Is Security Worth Risking Your Job?

It's 1:30 a.m., you're sweating bullets and your head is pounding. You can feel the stress wracking your body as you try to concentrate. The code-complete deadline for your part of the module is coming up, and the bean-counters are on everyone's back. Product has to ship on time -- period.

You've almost got that last, thorny problem licked, but testing all the different security scenarios with this new cloud-based database-conversion tool takes soooo much time. A potential "connection string pollution" vulnerability has popped up in the back of your mind, but you're unsure how dangerous it is -- or even if it's possible. It's a brand-new threat. It will take forever to investigate.

Posted by David Ramel on 02/04/20100 comments

Hands-on PowerPivot: To the Cloud

I previously wrote about an interesting demonstration that involved a 44-milliion-record data set imported into PowerPivot, Microsoft's coming "self-service business intelligence" add-in for Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010.

Connecting to a cloud data service, importing a feed into Excel and culling BI info from the data is remarkably easy. You can try it for free with the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta (requires registration) and PowerPivot for Excel 2010.

Posted by David Ramel on 02/01/20100 comments

PowerPivot: 44 Million Records in a 5MB File

Taglienti, a Microsoft technology architect, was at the monthly meeting of the New England SQL Server User Group to show off the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 add-in (formerly code-named "Gemini"). He said Microsoft developed PowerPivot to rein in the growing enterprise problem of "spreadmarts," basically tech-savvy users developing their own sophisticated spreadsheets to cull business intelligence out of various data sets and shipping the resulting -- sometimes gigantic -- files all over the company via e-mail, with no organization, security or management.

With PowerPivot, he said, users can create much more useful BI and share it throughout the company via SharePoint 2010, for example (PowerPivot is also a SharePoint add-in).

His presentation elicited some "oohs" and "aahs"from the 40-plus developers at the meeting, with the 44-million-record example generating special interest. Previously, Excel users were limited to using 1 million records.

"It's amazing," said Taglienti, as several people inquired about the demonstration. It did seem hard to believe that 44 million records could be instantly sorted on a laptop.

Granted, he was using a 64-bit machine with 4GB of RAM, but he said the remarkable speed of his demonstration was primarily attributable to compression technology that shrinks huge data sets so that they can be manipulated entirely in-memory. In fact, Taglienti said, the 44 million records were squeezed into an XLSX file of less than 5MB. That also got everybody's attention: 44 million records in a 5MB file. PowerPivot's data engine technology (called VertiPaq) has achieved up to about 20-to-1 compression, he said.

Surprisingly, it turns out that 44 million records is nothing special. There has actually been a 100-million-record PowerPivot experiment. Taglienti also demonstrated how PowerPivot can access data from the cloud. He showed how easy it was to connect, in just a few clicks, to an Open Government Data Initiative data feed and download it into PowerPivot. The OGDI data is hosted -- of course -- in Windows Azure, Microsoft's fledgling cloud platform.

Other usable data sources include several different kinds of databases, files and Microsoft Reporting Services feeds. The strategy behind PowerPivot is "to empower the end user" to do their own data analysis and intuitively build their own custom BI solutions, Taglienti said. This lets IT concentrate more on infrastructure and data management instead of numerous custom BI projects.

He stressed that it's all beta technology at the moment, and Microsoft isn't entirely certain how it will be leveraged in real-world, day-to-day use. He posited the question of whether-if a company has some 10,000 PowerPivot cubes floating around in SharePoint, for example-PowerPivot should have its own server. While questions such as that get sorted out, Microsoft is out in the front lines trying to convince users that, as Taglienti says, "it's a game-changer."

The mood at the meeting seemed to be wait-and-see.

Teresa DeLuca, a Web developer at International Data Group, which is headquartered in Boston, said she didn't anticipate using PowerPivot. But she said, "I do work with pivot tables a lot," so there might be some benefit to checking the product out.

