Job Description for Petvalu

http://www.petvalu.com/careers/sysarch.htm

Growth and future business initiatives at Petvalu:

http://www.petvalu.com/aboutus/investorrelations.htm

Best regards,

Mohammad 

best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post provides a link to the Silverlight resources

Greetings,

I have received a number of inquiries about Silverlight in the past few months and was thinking about compiling a list of resources when I found out that one of my colleagues, Qixing Zheng has compiled a wonderful list of resources, you can find them at :

http://blogs.msdn.com/canux/archive/2008/03/26/silverlight-2-resource.aspx

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This post contains the list of resources about Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008

Greetings,

I want to thank all of you who attended the Architect Track at launch and provided feedback; here are some of the resources we mentioned during our track.

General

1.       Joel’s blog (in French)

a.       http://blogs.msdn.com/joelq

2.       Channel 9 for Architects

a.       http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Architecture

b.      http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/ARCast.TV

3.       Subscribe to “The Architecture Journal”

www.architecturejournal.net

4.       Patterns and Practices Web Site

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/practices/default.aspx

Aspiring Architects

5.       Web Cast series for aspiring architects

http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/2007/05/25/architecture-101-recording-and-resource-links.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/2007/06/01/software-development-lifecycle-and-methodologies-recording-and-resource-link.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/2007/06/12/service-orientation-and-other-architectural-approaches-recording-and-resource-links.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/2007/06/21/transitioning-to-an-architect-role-recording-and-resource-links.aspx

Visual Studio

6.       Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison

a.       http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc149003.aspx

7.       Adam’s blog is at

 http://blogs.msdn.com/adamga

8.       Adam’s content

 http://adamga.canitpro.ca

9.       Visual Studio Webcast series

 http://msdn.microsoft.ca/vswebcasts

10.   Install Visual Studio 2008

Download available for MSDN Subscribers, Trial version available

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

11.   Download training kits, hands-on-labs and videos

http://download.vstudio/starterkits

12.   Subscribe to Scott Guthrie’s blog

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/

Windows Server 2008

13.   Virtualization overall

http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/default.mspx

14.   Server 2008 on MSDN

 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/windowsserver/default.aspx

15.    TechNet

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/2008/default.aspx

16.  Small environments without management tools, try System Center Essentials

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/essentials/default.mspx

17.  Larger environments try System Center Virtual Machine Manager

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scvmm/bb727241.aspx

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is about the training on Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008 on Feb 11, in Mississuaga

 Greetings,

We will be conducting training on Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008 on Feb 11, 2008 in Microsoft's Mississuaga campus for architects and aspiring architects. It is a great opportunity to get ahead of your peers, get free books and materials on these technologies and learn how they can help you be more successfull

 http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032364802&Culture=en-CA

Best regards,

Mohammad 

About: This blog post provides link for an interesting article on Silverlight

Greetings,

Hope all of you are doing well, sorry for the long gap in blog posts, I was blessed with my third daughter during summers and along with vacation, training and organizing architect forum, I am finally back at the usual pace of activity. I recently came across an interesting article that I would like to share with you, you can find it at

http://vip.itworldcanada.com/t?r=8&c=5152&l=4234&ctl=23045:8BD8AB3275638410133CE93EF10C11A0

Enjoy reading!

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This post points to the article I have written for InfoQ

Greetings,

Hope all of your are doing well and hopefully had some time off during summer. I have recently published an article describing the various components of .NET 3.0 , you can find it at http://www.infoq.com/articles/akif-dotnet-architect 

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This post is about the new development center Microsoft is opening in Vancouver, Canada

Hello,

I am very happy to report that Microsoft Canada and our corporate head office will be opening a software development centre in Greater Vancouver, BC. The Microsoft Canada Development Centre (MCDC) will open in the Fall of 2007 and will be home to software developers from around the world.

Canada has a burgeoning hi-tech and software industry, globally envied quality of life, and our cities represent exactly the kind of environment that leading information workers want to live in. The Vancouver area, in particular, is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft’s corporate offices in Redmond. The Microsoft Canada Development Centre will help Microsoft remain globally competitive in its recruitment efforts while expanding our development footprint into Canada and providing strong economic benefits to the country.

