Just a quick note to promote a few free (primarily Sydney) events coming up (some you’ll know about, others you might have missed): September 14: BizTalk 2006 R2 Launch (via Andrew Coates blog) September 18: Enterprise Search Seminar September 25: NSW.NET ICT Cluster – Business & Technology Directions for the Web October 2: Readify Developer Network sessions commence October 13...
I finished up at Talman last Friday after more than 9 years with the company. It was a sad day. Having been there for more than half of my professional career, I have learnt, grown and gained so much, and become close friends with many of the team. Walking out the door for the last time was a strange feeling. After deciding back in May it was time to take the next step, I sat down and discussed...
Next Wednesday 29 August we’ve got a jam packed Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG) meeting all lined up. The meeting kicks off at 6:30pm with free pizza. Business Kicking us off will be Steve Herzberg () from NRG Solutions () with an detailed session on ‘Winning New Business’. Steve is a sales and marketing guru who specialises in training SMEs and company managers. His...
I’ve written an article outlining How to use SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS) to import Visual FoxPro data into SQL Server. The article is reasonably basic and covers: Using SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio to create the package and manage errors Using SQL Server Management Studio to create the Integration Service Using SQL Agent job to schedule it Gotchas...
Not wanting to pick on anyone in particular, but I’ve heard the expression “it’s not rocket science” all week at TechEd, usually in the context of how easy it is now (as compared to previous versions of products) to build wonderful, enabling, awe-inspiring solutions to enterprise problems. I have to admit I wasn’t exactly sure what rocket science was, but thankfully...
I’ve held off talking about the TechEd keynote from Wednesday (because it was extremely disappointing), but thankfully the locknote was slightly (but only slightly) better. It was good because it was a chance for us developers to say goodbye to Frank Arrigo (he’s heading over to Redmond). Frank has had an amazing impact on the developer community (and to a small extent the IT Pro...
I popped into the end of a session delivered by some of the AFP (Australian Federal Police) Computer Forensic experts. The surprising discovery for me was how under-resourced they are. Sure, they know how to recover data ‘deleted’ from a hard drive, and they also get pretty good at finding incriminating stuff, but overall my impression was that these guys rely on a lot of luck...
More out of interest than any compelling business need I dropped into Neil Roodyn’s session on Vista Gadgets. And I have to say I found it quite thought provoking. Neil went through some simple examples but most importantly stressed some of the design considerations to be employed. Designing for Offline (or worse, unexpected disconnection scenarios) from the outset is the most important of...
Why SharePoint Branding?Answer: Because we can. Finally. Yes, the customization ‘features’ of SharePoint have been well criticised for a while, so it is good to see that branding and formatting is now a simple combination of master page changes and CSS. Not that it is trivial, but as Kathy Hughes covered (extremely well I might add) in her session, it is very straight forward once you...
I’ve been a little behind on my blog reading of late, so here’s a quick list of links I’ve enjoyed (many of which you no doubt read weeks ago :-) Vienna will support 32-bit: Even longer life for FoxPro applications Another great new site for learning FoxPro (for free!) Embed II – The Smart VFP Treeview Class One month until FoxForward 2007! Visual Foxpro Autocomplete...