Technology Blog - Vikas Goyal

Migrating existing web application to Azure

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Sun, 28 Jun 2015 16:02:00 +0000

Here is an useful resource to refer when planning for migration including how to select the right target platform between Azure WebSites, Cloud Service ( web & worker role) & VM.

Azure App Service, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines comparison

Azure Subscription and Tenants

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 06:59:00 +0000

QUICK TIP : When you add your Azure account using PS Add-AzureAccount, you get subscription id and list of tenant IDs created in the subscription. The tenant IDs are actually related to Azure Active Directory tenants which you have created.

Back to Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Sun, 23 Nov 2014 19:00:00 +0000

After 4 years i am back to blogging again. So much has changed in these four years.

From desktop & web app world we have moved to mobile & cloud first world. We now design & build app + services and design for multiple platform and form factors.

Lots to share with you.

Free eBook on Claims based Identity and Access Control

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:55:00 +0000

Starts with discussing basics of claims based identity and moves to advanced topics.

Following industry standards are discussed :

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
Security Association Management Protocol (SAMP)
and Internet Security Association
and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP)
WS-Federation
WS-Federation: Passive Requestor Profile
WS-Security
WS-SecureConversation
WS-Trust

Download the eBook

What’s new in ASP.NET 4.0 ?

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:36:00 +0000

Here is a very useful whitepaper which covers what’s new in ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 for Web Development.

http://www.asp.net/whitepapers/aspnet4

On Demand training on latest web technologies

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 06:13:00 +0000

Programming with HTML5 and related technologies

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/in/details/4f39070b-c435-4de5-9f50-0d2852c1dfbe

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 for Web Developers

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/in/details/90b79e80-eae9-47c8-a4f4-a2431e62178d

ASP.NET MVC3 Development with Visual Studio 2010

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/in/details/fd907f28-bcbd-4a00-871f-4be5965d3764

Code-First Development with Entity Framework

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/in/details/966167f3-9da3-422b-ab7c-0ecedd3ae5f2

Web Sockets & Indexed DB

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/in/details/83478b2d-e2c2-427d-8a05-7e795efa03f0

Building cross browser compatible websites

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/in/details/0ed592c6-cf3b-495b-8e22-48f530f89f3b

Feedback on Visual Studio ALM or TFS

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:33:00 +0000

Now you can directly provide feedback on TFS to the team in terms of new features which you want to see in next version. You can also vote on existing new features requested.

Reach to this site for providing feedback

http://visualstudioalm.uservoice.com/forums/100197-visual-studio-alm

Whitepaper on exploit mitigation technologies

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 07:26:00 +0000

A new whitepaper has been recently published which discusses about various exploit mitigation technologies and how to use them. Release by Microsoft Security Engineering Center.

A must for every person on software development team. Covers following:

economics of exploitation – attacker’s return on investment
Tactics behind exploit mitigation technologies like enforcing variants, creating artificial diversity, leveraging knowledge deficits
exploit mitigation technologies like

Stack buffer overrun detection
Data execution prevention (DEP)
Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)
SAFESEH and Structured Exception Handler Overwrite Protection (SEHOP)
Heap metadata protection
Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET)

For each technology it also mentions following:

Overview
How to use
Proof point
Performance consideration
Compatibility considerations
Availability on various OS/platforms including browser versions

Download the whitepaper from here http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26788

Watch what is coming in next one year.

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:27:00 +0000

Even if you are not visiting Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference currently running, make sure you watch the keynotes LIVE/Recorded to get glimpse of all the products coming in next one year.

Here are few of them :

Windows Phone ‘Mango’
Windows 8
Windows Server 8
System Center 2012
…lots of other cool stuff.

Visit http://www.digitalwpc.com

What’s new in Visual Studio vNext ?

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:26:00 +0000

There are still few months before we start getting the beta of Visual Studio vNext including TFS but the recent public announcements and demos have already created lot of excitement.
This will be a next major release after Visual Studio 2010.
Here are few of the important features coming up in ALM space.

Onboarding Stakeholder & Operations teams on TFS
Storyboarding tool primarily for Stakeholders
Stakeholder feedback Tool
Enhanced TFS web for backlog and iteration planning
Scrum Board
TFS connector for SCOM. This will allow operations team to directly log production issues from SCOM into TFS. Beta is already available for this and can be downloaded and installed.
Code Review inbuilt into TFS.

For further detailed reading, have a look at following links:
Visual Studio vNext Roadmap
Visual Studio vNext ALM Foundational Session

* SharePoint 2010 : Notes on Search

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:50:00 +0000

Goals

· Enterprise data from multiple Information stores (heterogeneous systems & data stores) can be indexed & queried with unified results presented to the user.

