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The humble CD-ROM drive has certainly had a number of enhancements made to it. Nowadays, toasting anything from 700MB, write-once CD’s to dual-layer DVD’s and DVD RAM disks is no issue. And all that in one drive! The latest upgrade to my aged home PC is the LG GSA-H20L super multi DVD-RW drive.

Disk support is impressive, with every major format being supported: CD-R/RW, DVD-R/-R DL/-RW/+R/+R DL/+RW/RAM read and write. Being an IDE device, installation is very simple. The necessary cables are included and the instructions are reasonable. One unfortunate issue is that Nero has to be re-installed to ensure all necessary components of the software register the drive’s capabilities (no better time to get hold of the very latest version). The express edition is included with the drive, but sadly no sample media.

The one feature that makes this drive interesting is Lightscribe – the ability to turn a suitable recordable disk over and write an image to it. Currently, the disks are still expensive as they require a special surface on which the image can be burnt. Over time, the price is likely to drop as we’ve seen with all other media.

Performance of the Lightscribe system on the GSA-H20L is reasonable. The rather simple pattern pictured above took almost eight minutes to complete. That’s many orders of magnitude slower than physically writing the data portion, which the drive handles with ease. There is a 2MB buffer to ensure the usual buffer-underrun protection. Obviously the image complexity will determine the length of time taken to complete. This is definitely a good alternative to manually labelling disks or having to print labels and sticking them on.

Overall, this drive is exceptional value for money. At a cost of under ZAR 400, the LG works as advertised and is able to read and write any potential disk you may want to throw at it. The package should contain a sample disk. Lightscribe is a useful feature, but the cost of coasters will have to drop and the actual lightscribing become faster. At least there’s no more excuse for scribbling illegible text onto a CD…

The inevitable will happen: Lightscribing will increase in speed, and colour support is probably on it way, too. That keeps us consumers and gadget purveyors doing what we need to do and do best: continue getting the next feature when available

Human staff…thank goodness!

Originally uploaded by MHertenberger.

With an increasing reliance on Java code, SAP has started facing quite a number of challenges: support issues related to different Java Virtual Machines and the necessity to provide specific parameterization for performance on different operating systems. Sun’s JVM is slightly different to that of IBM, for example. Each includes the Java-compliant code, but is optimized to perform best in certain environment. To counter this, SAP is launching its own JVM to supplant its reliance on the J2EE engine.

Java Enterprise Edition 5.5 is the first available release. The primary issue with Java in an enterprise environment is the fact that the standard JVM provides no isolation. All applications run in the same space, resulting in an overall failure if a single application misbehaves. SAP’s JVM has been designed to ensure that unused processes are isolated from those running applications. Furthermore, applications are combined in smaller virtual machines to ensure that there is far less impact in the case of a failure. SAP’s name for this initiative is as scary as Microsoft’s “Always On” – they’ve named it “Always On Java“.

Now that SAP owns the application, the RDBMS and a JVM, can the branding of an operating system be far behind?

The final release of Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) is available from today. With enhanced security features, speedy startup and shutdown, this is an upgrade I’ll certainly be considering. The release of Firefox 2.0 was probably the one last issue holding back the release of Edgy. There’s also the inclusion of Tomboy, a note-taking application, F-Spot, the image manipulation application and a new release of Evolution. Upstart promises a cleaner user interface and much faster startup times, something that will be impressive indeed: the current startup time is already many times faster than my XP installation (there are quite a few startup programs that need to get going, to be fair), so any improvement would almost result in an instant-on! That’s the primary use I now have for Ubuntu: those times when you simply want to get going with mail and Internet access but can bear to wait five minutes for XP to start up.

Once I have some decent network connectivity I’ll get the latest Edgy Eft release here.

The next release has also been announced: Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

Today, only two sessions. Continuing in the same vein as yesterday, SQL 2005 is on the menu. In particular, indexing strategies and hint and tips.

SQL 2005 advanced indexing techniques placed a lot of emphasis on proper indexing and optimization of SQL statements. Some great examples and demos, but still aimed at environments with few tables, smallish databases and custom-written code. Nonetheless, the two back-to-back sessions were quite informative.

