58bits - Tech

Today I decided to go for it, and promote my Windows Server 2008 64 bit test box to a domain controller (using dcpromo). I then created two Hyper-V virtual Windows Server 2008 servers (joined to the domain); the first as a dedicated SQL Server 2005 database server, and the second as a SharePoint server. I've dabbled with WSS a little previously and had all the docs ready. Configuring the Windows Server 2008 domain and the SharePoint server all went surprisingly well.

Windows Server 2008 in particular has a very slick install, role management and feature configuration system - all run via Server Manager. The main and 'real' server has the Active Directory, DNS and Hyper-V roles installed. The two virtual machines have the application server and web server roles installed (the main box is a fairly decent spec Core2Duo with 8GB of RAM).

Configuring WSS correctly takes a little preparation and planning - but for a sandboxed lab installation - it's pretty straightforward. Here's a great five part tutorial on installing SharePoint, and here's a link to a SharePoint deployment book that you can download from Technet.

The first thing you need to know about any WSS deployment is that if you want to use a separate SQL Server 2005 server as your SharePoint configuration and content database - then you MUST install WSS as a server farm - even if you only have a single SharePoint web application server (also the account that it used to connect from the SharePoint server to the database server MUST be a domain account - hence the creation of the server domain first). If you choose a single server installation (as opposed to the server farm installation) then SharePoint will install the Windows Internal Database (SQL Server runtime) and everything will run from a single server without any options (as far as I can tell) to move content to a separate and dedicated database server in the future.

Now that I'm up an running - I'm really curious to take a look at the 'out of the box' features for WSS. WSS is free  - and at first glance I'm impressed with what's there - including content creation, document management, collaboration, calendars, tasks, wikis, and blogs. And this is all before a full Microsoft Office SharePoint Server installation. Here's a link to a comparison of the two. From the docs and feature comparisons you can see that WSS alone offers a lot of intranet and collaboration functionality; ideal for small to medium size organizations that have already made an investment in Windows desktop and server technology.

Although I've not spent a lot of time looking at intranet or content management systems (CMS), I have been following the blogosphere activity around Drupal, Joomla and other 'free' CMS applications. I've also watched the Telligent products mature - like Community Server and Graffiti CMS (Graffiti in particular is a very slick and easy to configure CMS and blogging platform for ASP.Net- perfect for small organizations and individual bloggers). I'll be looking at the Windows SharePoint Services Development Center as well, and if I can find the time - will take a shot at writing an experimental Web Part.

So if it all went so well, then why is the 'Missing SMTP Server' in the title of this post? Well I was 95% there - starting to get that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when a whole bunch of things just work - first time. I then tried to configure the SMTP server for SharePoint's outgoing email messages, and discovered that the SMTP server is no longer under the IIS snap-in - at least not for IIS7. It took a while for me to discover that it's now part of the Features node in Server Manager.

Select the Features node - and then Add Features (in right hand panel) and you'll see an option for SMTP Server. When selected you're also prompted to install the Remote Server Administration Tools and something called the Feature Administration Tools beneath which you see listed the SMTP Server Tools. I said ok to all of that... but could I find a snap-in or configuration option for the SMPT Server Tools anywhere? Well nope - not even after an hour of Googling and searching the docs for the SMTP Server Tools. Amazingly - the SMTP server re-appears under the IIS6 snap-in (as long as you've installed the IIS6 compatibility components) however after being prompted to look for the something called Feature Administration Tools and SMTP Server Tools - I figured I could be forgiven for looking just about everywhere BUT the original IIS6 snap-in. Argh...

Ok - well pain over - I'm still looking for a way to configure a local SMTP server with a smart host entry that also requires server credentials - since neither the WSS SMTP outgoing email server options, or the SMTP server (under IIS6) offer a way to relay mail to a server that requires authentication for outbound mail. I'd like to be able to use the SMTP servers at my external Webhosting service (WH4L) but they both require authentication for SMTP outbound email. Ah well - not a big deal compared to the rest - but it would be a nice way to finish things off.

SMTP server hiccups aside...WSS looks pretty darn good and it'll be fun experimenting with additional sites and features on my test installation.

I spotted this post on Scott Watermasysk's site the other day. I've been looking for something like PureText for ages.

I almost never want to take the source formatting of text I copy from documents, or the web and almost always want the pasted text to assume the format of the target document. In Office - with some complicated maneuvering you can use Paste Special... and choose unformatted text - but it's a real hassle and gets in the way of quick document assembly.

I smile now every time I hear the PureText sound as I happily past plain text into whatever I'm working on, from wherever I've copied. :-) Nice one Steve Miller and thanks a bunch...