· Information stores can be SharePoint sites, external sites, file shares, database systems, web services, mail systems or any other custom source.

· Fast and accurate search results which include correct relevancy and ranking.

· Search context to include People within the enterprise and content metadata.

Search Products

· Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Search

· Microsoft Search Server 2010 Express

· Microsoft Search Server 2010

· Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Search

· FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

End-User Functionality

· Available as simple search box and Search Center site.

· Search content or people based on their expertise.

· Refine results based on content metadata & taxonomy tags

· Search interface can be web or custom apps using query object models.

· Search from Windows 7 & Windows Mobile/Phone

· Phonetic & nickname search

· Thumbnails & previews of results

· Boolean query syntax (supports AND, OR and NOT)

· Wildcard search

· Content metadata & content type based search

· Suggestions while typing search queries – based on past queries

· Suggestions after user runs queries – based on past queries

· Office Web Applications integrated – to view docs as results in browser.

· RSS feed for search results

· Schedule a search and get an alert of result changes via e-mail, etc.

Search Processing Features

· Connector Framework

· Social behavior based relevance & ranking

· Unified Query Object Model

· Scale out with Index partitioning

· Search Analytics Report

· Federated Search

· Best Bet – associate keywords and URL even without indexing

· IFilter framework – allows reading of content within documents

· Stemming, Stop Word, Synonym & Word Breaker support

Search Administration Features

· >500m content volume with sub-second query response time

· Central & Site collection level administration

· PowerShell 2.0 support for administration

· Search as an independent service application

· Crawler Impact rule allows to manage load which can be put on data sources by crawler

* SharePoint : Add custom search provider to IE for SharePoint site

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:37:00 +0000

Both IE8 and SharePoint/MOSS 2007 are OpenSearch compliant. This enables SharePoint admins to publish a custom search provider for IE users so that users can search the site content from browser search bar.

Here are the steps:

Start with identifying the search URL for your site. A typical search url looks like following :

http://<portal>/_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms} . This returns results in RSS format.

Create a search provider xml file. <name>.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
    <ShortName>My Portal</ShortName>
    <Description>Realtime My Portal Search</Description>
    <Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://<portal>/_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>

Upload the above file to anywhere in document library of your portal.
Add a following link on home page of you portal. You can use ‘Content Editor Web Part’.

<link title="My Portal Search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="search" href="<path to file uploaded>" />

When you will load the home page in IE, it will show additional search provider as shown below which you can add permanently.

* IndiMix 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:41:00 +0000

http://www.microsoftindimix.com/default.aspx

* MSDN and TechNet Blogging platforms getting updated

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:55:00 +0000

MSDN and TechNet blogs have become the most efficient ways of receiving latest updates on Microsoft products. While most of the blogs are unofficial, the official product team blogs provide the latest updates really fast and best too.

After many years these blogging platforms are finally getting upgraded and becoming more social. The updates have started and will continue till 24th.

Catch all the latest updates about the ongoing update on this blogging platform’s PM blog.

http://blogs.msdn.com/seanjenkin/default.aspx

* Windows Search : Add SharePoint Search Connector

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:35:00 +0000

With Windows 7, Search is integrated with Operating System. Apart from ability to index any kind of local content like files, mails , others, Windows 7 also supports federated search.

With federated search users can even search content outside local desktop.

Windows 7 support search federation to remote data stores using OpenSearch technologies that enable users to access and interact with their remote data from within Microsoft Windows Explorer. Additional search connectors can be created and deployed to external OpenSearch engines.

SharePoint 2007 search engine is OpenSearch compliant and so you can create a connector to search SharePoint site using Windows Explorer search bar.

Start with creating an OpenSearch Description (.osdx) file that describes how to connect to the Search Web service.

The simplest form of query URL for SharePoint / MOSS 2007 server which returns results in RSS format is following :

http://<my_portal>/_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms}.

Create a file with .osdx extension and following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
    <ShortName>My Portal</ShortName>
    <Description>Realtime My Portal Search</Description>
    <Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://<my_portal>/_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>

Replace <my_portal> with your portal server name. Double click the .osdx file created. You will be shown following confirmation box.

Click ‘Add’. The new connector will be added to Windows favorites.