Initially, we expect a few hundred employees to be part of this Centre.  We will continue to assess the Centre’s growth potential moving forward and hope that the Centre will become one of the company’s key hubs for international talent and for software development.  With the opening of this Centre, Canada will be one of only a handful of countries hosting development centers outside of our Redmond, WA, main campus.

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This post contains the recording and resource links for the fourth and last part of the aspiring architect series

Hello,

The recording and resource links for the web cast are as follows:

1. Recording: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032338981&Culture=en-CA

2. Architect Journal (Free Subscription) : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/default.aspx

3. Book : Software Architecture in Practice by Len Bass, Paul Clements and Rick Kazman

4. Academic, Carnegie Mellon University: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/index.html

I will provide more information about architectural training that Microsoft plans to organize online and otherwise in the coming weeks, stay tuned.

Best regards,

Mohammad

Best regards,

Mohammad 

About: This blog post contains recording and resource links for the third Web Cast in the aspiring architect series that was conducted by David Remmer

Hello,

The links for recording and resources for third Web Cast in the aspiring architect series is as follows:

 Recording link:

 http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032338979&Culture=en-CA

Resources

MSDN SOA : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/architecture/aa948857.aspx 
Thomas Erl Books: http://www.soabooks.com/ 
Ontology and Taxonomy of Services Article in the Architecture Journal: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/bb491121.aspx

The last part of series will be conducted on Thursday, June 14 2007

Best regards,

Mohammad 

About: This post contains the resources for the second part of the web cast series focused at aspiring architects

Hello,

David Remmer conducted the second part of the Web Cast series in which he covered a number of SDLC methodologies and approches including Waterfall, RUP, Agile (SCRUM, MSF) and SDLC tools. You can find the recording of the web cast at 

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032338975&Culture=en-CA

You can also find additional sources at

Agile Development : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb404166.aspx
Cruise Control (.NET) : http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/ccnet/welcome%20to%20cruisecontrol.net
Agile Journal : http://www.agilejournal.com/ 

Stay tuned for the next two parts of the series.

Best regards,

Mohammad

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032338975&Culture=en-CA

Agile Development : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb404166.aspx
Cruise Control (.NET) : http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/ccnet/welcome%20to%20cruisecontrol.net
Agile Journal : http://www.agilejournal.com/

About: This blog post is about table top computing

Greetings,

I don’t usually blog about ‘cool products’ but I have to make an exception this time. I was blown away by the new table top computer we announced yesterday that bridges the gap between the physical and the digital world. You will be able to sit in a  hotel lobby (starwood that owns Sheraton and Westin is an early adopter) order drinks from the table, drink at the table, split the bill at the table, pay at the table, get directions, use table as a concierge and do much more. You would also be able to compare phones at (selected) T-Mobile stores on the table and do other really cool stuff. The table top computers costs between $5000-10000 for now but we are committed to bringing the costs down and making it available to consumers. I would recommend checking out the three videos on the following Web Site

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/  

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post provides links to the articles and frameworks I referenced during my architecture 101 Web Cast yesterday

Greetings,

Thank you for attending the web cast, it was one of the largest Web Cast we have ever conducted and it was a real pleasure to interact with a lot of you yesterday (we had 45 minutes of Q&A after a 1 hour Web Cast!) . The recording and links for the web cast are as follows:

1.       Recording of the Web Cast

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032338972&Culture=en-CA

2.       Article- Characteristics of an effective enterprise architect

http://www.itworldcanada.com/Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=idgml-3e21a390-4090-42f5-9279-23970f2ec7fe&Portal=1fa35bf9-d296-4571-8fff-c665a851ec1d&ParaStart=15&ParaEnd=30&direction=prev&Previous=Previous

3.       Architectural Frameworks (As I mentioned during my Web Cast you do NOT need to be an expert in them)

a.       Zachman Framework - http://www.zifa.com/ (go to the link for framework overview)

b.      TOGAF - http://www.opengroup.org/togaf/

c.       DODAF - http://www.defenselink.mil/cio-nii/docs/DoDAF_Volume_I.pdf

d.      MODAF - http://www.modaf.org.uk/

e.      FEAF - http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/a-1-fea.html

4.       Swing set photos describing the breakdown in setting expectations and gathering requirements

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=80500328&size=o

This is a preliminary list of resources that only covers the material covered in part one of the web cast, I will continue to post resources including links to books, articles, certification program and others as we cover those in the web cast.

