Saturday, May 30, 2009
Japanese Bring Hot Spring to Home
Japanese remarkable creativity is proven again (to my limited knowledge). We today bought a packs of hotspring powder from a Japanese supermart in Sydney. Sprinkle it in the hot tub, control the tempurature of hot warter between 38 to 42 degree, a Japanese style hotspring is created in my home besides the bathtup is usually much larger than that you would see in most Japan's household.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
So What is SharePoint
My upfront apology for the briefness and unstructureness of this blog. Just thought I could do a blog series on SharePoint that hopefully share some points.
In short, SharePoint isn't merely an application that serves a vertical purpose. Rather it is a service platform where other business applications can be built on. Just as the term "platform" implies there are many OOTB platform features that otherwise would require reinventing the wheel. Seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook is one of the made-ready platform features.
You may have heard different terms that all refer to SharePoint such as WSS3.0(Windows Shared Server) and MOSS2007(Microsoft Office SharePoint Server). I personally use SharePoint as an umbrella code name to refer to the product when talking to clients at business side. Down to the technical level, WSS and MOSS are most likely to be used. MOSS 2007 is built on top of WSS 3.0, which is also built on top of ASP.NET 2.0 and runs in IIS (Internet Information Server).
Microsoft has a reputation being close-sourced and leaving no chance for extention or customisation. This isn't true, at least not for the entire Microsoft Office product suite, SharePoint included (as the name MOSS indicates). Instead of calling plug-ins, they are called add-ons in Microsoft. Just like people can develop custom portlets for Confluence or JIRA, one can develop Web Parts and deploy them to SharePoint. The difference is one is in Java while another .NET. The deployment process even shares some common characters, a XML descriptor file is needed - portlet.xml vs. *.dwp.
IMHO, transiting from Java to .NET requires a paradigm shift even though both lauguages follow OO pinciples. Microsoft isn't Open Sourced meaning at least for things you need you would need a license to legally install before you can start playing around with them. The model of downloading MySQL for free, hitting the ground running for a university student who wants to get a taste of DB programming isn't going to work in Microsoft world. Another frustration I have experienced is Microsoft products' appetite for hardware resources. You need a high-spec computer to run Microsoft goodies.
The world is changing. Sun is going to be bought by Oracle after it failed to sell itself to IBM. The old saying of "Microsoft againt community" in my opinion is no longer true. Microsoft these days engages with community on a broader scale, after all Ray Ozzie is company's chief software architect. CustomWare is an Integration & Collaboration specialist. SharePoint is Microsoft's entry to the arena, let's embrace it and delight our customers.
In short, SharePoint isn't merely an application that serves a vertical purpose. Rather it is a service platform where other business applications can be built on. Just as the term "platform" implies there are many OOTB platform features that otherwise would require reinventing the wheel. Seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook is one of the made-ready platform features.
You may have heard different terms that all refer to SharePoint such as WSS3.0(Windows Shared Server) and MOSS2007(Microsoft Office SharePoint Server). I personally use SharePoint as an umbrella code name to refer to the product when talking to clients at business side. Down to the technical level, WSS and MOSS are most likely to be used. MOSS 2007 is built on top of WSS 3.0, which is also built on top of ASP.NET 2.0 and runs in IIS (Internet Information Server).
Microsoft has a reputation being close-sourced and leaving no chance for extention or customisation. This isn't true, at least not for the entire Microsoft Office product suite, SharePoint included (as the name MOSS indicates). Instead of calling plug-ins, they are called add-ons in Microsoft. Just like people can develop custom portlets for Confluence or JIRA, one can develop Web Parts and deploy them to SharePoint. The difference is one is in Java while another .NET. The deployment process even shares some common characters, a XML descriptor file is needed - portlet.xml vs. *.dwp.
IMHO, transiting from Java to .NET requires a paradigm shift even though both lauguages follow OO pinciples. Microsoft isn't Open Sourced meaning at least for things you need you would need a license to legally install before you can start playing around with them. The model of downloading MySQL for free, hitting the ground running for a university student who wants to get a taste of DB programming isn't going to work in Microsoft world. Another frustration I have experienced is Microsoft products' appetite for hardware resources. You need a high-spec computer to run Microsoft goodies.
The world is changing. Sun is going to be bought by Oracle after it failed to sell itself to IBM. The old saying of "Microsoft againt community" in my opinion is no longer true. Microsoft these days engages with community on a broader scale, after all Ray Ozzie is company's chief software architect. CustomWare is an Integration & Collaboration specialist. SharePoint is Microsoft's entry to the arena, let's embrace it and delight our customers.
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