* Gartner : CIOs Top 10 Business and Technology Priorities in 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:33:00 +0000

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1283413

Top 10 Business Priorities	Ranking	Top 10 Technology Priorities	Ranking
Business process improvement	1	Virtualization	1
Reducing enterprise costs	2	Cloud computing	2
Increasing the use of information/analytics	3	Web 2.0	3
Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness	4	Networking, voice and data communications	4
Attracting and retaining new customers	5	Business Intelligence	5
Managing change initiatives	6	Mobile technologies	6
Creating new products or services (innovation)	7	Data/document management and storage	7
Targeting customers and markets more effectively	8	Service-oriented applications and architecture	8
Consolidating business operations	9	Security technologies	9
Expanding current customer relationships	10	IT management	10

Source: Gartner EXP (January 2010)

The green ones are new entrants to Technology list with respect to 2009.

* Software Architecture : SATURN 2010 announced

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:41:00 +0000

Each year, the SEI Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) Conference brings together experts from around the world to exchange best architecture-centric practices in developing, acquiring, and maintaining software-reliant systems. Architects at all levels meet to share ideas and lessons learned, network, and learn about new and existing technologies.

SATURN 2010 Theme: Architecting for Change

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/saturn/2010/index.cfm

* SharePoint Designer 2010 available as free download

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:34:00 +0000

As SharePoint 2010 reaches RTM status, SharePoint Designer 2010 is now available for free download.

Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are available.

Important Note : SharePoint Designer 2010 only connects to SharePoint 2010. To connect to SharePoint 2007 and earlier sites you must continue to use SharePoint Designer 2007. If you elect to install both applications side-by-side, you must download the 32-bit version of SharePoint Designer 2010, and install it after installing SharePoint Designer 2007. Please also note that 64 bit Office applications will not run if SharePoint Designer 2007 is installed; 64-bit Office 2010 applications should only be used if not connecting to SharePoint 2007 servers.

Download SharePoint Designer 2010 32-bit

Download SharePoint Designer 2010 64-bit

* SharePoint 2010 : 12th May is Launch Day

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Fri, 07 May 2010 11:11:00 +0000

Watch Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, announce the launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on May 12, 2010 at 8 a.m PST or 11 a.m. EST. The live Microsoft keynote focuses on the next wave of productivity that delivers:

End user productivity across the PC, phone and browser
IT choice and flexibility
A platform for developers to build innovative solutions

Join the virtual launch event with Microsoft executives, product developers, partners and customers to:

Find out how peers and partners are already seeing benefits to their business by leveraging the next wave of productivity.
Submit your questions through live Q&A.
Participate via blogs, tweets, social media networks, commenting, and more.

* OpenSearch and SharePoint

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:38:00 +0000

OpenSearch is a specification which can be used to publish and consume search results in a standard way and thus enabling federated searches. This helps in multiple servers indexing & storing the content in their own format but still share results with others in standard way.

It helps in search client to server & search server to server collaboration.

Some of the basic features of Search Servers support OpenSearch are following :

Accept a GET URL query from the client.
Permit the search terms in the URL.
Publish results in RSS or ATOM format.

OpenSearch complaint Search Servers publish their query interfaces using OpenSearch Description Document.

A very basic OpenSearch description document looks like following :

SharePoint 2007 & 2010 by default support OpenSearch. The SharePoint search service can be queried using Http Get Url and search results page has a link to get results in RSS format too.

A typical search query url looks like following on SharePoint 2007 which returns results in RSS format:

http://<your_portal>/_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms}

* OASIS Members Approve Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Standard

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:10:00 +0000

Adobe, Alfresco, ASG, Booz Allen Hamilton, Day Software, dotCMS, EMC, FatWire, fme AG, IBM, ISIS Papyrus, Liferay, Microsoft, Nuxeo, Open Text, Oracle, SAP, Saperion, WeWebU, and Others Agree on Standard to Link Disparate Content Systems

Boston, MA, USA; 4 May 2010 - The OASIS international consortium today announced the approval of Content Management Interoperability Services

(CMIS) version 1.0, a new open standard that enables information to be shared across Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories from different vendors. Advanced via a collaboration of major ECM solution providers worldwide, CMIS is now an official OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification.

Using Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces, CMIS dramatically reduces the IT burden around multi-vendor, multi-repository content management environments. Companies no longer need to maintain custom code and one-off integrations in order to share information across their various ECM systems.

CMIS also enables independent software vendors (ISVs) to create specialized applications that are capable of running over a variety of content management systems.

"CMIS makes it possible for business units to deploy systems independently and focus on application needs rather than on infrastructure considerations.

With CMIS, integrating content between two or more repositories is faster, simpler and more cost-effective. This is how it should be," said David Choy of EMC, chair of the OASIS CMIS Technical Committee.

"CMIS has the potential to be a game-changing standard, not only through its promise to facilitate affordable content management, but also as an enabler of whole new classes of high-value, information-rich applications that have not been feasible to date," said Mary Laplante, vice president and senior analyst for the Gilbane Group. "At the end of the day, companies simply need better approaches to integrating systems. Business agility increasingly separates the winners from the losers, and agility is perhaps the biggest single benefit that CMIS offers."

