New Zealand got 9 Olympic medals so far. Brazil got 6.
New Zealand is nearly 4 million people while Brazil is nearly 200 million…
New Zealand is placed in second in the medals per capita while Brazil is placed 68…
Ok, let’s stop comparing Brazil do NZ. Let’s compare Brazil to Iraq.
In the last 2 months more people were killed in Rio than people killed in Iraq in the whole 2008.
Amazing…
Well, that’s creepy but a few days ago we’ve bought a box with a dozen eggs and believe it or not, 11 of them were double-yolked. I found out that 1 in every 1000 eggs are double yolkers so how can we possible have 11 of 12 eggs that way?
To make it even worse, my friends Duncan and Jo told me that when they were cooking eggs with their families this weekend, each of them had double yolked eggs as well!
So I’m not sure about what’s happening, may be a sign of the end of the world, alien chickens taking over the world or some mad scientist creating transgenic chickens in New Zealand, but just in case, before you break your eggs in the morning, be sure you have your gun loaded and ready for some shots!!!
I’m scared…
Ok, so one year ago I’ve bought a brand new iMac. Yes, that’s right, iMac because the music editing software I wanted to use was only available for iMacs.
2 months later the wireless keyboard wasn’t working anymore. Then the not-so-happy Mac user here goes to the shop to have his keyboard replaced. I asked them if these things happen often and they said no, that I just had “bad luck”.
4 months after that my new wireless keyboard stops working…
Totally-not-happy-Mac-user comes back to the shop, asks again if this happens often, again I hear that I’m just in a hell of a bad luck, and come back with a new keyboard.
Now, 2 weeks after my warranty has expired, guess what? The bloody motherboard died! How lucky is that?? Then I call the service and they tell me that in order to replace the motherboard, it will cost NZ$ 1740! That’s more than what you pay to replace a laptop’s motherboard.
Now ask me if I see any value in owing a Mac? Hell no.
If like me you also work with Microsoft development technologies for more than… er… 16 years (oh boy, I feel old) you will probably be very pleased with the next generation of Visual Studio. Simply because comparing what changed from the first VS .Net to VS .Net 2003, then from 2003 to 2005, then from 2005 to 2008 and now from 2008 to “Rosario”, you will notice that this last step is also the biggest one. Better features, better new concepts, better everything 
So I want to start blogging about a few details here and there that not many people know about.
Today’s tip: Look mom! Debugging with no Visual Studio!
Yes, in Visual Studio “Rosario” you can generate a debugger so you can step into your app without Visual Studio! In order to do that, just create your app, go to Visual Studio menu, debug and then choose “Create standalone debugger”.
Yes, it will generate all you need into a folder of your choice, and that’s all.
How cool is that?
Connected Systems User Group had a great first meeting at Microsoft with Ron Jacobs presenting REST. But what was a great surprise (at least for me) was finding out that 20% of the people there were Brazilians!
Was a nice presentation about how to couple REST and WCF. Cool stuff.
O pior tipo de hacker é aquele que além de não saber escrever código, também não sabe escrever português.
Recebi uns 40 e-mails (de uma vez) supostamente do hotmail dizendo que meu e-mail está para ser “canselado”.
Bom, primeiro o cara deu uma orelhada enorme de mandar esse monte de e-mail de uma vez, o que já deixa óbvio que o e-mail é falso. Mas feio mesmo é ver que o coitado é semi-analfabeto e não consegue nem fazer de conta que o e-mail é sério, cheio de erros de português.
Triste viu, precisando voltar pra escola esse daí.
Ah, the wonders of a well integrated development environment…
http://www.zuneboards.com/tip-of-the-week/how-to-install-games-on-your-zune.html
And I’m already thinking about what to do with my (little) free time…
Finally, Zune 2.5 is released. The limitations I was struggling with, like not having smart playlists are over
Some time ago I wrote about how machines compete for resources against living beings, and how all Darwing theories could well be applied to machines as well they do apply for organic life.
