A Siebel CRM upgrade project typically consists of numerous iterations even before the actual development and bug fixes take effect. It is wise to follow the age old adage “measure twice, cut once”. It makes practical sense not to upgrade the development instance until the upgrade team is absolutely sure of the upgrade process itself, since there will be slight… Read more
PowerShell isn't a conventional language, though it draws inspiration widely. Many people learn it, and use it, best by collecting snippets, or one-liners, and adapting them for use. Michael Sorens provides the second in a series of collections of general-purpose one-liners to cover most of what you'll need to get useful scripting done.… Read more
Despite all the advances in software tools, there seem to be several enduring truths about software development. By understaning these 'laws', Ziv's law, Humphrey's Law and Conway's Law, for example, you can remove some of the mystery of the process. Al Noel discusses these and other laws that seem to apply generally to the art of programming.… Read more
Traditionally, Database Deployment is a process that isn't associated with smiles, bonhomie and tranquility. There are a number of challenges that make the task more difficult. Alex reviews the common techniques for deploying new databases and upgrading existing ones, and their flaws, and argues the advantages of an automated, incremental, script-based approach to deployments… Read more
Simple-Talk's Melanie Townsend sits down with Red Gate's Matt Lee to talk about their newest adventure in cloud-based monitoring for SQL Server: migrating their popular SQL Monitor tool to run as a hosted service on Amazon's cloud platform, AWS… Read more
So how easy are you going to find putting websites in the Cloud? We decided to ask Bud, who has loads of IT experience, but is a stranger to the cloud, to create a minimal 'Hello world', LightSwitch application and attempt to deploy it; first to Amazon Web Services, then Elastichost and finally to Windows Azure. He documented the struggle.… Read more
We wondered how easy it would be for the average developer to use one of the cloud services to put up one of the very simplest of ASP.NET MVC applicastions, NerdDinner, complete with database. We asked Bud, who turned into an intrepid explorer of the Amazon to show us the way.… Read more
AWS's DNS service, called Route 53, is a reliable and cost effective service for managing your domain. It has a simple RESTful API for managing them in the command-line.… Read more
OpenStack is an open-source cloud platform based on Linux. It aims to allow organisations to run cloud services on standard hardware, with interoperability between cloud services such as Amazon AWS.… Read more
Eucalyptus is a rival to the open-source OpenStack as a software platform for private infrastructure as a service (IaaS) clouds. Like OpenStack, it supports Amazon AWS APIs, and so is ideal for hybrid clouds. Is support from Amazon going to make it more attractive to paying customers?… Read more
Beanstalk provides a good way of deploying an application in the AWS infrastructure because you have the full control of underlying resources and you only pay for those that you use. It also supports Git, making development of AWS Elastic Beanstalk applications faster.… Read more
Migrating applications from physical servers to a new set of virtual machines on Amazon Web Services (AWS) has proved to be a rewarding experience. It was more expensive than expected but has proved to perform well, and given a means of rapid scaling up horizontally and/or vertically when required … Read more
Jonas Stawski takes you, step by step, through a sample project that demonstrates how to create an application that can get GeoSpatial coordinate data for addresses within a SQL Server database, and then use that data to locate those addresses on a Bing Map on a website as pushpins, either grouped or ungrouped: And there is full source-code too, in the speech-bubble.… Read more
Dr. Masha Petrova compresses, into a small space, much good advice on networking with other professional people. She draws from her own experience as a technical expert to provide a detailed checklist of things you should and shouldn't do at conferences or tradeshows to be a successful 'networker'. As usual, she delivers sage advice with a dash of humour.… Read more
Jaap's Practical Guide to Exchange Server 2010 draws upon all that experience to deliver an easy-to-use guide to this latest platform, full of useful examples and top tips for SysAdmins, both new and experienced.… Read more
Compliant Database DevOps
Standardize team-based development
Automate database deployments
Monitor performance and availability
Protect and preserve data
