I have moved my Blog!

Old Site: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/JamesHip/

New Site: http://JamesHip.blogspot.com/

Reason: I can now use Windows Live Writer to write my blogs, instead of manually creating an html page in Microsoft Visual Studio!  Also, the formatting was being automatically changed, thus rendering my final output almost illegible.

Method: I had to move each item manually!  I discovered how to make my past blogs appear as though they were written on their original post date, but I couldn’t make the comments appear that way.  It took me 7 days to do it, because there was 7 pages of blogs to move over; each page was about 20 blogs.

Result: This will be my final entry at GeekZone.  Thanks, Mauricio, for being a great service when I needed you.

Thoughts from a Training Junkie

Thoughts from a Training Junkie

PASS Camp	What It Was Professional Association of SQL Server - Code Camp Whitireia Polytechnic Porirua, New Zealand Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th December 2008 What I Learned Adam Cogan is a barrel of laughs Dr Greg Low is the fount of all knowledge People are interested in learning about Certification Adam has top 10 lists for everything Nathan Pitcher is good at getting people to volunteer their time Adrian Englebrecht is good at getting people to honour their committments
Live Services Jump Start	What It Was Live Services (Mesh & Azure) Training Four Points Sheraton by Darling Harbour Sydney, Australia Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th December 2008 What I Learned Dr Neil Roodyn is the fount of all knowledge This is bleeding edge stuff SQL Data Services is NOT a relational database in the cloud Microsoft still haven't worked out a marketing/pricing model for this stuff yet This is a direct result of the success of Google's offerings Android is Google's operating system for smart phones Azure is still in Beta; developers are encouraged to make use of up to 50GB capacity; we are encouraged to make any recommendations we deem appropriate
Book Review	Title The Rational Guide To... Sub-Title Building Technical User Communites Author Dr. Greg Low, Microsoft Regional Director Publisher Rational Press, 2007 Pages 122 Price US$24.99 Description In this guide you'll learn how to... Build Successful Technical User Communites Raise Funds For Your User Groups Attract New Members Contents Part I - Overview People, Not Technology Something for Everyone Finding Speakers Tried and True Part II - Starting and Growing User Groups Pizza Does Not Define a User Group Don't Reinvent the Wheel Recruiting Members Content and Handouts Part III - User Group Meetings and Conferences Using Technology Recruiting Volunteers Conducting Meetings Tips for Presenters Part IV - Legal and Finance The Fine Print Funding Part V - Extras Review A great little ripper.  I must confess, that a lot of things happening around me currently all seem to be converging on community as the way of building relationships and getting things done in this technological and impersonal 21st century.  This is a timely book, not just for technical communities either. Highly recommended.
Situations Vacant	Infrastructure & Corporate Supply Manager Supply chain complexity Gain exposure to broader Telecom business as you build on your career through involvement in a range of commercially focussed projects. Experienced in vendor management, broaden your commercial experience in our diverse and change rich environment. Manage performance and commercial management relationships with vendors ensuring the delivery of optimal total cost and performance outcomes. Your finely tuned commercial negotiation skills will be drawn upon to initialise discussions, agree terms and conditions and put contracts in place. Manage the relationship with suppliers and our internal stakeholders continually seeking improvement opportunities whilst achieving effectiveness and efficiency for our business. You'll be comfortable dealing in the vendor management space and have gained experience in large commercial environments. Your strengths lie in commercial acumen, problem solving and negotiation skills. With previous experience under your belt you've no problem managing relationships extending across multiple business areas and multiple