Here I am, back to NZ. Had a great, great time at Microsoft Services University. Here’s a picture that I’m using as my desktop background:
With friends from MCS worldwide:
And once again my life turns out to prepare me things that I’d never be able to predict one year ago.
Here I am in Redmond, Microsoft HQ, for the Microsoft Services University MSSU training with consultants, TAMS, PFE’s, SE’s etc from all over the world.
Just today I’ve met guys from: Spain, Turkey, US, France, Portugal, Dubai, Canada, Sweden…
So far it has been a great experience and I’m sure there’s more yet to come.
I tell you what. You may or may not like Microsoft for your own reasons. But if you don’t, you really should see how the company works from inside and get to know the people working there before complaining about it. I’m sure you would change your mind. Try creating an online mail service that handles 350 million users yourself and see how easy it is.
Quem sou eu para criticar a sagrada Igreja Católica?
Quem sou eu para criticar a instituição que colocou Adolf Hitler no poder, que colocou Mussolini no poder, que deu as costas quando todos aqueles judeus foram exterminados, que fingiu não ver quando seus padres abusavam sexualmente de crianças, que queimou mulheres vivas pelo crime de bruxaria só porque elas tinham coragem de pensar por conta própria, que ameaçou cientistas de morte só porque os caras descobriram que a terra não era o centro do universo…
Não, longe de mim criticar uma instituição dessas. Não é preciso, basta sentar a bunda na cadeira e ler um pouco sobre a maior folha corrida de atrocidades contra a humanidade que já existiu. Não tem nenhuma outra organização que chegou perto de matar e torturar tanta gente, mas nem de longe.
Eles lá e eu cá.
Só que agora eles vêm com essa bela preocupação pela vida (que ironia) dizer que não podemos pesquisar células tronco, afinal, coitados dos embriõezinhos…
Fico imaginando os índios da América do sul que morreram de doença porque os padres europeus queriam porque queriam ir lá catequizá-los, sem nenhum respeito pela cultura e religião que eles tinham.
Claro, temos que respeitar todas as religiões, inclusive essa daí.
Acontece que respeito é uma via de mão dupla. Eu respeito sua crença enquanto você respeitar a minha. Você não come carne? Bom pra você, eu como. Você tem tanto direito de não comer quanto eu tenho de comer. Então só porque você não come, não quer dizer que os fazendeiros estejam proibidos de criar e abater o gado.
Então se você é contra pesquisa com embriões, quando você sofrer um acidente de carro e virar paraplégico e um médico vier com a cura, que foi descoberta através de pesquisa com embriões você diz para ele que vai contra as suas crenças e que você prefere viver numa cama de hospital sem conseguir mover um músculo do seu corpo e respirando através de aparelhos pro resto da vida. Já eu e outros tantos usaremos os benefícios dessa pesquisa, porque pensamos diferente.
Pronto! Problema resolvido!
Chega de viver debaixo do controle dessa instituição! Isso aqui é século 21, pô! Vivemos numa democracia, temos direito de escolher nossas crenças, até quando temos que ter medo do conhecimento? Quem tem medo do conhecimento é quem lucra com a ignorância, quem ganha dinheiro e poder controlando as multidões de gente ignorante pelo medo e por promessas ilusórias.
Você é contra a pesquisa com células tronco? É contra o aborto? Mesmo depois de tantas e tantas pesquisas e provas de que países que legalizam o aborto reduzem drasticamente os índices de violência, de gente vivendo em condições sub-humanas, passando fome…? Tudo bem, problema seu. Não compre nenhum remédio ou tratamento que venha dessas pesquisas! Não cometa aborto! Mas deixe o resto do mundo em paz, temos tanto direito de usar essas coisas quanto você tem de não usar.
Isso sim se chama respeito, vai aprendendo, porque de um jeito ou de outro isso vai acontecer. Goste você ou não. Pode não ser agora ou no ano que vem, mas a ciência e o conhecimento sempre acabam superando a ignorância.
I just got the so bad news. Mr Clarke died at age of 90.
Big, big loss for all of us.
