Code" I was quite surprised how I never noticed it.

When I launched my VS 2008 instance I could not find this option. Then I went and reset my toolbar settings and set it up for the default development environment setting and this option appeared.

I always set my dev settings to the VB Developer Settings and this option seems to be not available in the menu for that setting. If you want to use a different setting and want to use this option, you will need to customize your Menu Options to do so.

SQL 2008 - New Features for DW

Found this technet article that gives an overview of new SQL 2008 features that will help with your Data Warehousing activities.

Introduction to New Data Warehouse Scalability Features in SQL Server 2008

This is quite old, but could be useful if you are looking at upgrading your SQL 2005 skills.