Getting close to that time again where I'll be in the market for a new mobile device.

About a year ago I dropped back to a POT (plain old telephone) mobile handset - a very basic Nokia 3110c. I had decided to reign in my gadget attachment disorder and wait another generation or two before moving back into the world of multifunction/media/pda/smart phones.

My previous experience wasn't great. A couple of years ago I bought an HTC Wizard - the Qtek 9100 version. Initially I was impressed - and really liked the QWERTY keyboard. But after a couple of very bumpy ROM updates, major disappointment with the Windows Mobile dialer (which continues to this day) and big problems with screen calibration as well as using the touch screen in hot weather - I gave up. Windows Mobile 5 wasn't there yet - just didn't feel right; that combined with my first HTC experience and I figured waiting it out a generation or two was a better idea.

Fast forward to August 2008 - and my choice has narrowed (I think) to the Nokia N96 vs.the HTC Touch Pro.

As an aside - the Apple iPhone is definitely a game changing phone - a very cool device, and I would love to put my hands on one.  But I just can't understand why they don't sell both unlocked versions, and the freedom to choose any media player I like. I refuse to use iTunes, and as Jeff Atwood has remarked - Apple hardware is in reality just a dongle for all your software. Really - I'm especially confused by the locking issue and wonder why trading standards bodies haven't intervened.

Anyway - back to the shootout.

There are - broadly speaking - two groups of mobile device users. Those who want phones with some extra bits including a PDA, and those who want a PDA with a phone. I'm definitely in the "give me a phone that works" camp, and then I'll  look at the extras bits second. The Nokia N96 is in the 'phone first' category as far as I'm concerned, while the HTC Touch Pro has more of a PDA lineage.

On the Nokia side, one thing that has really impressed me is the huge improvements they've made in PC client and synchronization software over the years. The Nokia PC Suite just gets better and better. They've adopted a universal client application strategy which makes a lot of sense. Just one download for all your Nokia phones (your own and your friends' should they want to connect to your PC to transfer files, photos etc). Very easy to install, configure and use and it's worked well for me in terms of synching my contacts and diary with Outlook - which at the moment is about the limit of my PDA needs (although this could change when I finish studies and head back into full-time employment).

The Nokia OS  - both the 'Nokia OS' and Symbian versions - have always been stable and easy to use. The general consensus seems to be that Nokia's operating systems have been more stable and less power hungry when compared to Windows Mobile devices - although the gap in this respect is narrowing no doubt.

To me the only downside to Nokia has been the consistency which which they seem to produce flimsy, ugly, and generally very poor designs. On many of their models I find the buttons and plastic components feel rather cheap and certainly not as firm or positive as I think they should be in the more expensive models - especially the number pads. I was VERY close to taking the plunge on an N95 - but then heard about the N95 8GB and decided to wait. In terms of design at least the N95 8GB was a big disappointment and a step back from the N95. Very flimsy button action, a crowded central button panel and certainly not the look and feel of a 400 GBP, or 650+ USD mobile device. What a shame.

Enter the N96 - I've yet to put my hands on one - but it looks great - and if the design improvements and positive reviews so far live up to expectations this looks set to be a brilliant device. 16GB storage, quad-band, WiFi, micro-SD, GPS and lots else. I've wanted to play with a GPS system for a while as well, although not sure yet whether this will just be the "toy in the phone", or something useful.

Enter the HTC Touch Pro. I took a quick look at the HTC Touch Diamond while I was in Hong Kong a month ago - and it looked and felt pretty good. I also remember how cool it was having a good QWERTY keyboard in a mobile device during my early days with the HTC Wizard. The HTC Touch Pro has a full five row QWERTY keyboard so typing numbers will be much easier. Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro, Quad-band, WiFi, GPS and an FM radio plus lots more. I'm really looking forward to putting my hands on one of these as well to see if the build quality, keyboard, UI etc. live up to the price tag. That said, and as crazy as this sounds - the Windows Mobile dialer may still be the show stopper. I blogged before on this topic. The problem is that there isn't a way to take a telephone number from a contact, load it into the dialer, and make ad-hoc changes to the number before you dial (like dialing prefixes, dial out extensions, calling cards etc). This is a standard feature on all Nokia devices - the 'Use Number' option. On the other hand - developing software for WM is reportedly easier than for the Symbian OS - so maybe writing a custom dialer will be my first WM dev exercise.

Another deciding factor between the two is the choice in application software. Since I'm still in the 'phone first' camp - this isn't a critical area for me although I do want good support for mail, IM, VoIP and even a decent Twitter client. Initially I was concerned about Symbian support in this area - but having found both Gizmo  (a very cool universal SIP based IM and VoIP client), as well as  Fring (another very cool universal IM client with Twitter support) I think I'll be ok if I decide to go with the Nokia.