I suggest you to read (or at least watch the movies) 2001 and 2010, and if you are really keen, also read the 2061 and 3001 (this is the best one in my opinion).
Great mind, the world needs more people like this one.
If you ever tried to configure your outlook to download your hotmail or live.com e-mails, you probably hit on a few issues. One of them is that the download for some strange reason is synchronous, what “locks” your outlook every time the download happens.
To overcome this issue, download the Outlook Connector here:
After setting up you will see a huge improvement in the way outlook communicates with these e-mail services.
Ok, I spent the last 2 hours in battle with my Windows Vista after destroying my partitions with an open source defrag tool (yes, I know, I know).
First, what destroyed my windows:
I had two volumes using a dynamic disk, and if you have a dynamic disk you should be aware that repairing this one can be way more complicated than a normal partition. So as I was having space issues I decided to run a defrag so then I would be able to resize my partitions, but the defrag tool I decided to use… well, it simply messed with the allocation tables and even booting with the windows setup CD didn’t work, since windows couldn’t detect the partitions anymore.
How to fix that:
First, I used a very nice (but limited) tool called Active Boot Dist (www.ntfs.com)
With this tool I could boot with a recovery CD and try to recover my partitions. Unfortunatelly, the tool could not recover it since the allocation tables were way too messed up. So then I went to the command prompt and converted my dynamic volume back to basic again using DISKPART tool. This allowed the tool to recover my 2 crashed partitions.
Cool, but not enough. When I tried to boot again, no sucess. so next step was booting with my windows vista CD and asking it to repair the boot. All done, still not booting.
Then I booted with Windows Vista CD again and went to the command prompt. And that’s when I realized Windows Vista doesn’t have FIXBOOT or FIXMBR anymore! But it has a nice little command called BOOTREC that handles all of this. So, checkdisk /f, BOOTREC and reboot.
YAY! Windows back and running!
pfew…. No more open source defrag here. And I need a bigger HD.
Well, as promised, the first cool news was my interview with Mara Luquet for a radio in Brazil. Not really a big deal but was cool. I’ve got quite a few e-mails about this one.
The second news, and the most important, is that I’m leaving Gen-i and will be working for… Microsoft!
Yes, I’m really happy about this, mostly because deep inside feels like it perfectly makes sense and that’s the job I always wanted for me. I’ll be working for the Microsoft Consulting Services, here in Auckland (well, hopefully I’ll be travelling overseas too!).
Will be hard to leave all my friends at Gen-i but I’m sure we will always be in touch and having drinks together.
Well, that’s all I’ve got so far
SOA is the only thing Chuck Norris can’t kill.
SOA invented the internet, and the internet was invented for SOA.
SOA is not complex. You are just dumb.
In the last year, SOA increased Turkey’s GDP by a factor of 10.
One person successfully described SOA completely, and immediately died.
Another person successfully described SOA completely, and was immediately outsourced.
Larry Ellison once died in a terrible accident, but was quickly given SOA. He came back to life, built a multibillion dollar software company, and now flies fighter jets.
Guns don’t kill people, the SOA WS-* stack kills people.
SOA can write and compile itself.
SOA is an anagram for OSA, which means female bear in spanish. It is a well-known fact in the spanish-speaking world that female bears are able to model business processes and optimize reusable IT assets better than any other hibernating animal.
SOA is so great 10 facts aren’t enough.
SOA is the mistress to all CIOs.
SOA is just one letter away from SOB. On purpose.
If a tree falls in the forest, SOA knows about it.
If you google ‘SAP’ and ‘Chuck Norris’, the top site is SOA Facts.
SOA is being used in the developing world to solve hunger. Entire populations will be fed on future business value.
SOA can always win at TicTacToe. Even if you go first.
SOA singlehandedly saved SOA’s bacon.
J2EE can sometimes make a diamond from a lump of coal. SOA can make diamonds from air.
SOA knows what you did last summer, and is disappointed that it wasn’t SOA.
SOA thought Mensa too easy, so it founded Sensa. SOA is the only member.
In a battle between a ninja and a jedi, SOA would win.