The closing keynote focused on the IOM (Infrastructure Optimization Model), that maps IT to business needs. Where have we heard that one before? Application, business and IT infrastructure components are supported by relevant software products. Demos of .Net 3 applications included the New York Times reader, an RSS-fed reader with interesting navigation aids and text-to-speech.

Some information regarding The Live initiative and mobile television.

A great event that provided a lot of information and stuff to consider!

As a welcome break to all the Microsoftness that’s enveloped me for the past two days, there’s some really great news: Firefox 2.0 has been released! Get it here.

I’ve been running RC3 for about a week now and have had no issues with it. The only Add-on I had to replace was a proxy switching tool. I easily found one supported in 2.0: FoxyProxy. There’s also a really great theme if you don’t like the standard look of Firefox. Get Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) – it gives the ‘fox a whole different look!

Just for all the Microsofties out there: Internet Explorer 7.0 is also available.

Make an informed choice

Today seemed to focus a lot more on development. Yesterday’s sessions were difficult to choose, as there were quite a few that would have been interesting. The choice today was pretty simple: avoid anything with the TLA API in the presentation title! It seemed to be a SQL 2005-themed day…

SQL 2005 procedure statement optimization was more developer-focused. There are many ways of optimizing stored procedures. Let’s leave it at that! One nice feature in SQL 2005 is the ability to save an XML of the cache execution plan and have it graphically displayed. With DSE (Dynamic String Execution), commands issued to the database can be up to 2GB in size. That’s bigger than most SQL databases should be

All up BI is a bit of a heady title for Microsoft. But, they do have some great features that make business intelligence a potentially pervasive technology at all levels of an organization. The main reason for this is their leveraging of Excel and Visio to provide end-users with a reporting view on data. With their acquisition of ProClarity, Microsoft has further strengthened its position at being able to offer business intelligence solutions to small and medium enterprises. PerformancePoint Server is a new product that should be launched in June 2007. It is Excel-based and provides planning, analytics and scorecarding functionality. Realizing that there’s more to the BI world than just Microsoft, SAP BW connections and templates are thoughtfully provided.

Disaster recovery strategies for isolated damage and human error provided a good introduction to data recovery strategies…in very small environments, though. It’s a presentation like this that makes me realize how far removed many Microsoft developers and professionals are from large-scale enterprise applications. Recovering lost transactions by attempting to recover by the millisecond…manually! Give me a break, and we’re talking single tables here with no referential integrity. That may work on a database of a few MB, but certainly not in an environment that is multi-TB and has thousands of interlinked tables. SQL is great. But the demo did little to give me the impetus to consider it for large-scale applications!

Top 10 lessons for SQL 2005 – of which lesson 1 might be: consider Oracle! Just kidding! A short rundown of the ten lessons and features in SQL 2005 is provided here in a fairly unreadable format:

1. 1. SQL Server upgrade from 2000 and 7.0 to 2005 are possible, including the ability to target 64-bit hardware and operating systems. Microsoft provides the Upgrade Advisor to assist in resolving issues on the current release before moving to the upgraded version.
2. 2. Database mirroring and snapshots provide performance benefits and software-built high-availability.
3. 3. Numerous enhancemens to T-SQL provide additional error handling within stored procedures.
4. 4. The XML data type is natively supported and should be used for structured, flat data and hierarchical data. It is senseless to implement XML data structures in a relational database if such a data structure doesn’t conform to relational principles.
5. 5. SQL 2005 provides optimistic isolation levels which permit snapshots within mirrored databases to be used for read-only access by certain users.
6. 6. Where SQL statements cannot be changed and stored procedures are potentially not changeable, indexed views allow some performance gains to be made by creating faster access to data.
7. 7. The CLR (Common Language Runtime) is an interesting addition. Using standard .NET code within Visual Studio, various operations and manipulations may be included at the database level. CLR is far more efficient than T-SQL and delivers its data in table format for further processing.
8. 8. With integrated web services, SQL 2005 can expose stored procedures as web services in SOA scenarios.
9. 9. The service broker handles asynchronous messaging and provides in-database message handling. All of the messages are queued and handled in a transactional fashion.
10. 10. Dynamic Management Views provide easier troubleshooting and additional aids for developers within SQL 2005.

Tonight, The Techie Guide to the Galaxy Party…

Stumbling onto this album is a great example of the long tail principle!