In either case these are both Q3, Q4 devices in this part of the world - so it will be interesting to watch the reviews shape up and see how the two fare before making a final decision.

In the longer term (and unless projects like OpenMoko and the Neo Freerunner really start to gain market share) - I'll almost certainly be headed over to Windows Mobile. Either I or MS will fix the dialer, and the opportunity to easily build client apps that fit nicely into LOB and other connected systems will make Windows Mobile hard to resist as a development platform for much longer.

A recent tweet led me to an Alt.Net Canada video - which was discussing the build process, build skill-sets and the complexity of maintaining a large build scripts. In the middle of the video - a guy with a ThoughtWorks t-shirt on mentioned a toolset that amongst other things, helps with database change management (from development, to testing, to release). The project is called Tarantino Database change management and it looks really good. I LOVE the solution statement... 

• Each developer using their own local database to do their development work.
• Each environment using it's own database. i.e. Development, Testing, Staging, Production
• Each developer maintains his changes locally. When the database changes are ready to commit along side the application source code, the developer follows these steps:
  • Create a change script that wraps all of the database changes into a single transactional change script. A Tool like Red Gate SQL Compare makes this a 30 second operation.
  • Save the change script in to a folder in your source tree call Update.
  • Commit the change script along with the source code that corresponds to the change.
• The continuous integration server detects changes to the source control repository than it:
  • It builds the application code.
  • It executes the applications unit tests.
  • Executes the database create task to create a new database with all of the changes that are in source control.
  • Executes the projects integration (data access) tests.
  • Marks the builds a success when all the tests pass.
• Each developer runs the build script locally after receiving new schema changes scripts from the source code repository.
• The testers, developers, change management managers execute the script using the Database Update (windows form) tool to run the database scripts against the Dev, Test, and staging environments when the environments receive their next update of the source code. 

About 7 years ago - (and still to this day), one of the most useful on-the-spot mentoring exercises I've ever had, was in database change management. A co-worker showed me the process they'd come up with at their previous employer for giving each developer a local database to develop against, using local work files to maintain their changes (SQL scripts) and then a consolidated SQL release script for combining individual changes, all numbered and versioned against the DB which was matched (and backed-up) against the release version of the application (and all under source control).

I've worked this way every since and I've always been able to track schema changes against releases. That said - not too long ago I was in an office where I was actually accused of 'working dangerously' because I refused to use the 'shared' dev database that all the other devs were using. Ok - so if NOT breaking other developers' build environments, and being able to track and even rollback on schema changes  is a dangerous practice - then feel free to call me Danger Man.

Looking forward to taking a closer look at the Tarantino bits...

I got all nostalgic and Canadian this evening - after I took my first good look at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's web site. A fantastic site - I was totally blown away. Easily as good as the BBC site if not better and a top level example of brilliant design, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript (including jQuery).

Ok - well I'll at least give Microsoft credit for posting this... but argh....... I tried in vane to find an option from within Media Player for about 20 minutes before Googling. Now that I'm using Ultramon - I want WMP to minimise to the taskbar for the screen it's currently playing on- and not on the main taskbar in mini player mode. Grrrrrr....

Having spotted a tweet on Pandora.com - and then of course discovering that Pandora.com is not available outside the U.S., I was inspired to take a proper look at Last.fm. Incredible. Download the desktop app, and the appropriate plug-in for your media player - and Last.fm will "scrobble" whatever you listen to, building up a recommended playlist; similar artists, genres etc. I wonder how Peter Gabriel's venture over at We7 will fare in the same space.

Just like Josh Smith I was looking around for some pre-rolled themes for WPF, and wondered why there was so little activity in this area. I would have thought the ability to take a professional looking UI (adjusted to match an organization's in-house style) would be a popular approach for building new business applications.

Although there's quite a bit of work involved in creating a complete set of control templates (for all the required controls; textboxes, dropdowns, checkboxes, tab controls, lists, splitters, scrollers etc.) it can  be done (and it's a great way to learn WPF - even if you only override a few). Included here is a screen shot from my 'learning' WPF application in which I created a nearly complete control template set from scratch - including a custom toolbar strip, and dropdown/context menu system. What's more I give the user some options on basic color themes and backgrounds - just like Windows Live Writer does.

Commercially available themes must surely be on the way. Maybe they're just waiting for WPF adoption to reach higher levels, or perhaps visual designer support to improve. I'd estimate that it would take about 20 person days to complete a full theme set - and that's with a good graphic designer working with a good WPF developer together to assemble the theme.