Best regards,

Mohammad

 About: This post is about the aspiring architect web cast series starting tomorow

Greetings,

Just wanted to remind everyone that the (technology-agnostic) web cast series focused on aspiring architects is starting tomorow.

https://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/2007/04/25/webcast-series-for-aspiring-architects.aspx

Please point those in your organization that might be interested in the topic to the link above for registration. I will also post a detailed set of resources for aspiring architects next week.

For everyone that has been asking for blog posts on Web 2.0, I promise that a five part series will be posted in June so stay tuned and thank you for your patience :-)

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is part of the “Microsoft at JavaOne 2007” series; it provides general commentary about the last day and the overall conference. Warning, it is arguably my most controversial blog post to date.

Greetings,

JavaOne 2007 is over, last night I went to the JavaOne “After dark bash”. The “MiniKiss”, a midget band dressed up as KISS was about as exciting as the JavaFX demo on the opening keynote. The battle bot fights were quiet interesting and generated some enthusiasm in a party where the most popular attraction seemed to be the five XBOX 360 gaming stations and the Gyro and arcade machines set up around the walls. The “Grinder Girl” turned out to be a girl wearing a stainless steel bathing suit with an electric grinder in her hand which generated sparks when put against various ‘parts’ of her body generating “Wows” & “Ooohs” from some of the attendees but looked quiet distasteful to the majority (some of the locals had brought their kids) who left the party at that point.

In terms of the overall comments about JavaOne 2007, when Richard Monson-Haefel (who is the author of one of the most popular books on Java and now works as an analyst for Burton group) wrote that “Java is dead” (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32968) I thought that he had spoken too soon. However, attending JavaOne this year has convinced me of something that no amount of Microsoft marketing or conferences would have done, that the peak days of Java are definitely behind us. As someone who was part of the Java revolution and as a technologist, it is sad to see the missed opportunity and potential. The attendance, energy, enthusiasm, quality and exciting news around Java this year were definitely at a significantly lower scale (excluding mobile) than last year and the years before. In sessions where we asked people to raise hands if they also program in .NET, around 50% raised hands.  I remember Java conferences where you will get a very small percentage of people who had any familiarity with the .net framework at all. I don’t want to get in to a detailed analysis of the reasons but here are some of my personal (not Microsoft’s) thoughts on the subject:

1.       The business users are becoming more demanding, they have made it clear to IT that they do not care about Java, .NET, open source, cross-platform, SOA, ESB or Web Services. They care about time to market, increased revenues, customer loyalty, lower costs and better quality of service. IT cannot use their internal issues and academic arguments to justify a lower level of service to the business anymore.

2.       Sun’s strategy of open sourcing Java and related tools is driving the entire market down. Businesses are not charities and cannot be run as such, (btw giving out software for free but charging for support and services is not open sourcing, it is just a different business model for getting the payment from the customers). Sun, IBM, BEA, Oracle, Red Hat and every other Java vendor pays salaries to their engineers as no open source enthusiast would agree to work for free. When Sun makes its application or portal server available for free (because no one would buy it), it hurts the Java vendors that are selling their application servers forcing them to lower their costs and reduce the investments they can make to improve the products (or get the investments from a different part of their business), that in turn results in slowing down the pace of innovation and the ease of use with which enterprises can develop on Java platform.

3.       Microsoft’s strategy around putting infrastructure plumbing code in the .Net framework and significant support for open standards in the latest versions is making it a preferred choice even in organizations that used to be pure Java shops. Some of the adoption numbers according to independent industry studies (future development, 56% on .NET vs. 44% in Java for some of the largest enterprises in North America) are pretty astounding considering that .NET was a fraction of the marketplace just a few years ago. When you can produce similar or better applications significantly quickly and for significantly lower cost, the argument for Java and its cross-platform nature loses some of its charm.

