Sunday, February 19, 2006

KPI Hell

The Management Cockpit �War Room� at Iglo-Ola (Unilever Belgium): An Interview with Iglo-Ola�s Financial Controller Ghislain Malcorps

The flight deck concept taken to new levels of complexity.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

71-528 Study Group Transcript - 2005-11-02

71-528 Study Group Transcript - 2005-11-02

It's law to include on goverment sites things like ALT tags etc for accessibility I do believe

AndrewCoates says:

Certainly is in the US

AndrewCoates says:

There's an accessability checker in the IDE that tells you whether you've complied

AndrewCoates says:

the rules are different in the US from Europe

michaelmileos says:

thats cool

AndrewCoates says:

In the US it's called something like "Section 508"

tathamoddie says:

localization: http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/anoras/archive/2005/02/13/54271.aspx

tathamoddie says:

Globalization is a process of identifying all the parts of your application that need to be different for respective languages and separate them from the core application.

tathamoddie says:

Localization

tathamoddie says:

Localization is process of creating and configuring your application for a specific language.

Study Group for 71-528. 31 October 2005

Study Group for 71-528. 31 October 2005

Deadeye (~dead_eye_@218.214.2.XXX) has joined the conversation.

mikemileos says:

hi dan

Deadeye says:

hey

Deadeye says:

what have i missed?

mikemileos says:

we were just wrapping it up

Deadeye says:

:(

mikemileos grins

mikemileos says:

nah, we just started

Sunday, February 05, 2006

I need more exams?!?

Vishal Joshi's Tangent: "MCDBA Upgrade to MCITP Database Administrator
In the new family to become MCITP Database Administrator it is required to achieve MCTS SQL Server 2005 Credential by taking Exam 70-431 and then by passing two PRO exams 70-443 and 70-444.
For folks who are already MCDBA this three exam path becomes two exam path...
An MCDBA will have to achieve MCTS SQL Server 2005 credential by passing Exam 70-431 and then can take & pass an upgrade exam 70-447... So basically instead of passing the two exam 70-443 and 70-444, MCDBAs will have to pass just one exam.

This was a quick snapshot of SQL Server 2005 credential upgrade... Now lets talk about Visual Studio 2005 credential upgrades..."

Configuration API Improvements in ASP.NET 2.0

Configuration API Improvements in ASP.NET 2.0: " AQA------------ FnvpHa1iy4Oww= "

Encrypting connection strings in the web.config

Exam 70-536 - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Exam 70-536 - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Prepare for the 70-536 Certification Exam: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation

Prepare for the 70-536 Certification Exam: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation

What you need to know to pass the 70-536 certification exam:

Visit the following links for resources to their individual topics and study them completely and thoroughly until you're confident you've mastered them! The best way to accomplish this is by actually building Visual Studio .Net 2005 solutions and projects and incorporating the topics listed below into them accordingly. There's no better way to study for an exam than by actually doing it in real-world scenarios. You can get Visual Studio .Net 2005 by clicking on this link.

Andrew Coates ::: MSFT : Studying for another Beta Exam (71-536)

Andrew Coates ::: MSFT : Studying for another Beta Exam (71-536)

Looks like Mitch is studying for 71–536 as well. I’m signed up to do it AFTER the Ready Launch – on Dec 20. For 71–528, we had a study group chat. Mitch has taken a different tack, doing individual blog posts on each of the skills being measured as he looks at them.

So far he’s done:

Value types and nullable types
Reference types
Attributes
Generic types
Exception classes
Boxing and Unboxing
Forwarding types? and
ArrayList class
This looks like a great approach. Leave comments on Mitch’s individual posts if you’ve got stuff to add and get ready to get certified!

Eric Gunnerson's C# Compendium : Nullable types in C#

Eric Gunnerson's C# Compendium : Nullable types in C#

Right off the bat, on the first thing I study in .NET 2.0, there is something that looks fundamentally wrong to me - nullable types and boolean.

Skills measured by exam 70-551
Section 1
Developing applications that use system types and collections
Manage data in a .NET Framework application by using .NET Framework 2.0 system types. (Refer System namespace)

Value types
Nullable type

Syntax:
bool? nullBool = null;

- Nullable, hasvalue property,boolean now has 3 values! return (int?) cmd.ExecuteScalar(); Null coalescing operator (x ?? Y) - default x to Y if null

G. Shaw said:
I hope you and the other language designers know what you are doing for the long run. The current C# language is thing of beauty with very few warts. By adding the Big Four plus this new feature I worried that you are starting to move the language from a simpiler easier to use language more into the realm of C++ hell. I've worked with C# for years now (since beta 1) and find the language has been perfect. The language is so explicity about what it is doing, adding new funky operators makes the language more confusing as it isn't immediately obvious what is being down.

Please do a lot of usability testing with the syntax of this feature. I can see a need but I really think it should be done as a keyword and not an operato. For example,

nullable int a;
nullable int b;
nullable int c = a+ b;

Is immediately obvious what we are doing. The int? syntax is alien and is painful to read/understand. Since this is a feature that isn't going to be used all the time people are going to have look it up to understand how it works when the encounter it.

How can a bool have three values! It can't, that's why you need a new type: nullable bool. In fact I'd keep it as Nullable but provide operator overloading so that the operators work correctly to return null types.


What's next... Reference types and attributes... Hmm. Only 450 or so items to cover in 2 weeks.

January 23, 2006 - MSDN Flash - Training Resources

MSDN Flash

New developer and database exams coming fast and furious

New developer and database exams coming fast and furious

More codes - The rest of them

MSBLOG

What's the monetary value of Microsoft certification?

What's the monetary value of Microsoft certification?: "It's pretty clear that the MSDN2 material was consulted when the Exam 70-526 objective were drafted. For example, the objective �Use the Windows Forms Designer to create default event handlers.� maps directly to the topic How to: Create Default Event Handlers on the Windows Forms Designer. Need a resource for the exam objective �Connect multiple events to a single event handler�? Check out the MSDN2 topic How to: Connect Multiple Events to a Single Event Handler in Windows Forms. Objective 'Set page details for printing by using the PageSetupDialog component.' maps to PageSetupDialog Component (Windows Forms). There's not a one-to-one mapping of all objectives, but there are a lot of direct mappings. It's just hard not to learn when you use this approach, and it makes it easier to find related information in the future because it drills the content structure into your head."

What's the monetary value of Microsoft certification?

What's the monetary value of Microsoft certification?: "The technique I use is this: I create an Excel spreadsheet with all the objectives listed, and I create a column listing resources (usually hyperlinks) for each objective. For Exam 70-526, I've found this to be easy. Better yet, in the process of searching for resources, I'm definitely getting a much better grasp at the wealth of material and organization of material posted on MSDN2 (http://msdn2.microsoft.com). It's really impressive - kudos to the VS 2005 product teams and documentation team. "

What did you learn today? - MS Upgrade Study Guides

What did you learn today?

Lots of great study guides here.

Upgrade Microsoft Certifications + Promo Codes

Microsoft News

Until March 14, there are some promo codes for these.

MCAD Exam 71-551 (Promo code UPG551) MCAD Web
MCAD Exam 71-552 (promo code 552BTA) MCAD Windows
MCSD Exam 71-553 (promo code BTA553) MCSD #1/2
MCSD Exam 71-554 (promo code UPG554) MCSD #2/2

You also get 1 free exam per pass. So if you pass 3 exams you'll get $375USD worth of vouchers, on top of the $375USD you already saved, + you won't write all 7 of the new exams.

Something tells me these won't be easy....