In my years consulting for LÛCRUM, I have worked for numerous clients that have had installations of both Oracle and Microsoft running in their environments. With recent statistics estimating that Oracle controls >50% of the database market and Microsoft controlling >50% of the server operating system market, are you surprised? SQL Server only runs on Microsoft. Oracle offers more operating system versatility. While you’ll see UNIX and Linux installations, Oracle’s ability to run on Microsoft remains strong and they are improving their functionality with respect to Microsoft development. Where might an Oracle database deployed on a Microsoft server make most sense? In the small and mid-sized business market (SMB). In the SMB market, Oracle has competitively priced versions such as Oracle Database Standard Edition and Standard Edition One.

So what advantages does running Oracle on Microsoft have to offer? First, Oracle has tight integration with Active Directory and Windows Security Framework. Items such as single sign-on and security via database role and Active Directory group fall into this category. Next, Oracle offers 32-bit and 64-bit versions. In the 32-bit version, Oracle is able to utilize up to 3GB (out of a 4GB O.S. maximum) of system memory for database use. Finally, Oracle has also been working on enhancing its ability to integrate with the Windows development suite, specifically Visual Studio 2008. Oracle supports .NET in 3 ways. The Oracle Data Provider for .NET leverages ADO.NET API and allows .NET applications to access Oracle data. These APIs should be familiar to most Microsoft developers. In addition, through an add-in (free for that matter), developers can work with Oracle services via Visual Studio 2005 (and 2008 as previously mentioned). Through the development suite, developers have access to various wizards to perform various database tasks (i.e. DDL), a procedure editor (for PL/SQL procedures, packages, and functions), a Debugger for runtime error interaction, and integrated help for items such as Oracle error reference, SQL, and PL/SQL user manuals. Lastly, Oracle has integrated .NET extensions directly inside the database. This allows developers to created stored procedures and functions using C# or VB.NET within Visual Studio. This code can then be deployed to the database and referenced wherever a stored procedure or function is permitted.

Oracle has shown it is advantageous to offer solutions that fit neatly into an operating system that controls the majority of the server market, even if that vendor also happens to be a major competitor in the database market. Offer a product that is extensible and easy to use with development GUIs is sure to give you a seat at the table when it comes to choosing a solution for your organization. That is precisely why Oracle supports Microsoft (most of the time <grin>).

Dave

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This week - Urgent priorities with my new client, Ipsos, and other major client needs are driving my time. I also have a member of my team in town from Newfoundland.

Last week - I started to come up to speed with Ipsos and had meetings all day each day.

Prior week - I was finishing my Data Strategy/Architecture role with Kroger which required me to max out each day.

But, at night… Had lots of family things going on…you know what it’s like trying to balance work/home life. !

I’ve got one finishing high school, one just finished her first year of college. Two proms. One 8th grade formal. One child going to Orlando for two weeks, another going to Destin for a week. Three awards ceremonies. One child with recent medical issues and blah blah blah and so on….

So, I am trying to get back in to balance and expect to reach a proper rhythm again soon. Or my head will explode! I miss you all and hope to post some great content soon.

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My coworkers at LUCRUM are smart - much smarter than I am. I know that when they talk about technology, they are passionate about it. They speak from experience and they speak from the heart. They are sincere, and that is different. They are interesting. They are real. They are the essence of “The Brand.”

I also trust the readers of the site. They can smell disingenuous corporate speak from a mile away. Yeah, I could hire professional writers to put together a brand strategy for our blog. We could toil endlessly on the exact wording of every phrase - but why? It would not be real. It would not be different. It would invisible.

Thankfully, it is real. And… it is really fun to be involved with.

Just today, we were contacted by a talented IT Professional who was so moved by Andy Erickson’s LinkedIn profile and the honesty of the blog site that she sent in an amazing letter with her resume expressing her desire to join the LUCRUM team.

This is the result of conversation.

What we hope to achieve is not just conversation, but also recommendation. In this day and age reputation is so important. What you do is far more important than what you say you do. What you do IS the marketing. It is about customer service, employee relations, innovative thinking, and delivering real value for Clients each and every day.

