.Net Rocks [via Sells Brothers -- Chris's Home on the Web]

I didn't know this site existed. So cool !! This week's show features Chris Sells

Water: Simplified Web Services Programming Language

SD Magazines's DevTalk newsletter's november issue talks of a new Web Services programming language, Water.

Water™ is a new Web services and general-purpose programming language that allows you to program in ConciseXML syntax. It is an open, object-oriented language designed to simplify the creation of new Web services. Water is extremely flexible and adheres to a "Learn Once, Use Everywhere" philosophy where data, logic, and presentation have a uniform representation. Water leverages your existing investment in processes, tools and platforms, and lets you incrementally adopt a Web service architecture. A thin-client development environment is freely available and services are easily deployed on a standard industry platform.

You can try out the Steam IDE and the runtime engine from Clear Methods for non-commercial use. Water's available for most platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac. I tried it out and am really impressed by the simplicity it offers.

RSS as Web Service

After reading an article by Timothy Appnel, I am left wondering if RSS can be considered a kind of web service (or is it a web service and I quite didn't knew it). It does follow RESTian approach. If any of you know the answer to this or have some ideas, do let me know?

MSDE 2000

MSDN has a new article on how to get MSDE, install it, and use it as your application's database engine: integrate it with Access or SQL Server, manage it with OSQL, implement security and authentication, and do backups and replication. MSDE 2000 does not provide a human interface like SQL Server does with Enterprise Manager/Query analyzer. Users interact with MSDE 2000 through the application in which it is embedded. This article points to resources on how to interact with MSDE server and how to manage it with OSQL.


There is also a GUI tool at The Code Project website which you can download. The source code is also available. I have tried this tool and it's a pretty decent one and allows you to edit your tables, run queries, execute stored procs etc.

I am thrilled

Some months back, I volunteered to betatest (review) HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide, Fifth Edition by Elizabeth Castro. Well, yesterday I received an autographed copy from Liz. And Guess what, my name is among those credited on the Special Thanks page. This is happening for the first time for me and as you can see I am thrilled. Thank you Liz, for this great oppurtunity.

Building Secure ASP.NET Applications: Authentication, Authorization, and Secure Communication

Microsoft have released reference guide that presents a practical, scenario-driven approach to designing and building secure ASP.NET applications for Windows 2000 and version 1.0 of the .NET Framework. Download this guide as a PDF, here. It's a must read for any web developer/web architect developing ASP.NET pages/web services with .Net Framework. So cool !!!

GoogleShare

Steve Johnson has come up with a cool idea, Googleshare.

Search Google for a specific word, and get back the total number of results. Then you search that set for someone's name. Divide the second number by the first, and you get a percentage that shows you how much the person "owns" the word. Call it semantic mindshare. Or lexical penetration. Or whatever.

And guess what, Rael has a Googleshare implementation using Google API to do just that. All you need is your Google API key.

W3C defines Web Services

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published its first working draft of the Web Services Architecture document and the fourth of Web Services Architecture Requirements. W3C also published the first working draft of the Web Services Glossary. It would be very interesting to see how far the consortium goes with the glossary.

Web Services Architecture Requirements - W3C Working Draft
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-wsa-reqs-20021114
Web Services Architecture - W3C Working Draft
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-ws-arch-20021114/
Web Services Glossary - W3C Working Draft
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-ws-gloss-20021114/

Unleashing the Ideavirus

Finally, I've been able to put up a small review of Seth Godin's book, Unleashing the Ideavirus in the book reviews section. Actually I finished reading this book sometime back and was trying to find time to write this small review, which I got today. This is the first marketing book that I've ever read and Guess what, I liked it. The book is also available online.

W3C recommends XForms

W3C has published the XForms specification as a candidate recommendation. From the W3C Recommendation:

XForms is an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. By splitting traditional XHTML forms into three parts—XForms model, instance data, and user interface—it separates presentation from content, allows reuse, gives strong typing—reducing the number of round-trips to the server, as well as offering device independence and a reduced need for scripting.
XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML or SVG.

Related Articles:
W3C Advances XForms 1.0
Captured in XML

Web Services: Freedom of choice

From the Don Box's interview in the MSDN magazine:

MSDN Magazine: If COM is Love, what are Web Services?
Don Box: XML and Web Services are about freedom—specifically, freedom of choice.