Dean Serrentino, a software developer/consultant at Paradigm Information Systems in Wilmington, Mass., said before the meeting, "I'm totally unfamiliar with it" and that he was at the meeting to learn more about it. "I usually don't go bleeding edge," he said. After the meeting, he said in an e-mail, "I don't anticipate using it for two reasons. First, I think it is too complicated for use by the audience that would most benefit from it. Second, it is an SQL Server Enterprise version feature. Most of my clients are small to medium sized businesses and don't need the features in SS Enterprise, or have the resources to afford it."

Gary Chin, an independent developer in Newton, Mass., said, "I don't see using it immediately, but it's going to come in handy for BI and SQL Server applications ... the whole idea of storing the live data from SQL Server and downloading it down to financial analysts or other users that need to manipulate the data to see what happens within the data."

Some people are more skeptical. Readthis entertaining, semi-contentious exchangebetween one of PowerPivot's founding engineers and a user arguing about what capabilities PowerPivot provides that plain old Excel doesn't.

What do you think? Marketing hype or must-have technology? Have you tried it? Are you going to? Comment here or send me an e-mail.

Posted by David Ramel on 01/22/20102 comments

On Jobs, Salaries, Trends, Clouds and More

Some interesting salary data shows that there's still a strong need for software and Web developers stateside.

Jobs: Software engineer rated No. 2 on CareerCast.com's recent listing of the top 200 jobs for 2010, ranked on factors such as physical demands, work environment, income, etc.

Web developer was No. 15, and computer programmer was No. 34. (On a sad personal note, the jobs I have held rank no. 65 (publication editor); 79 (public relations executive, though I was a mere "PR specialist" -- didn't even make the list); 184 (newspaper reporter); and 199 (lumberjack -- only a "roustabout" was ranked lower).)

Posted by David Ramel on 01/15/20100 comments

Mining the Cloud

Imagine the world's information at your fingertips. Imagine being able to slice and dice it as you choose. Imagine you're a sales exec who, with just a few clicks, can pull up reports on consumer spending and demographics, mapped to your sales areas -- or your competitors' sales areas -- just about anywhere.

And the best part is that you don't have to invest in your own data warehouse, with all the accompanying costs and hassles. You can just pull the data out of the cloud.

Posted by David Ramel on 01/06/20100 comments

Acing Azure and Dabbling in Dallas

Got Azure? I do!

Here's a ringing endorsement for the simplicity of the Windows Azure platform: I was able to migrate a database into a SQL Azure project and display its data in an ASP.NET Web page. What's more, I actually developed a Windows Forms application that displayed some of the vast store of public data accessible via Microsoft's Dallas project.

Posted by David Ramel on 12/16/20091 comments

Coding for Booze (& other fun stuff)

Database-related programming has to be right up there on the boring scale. But if you want to improve your coding skills, why not do something interesting while you learn?

Microsoft's Clint Rutkas has the right idea. One of the hits at the recent Professional Developer's Conference was his automated bartender robot, a contraption with tubes, valves and a compressed CO2 tank that serves up cocktails.

Posted by David Ramel on 12/09/20090 comments

Is Microsoft Feeling the "NoSQL" Heat?

Think the "NoSQL" movement isn't prominent on Microsoft's radar screen?

Think again. Not only is the company tracking it, some people inside Microsoft have actually jumped on the anti-SQL bandwagon. This came to light when Microsoft Technical Fellow Dave Campbell took some pot-shots at the latest threat to the company's bread-and-butter database strategy during the recent Professional Developer's Conference.

"The relational database model has stood the test of time," the database guru said in an interview with Charles Torre on Microsoft's Channel 9 video feed from PDC. "And it's interesting in that there's this anti-SQL movement, if you will," he continued. "You know some people follow that. The challenge is that you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. "

Posted by David Ramel on 12/01/200923 comments

Trying to Become a Programmer

I'm as cynical as the next guy, but this note I just got really made me stop and think about things like the meaning of Thanksgiving, and the fact that there are real people behind that 10.2% unemployment rate statistic.