4.       The businesses are realizing that the important areas are open standards and total cost of ownership and not what you may or may not pay at the time of acquisition. I recently went to a bank which used 7 different tools (4 of them open source) to architect, design, develop, test, bug track and deploy applications. It was one of the easiest conversations I had to move the bank to Microsoft technologies, my basic point after they admitted that they spend months in lost productivity due to integration, training and maintenance issues was that at a cost which translates in to a few days of salary (compared with the 2 months) they could have an integrated suite which will solve a lot of issues they are facing. This is the primary reason that Visual Studio and Eclipse are becoming increasingly popular in the enterprises.

5.       The process of innovation in Java which requires approval from a large variety of vendors with different agenda and interests results in very lengthy discussions and intense disagreements which lead to the specifications not covering some key areas. The big turning point for me a few years ago was trying to make application server by one Java vendor work with the identity server from another, it took me and a team of engineers about 15 days to get it to work and the Microsoft champions at the customers showed me how to do it in the Microsoft world in about 25 minutes. Again the big question now is how to serve the business better.

These and a culmination of other factors e.g. increased expectations around user interface and experience where Java was always weak is producing the perfect storm against Java. The thing that is working for Java right now is the large install base and many people that bet their careers on it. These individuals (some from the small talk base) are now at a stage of their careers where some of them are unwilling to consider alternatives. From an IT organization standpoint, the cost savings and other advantages of .NET are sometimes not considered enough to justify the cost of developers learning new skills. In my opinion, that is IT propagating its internal problem to the business; granted that the problem is genuine in many cases, in my opinion it is still a losing battle. For IT to become a strategic asset and not just the cost of doing business it must be run like a business and not like a subsidized unit. It must be willing to learn, reassess and make the choices that are the best for its customers; that is the only way forward. If it means replacing one technology on which it might have standardized with a better one that is the right thing to do, otherwise sooner or later the business users will find others to lead the IT organization (or outsource it) so that they can get the level of service they need to be competitive with others in the industry.

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is part of the “Microsoft at JavaOne 2007” series; it provides general commentary about Day 3

Greetings,

Its 5:40 p.m. on Day 3 at JavaOne and I am sitting in a session by Steve Marx (http://smarx.com ) of Microsoft called “Java Technology-powered Microsoft AJAX” , Steve has done some really interesting work in showcasing interoperability between an AJAX front end based on Microsoft technologies integrating with Java Midtier through web services.

I got an invitation to a private party hosted by Google; it was a fun event and I got to meet some really interesting people. My ‘Microsoft” shirt attracted a lot of attention, someone from Yahoo came over and asked why I wanted to buy him (a few drinks can have a great impact on some people), I assured him that I am pretty low on the totem pole and have no influence on acquisitions that are above 25 billion dollars J , he then asked me if I was there for corporate espionage and I told him that I did get an invitation to the party and would not have wore my Microsoft shirt if I really wanted to spy. Another open source company guy congratulated me on the ‘great joke of wearing a Microsoft shirt at a Google party” and said that he saw me at the Oracle booth and knows that I actually work for Oracle (after I showed him my card, we had a loooooong conversation on open source, software companies running as charities, difference between making money on software development vs. on support and services and on the future of the internet).  The Google guys and gals were very gracious and we had some really interesting conversation around search, the price Google paid for DoubleClick, .NET vs. Java and why Sun has found it so hard to monetize the innovations they have made in the area of Java technologies.

In terms of the overall day, I had some really fun conversations at the booth, last year my tag line was “I am from Microsoft, I come in peace, take me your leader”, this year I changed it to “I am here to convert you to a .NET enthusiastJ” and after the shock reaction talking about the interoperability and Web 2.0. I am looking forward to the party which features “Grinder Girl” and “Mini Kiss” (I am counting on my wife not being a reader of my blog). Based on the number of questions I got on SilverLight  (http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight ) and on the British library Turning pages application (http://www.bl.uk/ttp2/ttp1.html ) I will include them in the series I plan to write soon on the next generation web applications. I also met lots of Canadians from RIM, HSBC, Ontario Lottery Commission and bunch of other companies (you could see the signature smile, friendliness, laid back, a little high... etc. to detect them from a mile J).

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is part of the “Microsoft at JavaOne 2007” series; it provides general commentary about Day 2

Greetings,

Day 2 at JavaOne is over. Kevin and I conducted a session on “Implementing interoperable SOA in the enterprise” which was attended by 800+ people, one of the largest JavaOne breakout sessions. We talked about the need for interoperability, the challenges in realizing it, the danger of a magic bullet answer and the solution choices and strategies especially in implementing .NET 3.0 and JEE5. We also gave out copies of Windows Vista to some of the attendees who asked questions.