Bill Gates bullish on India

Bill gates seems to be very bullish on India. After pledging $100 million towards AIDS spread/prevention causes through his charity, he now says that Microsoft will invest $400 million in boosting education, business partnerships, localisation efforts and software development in India. This is the largest set of investments ever done by Microsoft outside US. Bill Gates and Microsoft see the oppurtunity that India provides with billions of home still unconnected (and without desktops) and the remaining connected ones with Microsoft OS's and softwares. Linux is still entering the Indian market and I guess some part of this $400 million will be used to compete against it.

Analysts say Microsoft needs India's vast army of software developers to make cheap and reliable software based on its Windows operating systems to meet competition from Linux which is a free, easily modifiable rival.

Microsoft will also be releasing the localized(Hindi) versions of Microsoft XP and Office XP softwares.

Read all about Gates India visit here: Gates in India.

Get content-to-code ratio of your blog [via Kiruba.com]

A cool application, GetContentSize, that calculates the ratio of text content to total page size for a given Web page. To do that it strips all HTML, JavaScript and CSS code and then determines how much of the document is actual text.

Atlast Commenting added

In the past, some of you had complained about lack of Commenting system on our blog. Guess, we were lazy to implement that. Well, here's it atlast. We are using commenting system by Haloscan. So Happy Commenting !!

Why is Pakistan still called a Democracy?

I don't understand, why Pakistan is still being called a Democracy. Economist writes after the Military Dictator, General Musharraf, postponed the opening of the country's new parliament.

IN MOST democratic countries, governments are made and unmade in parliament. Not so in Pakistan. A month after the general election of October 10th returned a hopelessly fractured parliament, there is still no knowing when parliament will actually meet to approve a prime minister.

After the most farcical elections in Pakistan, We are seeing a hung parliament. General Musharraf has distorted the entire constitutional and legal process in the country in such a manner that Pakistan can no longer be called a Democracy. And he is not done yet. With Benazir Bhutto's, Pakistan People's Party and Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) party which is an alliance of six islamic parties striking a deal (that's a different story altogether) to keep General backed Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid away from the power, he has gone ahead and delayed the start of the parliament by atleast a week. And even if this state of hung parliament is resolved, one thing is clear, Pakistans new government cannot be formed without the help of MMA, and the real fun starts there. Pakistan needs US backing and financial support and I'm sure US won't like talking to an Islamic-Secular alliance(which talks of expelling US forces from Pakistan) in its fight against Al-Qaeda and terrorism. So what are General's choices? Promise for another Elections in three year's time period, til then enjoy being a dictator. Who cares, The World's still calling Pakistan a DEMOCRACY.

Holy Grail of .Net is out

Essential .NET, Volume I: The Common Language Runtime, authored by Don Box and Chris Sells is out. This is one book you can't miss having in your bookshelf if you are into .Net. Read a sample chapter here. Cool !!!

Calling Bangalore

Good article on R&D boom (and in general software) in Bangalore, India. Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka, a state in Southern India. Also known as the Garden city it boasts of itself as the Silicon Valley of the east and true so with almost all the big software/IT companies presence there.

Few good articles on Web Services

Understanding DIME and WS-Attachments, " This article explores the rationale behind attachments, including the key ideas around packaging and message delineation, and then looks at how DIME and WS-Attachments arose from these ideas"
Web Service Development Kit (Tech Preview), "Detailed walkthrough of the WSDK Tech Preview for WS-Security, WS-Routing, and DIME protocols. Provides sample code repackaged for VS .NET, some extensions of sample code for more realistic scenarios, and tips on how to avoid 'InvalidSecurityToken' faults when working with X.509 Certificates." [via Sam Gentile's Weblog]

Happy Diwali

A very Happy and Prosperous Diwali to all of you. May this festival bring happiness, joy and good health to everyone. Greetings from both of us.

Monica and Deepak

Web services: Look before you leap

A nice article with some good advice but I wonder how many will adhere to it.

Bill Gates India visit

Bill Gates shattered the urban myth that 32 % of Microsoft employees are of Indian-origin. Here's an excerpt of an interview with Bill Gates published in The Times of India:

"TOI: The urban myth is that 32 per cent of Microsoft employees are of Indian-origin, but that seems a stretch.
Bill Gates: Yes, that's too much. But if you took just our engineering departments then it's about 20 per cent.
TOI: That's still huge.
Bill Gates:Yes, that's huge and that's just the engineering department. It's a good-sized community. Hey, they even have a cricket community. But I will say the Indian restaurants in Seattle could be better. But we are working on that."