SOA violates the first and third laws of thermodynamics. But not the second, as all energy flows from SOA.
On the eigth day, God created SOA, then SOA created Rock and Roll.
Pluto is no longer the ninth planet, because SOA wanted the job.
SOA taught Chuck Norris everything he knows.
SOA is the secret ingredient that makes the colonel’s chicken so tasty.
For years Theoretical Physicists have searched for a grand unified theory that explains the architecture of everything … DUH … SOA
SOA can’t be named BOA (Business Oriented Architecture) since that would be too constricting for SOA.
SOA is also a yoga posture that consists of performing all other yoga postures simultaneously.
Dante has a special level in hell for consultants whose resumes do not say SOA.
SOA is the correct answer to all zen koans.
Mike Tyson never physically beat an opponent. He ‘Edumacated’ them about SOA.
SOA is a power source more efficient than nuclear, cleaner than solar/wind, more available than coal, and more geopolitically stable than oil. Its too bad you can’t afford it.
SOA can do it in one line.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of SOA.” - Jane Austen, opening line to Pride and Prejudice.
The first rule of SOA is you do not talk about SOA.
SOA in a Nutshell is 7,351 pages spread over 10 volumes.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So does SOA.
SOA actually stands for SOA Oriented Architecture. Let THAT bake your noodle.
The solution to SOA is 42, which begs the question…
If you plug SOA into the back of your head, you’ll know Kung Fu.
Neo didn’t bring down the Matrix. SOA did.
Ancient lore promises the day when a single unifying technology will bring openness and peace to all lands. That technology is not SOA. because SOA killed that technology.
Another ancient legend tells of ‘One technology to rule them all, One technology to find them, One technology to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.’ Again, not SOA.
SOA is the answer to the question nobody ever asked (or if they did, you couldn’t tell what the question was from SOA).
Saddam didn’t have WMD, he had SOA. But SOA is so powerful, they went with the WMD angle instead to quell fear.
Kazakstahn uses SOA to produce the world’s best Potassium.
SOA actually stands for Same Old Architecture - whatever your old architecture is.
SOA is so tough, Police around the world are replacing their SWAT teams with SOAT.
Not content to just best sliced bread, SOA is actually the best thing since beer, wine, coffee, ice cream, chocolate… oh, and sliced bread.
SOA - building contractor jobs, one Visio slide at a time.
SOA is the only TLA (Three Letter Acronym) you will ever need. Until you actually implement it - then you’ll also need DOA.
Implementing SOA for the first time is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Implementing SOA for the second time is the triumph of hope over experience.
Peace is not merely the absence of violence, but also the presence of SOA.
The most dangerous animal in the IT jungle is the SOA constrictor. It has been known to squeeze the life out of all other IT initiatives.
It has been said that an infinite number of monkeys pressing their buttocks against keyboards for an infinite amount of time will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. 100 monkeys typing for 10 hours will eventually produce a SOA project plan.
Unlike it’s predecessors, SOA actually is a real silver bullet. Capable of slaying legacy apps and werewolves. And your career if you really mess up the implementation.
Einstein settled on E = mC2 after first rejecting soa = mC2 as too powerful and volatile.
SOA beats Particle Man, Person Man, Universe Man and even Triangle Man. But SOA really beats the crap out of nerd-rockers like They Might Be Giants.
Software architects don’t use SOA. SOA uses software architects.
The Answer to the Ultimate Question about Life, the Universe, and Everything is ….. SOA
If you never tried this one, do it. Your pocket pc will look awesome.
Unfortunately I can’t tell much at this point but hopefully in the next two weeks I’ll have a couple of good news to post here
Ok, so here goes a little more of personal story that I am trying to write before I start to forget important details.
Somewhere around September 2006 I realized that I wasn’t happy with my (professional) life in Brazil anymore. I was a shareholder of this IT company for 7 years, money was good, but many other things disappointed me and made me not only frustrated but very stressed.
