Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity

DRP Community Server ... more detailed view of the beastie

willy — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:49:51 GMT

Continued from http://dotnet.org.za/willy/archive/2008/09/30/south-african-it-community-servers-stats-to-be-proud-of.aspx.

Here is a more detailed traffic view of our www.drp.co.za community server, as requested, showing that the server seems to be known by a lot of countries these days. Remember that www.saarchitect.net is a newer version of our community server and definitely better suited for MEA region, in particular, in terms of bandwidth.

World Countries (stats for the past 6 months)

Rank	Country	Page Views	Visits	Hits	Bandwidth (KB)
1	United States	84,604	27,421	195,189	11,615,126
2	N/A	67,755	18,514	160,140	7,344,262
3	United Kingdom	12,478	826	31,583	1,955,383
4	Germany	25,532	1,112	34,698	1,411,797
5	Canada	6,279	708	17,357	1,024,689
6	Spain	7,721	666	17,811	845,354
7	South Africa	10,389	1,551	32,576	842,469
8	Russian Federation	9,017	389	18,376	748,956
9	New Zealand	2,953	78	4,960	646,723
10	Netherlands	4,707	257	10,899	590,881
11	India	3,529	305	11,523	434,971
12	Belgium	3,036	116	6,905	406,987
13	Argentina	3,860	973	6,892	397,612
14	Sweden	4,499	329	10,967	393,987
15	Austria	1,572	72	3,316	366,957
16	Finland	2,044	618	3,867	363,988
17	France	3,433	353	7,329	316,445
18	Australia	2,668	274	7,363	308,451
19	Switzerland	2,826	143	6,220	281,759
20	Ukraine	2,306	505	4,286	246,909
21	Saudi Arabia	3,361	1,424	4,297	208,023
22	Brazil	1,740	406	4,063	195,077
23	Israel	1,362	190	3,166	168,246
24	Italy	1,167	139	2,928	107,170
25	Mauritius	1,539	552	4,324	106,194
26	United Arab Emirates	1,003	124	1,425	103,124
27	Algeria	923	68	1,994	94,304
28	Portugal	458	36	1,177	91,552
29	Egypt	612	27	1,484	90,062
30	Singapore	705	121	1,670	89,455
31	Colombia	675	60	1,190	85,304
32	Ireland	422	57	1,582	80,414
33	Norway	616	199	2,191	79,586
34	Poland	1,311	284	2,907	75,435
35	Venezuela	470	21	670	74,206
36	Czech Republic	783	59	1,490	70,659
37	Thailand	1,001	202	1,432	60,608
38	Taiwan	739	311	1,563	54,752
39	Malaysia	1,317	872	2,390	54,709
40	Turkey	587	32	1,387	54,651
41	Japan	540	91	1,528	54,282
42	Slovakia	407	13	851	53,660
43	Mexico	1,738	742	3,280	49,465
44	Bolivia	437	23	883	48,843
45	China	2,208	1,874	3,037	45,360
46	Belarus	889	39	1,920	44,400
47	Europe	366	12	731	43,405
48	Denmark	591	62	1,708	39,735
49	Jordan	362	53	584	31,007
50	Peru	630	18	1,087	27,737
Other Items (71)		7,542	2,802	18,799	345,982
Total(s)		297,709	66,123	669,995	33,271,111
Average(s)		2,460	546	5,537	274,968

... working as a global community and as one happy family

Rhodes ... T-24 hours

willy — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:25:56 GMT

We are one day away from getting up at 3AM, getting to the office at 4AM and from there starting the journey to Grahamstown, via Johannesburg International and Port Elisabeth airports. The handouts are finally complete and thanks to all sponsors the attendees will get a nice pack as shown:

Proud sponsors of the content include: BB&D (www.bbd.co.za), Teamprise (www.teamprise.com), SA Architect (www.saarchitect.net) and MVPs (www.microsoft.com/mvp). THANK YOU very much for all the sponsors and community leads involved in this initiative.

The key message for this latest academia road show to Rhodes University (www.rhodes.ac.za) is defined as: "Provide information and guidance regarding the real world information technology environments, through collaboration and interaction".

We are aiming at bringing the faculties and vendor technology focused environments under one roof, with the clear message that the development environment of today must be "one happy family" and willing to embrace all technologies for the best of the solution. We are demonstrating Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, Teamprise, Eclipse, Java and Mono GDK working in one integrated development environment.

A few pictures of the final preparations and some glowing, or is that sweating, colleagues ... THANKS GUYS, you are the real champions! From the left to the right, please meet Zayd, Henk, Thabang and Robert.

For more information on this exciting initiative, see the academia flyer on www.saarchitect.net. We are really looking forward to this trip ... back to final preparations. Watch this space for more details ...

TFS WIWA or TSWA ... what's in these FLA's (four lettered acronyms)?

willy — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:50:55 GMT

We have long spoken about a TSWA (Team System Web Access) application that allows you to enforce the client access license fine print, which states that you can access work items that you have created without needing to invest in a client access license (CAL). Microsoft has released a CTP (Community Technology Preview) release of the WIWA (TSWA Work Item Only View) tool, for which you can also read the public specification here.

