February 2008 - Posts

• SSIS Frustration? Enter Pentaho

  For awhile now I have been wrestling with SSIS. I don't like it at all so much to the point that the majority of my nightly packages are still on SQL 2000 as I have been unsuccessful in porting them to SQL 2005 SSIS. A little while ago I went searching for alternatives. There are quite a few out there, some having very good reviews. I don't have a list of what ones I looked at as this was a couple of months ago. The one that did stand out was Pentaho. Not only does it do everything and more than SSIS, but specific verions are available as open source. Namely, the Pentaho Data Integration is available as open source. This is the main ETL tool that they have and is written in Java. It is very mature and has a wealth of documentation that accompanies it. This was the deciding factor for me. Originally I was using RhinoETL, but the only problem was the lack of documentation. This was ok for simple tasks, but once I had to do more complex data processes, and my lack of knowledge with boo it became more difficult to stay with RhinoETL. Ayende has a great tool, it just needs to simmer for a little while I think. I would definately consider going back once it has matured a little more. In addition to the great documentation, Pentaho Data Integration also has a visual designer for creating data workflows. Here is one screen shot of a simple process that exports to a csv, uploads to a remote FTP and then send's an e-mail upon success or failure of the task.You can see a few of the tasks available to you on the left sidebar. Everything in Pentaho is in a propietary Package Repository on the server so if you mess up an export you can rollback the repository to previous versions. Very nice feature! Here are some more screenshots of the interface: Very basic export with email   E-Mail configuration window: Options for attaching logs to the e-mail to send: This is just barely scratching the surface of the processes you can perform with this tool. The Data Integration server and clients are all available under open source liscences. As well as access to the forums and all the accompying documentation. I will post more on the topic later. It has just been a very helpful tool and I think other people need to see some alternatives to SSIS. Posted Feb 27 2008, 10:19 AM by schambers with no comments

• What happened to you've been HAACKED?

  I normally don't write blog posts directly at one person. I don't like to be confrontational, and I have professional courtesy. That being said, please take this post as constructive criticism rather than being negative. Over the last couple of months I have noticed a steady decline in the broad coverage of topics and knowledge put forth from your blog Phil, With recent posts such as Blocking Direct Access To Views in ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET MVC Update, Testing Routes In ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET MVC Design Philosophy; I am more than a little disappointed with how biased the topics are. Not all of your posts are about ASP.NET MVC, but a large majority are. More then half of them in the last couple of months. I understand that you are a new Microsoft employee and are excited about a new framework that you are working on and are trying to get feedback from the community. I am not so much disappointed in your blog as I am with Microsoft. It is clear that Microsoft has created a magnificent MVC framework and at the same time, played their cards right with the preview release of ASP.NET MVC and got the right people to spread information into the .NET community through various mediums. It was played very nicely I must admit. Now, Phil's blog has more subcribers than probably every single blogger on LosTechies combined. I think it was around 8000 subscribers the last time I looked. I know that before I got into a lot of open source frameworks and contributions, one of the first blogs I started reading on a regular basis was Phil's. This was because of MVC oriented posts years ago, TDD related posts as well as content about SubText, open source etc... I wonder if a lot of other developers go down the same route and find the same blogs. If so, then I question the motivation behind these posts. This is a little extreme however as I would never presume to say that Microsoft is asking you to make these posts Phil, but this I do not know. Please correct me if I am totally wrong of this presumption. I'm sorry Phil, I couldn't hold it in any longer and I feel like I need to vent on this. I am frustrated that yet another avenue for great agnostic content from the open source community has now been dominated by Microsoft tools and frameworks. It's nothing against you and I still plan on reading your blog. I will admit however that when I see posts appear on "you've been HAACKED!", I do not have the same enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of another post from your blog that I used to. Now, with constructive criticism you need to offer a solution otherwise there is nothing to construct on. So my constructive criticism is this: Blog about what you think is most relevant but try to do so without being biased. I know probably all you are working on is ASP.NET MVC, but perhaps you can do more MVC agnostic posts rather then completely gearing your blog towards Microsoft related content. As I said at the beginning of my post, I really don't like posts targeted at one specific person but I really feel like someone had to say something. Maybe I am way out in left field but I had to vent some of this. Posted Feb 26 2008, 06:28 PM by schambers with 19 comment(s) Filed under: microsoft mvc

• How can Open Source Software compete?