I also attended a number of sessions; again the most interesting ones were around Mobile and Java Realtime. There didn’t seem to be much excitement about the web offerings. I was also surprised by how many Java Developers came to collect the Visual Studio IDE express edition, we actually ran out of the CDs on Day 1! It was surprising as in past year many developers would not accept the IDE CD. About 40-50% of the thousands of people who visited our booth admitted that they are now either programming in both Java and .NET or are learning to interact with .NET as their organization has bought or built systems in .NET

The maximum number of questions we got at our booth today were again around Silverlight, it was interesting to see the level of interest and excitement around SilverLight amongst Java developers. We also got a lot of ‘Wows!” on showcasing the British Library’s Turning Pages application (Version 2, available from their Web Site” which allows consumer to view some of the most precious books at the library including DaVanci and Mozart original notebooks. More later

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is part of the “Microsoft at JavaOne 2007” series; it covers the key note on Day 2

Hello,

It is about 8:40 a.m. and I am sitting in the second row at Day 2 of JavaOne 2007. I did not have to stand in line really early to get this seat; about half of the hall is empty, typically the opening keynote by Sun on Day 1 gets the maximum attendance. Thomas Kurian, Senior Vice President at Oracle is on stage now, he identified JEE5, SOA , Web 2.0 and Grid Computing as key trends in the industry.

Oracle is showing a demonstration called “MyFlix” based on JSF, it may be a coincidence but I have to point out that Microsoft showed a key Silver Light demonstration at MIX 07 which was the next generation NetFlix. The demonstration shown uses AJAX but fails to have any Wow effect, it showed drag and drop functionality of a control on the Web Page, something that has been possible for multiple years now and is possible in every other AJAX engine on the market (e.g. http://AJAX.ASP.NET ). Oracle has just announced that they will donate the rich component framework to Apache; I think it is a brilliant idea as it is unlikely that people would pay for something that looks like a rudimentary AJAX framework.

Now Oracle is showing a social networking application which is quiet interesting, both from a technology standpoint and in terms of the example they have taken which is a discussion about the importance of Oracle in the matrix (movie). The JSF application shows integration of email, discussion board, presence information, mobile and other things that show how people can interact with each other using the web. It is also integrated with the MyFlix web site they showed earlier.

Now Oracle is showing an SOA implementation of how the order put on the MyFlix site is fulfilled. I like the idea of an end-to-end demonstration; they showed the various roles that the organization has to fulfill the order. They are showcasing the ESB functionality with emphasis on the business activity monitoring features.

Thomas just announced that Oracle Application Server has now been certified on JEE 5. He also mentioned that Oracle believe that Java must become easier and more lightweight (something that I agree with) and explained how Oracle is trying to make it easier to develop Java application. He is now talking about how Oracle has just acquired a new company (Tangosol) that allows Oracle to take advantage of the grid through virtualization. They are now showing a demonstration of a dynamic pricing engine for MyFlix based on this technology, he added and removed server, the demonstration looked quite interesting.

The keynote is now coming to an end now, overall I think they did a good job (except for the web site creation) and were able to showcase their offerings for the enterprise.

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is part of the “Microsoft at JavaOne 2007” series; it covers some of the sessions on Day 1 and provides general commentary

Hello,

It about 4:40 p.m. and I am sitting in a session called the “Future of the Java Web Tier”. Throughout the day I have answered questions about Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Vista, Windows mobile and Microsoft’s AJAX story at the MS booth, we have had about a thousand people come to the booth since morning, I have also popped in and out of various sessions.  We had a lot of questions around interoperability between .NET front end and java business tier which remains the number one request from companies who invested heavily in Java but want to take advantage of .NET especially on the front end. I was surprised by the number of people who showed interest in getting a DVD of Visual Studio Express edition and mentioned that their companies now have both Java and .NET and they need to learn .NET and how to interoperate between the two technologies. We also had a number of Java ISVs that visited the booth saying as a small business they did not want to choose between the two and want to learn more about technologies that allows them to work with customers on both sides.