"Please" remember that CTP == Customer Technology Preview, not release ... which means that you should not install CTPs in your production environment.

For more details, peruse Hakan's blog here.

... viewing TFS from two different perspectives.

Teamprise Remote Accelerator ... a view after a few battles

willy — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:48:48 GMT

Continued from post http://dotnet.org.za/willy/archive/2008/09/26/teamprise-remote-accelerator-part-2-of-2-evaluation.aspx.

The battles raged with our internal network and our proxy server over the past few days and we were forced to switch to our broadband networks and took the opportunity to work off-site, remote from our Team Foundation Server (TFS).

Fortunately I have been evaluating the Teamprise Remote Accelerator product and the following graph shows the average gains in performance I achieved using the Team Remote Accelerator product, based on a few days of working against our ATC_Ecosystem repository which has an approximate size of 142MB, excluding our cloaked directories which would bloat this figure to a few Gigs.

Pictures tell a thousand words and the above graph confirms a minimal performance gain when running on our internal LAN and a phenomenal performance gain, when working from remote. Our broadband network ranges from anything from 10 to 1200Kbs, which means that I cannot document accurate a la Swiss findings ... but, the diagram proves, without having to think, that this product delivers immense performance gain for roaming and remote users, working with Team Foundation Server Version Control.

The following screens confirm the configuration:

I rate this product as a five out of five smiley product, both for performance and stability.

Hoping that Teamprise will release this "nugget" soon.

Rhodes ... T-48 hours

willy — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:45:15 GMT

We are doing final preparations and are busy sorting the handouts for the two sessions we will be hosting at Rhodes:

Team Foundation Server Session: Introducing a real world development environment.
- TFS/VSTS/TeamPrise/Tools introduction and positioning
- Team project creation and discussion around planning
- TFS/VSTS/TeamPrise interoperability
- Management, Development and Testing using the ALM solutions
- Automated Build and Testing
Linux Interoperability Session: Using TFS 2008, TeamPrise and Java.

... bringing vendor-specific worlds together, creating "one happy family".

While the second is a re-run of the session we ran at Rhodes before, this time targeting primarily the Java developers from Computer Science (CS), the first is a three hour session during which we will introduce TFS, VSTS and Teamprise from A-Z, looking at all aspects of application lifecycle management (ALM). We will be using quite a unique way to coordinate and run the session ... but more about that when we report about the actual event on the 16th.

What is interoperability to us in the real world?

Where the project team with a mix of .Net and Java can co-exist using the same Application Lifecycle Management
system developing on different platforms, where the project and project health are available from one source. This is what Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) gives us.

Teamprise is the product that give Java developers the ability to plug in to Team Foundation Server (using the Eclipse IDE plug-in or standalone Teamprise client) and have all the benefits enjoyed by .Net developers. Team Foundation Server is an Application Lifecycle Management server. Software vendors are able to develop a single solution on TFS using a mix of .Net and Java. TFS is about the project, the methodology, work items, source control, automated builds and tests. All of these features are available to the Java developer using Teamprise. Projects are no longer required to split into two teams to develop a .Net and Java solution for the client. TFS can take care of Java the same way it does for .Net. The Teamprise Eclipse plug in integrates seamlessly with the Eclipse menus and the Team Explorer gives the same functionality as found in Visual Studio 2008 team explorer. The Teamprise stand alone client is in essence the Team Explorer in Eclipse with the same functionality.

My colleagues Henk du Plessis (alias Mumbles), Zayd Kara and Herman Nolte will be accompanying me to Grahamstown for this great event.

Keep an eye on this blog for a daily report on the great community initiative, sponsored by the MVPs, SA Architect, BB&D and Teamprise.

South African SQL Server User Group revived

willy — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:25:47 GMT

Gail (our very own SQL MVP, aka GilaMonster) is reviving the SQL Server User Group, with a meeting at 18:30 on Tuesday the 21st of October.

The session is titled "Effective Indexing". For more details teleport to here.

DRP Drilldown - LINQ

willy — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:08:52 GMT

When	29th October 2008 (08:30-15:00)
Where	BB&D, Collaboration Centre
Presenter	Robert MacLean, BB&D ASTRA Technology Core (ATC)
Description	A drilldown bootcamp, focusing on LINQ, which is the code name for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated data query, set, and transform operations. This is a developer readiness program (DRP event. Seats are therefore limited and registration essential.

This Developer Readiness Program (DRP) session, hosted in the Collaboration Centre at Barone, Budge & Dominick (BB&D), is open to one registered SA Architect member for free. To reserve a seat, please contact one of the SA Architect leads, see www.saarchitect.net for details.

Tech·Ed Online: What are MVPs and what does it take to be one?

willy — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:11:33 GMT

Microsoft has posted the first of three Tech Ed Online sessions we were involved in ... tough seeing and listening to myself. Thanks Ruari, Henk and Zayd for a great chat and recording q;-)

Microsoft has posted the video to Tech·Ed Online: What are MVPs and what does it take to be one?. You can find the video on the Portal page and the Library page.

Please be sure to let us know if you have any questions or concerns with the contents q;-)

www.microsoft.com/techedonline

The other two videos will probably be posted on the 27th October.