Phil Scott's WebLog

I've been finding out that a lot of VB people out there are getting stuck with the role of the DBA.  They can create the tables, data integrity stuff, stored procedures and all that just fine.  They might even pick up some security and backup knowledge.  But something that many just don't have the time to learn proper is indexes and the index architecture.  Some really cool stuff in there, but many people are too busy creating apps to worry about creating an index that might perform a little better than what we have out there already.

Not sure if anyone is looking to get their MCAD / MCSD for Microsoft .NET out there, but a couple of links that I've found treemendously helpful are Tim's Exam Links. What he's basically done is taken Microsoft's list of skills you need to pass the exam, and provides links to MSDN or other websites where you can pick up the skill.  So say you haven't done much in the ways of "Provide multicultural test data to components, pages, and applications," there are three links to get you up to speed on that topic.  I like resources like this because I never really prepare for exams, I just kinda take them.  That willy nilly stuff was fine fof VB6 because, well, I did all that stuff all the time.  Now with .NET, there is just SOOO much that I just don't touch on a day to day basis (like multicultural stuff), things like this are a god send if I want to confidently pass an exam.

All this hype about Konfabulator is kinda making me jealous.  That was my idea!  I never did much with it, but my idea was to basically do what they did, but instead host ASP.NET and serve up "applications" that way in an applications.  I'm sure if I was wiser about Smart Clients, I could figure a way to do some cool stuff like that....

Edit: More Links

• Reference for Creating Objects
• Gallery of Stuff people have done so far (link is misspelled in their menu).
• Article in MacWorld.
• Wired News Article <- best info IMHO.

Not sure how many people here are MCSDs, but if you are, starting March 1, 2003 you qualify for a free exam voucher for exam 70-300 (Analyzing Requirements and Defining Microsoft .NET Solution Architectures) which should help you obtain the new MCSD for Microsoft .NET.  See the secure MCP site for details.

Not to be another "me too" on Ingo's redesign, but what's up with this ;)

Macromedia DevNet [via CNet]. Who are these people using freakin' Dreamweaver and Flash that need to drop $1,500 on DevNet.  It's upgrades and their resource kits.  And upgrade costs what, $200 bucks for each piece of software?  So you are paying $1000+ for info most people have available for free on the web?  Hmmmm.  I have no problem with the subscription system (god bless MSDN Subscriptions), but it's kinda like paying $900 bucks a year for Sports Illustrated and access to CNNSI.  You could easily buy the magazine at the store and hit up another website for the info. 

I feel I'm missing something here.  $1,500 seems a bit high for what you are getting.  Oh, BTW, Tim's blog got me interested in Flash Remoting until I saw the price tag.  Which took a couple of days to find out, because Macromedia's "Dynamic content" was down yesterday.  Not a good sign when evaluating their dynamic content type applications...

I'm feeling kinda left out by the OS thingy, but for the record I'm Debian Linux.  I figured out my OS way back before finding out you are DR-DOS was cool.

http://homepage.mac.com/deadtroll2/.Movies/ossucksref.mov

In case you haven't seen it yet, an internal memo about "The Java Problem."  Not going to get in a language war, but it is still interesting to read, and hope that .NET doesn't end with issues like the size of the JRE and the "Extensions do not support modularity" type stuff.  I'm a little worried myself between whether I should be creating Windows app at all with version 1.1 of the framework...Ever.  Or is it 1.0?  That might just be my ignorance on how a system that has version 1.1 installed, and not 1.0 which my application is running with.  According to Sean and Scott I better deploy the framework, but having a link for people with version 1.1 installed to download version 1.0 seems just down right shady to me.  Time to read some more...