So I started to send my CV to some places and shortly I’ve got some calls from New Zealand. A couple of weeks later I was flying to NZ for some job interviews, spent 2 weeks over there, got some final offers and then had about one last day to decide if I would stay in Brazil or completely change my life and move to the other side of the world.
Well, believe it or not, I took the second option. I remember sending my mother an e-mail yet from NZ saying something like:
“Well, that’s it… I said yes. My life is about to change completely and I’m not really sure if I’m doing the right thing. I’m scared and I know this will be damn hard”.
Then, at the Wellington’s airport, preparing to come back to Brazil to sort things out and pack my stuff to move back to NZ, I received an e-mail from my mother saying:
“I’m sending you this song, so we both can appreciate and cry together.”
This sad song she sent me is called “Desenredo”, that could forcefully be translated to “Explanation” or “un-plot”.
The song is attached HERE.
The lyrics say (and please forgive my translation, some expressions are hard to translate):
“Thru all the lands I pass
it surprises me everything I see
The death weaves its wire
of life made inside-out
The look that arrests has been free
The look that frees has been arrested
But when I arrive I lay down
on the braids of your desire
The whole world marked
with iron, fire and disdain
Life is the wire of time
Death is the end of the hank
The look that scares has been dead
The look that alerts has been lighted
But when I arrive I get lost
in the trams of your secret
Oh Minas (Minas Gerais state, where I used to live), Oh Minas
It is time to leave, I will go
I will go to so far away
The wax of the burning candle
The man making his price
The death that life has been planning
The life that death has been living
The weakest look has been restless
The strongest look has been defenceless
But when I arrive I roll myself
between the ropes of your hair
Oh Minas, Oh Minas
It is time to leave, I will go
I will go to so far away
Oh Minas, Oh Minas
It is time to leave, I will go
I will go to so far away”
Well, it may sound silly now, but at that airport, listening to this song sent by my mother, who only said those words in the e-mail, nothing more, nothing less… I cried like a little kid. First because I could see the consequences of a decision made in a single day that would completely change my life and anticipate the emotional pain. Second, to see that my mother, with such simplicity of words, could describe so well so many feelings passing by both of our minds.
It has been one year since then and now I’m visiting Brazil. For my surprise, my cat recognized me and came asking for some cuddle as if she said: “I have no idea where you’ve been or why you left me here, but I forgive you”. Without any doubts, this was the hardest year of my life. I had to give up of my comfort zone, my comfortable life, friends, girlfriend, family, well, you name it. The reality showed itself way harder than what my imagination could possibly conceive. Different people, different culture, the adaptation was (and still is) an exhaustive process and having to give up of so many important things and people makes it way more difficult. I can say that who I was before has died and the person who came back from NZ is different.
Stronger, wiser… and still sad. Well, I can’t deny it, despite of everything good that this experience represented to me, I have to look back and ask: Why again did I do it?
The answer is: Because I wasn’t happy.
So guess what?
You won’t find your happiness in a specific geographic location. Seems (and I learned that now) that this isn’t the way happiness works.
So do I regret of everything I’ve done?
Hell no.
As I said, I’m wiser now and I understand better many very important concepts. Still, coming back to Brazil, what initially was a very good experience, is proving to be painful. Painful because we can see life doesn’t wait. Keeps weaving that wire, doesn’t matter if you are there participating of the process or not. So that’s a hard lesson: Exercising our detachment of things, moments, places, people… because eventually they’ll all be gone.
So there comes the enigma: Being happy requires detachment at the same time that happiness also depends on the connections with others, intimacy.
Someone should offer a million dollars to whoever solves this one. As I don’t have a good answer, I’m drinking some damn good Irish beer. Well, at least it helps.
Tomorrow I will have a party with most of the friends I could bring together. The venue? The same place where they came one year ago to the farewell. I guess it is part of my silly attempt to hold things together as they currently are so they won’t change anymore… Yes, will be in vain, I know. Some of these people I may not ever see again or will change too much. It is probably my emotional side telling to my rational one to shut up and enjoy as much as I can since there’s no better plan yet.