In terms of the big story, I think the most exciting things at JavaOne seem to be related to the mobile devices followed by some of the real-time stuff, the web story and demonstration would have been exciting to see in year 2000 but as I mentioned the demos were not very compelling and a number of press and analyst that visited our booth commented that they were expecting something more dramatic. It seems that it was a small effort within a group that suddenly got a lot of attention (probably after the focus on Silver Light at Mix).  I am attending the future of Java Web Tier session to see if there is a more compelling story around Java on the Web that was missed at the keynote.

Rajiv who is delivering a session on future of Java web tier is talking about Servlet 3.0 and AJAX and REST. The presentation so far has been about the various technologies and how Java works with them, one interesting point was AJAX support JavaServer pages. I have enjoyed the session as it provided a good overview of the state of the union.

In terms of next things, we are giving out Microsoft Windows Vista (through a draw) at the welcome reception tonight, I look forward to attending the Oracle keynote tomorrow and the Motorola keynote (which I suspect would be the most exciting) on Thursday. I am also looking forward to the after dark bash, the JavaOne party on May 10 which features killer bots and virtual flying dukes. I will head back now to the welcome reception that starts at 6:00 p.m., by the way when I called to setup a wakeup call at my hotel, the operator offered a ‘menu of inspirational messages’ that I could get as part of the wakeup call... only in the great city of San Francisco would you be offered inspirational messages and a ‘dream on’ (instead of a good bye) by the operator! I will report live from Tomorrow’s keynote again, adios for now

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is part of the “Microsoft at JavaOne 2007” series; it covers the opening keynote at JavaOne and was typed while attending the keynote session at Moscone Center in San Francisco

Hello,

I am at the JavaOne opening keynote, its 8:30 a.m. in the morning and I am seated in the third row from the stage, the hall has a capacity of over 12,000 so I had to stand in line early to get here. The biggest news of the day which has not be been announced yet, is expected to be Sun response to Microsoft’s SilverLight. Sliverlight 1.1 which allows for a subset of the .NET framework to run across platforms and will allow customers to produce extremely powerful next generation web application is a very serious threat to Java and Flash. Today the Java side is expected to announce some sort of a response. I am sitting in the middle of Java enthusiasts with their laptops open....I have to mention that everyone around me is running windows J (and I have had two inquiries so far about my Vista Ultimate OS)

8:40 a.m. The keynote has not started yet, but the music and atmosphere is awesome, so I am not complaining

8:41 a.m. John Gage from Sun is on stage welcoming people to the 81 hours of the 12^th JavaOne. He started by advising engineers not to be shy during their time here. He quoted from the New York Times and said that this JavaOne is about internet connected multi-function devices. He also hinted on how the Java Mobile technology will be becoming open source and that Sun will make some announcements in this regard. He also displayed a solar power generator (10 minute of talk for every 1 hour of sunlight charge). Finally, he announced that it was really hard to make JavaOne carbon-neutral this year due to the difficulty in measuring the environmental impact accurately but he promised to strive for that next year.

9:04 a.m. Rich Green from Sun talked about the state of Java and has  invited Martin Harriman who is making the announcement that Ericson is going to open source some of its key technology and enter in to a strategic partnership with Sun and the open source community (as part of the project glassfish). He also just announced the availability of real time Java (JSR-1) and how developers can use the usual programming tools to develop code for real time.

9:20 a.m. Rich Green has announced that open sourcing of Java is complete and announced a 5 member interim governing board comprising of two members from Sun, 1 from a university and two from industry. He also announced the open sourcing of compatibility certification

9:30 a.m. Rich announced that by next spring there will be releases of Java primarily focused on speed. Now the big announcement is coming, it is called JavaFX which is a family of Java technologies focused on the consumer. The first member of the family is JavaFX Script which a scripting language for rich internet applications designed for content professionals but also easy enough for the general developers.