We are working on building a tribe. A loyal group of eager participants, fully engaged in the experience of LUCRUM. We want to create evangelists. We aspire to deliver greatness. That aspiration lives in each of us, and thus the blog serves as the platform for sharing our honest hopes and dreams for the firm. It is a metaphor for the business as a whole. It is about being “recommendable” or perhaps more properly put “remarkable.”

Are we there yet? Nope. But we have taken the steps necessary to start the journey. Each and every day we learn. Each and every day we evolve. Hopefully, we listen, we grow, and we improve along the way.

Why blog? Well if what we do is to solve business problems by using technology, than why not embrace technology to identify those problems and uncover the solutions? Why not engage our people to drive innovation at every level of the organization? Why not give everyone, including our clients and the world at large, a voice in the conversation. Why not become recommendable?

Check out the link below for a great article about marketing in the recommendation age.

Marketing in the Recommendation Age | Small Business Solutions - TheStreet.com

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What is a Architect? Is it the guy that wonders the halls with a chip on his shoulder and thinks he has all the answers … Yes. It is the guy who sit quietly in the corner cube and know how everything works … Yes. It is the guy that everyone looks to for technical leadership … Yes. Is it the guy  who works with the business team and the development team to deliver a solution to a business need … Yes. I listened to a lot of opinions on what people considered a architect to be. Here are some of the qualities of an architect that come out in the meeting:

• Knows the value of business and how to work with them to provide solutions
• Bridges the gap between business and IT
• See the ‘Big Picture’ and keeps everything on course
• Advocates change ( In technology and business)
• Mentors
• Designs repeatable solutions
• Defines processes
• Creates conceptual solutions to prove concepts
• Codes

These qualities can be boiled down into 5 compentencies of an architect

• Technology
• Leadership
• Consulting
• Organizational Politics
• Business Stragegy

Many companies use roles as titles to help define an individuals value to the company. I think this is where the definition of an architect gets confusing. It can be defined differently based on the company you are working for. A architect at small company A might only be considered a technical lead at large company B. People can be quick to say that they are an ‘Architect’ because the title adds value to them within the company. It can also mean a higher pay scale and more respect, who doesn’t want that. This is partially how I defined an architect, but after last nights meeting I have a different view. Architect is a role that is played on a project. I might be a architect today on a project, a business analyst tomorrow and a coder the next day. Do I have the qualities and competencies of an architect? Yes (depending on who you ask). Should I have the title? No. I move from project to project in my consulting career and may serve as architect on a project or I might just be joining the team to help out with coding an application that has fallen behind schedule. I could even move to the database and being doing tables and stored procedures. The point to my rambling is that we should not define ‘What is a Architect’ just based on technology, but define what are the qualities, skills and competencies of the individual that plays the roles of architect on a project.

Architect vs. Designer/Technical Lead

This can be a tough distinction to make depending on the size of the company you work for. Smaller companies and projects will blur the line between the two just because there are not enough people to clearly define separate roles. I think the distinction between the two is made by the qualities of an architect listed above. An architect can do the technical lead role, but brings more to the table along the lines of business knowledge and the ability to understand what the business wants, work with them to find a solution and understand the costs and ROI involved in the solution.

Types of Architect

This can also be tough distinction depending on the company or project. The meeting produced the following list of types:

• Enterprise
  • Strategy
  • Sees and understands the ‘Big Picture’ for a company
  • Oversees all applications and infrastructure
  • Works with business leaders (CFO,CTO,CIO)
• Solution
  • Oversees multiple applications and integration
  • Develops solutions to meet business needs
• Infrastructure
  • Servers and sever software such as Exchange
  • Capacity planning

———————————————–

• Data
  • Database and data
• Business
  • Works with business to improve process and workflow
• Application
  • Technical lead
  • Coding standards
  • Application specific detai

The separation between the top and bottom three is because the bottom three could all be considered part of the top three depending on the size of the company or project.

These are just my thought on what was discussed in the meeting. Maybe they helped you answer some questions. Maybe they raised more questions. What is a Architect? It will vary depending on who is defining it. To me an architect is a person who can wear many hats and work with business to clarify the ‘Big Picture’ and create solutions that meet needs and provide value to the business. Don’t worry about achieving a title, worry about being good at your job whatever hat your wearing that day.