I should be sleeping…
I hope I’m not violating any copyrights, but this one is so true that deserves to be posted here.
Next Tuesday, 18th December I will be going to Brazil. Keen to see all the friends and family.
MOSS is a great product. But if you have been developing a custom application using MOSS as the platform, there’s a chance that you not only have a different opinion about MOSS but also may be using some very strong adjectives to describe it.
The main question about using MOSS, as happens with any other technology or tool is: Is this going to save you time?
By using MOSS in your projects, are you actually saving development effort?
Before deciding if MOSS is going to be or not part of your solution, this question must be explored and answered. I’ve seen several times people with wrong expectations about what MOSS will deliver and this is the most common cause of the lack of satisfaction around MOSS.
In order to answer this question, we need to understand the profile of our project.
If you can answer yes to any of the following questions, the MOSS is very likely to be your solution:
· Do you need content management features, allowing non-technical users to maintain site content? (site content not tied to any specific business rule or intelligence)
· Do you need document storage features, including versioning, keyword searching, or associating document types with specific visual lists, approval workflows, by not having to write code?
· Do you need keyword search across data from different sources, such as documents, databases and web services?
· Do you have Excel spreadsheets and you would like to publish them online and provide a way of allowing users to see and update the data from the web?
· Do you have isolated database tables where all you want is a simple, online data entry user interface without any special business rules?
· Do you need users to be able to create their own sites with content, blogs, wikis or other common content management features?
Well, if you answered yes to one or more of these questions, MOSS is probably your friend. You will be pleased with the great features and advantages of using MOSS for your needs.
But let’s say you are answering yes to some of the following questions:
· You are developing a commercial app, and instead of developing web pages to manage the CRUD operations on tables, you want to use MOSS lists, so you won’t have to develop anything?
· Your application needs to store documents but doesn’t need searching, versioning or workflows, so you want to use MOSS just for document storage?
· Most of your application will be custom developed in ASP.Net and C#, but as you need “MOSS Integration” you are looking for developing web parts for every single list or form of your application so it can be hosted on MOSS?
· Some of the entities of your application will be managed by custom code and others will be managed by MOSS itself?
· You want MOSS because you need workflow features only
Well, if you answered yes to any of these, be worried, be very worried.
If you believe that instead of creating the common web pages with CRUD features you can just create lists on MOSS and have them working exactly the same way, keep in mind that there will be always business rules and exceptions to this. So then you will decide to use MOSS lists for the simple CRUD tables and custom dev for more complex user interfaces. Everything will be nice and easy until you realize that you need to link your real world tables to your fiction “entities” managed by SharePoint. You can’t access MOSS databases directly, so you can’t create reports using something like Crystal Reports that easily.
Also, you can’t have referential integrity between the MOSS lists and your real tables, or even between two MOSS lists. If you ask a MOSS specialist, he would probably say: “Of course you can! You can create some triggers and code the integrity yourself!”
Yes, that’s true. The problem is that if this becomes the solution for your referential integrity, the amount of code and time you will spend here will bring you to my first question: How much development time you are actually saving here?
You could always replicate your MOSS list data to specific tables on your database, but again, you will be spending time on something that was supposed to save you time. Also, you could use BDC to bring your custom database tables information to MOSS, but what for? To support keyword search on these tables? Is this a requirement for your project? Or a couple of ad-hoc reports could manage all the data information your users would need to obtain?
And you always need to keep in mind that by using MOSS you will need: A good server, more configuration steps to support things like debugging, automated deployment and source code control. So keep that in your equation when deciding if it will save you time.
So what’s the point?
I’m not telling you to run away of MOSS and never look back. I’m just saying that in the today’s world, where MOSS specialists are being chased as little rabbits in a lion’s jungle, we need to stop for a moment and understand where MOSS and WSS are as technologies and what the benefits that they can bring to you are.
I trust MOSS will evolve and solve most of the considerations I’m making today, becoming a real application server. But today MOSS is NOT an application server, and from the architectural point of view, if you are developing a custom app, you should see MOSS as a collection of services that you may or may not use individually from your application.