business owners. You'll be tertiary qualified ideally with commercial/legal background. You may have some IT vendor management experience or you may be keen to extend your skills into the ICT vendor management space. Infrastructure Supply Chain, in conjunction with various business owners, manages the myriad of suppliers such as hotels to larger complex commercial businesses ensuring we have the necessary infrastructure to carry out your day to day job. There hasn't been a better time to join this committed team and contribute to its evolution. So, are you ready for the challenge? Apply today Operational Delivery Manager - Release Manager Places to go, people to meet… Time to take a step up and really go places, working on one of our biggest ICT accounts. A major account of huge value, this will get you heading in the direction that you've being planning. It's not for the light hearted though, you won't just participate in change; you're expected to influence and lead thinking too! Get your kick out of delivering quality solutions as you anticipate your client's every need. Closely aligned to a Service Delivery Manager, you'll be the operations and support service champion and will orchestrate the technical teams to provide optimum technical and support solutions. It's not a 9 to 5, we work around our customer to ensure uninterrupted service, and flexibility is a must. You'll be in your element alongside the customer, building the type of partnership that becomes invaluable to them. Innovative by nature, you certainly see the value in effective service and can share that worth with our broad virtual team. Combine your ICT project management and exceptional communication and org skills to manage service expectations and drive operational outcomes. Providing a breadth of services unparalleled in the New Zealand market, Gen-i is NZ's ICT market leader. We are a dedicated team helping our client to generate greater value from their IT and telecommunications spend, while managing the transition from legacy networks and systems to converged technologies that will meet their needs today and beyond. So get ready to go places and apply today. Strategic Sourcing Manager Supply chain complexity Deliver some of our most complex purchasing agreements and gain exposure to several parts of the broader Telecom business as you build on your career through involvement in some of the most complex, leading edge technology projects in town. Multi-million dollar sourcing deals and complex stakeholder management will keep you busy in this autonomous and results driven role. Manage the commercial aspects of various supplier relationships ensuring the delivery of optimal total cost and performance outcomes. Your finely tuned commercial negotiation skills will be drawn upon to initialise discussions, agree terms and conditions and to put contracts in place. Manage relationships with our suppliers and internal stakeholders continually seeking improvement opportunities achieving effectiveness and efficiency for Telecom and our suppliers. You're a seasoned veteran in running large end-to-end and complex ICT commercial purchase processes (some in excess of $100M), from RFI through to Q&As and recommendations. Your ICT knowledge will extend across the entire buying solution of Hardware and Software and the various aspects of their integration. Your strengths lie in commercial acumen, problem solving and negotiation skills and you know how to manage sourcing processes and the stakeholders involved to mitigate risk to the organisation and manifest positive outcomes. In addition, you will be well versed in vendor management having gained this experience in multifaceted, enterprise environments and you've no problem managing relationships extending across multiple business units and multiple business owners. Infrastructure Supply Chain, in conjunction with various business owners, manages the myriad of suppliers to both support our Heritage and Next Generation Network (NGN) and various other suppliers to ensure we have the necessary infrastructure to supply products and services to our customers and carry out our day to day jobs. There hasn't been a better time to join this committed team and contribute to its evolution. Are you ready for the challenge? Apply today