Thanks to Mike Levy, Leon Gersing and Joe Wirtley for an excellent meeting. Joe will be presenting ‘Pragmatic Software Architecture and the Role of the Architect’ at the May 21st Cincinnati Programmers Guild meeting if you are interested. Check out their website for more info. http://cincypg.org/.

Also checkout the Cincinnati .NET users group site for more information on the CinArc group and the new CinArc forum. http://cinnug.org/. Hope to see you at the next meeting.

- Jeff

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Truth be told, I rarely ever go to Starbucks, and as a matter of fact don’t have a Mac but I see where their success lies. I digress though. The reason that I was at Starbucks on this beautiful May morning was to meet Jill Morrison from The United Way. She was outlining certain activities and going over the capabilities of the United Way, what they had to offer to the community, and more importantly how LUCRUM could get involved.

Many of us might think that charitable work is not related to customer loyalty at first but I assure it is. In the modern era of Globalization, the flat world if you will, this “think globally and act locally” mantra is very pertinent concept. Companies cannot and do not operate in a vacuum outside their communities, and if they do, the community will suffer and inevitably the company will too. No, organizations are living entities that operate within a community, the community draws from the company and vice versa, it’ a symbiotic relationship, or at least it should be.

Investing in the community around us indirectly benefits the company. Like the old saying, “the rising tide raises all the ships” well, if our community is doing better, it can only help a business. Moreover, those in the community will take notice and see that the company is not just trying to sell them something. Then they will realize that the company is just as invested in the community future as they are, and thus they will invest back into the company. It all comes back down to the Tuesday Model really. This part gets to the backbone of every relationship, which if you remember is trust. Beyond the good feeling we all get from helping others out, charitable works foster trust. Our customers will understand then that we are invested in their community, because we are meeting their expectations of giving back. Everything is integrated, the Milton Friedman concept that business sole responsibility is to maximize shareholder value is outdated and too simplistic. If we dehumanize ourselves then our customers won’t be able to relate. You can’t be loyal to what you can’t relate to. Investing back in the community feels right because it is right. It makes economic and social sense, and I am glad to see LUCRUM committing to such causes.

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It’s easy to see why SharePoint 2007 is such a strong contender in the enterprise collaboration space, when you realize that it combines messaging, social computing, real time collaboration and virtual team workspaces.

I am currently working on developing a plan and strategy for collaboration for a client and it’s all about leveraging the power of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (SharePoint 2007) to increase employee productivity and connect seamlessly to people, knowledge and data to help employees make better informed decisions so that they can serve their customers more effectively.

SharePoint 2007 provides blogs and wikis as site templates so that you can easily create those as needed. The People Finder can help you locate people based on different directory level attributes and the neat thing is you can find people based on skills or expertise that they have specified in their user profiles. People and group lists are readily accessible depending on user privileges and presence information is available as well. Real Time Presence and Communication is enabled wherever the real-time presence smart tag icon displays. In conjunction with Live Meeting 2007, Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007, this makes for a very powerful collaboration tool.

In the messaging space, the tight integration between Outlook 2007, Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007 allows you to take offline an entire library so you can work disconnected from the network. Also your SharePoint tasks can display right alongside your Outlook tasks. Alerts that you set up on your SharePoint site automatically send you email notifications. Discussion boards are email enabled so users can save their email as part of a threaded discussion. Also, lists and libraries can be email enabled so as to allow users to email a document directly into a library. There is an RSS viewer web part with which you can subscribe to an RSS feed. Furthermore, every list and library in SharePoint 2007 is RSS enabled, so you can subscribe to the contents of a list or library via RSS.

When it comes to virtual team workspaces, SharePoint 2007 provides several different site templates out of the box. Apart from this, Microsoft has released 40 site templates that cater to commonly used functionality such as vacation scheduling, contacts list management, etc. Furthermore, it is very easy to create a custom site template – once you configure your site to work just the way you want, you can easily save that as a site template so you can now reuse that as needed. These virtual team workspaces provide a repository for lists of items, libraries of documents, announcements, online calendars, surveys, task and issue lists, project tasks list with Gantt chart functionality, and task coordination using simple workflows. Lists and libraries can enforce security at the item level and they also provide versioning, explicit check in/check out, content approval before publishing, etc.  These team workspaces can be also be secured at an individual or group level. SharePoint 2007 makes it possible to easily create no-code, declarative, sequential workflows based on business rules using the SharePoint Designer 2007 tool. Combine SharePoint 2007 with Groove 2007 for collaborating across organizational boundaries, whether connected or offline and now you have an even more compelling scenario of use.