Don’t use the technology just for the technology. Use good sense and always look at the big picture from the architecture point of view.
Yes, that’s right: We are doing the Movember thing at Gen-i. And that’s the Ad we are using to get donations
Automatic page repair: You have a mirrored database, and then a single page file fails. SQL Server will automatically recognize that and obtain the copy from the mirror one. Yes, I saw that working.
Compressed backup. This can make a 77MB backup turn into a 19MB backup. And can make the backup finish in half of the time. But the best thing is that the restore process is faster too.
Compressed log shipping
Transparent encryption
You can add new CPU’s to your server on the fly
Data auditing
Declarative management framework: You can configure things like: It is not allowed to have objects under the dbo schema and things just happen. You have a nice console to check if there is any violated rule.
Row Level Compression and Page Level/Dictionary compression. Imagine you have a varchar column that in 80% of the case is “New Zealand”. That could be stored only once! Cool, eh?
Resource governor. You can set things like: Connections with the username equals “blah” cannot use more than 20% of the CPU and X Gigs of Ram. Yes, I saw that working too. So now SQL has “resource pools”.
Disconnected scenarios without having to rewriting applications.
Filestream Data Storage. You create a column that is a file, but you store only the file name there. SQL Server stores the file in the file system and maintains the consistency between the relational data and the file.
You can have up to 100000 columns in a table. And if you do that, you must be a mad dude.
Filtered indexes: I want to filter this column ONLY if this other column is greater than 56. Woohoo!
Hierarchical data type.
DateTime2 data type – higher precision.
DateTime with offset data type.
Virtual Earth integration
Geometry location data type.
Geography spatial data type.
Merge T-SQL statement. If you are an Oracle Certified too you already know what that means.
Data Mining in Excel
And some details: No 60, 65 or 70 compatibility levels anymore. No pubs or northwind databases installed with SQL Server.
Here are some valuable tips about MOSS and WSS to keep in mind, extracted from the NZ TechEd 2007:
SQL Server:
Databases can get big, really big, if you store lots of documents in SharePoint. Split your databases so they have around 50GB to 100GB. This will make many things easier, such as backup/restore for example.
Don’t update statistics for SharePoint database. Trust that SharePoint will take care of that. If you update statistics, this can actually make things worse.
During the first days, when you probably will be loading lots of documents, you will probably want to set the database recovery mode to simple to improve performance.
Use aliases when configuring database access, this will make a lot easier when moving from one SQL Server to another.
IIS:
Do not configure IIS, configure SharePoint. Yes, I know, I don’t feel very comfortable with that too, but that’s how SharePoint works, so accept it and be happy.
Get to know how AAM works, avoid IIS host headers.
Get to know how Security Zones work, they can be very useful. Remember that you need a security zone with NTLM support in order to allow search.
If you are used to ASP.Net applications, remember that web.config files work differently here. They stay at InstallDir\InetPub\wwwroot\wss\virtual directories\{GUID of Site}
If you need your SharePoint to have internet access (read RSS’s for example) you need to change the web.config of each web site that needs this access.
Application pools for SharePoint takes a lot of RAM (consider at least 1 GB per pool). Avoid creating too many of them. If you are considering having both SharePoint and SQL server on the same box, memory can become a serious issue.
Security:
Always use domain accounts for all the SharePoint services.
Create one domain account for each of the following:
-Farm account
-SSP account
-Office SharePoint Search Service
-Default content crawling (this one has read access to everything, so shouldn’t be mixed with others)
-Standard app pool account
Do not mix these accounts
Log files:
Always check SharePoint’s log files after setups/upgrades.
Windows Event Logs:
Consider using MOM as your central management system, will make things easier
General:
The first SharePoint Server in a Farm is like the first AD Server in a domain. So that requires more attention when installing/configuring.
Features: Installing is different than activating
You have content deployment so you can mirror your authoring server to the production server. It works incrementally by default, and is only for MOSS. But the API that supports it can be used on WSS as well. Do not edit content on the destination server when using this feature.