9:35 a.m. Rich has invited James Gosling who is taking about JavaFX script by “James Gosling and Chris Oliver” (the mention of Chris’s name indicates that it may be the project which was called F3 and seemed to be an incubation type of project, but I may be wrong).  Rich is mentioning that it is ‘unplanned invention’ and confirmed that it was something that Chris was working on his own.  Chris is demonstrating two Web Sites that were done using JavaFX, honestly the demos are a bit disappointing in the sense that they do not really have the Wow effect, it could be because the project was ‘discovered’ quiet late by the management and the team could not put the resources to create compelling demo. James and Rich also mentioned that Sun will work on a tool and will make it available. Rich mentioned that JavaFX would work on the Java SE right now without any modification

9:45 a.m. Rich also just announced the availability of JavaFX mobile version, he mentioned that it is a ‘desktop scale’ OS on the mobile and that it will be freely available to OEM’s worldwide. Rich and Nandani from the JavaFX mobile team is demonstrating JavaFX mobile on the PDA.  The demo has had a problem but Rich was able to handle it with a great sense of humour.  He asked how many people would want it, and about 5 people from 10.000 clapped..... he mentioned that the opinions might change once people have had a chance to look at the device.

9:50 a.m. Marco Boerries from Yahoo is on stage talking about how he plans to reach hundreds of millions of users on the mobile. Marco is now demonstrating the new ‘mobile one search’ and how yahoo is revamping to deliver news, driving directions, flickr and everything else on the mobile.

10:00 a.m. Jonathan Schwartz is on stage now; the announcements seem to over, a bit of anti-climax in terms of the nature and magnitude of the announcements.  I was expecting an announcement around some sort of a partnership between Adobe and Sun but it seems that for now JavaFX is the big announcement. Jonathan is talking about the importance of mobile devices and mentioning that around the world mobile devices are becoming one of the key means of connecting to the internet and North America has been slower in this area compared to the rest. He mentioned that mobile devices are going to be the big focus of next generation of Java technologies.

10:05 a.m. Dr. Djibril Diallo from the United Nations, New York Office of Sport for Development and Peace is here, he is an amazing speaker, the best one so far. He is talking about the fact that it is unacceptable that 1.5 billion people will sleep hungry today and is talking about how technology can act as a catalyst for improving the world.

10:10 a.m. Jonathan Schwartz just announced an ‘engineers without borders program on which Sun plans to work with United Nations. He has now invited Scott McNealy on stage as someone who is dedicated to distributing educational content through technology around the world.

10:15 a.m. Scott made a few (great) jokes including making fun of Rich Green wardrobe’s resemblance to Steve Jobs and then proceeded to imitate Steve Jobs’s hand gesture. Scott also talked about “curriki” which is attempting to deliver K to 12 education to for free.

I am glad to see a big focus on ‘citizenship’ efforts at JavaOne which is a positive development compared to last year. The keynote seems to be coming towards the end and my battery is dying so I am going to post this commentary and post a detailed daily report from the next few days

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This is the first in a series of posts about Microsoft’s participation at JavaOne 2007, San Francisco May 08-11

Greetings,

I have landed and am in my hotel room in San Francisco, it must be San Francisco... where else would a small bottle of water in the room would have an $8.00 label on it? It is 85 degrees Fahrenheit and the people of San Francisco are complaining about ‘the unusually warm weather’, I am not sure if it’s really warmer than last year or the after effects of watching the ‘inconvenient truth’ but global warming or not... flying in from Toronto where it was quiet chilly yesterday night, I absolutely love the weather! Another interesting change from last year seems to be the absence of any homeless people around the downtown area, in the last 7 years of my travels to this great city, I have always been struck with the disparity and divide that is so obvious. According to the taxicab driver the police is cracking down on the people living on the street so I assume that they have gone to adjoining areas. BTW the taxicab had a really big read heart and flowery decoration, on my inquiry the driver mentioned that he has themed his vehicle to be the ‘romantic cab’ and the decorations are a big hit with the regulars.... only in San Francisco!

Microsoft has a booth and is conducting multiple sessions at the conference. I am delighted to see that while Sun and Microsoft compete in some areas they are also mature enough to come together for customers that would like to see better interoperability between Java and .NET. The two big focuses for the Microsoft booth and sessions would be ”interoperability “ and ‘next generation web”. With the announcement about the cross-platform (and pretty amazing!) SilverLight and some really interesting work in the area of AJAX from Microsoft, I am keen to hear the updates on Java side of things at this conference.