[dotnet] MCPD upgrade exams from MCSD

Kiaora Shane, The greatest piece of advice I received was: don’t do it!  Do the individual exams instead.  When I attempted the 70-551, I failed.  Ended up doing all 3 exams separately (70-536, 70-528, 70-547).  Greater coverage, greater understanding.  Unless you’re a genius.  For those of us of average intelligence, not a good choice.

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From: dotnet@dot.net.nz [mailto:dotnet@dot.net.nz] On Behalf Of s ~
Sent: Tuesday, 10 June 2008 4:42 p.m.
To: dotnet@dot.net.nz
Subject: [dotnet] MCPD upgrade exams from MCSD

Fellas,

has anyone sat either of exams 70-553 or 70-554? If so, do you have any study material you can sell second hand, or can you point me towards some study material? There are guides and practice exams available for the other regular exams in the MCPD range, but there seems to be a scarcity of anything for the upgrade exams.

cheers

shane

[dotnet] Visual Studio Database Projects in 2005 or 2008

Ah!  You caught me out; yes, we primarily do single-developer projects.

• Still, I find the Database Project useful not only as a source repository of migration scripts, but also:
• The list of Database References helps keep the 3 environments handy when wanting to apply a script to any particular environment.
• And, when you right-click a database object in the Server Explorer and click Generate Create Script to Project = very handy.

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From: dotnet@dot.net.nz [mailto:dotnet@dot.net.nz] On Behalf Of Andrew Shearer
Sent: Thursday, 22 May 2008 4:03 p.m.
To: dotnet@dot.net.nz
Subject: [dotnet] RE: visual studio database projects in 2005 or 2008 -->

Do you have a whole team working on this migration script, or just you?

From: dotnet@dot.net.nz [mailto:dotnet@dot.net.nz] On Behalf Of James Hippolite
Sent: Thursday, 22 May 2008 3:51 p.m.
To: dotnet@dot.net.nz
Subject: [dotnet] RE: visual studio database projects in 2005 or 2008

-->

I use Database Projects; here’s how:

• Each week I create a new migration script e.g. Update20080523.sql.
• All database changes made to DEV, are scripted and saved to this file.
• I test and re-test it in DEV.  Obviously this requires some smarts around whether to attempt to recreate objects or update data (IF EXISTS…).
• I apply it to TEST, usually only once.
• Finally, during Friday’s change window, I apply it to PROD; definitely only once.
• It helps to place a comment at the top of the file referencing the changed objects.

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From: dotnet@dot.net.nz [mailto:dotnet@dot.net.nz] On Behalf Of Andrew Shearer
Sent: Thursday, 22 May 2008 3:31 p.m.
To: dotnet@dot.net.nz
Subject: [dotnet] visual studio database projects in 2005 or 2008 -->

Who here actually uses these and finds them practical?? Sure, the source control aspect would be great but all i see is this hugely outweighed by trying to manage schema and data changes in a sequential fashion and the major problems that arise if that isn’t done correctly. We don’t roll out the entire database with each product release, but simply the iterative changes that have been made. Is that where we’re going wrong in terms of how a database project works? If you release just the incremental schema and data changes like we do, how are you maintaining this sequence in your database project ‘change scripts’?

thanks

[dotnet] Test-Driven Development

Kiaora Zac,

I’m going to get ridiculed by true, OO developers like Owen, but I’ll give you my 10c. Having read the sum total of 1 MSDN article about it (and numerous Geek group discussions), I decided to give it a try. I found it easy to install and easy to use.  However, it didn’t fit my design methodology.  Let me elaborate. I use Strongly-Typed Datasets (instead of ORM) and don’t use MVC.  I like declarative programming and minimalist event-driven coding.  I code from the data model rather than the class definitions.  Maybe I should use MVC, but because I don’t, then I found TDD was of limited use to me. When I changed an interface (e.g. modified a stored proc), then TDD was very good at reminding me that I needed to flow through the changes to the BLL.  What it wasn’t any good at was helping me to pin-point everywhere in the Presentation layer where I’d used that ObjectDataSource (I guess Find All would do it). Having just read Owens response (I might have guessed he’d get in first), I agree that he’s top-down and I’m bottom-up.  I don’t have an issue with that.

Blessings,
James Hippolite
Senior .NET Developer – Workgroup Solutions Team

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From: dotnet@dot.net.nz [mailto:dotnet@dot.net.nz] On Behalf Of Zac Seth
Sent: Thursday, 20 March 2008 1:07 p.m.
To: dotnet@dot.net.nz
Subject: [dotnet] Test-Driven Development -->

Hi All, I have an early Friday arvo question for you: Are you/your organisation:

1. Currently using Test-Driven Development (TDD),
2. Hoping/planning to use TDD,
3. Not planning to use or not interested in TDD.

For those of you that are using TDD, how are you finding it? What are the pros and cons that you find using it in your environment? Would you ever consider developing without it? How painful was it to transition into? If you have any other thoughts on the subject I’d love to hear them. Cheers, Zac Seth  |  Developer  |  Netfinity Limited
phone: +64 9 308 5494  |  mob: +64 21 310 308
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