  I admit, that title is misleading and intriguing at the same time. I recently received a copy of Visual Studio 2008 compliments of Microsoft and a fellow colleague. Thanks Joe! After installing Visual Studio and playing with it for awhile I took a look through the other contents of the packaging. There was an informative pamphlet with factoids about the 2008 suite of products (Server, Studio and SQL). Along with this was a print out thanking me for trying 2008 and making note of the "Biggest launch event of 2008". After going to http://www.heroeshappenhere.com/ and browsing through what seems more like an agenda for a major rock tour it got me thinking enough to post about it. Here is this extremely large orchestration of marketing information steamrolling across the United States. Many dates have two cities on the same day, and all about 3 products from Microsoft. I am flabbergasted by how massive of a marketing engine Microsoft is commanding. I heard about launch events in the past, attended a couple in Orlando here and there but after checking out that website it is amazing as to how much content they are pumping into the community in a single day. They probably have more technology and sound equipment than a Kiss concert and a NASA shuttle launch at one of these things. All of this for computer software. This is amazing to me. It goes to show that Microsoft is gaining more developers and more steam each and every session at each and every one of these events. How in the world can Open Source alternatives EVER hope to keep up with this momentum or even surpass it? Simply put, It cannot. There will ALWAYS be more developers that are aligning with Microsoft tools and frameworks then any other open source alternative hands down. I don't care how easy to use your open source tool is, or how useful it is to the community or how good the documentation is. The bottom line is that Microsoft is simply playing with larger numbers. Now, this is a prime example of quantity over quality. Just because they are feeding 80% of the development community doesn't mean that it's quality, not by any measure. Most common developers are still hard coding SQL statements or creating C# applications with wizards. I will probably get blasted for that last statement but I'm sorry, it is a fact and quite sickening to see. The interesting part about the impending nasty comments is the fact that because Microsoft has a much larger following that certain developers, not all but some, will defend Microsoft blindly without any measure of comparison. That part is almost as amazing to me as the massive launch event that gets more attention then some open source projects get in their lifetime. Bottom line is, if you are reading this or are subscribed to the LosTechies feed you probably have a good idea of the slew of other alternatives out there to Microsoft and you know as well as I do that there is no possible way our kick ass open source tools can compete with Microsoft on their level. Our only hope is to show them the path, continue our meditations and hope that they will too become enlightened. Such is the path of the Bodhisattva :) This is definitely one of my more frustration driven posts but I'm sick of walking on egg shells around these crowds. Now if you will, please blast away just watch the language please. Posted Feb 21 2008, 08:22 PM by schambers with 1 comment(s)

• Presenting to Students

  It has been an extremely long time since I posted last. I apologize to everyone and I promise to get back in the groove soon. I have an amazing amount of stuff going on lately. Looking to buy a house, planning a wedding, a newborn son and training new people at work and working on two side jobs, needless to say I have been stretched a little thin. There is light at the end of the tunnel though. Anyways, The topic of the post is presenting to students. I will be doing a presentation at a high school in the district at work to a class of technology help desk students. These are kids that are pretty much already technology savvy way before the age that we were first introduced to computers. I will be giving them a run-down on programming along with a couple of points that they will be quizzed on at a later date. After mentioning this to Joe Ocampo, He noted that high school kids are always interested in game development. I went over the codeplex and downloaded the WickedGames open source game engine and the QuickStart Game engine so I could have some code to show them. The only thing that kinda stinks with the sample code is the fact that I am presenting for VMWare Fusion on my mac and apparently DirectX support in VMWare is pretty lacking at the moment. Either way, I'm sure they have seen running 3d games before so I will show them the code and go into a couple of different topics.  Some of the other topics I will be presenting are along the lines of: The history of programming, giving a quick timeline of programming languages The cycle of developing a computer program with Agile Methodologies Programming techniques such as TDD/BDD How to learn programming with college, self learning and improvement Other topics TBA After thinking about it for awhile I noticed that it was hard for me to describe how I got to the point I am at now. Every person follows a different learning path proceeding forward and it's hard to describe. I thought it might be easy to stress that every person learns at their own pace in their own way and then tell the students the path that I took to get where I am currently at in the learning process. Above all, I want to stress an importance on constant, continuous learning as this is the key. What does everyone else think of trying to describe the entire art of programming from languages to methologies in a little over an hour and a half without making their heads spin? =)  Posted Feb 17 2008, 08:41 PM by schambers with 1 comment(s)