CMIS is offered for implementation on a royalty-free basis. Participation in the OASIS CMIS Technical Committee is open to all companies, non-profit groups, governments, academic institutions, and individuals. As with all OASIS projects, archives of the Committees' work are accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment.

http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2010-05-04.php

* Windows Search : Saving Search results to text file

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:34:00 +0000

In Windows 7, when you perform search using Windows Explorer, there is no direct way of exporting the results to a text file.

Here is a small trick to copy them to a text file.

1 - Open Windows Explorer and search for what you want
2 - When the search results populate, select all (Ctrl + A)
3 - Hold the Shift key and Right Click on the search results
4 - Select "Copy as Path" (this option only shows up when you hold shift before the right click)
5 - Paste into a notepad window, Excel spreadsheet, etc...
The results will be formatted as:
"\path\to\first\item"
"\path\to\second\item"
...

Thanks Tarek Ayna.

* Free Silverlight 4 Training

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:40:00 +0000

Silverlight 4 is out and so is the free training from Microsoft for Silverlight 4. If you already have some experience with Silverlight, this training is most recommended to move to Silverlight 4. It is available for both online and offline consumption.

Download Silverlight 4 Training Kit

What's New in Silverlight 4

Silverlight 4 New Features

Silverlight 4 Business Apps: Module 1 – Introduction

Silverlight 4 Business Apps: Module 2 - Event Manager using WCF RIA Services

Silverlight 4 Business Apps: Module 3 - User Registration with Authentication, Validation, Rich Text, Styling, and Commands

Silverlight 4 Business Apps: Module 4 - User Profile with Drop Target, Webcam, Clipboard

Silverlight 4 Business Apps: Module 5 - Schedule Planner with Grouping and Right Click

Silverlight 4 Business Apps: Module 6 - Printing the Schedule

Silverlight 4 Business Apps: Module 7 - Event Dashboard Running Out of Browser

Silverlight 4 Business Apps: Module 8 - Advanced Out of Browser and MEF

* SharePoint and CMIS – Content Management Interoperability Services

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 05:09:00 +0000

What is CMIS – Content Management Interoperability Services Specification ?

A Web services interface specification that will enable greater interoperability of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. CMIS uses Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable rich information to be shared across Internet protocols in vendor-neutral formats, among document systems, publishers and repositories, within one enterprise and between companies.

Who all are involved in creating this specification ?

Maintained by OASIS, Microsoft has been driving with several other major vendors (Adobe, IBM, EMC, Alfresco, OpenText, SAP, Oracle).

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=cmis

What is the current status of specification ?

Version 1.0 is currently open for public review and voting closes on April 30th 2010. After which it will be released soon. Approval press release expected on May 5th.

What is the scope of version 1.0 ?

The initial set of deliverables will be targeted for the following use cases:

Collaborative Content Applications
Portals leveraging Content Management repositories
Mashups
Searching a Content Repository

The following use cases should be able to be supported by CMIS Domain Model and Bindings, but are not primary drivers:

Workflow and Business Process Management (BPM)-centric applications utilizing Content
Archival Applications
Compound and Virtual Documents
Electronic and Legal Discovery

What is the support in ECM Products ?

Lot of ECM vendors have already started supporting it including SharePoint 2010.

What is the level of support in SharePoint 2010 ?

At the SharePoint 2010 Summit @ AIIM Expo, Microsoft announced that it with be shipping the CMIS Connector for SharePoint as part of the SharePoint Administrator Toolkit by the end of June 2010.

* Gartner reviews SharePoint 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Goyal) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:55:00 +0000

Gartner recently published its research note on SharePoint 2010 and here what it says :

“Gartner expects it to compete increasingly in the traditional high-end content management market.”.

Other highlights:

Key Findings

SharePoint 2010 remains a horizontal content management offering. Microsoft does not appear to be targeting vertical applications or transactional (fixed) content management with this release, but rather more collaborative processes and dynamic content applications.
This release promises improved scalability and better support for broad enterprise deployments.
Enterprises will be better able to govern their SharePoint deployments if new features, such as policy-based information management, prove robust and effective.
SharePoint 2010 provides a more intuitive user interface. The range of information workers who can consume and use content management therefore continues to increase, blurring more completely the distinction between user and administrator.

Other areas covered in report :

Recommendations
Document Management Features
Records Management
Search
Metadata Management/Taxonomies
Web Content Management
Migrations From MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010
Business Productivity Online Suite 2010

Gartner’s note on SharePoint 2010