Give these guys a try…just remember: at high volume, in a residential area

More sessions than you can shake a stick at! At least, I have to say that they were all worth attending, even if the day is fairly long and concentrating becomes somewhat difficult.

Here’s a rundown of my day’s program:

Vista security tidbits highlighted some of the new features added to Vista to increase and improve security. There are no more Power Users and a few groups have been added. To increase security with regard to services, each service is now assigned its own SID. To prevent DOS attacks and other exploits, better buffer overflow protection has been included in the kernel and offline files are encrypted per user. The event viewer has been updated and includes additional information and an XML view. There are device installation restrictions to secure workstations and notebooks, whilst the Windows Defender has been integrated into the OS.

IT infrastructure security provide some highlights with regard to hacking techniques, social engineering and user ignorance. A rather useful methodology to start with the planning for effective security and counter measures was introduced. The Security Risk Management Process provides guidelines to handle and identify threats, attack vectors and vulnerabilities. Proper patch management and compliance management must be considered. The danger of keyloggers seems to be on the increase…

SQL-Server always on – a rather dangerous statement to make for any Microsoft product, in my opinion! In any case, the new features in SQL Server 2005 include the ability to mirror databases and implement a high-available solution, using only software components. Restoration of single database pages is possible, whilst Microsoft is still unable to supply a database engine capable of indexing data whilst in an online state. This functionality is available only in certain circumstances. A couple of the Always On technologies include improved failover clustering, database mirroring, log shipping, peer-to-peer replication and improved backup and restore operations. The database now maintains checksums on database pages. Microsoft is even getting in on the UNIX act by finally providing mount points!

Building the data mart highlighted the capabilities of data warehousing functionality in SQL Server 2005. There has been some progress made in the binding together of ETL (extraction, transformation and loading) tools to provide a unified toolbox and interface. The graphical wizards and integration with .NET technologies make report creation and manipulation fairly easy. Analysis Services provide functionality to build cubes and the cube browser may be used by developers to troubleshoot and refine solutions. Report Services provide all the necessary wizards and painters for report generation.

Governance and compliance had the most ominous title, but proved to be the most interactive session of all. Highlighting security issues (keyloggers, again) and various initiatives to legislate cybercrimes in both South Africa and the rest of the world, this was certainly informative. There is a huge onus on keepers of data to ensure the privacy and appropriate use of such information. The draft POPI (Protection of Personal Information) bill will affect direct marketing companies: there is a focus on eight key elements: processing limitations, purpose specifications, further processing restrictions, information quality issues, openess, security safeguards, individual participation and accountability. The bill is expected to be approved and enforced within the next eight months or so. A new commission is expected to be formed to enforce the bill within all regions of South Africa.

DB mirroring best practices was a follow-up to the Always on session somewhat earlier. Focusing entirely on database mirroring principles and options available within SQL Server 2005, the session gave some excellent insight into the protection of databases. SQL Server 2005 supports both synchronous, as well as asynchronous mirroring. A principal and mirror server are setup, ideally with a reliable network connection between them. Through the use of a witness server it is possible to create a software-based high-availability solution with automatic failover. A DB monitor provides some feedback as to the amount of data that had been queued prior to a failure in the principal server. That gives some indication as to how much data may have been lost during a switch-over when running with an asynchronous setup.

Mobile development practices showed off the Mobile Client Software Factory. This is a set of libraries and routines specifically catering for mobile application development, and is freely downloadable. Various interesting modules are provided to assist developers coding for different mobile devices, including the orientation control which handles device-dependent features such as resolution and screen orientation. The connection monitor assists developers in determining how a mobile device is currently connected (GSM, ActiveSync, WiFi) and queues data for later transmission to a server in the case that a connection is not present. AUTD (Always Up To Date) technology is promised for inclusion in a future SP release of Exchange.

Tonight, comedy with John Vlismas and sci-fi action with X-Men 3.

Alonso is the world champion for a second year running with Felipe Massa having the honour of being the first Brazilian to win a home Grand Prix since Ayrton Senna. Michael Schumacher’s last race showed his determination as he tried to get back a podium finish after having dropped to last place. He almost managed that, too!

That was the season. A wait until March. Enough time to select a new driver to back…the question is: who?