You can also copy content using stsadm command line tool, site management tool, backup/restore or custom codes, but if you are replicating an authoring site to production, the content deployment is your guy.
Hotfixes:
There are known bugs, and hotfixes for them. Remember to check in blogs and MS website.
Staging:
There is no staging server support for content, only code. Why? Because it wouldn’t make sense. You can create/change your content in production without making it visible.
Sempre que eu lia sobre as teorias de Darwin eu não conseguia evitar de colocá-las em cenários que vão muito além da natureza e dos animais.
Seleção natural existe em diversos níveis: Empresas, por exemplo, são organismos que também competem, sofrem mutações, evoluem ou morrem. No meio corporativo também existe essa competição, os mais adaptados conseguem empregos enquanto os demais acabam passando fome ou trabalhando muito para ganhar pouco. Daí o grande engano dos comunistas em achar que conseguem por decretos alterar essa lei da natureza.
Mas uma coisa que sempre me chamou a atenção foi o papel das máquinas como “organismos” que também competem no mesmo meio que os outros animais, inclusive o homem.
Pense em quantas profissões sumiram do mapa graças às máquinas. Você ainda conhece algum digitador?
Muitos acreditam que se as máquinas destroem empregos na camada mais baixa da pirâmide, elas criam oportunidades nas camadas mais altas. O problema aí é que na camada mais baixa você tem centenas de empregos na proporção de apenas 1 na camada mais alta. Os demais ficam de fora. Da para ver uma tendência aqui?
Além disso, em algum países como o nosso Brasil tenta-se em vão criar leis que segurem esse processo de seleção natural (visão distorcida da ala esquerda que infelizmente, cheia de boas intenções, acaba causando mais danos do que consegue enxergar), como o caso dos trocadores de ônibus que não podem ser substituidos por máquinas, o que iria baratear as passagens de ônibus, mas deixaria os coitados desempregados. Esse tipo de “intervenção” não funciona, é ilusório. Isso porque as leis de seleção natural são tão ponderosas que acabam sempre encontrando um meio. Por exemplo, se estamos salvando os empregos deles, estamos também acabando com outros que pelo custo da passagem se tornam inviáveis. E enquanto isso, outros países onde não existe trocador, é possível produzir produtos a preços mais baixos, que vão ser vendidos no Brasil, e por aí vai…
Mas as máquinas estão ganhando espaço na briga com os homens. Primeiro, a evolução tecnológica por si só está desacelerando a evolução do homem. Agora podemos nascer com defeitos genéticos e ainda assim ter uma vida plena, reproduzir e etc, graças à tecnologia. O problema é que sem perceber vamos nos tornando cada vez mais dependentes dela, até o dia em que até reprodução só vai ser possível com a assistência das máquinas. Veja a engenharia genética, por exemplo. Quando for possível escolher o quão inteligente e saudável seu filho vai ser, quem é que vai querer ter um filho de forma natural, sem esse poder de escolha? Só vai conená-lo a ter uma vida miserável porque não vai conseguir sequer um emprego, já que os outros candidatos serão mais qualificados.
Agora temos o dilema do petróleo. O petroleo está acabando, e o mais provável é que a solução sejam os biocombustíveis.
Ora, biocombustíveis percisam ser plantados, os fazendeiros vão análisar as possibilidades e perceber que plantar para produzir combustível é mais lucrativo que plantar para produzir comida. Ou seja, os carros precisam se alimentar, assim como os homens, só que os carros vão se mostrar mais importantes, vão ter preferência quando o assunto for comida.
Da pra ver o resultado?
Basicamente estamos todos competindo por recursos limitados, e como o Darwin dizia muito bem, o negócio não é o mais inteligente ou o mais forte, e sim o mais adaptado. E as máquinas sempre se adaptarão mais rapidamente e facilmente que os homens.
De um jeito ou de outro, a única certeza que eu tenho é que a raça humana vai ser extinta, cedo ou tarde, seja pela evolução, seleção, pela engenharia genética, o que for. É o caminho natural, só não vê quem não quer.