So all in all, it makes sense that the adoption of SharePoint 2007 is so pervasive!

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Due out later this year, SS2008 provides built-in support for Unstructured Data through the FILESTREAM functionality.  FILESTREAM combines the power of a relational database platform with the storage flexibility of a NTFS file system.  This is accomplished by storing references within the database to binary large object data (BLOBs) residing on the file system.  In this fashion, SS2008 manages access and interaction with the information, but is not responsible for the direct storage of it.  Unstructured Data can be accessed through typical Transact-SQL statements or via Win32 API calls.  FILESTREAM is a good option to consider when objects being stored are larger than 1 MB in size and is limited only by the volume size of the underlying file system.  If objects are <1 MB on average, you’ll get better performance by using the Varbinary(max) data type directly within the database.

From a security standpoint, FILESTREAM fits neatly into the database.  If a user has permission to query a table and column containing FILESTREAM data, they are able to access the Unstructured Data.  This access however does not carry forward at the file system level.  Only the account running the SQL Server service account has access to the files at the file system level.    

Is this only way to deal with Unstructured Data?  Of course not, but it is an option.  There are some limitations when using FILESTREAM with other SS2008 functionality.  Special consideration needs to be addressed when utilizing Database Snapshots, Mirroring, Replication, Log Shipping, and Clustering.

Continue to browse through other blogs on www.thefuturevalueofbusiness.com to see conversations on SharePoint 2007 and its role in taming Unstructured Data.

Dave

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Recently, I wrote a blog post on a project that I was working on for my supervisior. It was concerning Tuesdays, and customer loyalty. Customer Loyalty, seems pretty important no? If your customers aren’t loyal, it’s probably because of something you did, or perhaps didn’t do. Referrals are one the best forms of marketing or advertisement, you only refer who you enjoyed working with in one capacity or another. Also we tend to work and or buy things from people we like. This is why networking is so vital. That’s all I ever heard about at the Williams College of Business at Xavier- “networking-networking-networking.” Given the aforementioned, I think that customer service, and to be more precise, customer loyalty is paramount. So then, why The Prince as a preamble.

As the first line of my rant goes, is it better to be feared or loved? According to Niccolo Machiavelli, it is best be both, but seeing how this is rarely accomplished, it is better that you are feared than loved. There is no real concise way to put his explanation on why, but he does give his reasons. Again, why am I writing this? I tend to read a lot of philosophy and I find that it inspires me. Not that I think that our customers should be loyal due to fear of retribution. Personally, I say neither answer is right. I say that, better than being feared or loved is being respected. If people fear you, they will due only what is necessary to not be punished, which will render you moderate at best results. Love on the other hand can, at times, skew people’s judgment, which can lead to a lack of necessary constructive criticism. If I was starting a business, the last thing that I would want is a bunch of “yes men” to back me up or take point. R-E-S-P-E-C-T is king, people want to do good for those they admire, they want to work with those they admire, they are loyal to those they admire. This is why Fortune, ranks the “most admired companies.”

Now considering my recent project, in my humble opinion, customer loyalty comes down to respect. Given to and received from customer to business. It’s a two-way street. Respect comes down to relationships, and relationships come down to the Tuesday Model or The Tuesday(superscript C) Model. It’s linear. If the customer is simply a means to an end, then the relationship will end quicker than you think. We must remember that ultimately the customer is our “boss” and not vice versa.

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Collaboration by its very nature creates a lot of unstructured content. Given that there isn’t a pre-defined structure, how does one go about quickly locating relevant information? It’s quite possible that the one who is looking for something might not even know where the information might reside. Is it on a file system or in a virtual team workspace or in a discussion thread or in a wiki? Also, it’s quite possible that the unstructured content that is created was actually pertaining to some structured content out in a database or a line-of-business application. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to search and reference that information as well?

