April 2005 - Posts

The law of Leaky Abstractions
Thu, Apr 28 2005 8:15 AM
The article is 18 months old but I didn't knew it. The law of Leaky Abstractions is a good read. [via Aaron Skonnard]
BizTalk seems to be hot at Tech-Ed
Fri, Apr 8 2005 7:59 AM
Just came across this post on the newsgroups. 15 Sessions and 7 Labs dedicated to BizTalk, including at least 4 on BTS 2006. Mmm, last year I needed to perform on a chair to get a Tech-Ed ticket, I wonder what they make me do this year ;-).
Windows 2003 SP1 locks the door on install
Fri, Apr 1 2005 7:36 AM

About a year ago an article was published that an freshly installed Windows XP machine connected to the internet was infected by a virus or worm way within the hour (I think it was about 20 minutes on average). Which makes it almost impossible to install a machine and download all patches before infection strikes without precautions like disconnecting the network and installing a (closed down) firewall before reconnecting it.

Windows 2003 SP1 solves this issue by blocking all inbound traffic untill all relevant Windows Update patches are installed. That's the right way to go.

Site Statistics solution from Microsoft?
Fri, Apr 1 2005 7:23 AM

Microsoft Download RSS is one of the feeds I check daily and today this download came by. The Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Internet Information Services (IIS). Statistics is an issue in every web project and now you have the option to use Reporting Services out of the box. I know, it isn´t a big deal, but it are those little things that can make a customer happy.

BTW, I was stunned to see that it relies on a tool in the IIS6 Resource Kit that can parse IIS logfiles and create a database out of it. Never knew about this option. That in itself is a handy feature to know about.