Here it is, presented raw and unedited -- kinda like life:

dear  mr.ramel

forgive my lack of proper punctuation and caps and spelling.i never took typing and dont know how to use word. I was happy to see someone who taght themselves C languages. I have been doing that for about three years. up until recently i had been working 60 and 70 hours aweek at a hotel dining room bussing tables for about 15 years. most of the guests in this melourne florida hotel work for NASA,Grumman,Harris,Rockwell etc. over time i made friends with some of the IT people who work for these places. i decided to try to improve myself and asked some of them what it is they do and what should i learn to aim myself in their direction. one guy said"if you learn c you can go anywhere". so I started with c++.its been like trying to learn how to fly a martian spacecraft. being computer illiterate five years ago didnt help.stumbling around barnes and noble i have managed to pick up quite a few tiles on the subject of programming.At someone elses urging i have dipped my toe into sql but it seems to be quite a frigid subject.Another of my guests got me interested in cisco so i now have several books on telecommunications and internetworking.VB (or studio whatever) and java are a little in the mix.Ruby  and php too. I'm far along enough now thatthe rules and sytax of these languages are starting to resemble each other.  Now my goal is certification or a degree from whatever accredited institution I can get myself onboard with. I've been unemployed for several months now  so I'm trying to take advantage of offerings the state of florida hasas far as scholarships and grants and whathaveya.Nothing definite yet.Not ruling anything out elseware as far as that is concerned. I can tell you one thing though. It's that I have been bitten by the IT bug and I'm gonna persue it and hopefully make it my career. I'll be happy to get involved with your blog or just contribut in some way as an IT neophyte. I like to just surf around and glean whatever flavor of IT is sittiing out there for free. It's guilty pleasure to register for some free webinar and type ":student" as my proffession just to get in. I'm just looking forward to getting paid for having so much fun.      vty josh

Posted by David Ramel on 11/19/20098 comments

A Good Read, a Good Deed

Posted by David Ramel on 11/18/20090 comments

The New Guy

I've been an IT journalist for more than 10 years, and I do love programming. Now, I'm not an accomplished coder by any means. I think that left-brain, right-brain thing gets in the way of any true talent (which is why I'm a writer). But, as a former colleague once wrote, I never get tired of making all the bells and whistles work.

Long ago I taught myself C++. That actually resulted in a real, totally original, working executable, but it almost killed me.

I found Java and Visual J++ (remember that?) more my speed. Lately I've been experimenting with C# and Visual Studio.

Since I was recently named the database guy, I've been fooling around with LINQ and ADO.NET and such in my spare time -- which ain't much.

So it was quite satisfying to figure out Data Connections, DataSets, ConnectionStrings and the like and hook up to the good old Northwind database and run some SQL Server queries to populate a DataGridView.

I'm eager to learn more, even if to get just the slightest inkling of what you readers are dealing with out there.

So hey, readers, drop me a line. That's the key message here.

Suggest some good books or Web sites I could use to further my education. Maybe some good tools or add-ons for VS. Let me know what problems you're having, what topics you'd like to see covered, what complaints you have -- heck, even what music you like to listen to while you code. Anything at all (well, you know, almost anything).

Let's make this space an exchange of information and ideas. Let you be the ones to dictate what we cover and talk about.

See, that way, I won't have to work, and I can finally finish that cool C# BlackJack game I've been working on. JK!

Really, just kidding.

Posted by David Ramel on 11/18/20094 comments

Controversy at PDC?

Kathleen Richards at Redmond Developer News explained the change last week in her RDN Express blog.

The move generated a strong reaction from developers. Douglas Purdy's blog post announcing the shift in strategy had garnered more than 25 mostly negative comments -- with terms like "disappointment" and "wrong direction" being thrown around -- when Purdy responded.

Here's one choice tidbit from his comment: "The great irony to all these comments is that all we did was change the name from 'Oslo' to SQL Server Modeling and now we get the #fail tag."

The next day Purdy followed up with a posting titled "On DSLs and a few other things...." Two days after that a second follow-up post came out titled "On M." (That's the new programming language that constitutes one of the three main components of SQL Server Modeling, if you didn't know.)

So I'm looking forward to news coming out of the Professional Developer's Conference taking place right now in Los Angeles. Especially the Thursday presentation: "Oslo Modeling and DSL."

Should be interesting.

Posted by David Ramel on 11/18/20091 comments