My session has been scheduled for May 09, 2007 at 2:50 p.m. (about the time when the lunch coma starts to strike the audienceJ).  If you are at JavaOne, do drop by and say hello at the session or the Microsoft booth, the session information is as follows:

Session ID: TS-8882
Session Title: Implementing Interoperable SOA in Your Enterprise
Track: Services and Integration
Room: Esplanade 304/306
Date: 09-MAY-07
Start Time: 14:50

Also there is a great session on AJAX by my friend and colleague Peter Laudati, do a search on Microsoft in the ‘company’ field of the online JavaOne schedule builder to see all Microsoft sessions. I plan to leave the hotel now, check-in for JavaOne and then attend the coolest party in town ‘Canadians at JavaOne (which includes the most famous Canadian in the Java world, Mr. James Gosling) I also plan to drop-in at a reunion organized by my buddies from Sun. I will report live from the keynote tomorrow and plan to provide regular updates about the conference, announcement, sessions, atmosphere and other fun stuff, so stay tuned!

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post answers the FAQs I have received about this series

Hello,

I am pleasently surprised by the interest the upcoming aspiring architect series. The most common question I have received is about the technologies we plan to cover and whether it would be useful for people who are not working in MS technologies. The answer is absolutely yes, the series is completely and totally technology-agnostic; it is about how you move from being a developer to an architect and not about Vista, .NET or any other technology, everything that we talk about will be equally applicable to those spending their days (and nights) programming in Java and other technologies.

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is about the CSAF agenda and recordings

Hello,

Last week we hosted 150 architects from across Canada in Vancouver for the 3 day Canadian Strategic Architect Forum. Everyone who attended the forum received a full copy of the Office 2007 Professional and Vista Ultimate plus one individual won an XBOX 360. In the spirit of Web 2.0 we allowed attendees to participate in real-time on http://www.csaf07.com , we also recorded all 47 sessions and are in process of making them available. A number of PPTs and recordings have already been posted and rest are on the way. The agenda for the event was as follows: 

Please visit http://www.csaf07.com if you want to view the power point or recording for any session

Best regards,

Mohammad

About: This blog post is about a series of Web Cast that we will conduct for those who want to become architects and/or be recognized as architects in their organizations.

Hello,

Based on popular demand, we have put together a series of technology-agnostic Web Casts focused on those that want to become architects. The detaisl of the various sessions are as follows:

Architecture 101 (Mohammad, May 24)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032338971&culture=en-CA

Architecture is the balance between art and engineering, it requires a certain mindset and approach to solving problems. Architects often function as a bridge between the business users and development groups and are increasingly being recognized as a critical community within organizations. Becoming an Architect can often translate in  to an elevated status from a career stage perspective but it is hard to find prescriptive guidance around how to become an architect. Join Mohammad Akif for the first of a four part series focused on aspiring architects. During the Architecture 101 session we will discuss some key ideas around Architecture and define attributes of an architect.

Software development lifecycle and methodologies (Dave, May 31)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032338974&culture=en-CA

Over the years the various approaches teams have used to develop software have evolved. Join Dave Remmer in the second of a series focused on aspiring architects where we will discuss the various stages projects go through and sample some of the methodologies used by teams developing software. In this session we will compare and contrast the waterfall, agile, RUP, Scrum and MSF methodologies and how they are used within software projects.

Services orientation and other architectural paradigms  (Dave, June 7)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032338978&culture=en-CA

One of the hottest topics in software architecture is the services oriented approach to building solutions and how this can provide agility, flexibility and reuse. Join Dave Remmer in the third of a series focused on aspiring architects where we will be looking at approaches to architecting software. This session will give an overall description of service orientation and how it differs from object oriented and component based architectures as well as a discussion of some of the organizational challenges teams experience when using a services oriented architecture.

Transitioning from a developer to an architect  (Mohammad, June 14)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032338980&culture=en-CA

Are you a developer who would like to learn more about becoming an architect? Or how to get formally recognized as one (since you already wear the design and architecture hat along with the developer one)?. Join Mohammad Akif for the fourth and last part of the series focused on aspiring architects, during this session we will discuss how you can attain the skill set required to be an architect and sell yourself as an architect within your organization and industry. We will also provide a list of resources that you can use to continue the transition from a developer to an architect role. 

best regards,

Mohammad