IDC estimates that information workers spend on average 48% of their time searching for and analyzing information, (9.5 and 9.6 hours per week, respectively) which costs an organization $28,000 per worker per year (see “The Hidden Costs of Information Work”, IDC April 2006)

As mentioned last week, I’m going to look at some of the capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (referred to in the future as SharePoint 2007) which make it such a strong contender in the Enterprise 2.0 space. With SharePoint 2007, you are able to search both structured and unstructured data and quickly find the information you might be looking for. You can search content on your file shares, your internet and intranet web sites, IBM Lotus Notes repositories, Microsoft Exchange Public folders, and of course, SharePoint sites. You can also find information stored in databases and backend Line of Business systems, such as ERP and CRM. Not only this, but you can also search for people in your organization and identify those who might have the required expertise to get a job done. The best part about SharePoint search is that it returns security-trimmed results, so that a user only gets to see what they’ve been previously authorized to see. The search experience in SharePoint 2007 is highly customizable as well so that one can display best bets, eliminate noise words, and customize the display of search results and do so much more. Another highly useful feature is that there is really no preset document limit unlike other well-known search products.

An Enterprise Search feature pack is expected soon which is going to further enhance the Search experience with SharePoint and incorporate some of the powerful functionality found in Microsoft Search Server 2008, which Forrester Research has labeled as a Disruptor in Enterprise Search (see Microsoft: Latest Disruptor in Enterprise Search). Also, with Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST earlier this year (see Gartner Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology, 2007), which Microsoft plans to integrate into SharePoint Search, it’s going to make the already powerful SharePoint search experience even more so. It’s worth noting too that other software vendors have also recognized the power of SharePoint Search and are integrating their products with SharePoint to leverage its powerful search functionality (for example, look at this news article about an open source collaboration vendor integrating with SharePoint for its Search functionality).

So with SharePoint 2007, you can pretty much assume that you will be able to search and retrieve the content you’re looking for. For more details, look at Enterprise Search from Microsoft.

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Well this visit was a bit different, let me explain. I sat down in the chair and my hygienist explained it was time for x-rays. Ok no problem…put on lead vest…open wide and bite down on film…absorb some radiation…print out x-ray…review x-ray on white screen. To my surprise, my assumed process stopped at “absorb some radiation”. Instead of printing out the x-ray to film, the results of my x-ray immediately displayed on a LCD monitor next to my chair within “Dave’s dashboard”! My dentist had recently installed a new system and was in the process of converting the WALL into the digital age.

So what did “Dave’s dashboard” include?

• A repository of x-ray films. This allows the dentist to quickly move between versions of films and allows him to monitor changing patterns in the mouth (tooth gaps widening/shrinking, jaw alignment, etc.)
• Historical view of past visits. Included were procedures performed, costs associated, insurance company billed, future scheduled visits, etc.
• A graphical representation of all the teeth in MY mouth. It showed my incisors, my molars, etc. But the neat part was that if something was “special” about a tooth, that “special” was represented in the graphic. Fillings were shaded grey. Cosmetic work was green. Areas “being watched” were blue. I was told areas with potential enamel problems would be another color.
• A bunch of other “tabs” of information that I wasn’t able to view (couldn’t ask, mouth was full)

How cool is that? All information about a patient was online and accessible in a concise easy to read format. A format that can be shared directly with the patient to help them understand why their tooth is hurting or what their teeth may look like “after” a cosmetic change.

I attempted to ask my dentist about the software to get a feel for what technologies were used to create this. Obviously he didn’t have a clue, but it was running in Windows Vista and appeared to be client/server in nature. Not only did this appear to make the dentist and hygienist’s job easier from a paperwork perspective, but now this vital information was easily maintained, backed up and tucked away in the event of an office disaster. The reliance on the WALL was subsiding. So in a world where businesses are consistently trying to improve themselves, exposing the same old information in new exciting ways may just help turn on a light bulb to a new way of thinking or acting/reacting…even a dentist.

If I ever need to change dentists, I now only have to request my records be forwarded electronically to my next dentist. I don’t plan on doing so anytime soon though. I very pleased with my current one and he’s getting hip with the times and using software/technologies that I have expressed interests in.

Now where is that floss…

Dave

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