Sam Nasr

ComputerWorld has conducted a salary survery for a large variety of developers. It also provides a breakdown per region and vertical industry. To view these results and see how your salary compares, go to the 2006 Salary Survey . In addition, check out other related articles compiled by ComputerWorld. * Salary Survey 2006: Smart Salary Tool For Comparing Pay http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/1004849/209182/41105/2/ * 2006 Salary Survey Blog: 'I Want a Raise' http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/1004849/209182/41106/2/ * Gender Gap: Women's Paychecks Still Lag Men's http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/1004849/209182/41104/2/

I came across an article from Computer World that looks at Overseas outsourcing in a different light. Typically the argument has been cost vs. quality, but in this article many are saying outsourcing is becoming a necesary evil due to lack of resources in the western hemisphere. A shortage of IT graduates from Western universities is leading companies to call on developing countries to meet research demand, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said today. To read the full article, go to http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9004836&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

Q: I have a For-Next loop where intensive processing takes place. I would like the application to respond other events during execution of this code. A: The method DoEvents() will handle this requirement. By placing a call to DoEvents at the top of the loop, this method will process all messages queued from the Operating System, including shutting down the application. Using the DoEvents() method requires a reference to System.Windows.Forms.dll. Furthermore, the DoEvents() method is found in the class System.Windows.Forms.Application. Private Sub btn1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btn1.Click Dim intCounter as Integer For intCounter = 1 To 1000 DoEvents() 'located in System.Windows.Forms.Application 'Processing Procedure here Next End Sub

For those that missed the last SIG meeting on VB 2005, you can catch it Monday night (Nov. 6th). I have been asked to give the VB 2005 presentation at a local community college. The presentation is scheduled for Monday, November 6th, 2006, from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. If you're interested, please e-mail me for more information at sam@ClevelandDotNet.info .

Microsoft recently announced that EMC Corp's Documentum will offer better integration with Microsoft Office 2007, especially with SharePoint 2007. The Documentum product will offer it's content management functionality without requiring an upgrade. There are two main new offerings from Microsoft: Content Services for SharePoint, which provides access to the Documentum repository within SharePoint so users can check documents in and out and manage metadata and virtual documents. Archive Services for SharePoint, which can either manually or automatically move content into SharePoint. To read more about this, click here .

On Tuesday, October 10, 2006 Microsoft will release 11 security updates. Six patches affect Windows, 4 affect Office, and 1 affecting the .Net Framework. A brief summary of these patches is listed below. 6 Microsoft Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft Windows. The highest Maximum Severity rating for these is Critical. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. Some of these updates will require a restart. 4 Microsoft Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft Office. The highest Maximum Severity rating for these is Critical. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. These updates may require a restart. 1 Microsoft Security Bulletin affecting Microsoft .NET Framework. The highest Maximum Severity rating for this is Moderate. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and the Enterprise Scan Tool. These updates may require a restart. Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Remo...

Take a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/09/26/772250.aspx and you'll notice an item buried in this announcement for Visual Studio SP1 Beta. Development compatibility and support on Vista: VS 2005 SP1 supported; VS 2005 NOT supported; VS 2003/2002 NOT supported; VB6 supported! Interesting! Thanks to Mark H. for passing this interesting tid-bit along.

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Listed below are a set of FAQ questions surrounding the new IE bug. What's the problem? A vulnerability newly discovered in Microsoft Internet Explorer could allow an attacker to take over a targeted machine -- even a machine whose patches are all up to date. What's it called? The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures list tentatively designates this vulnerability as CVE-2006-4868 . McAfee calls it Exploit-VMLFill ; Trend Micro calls it EXPL_EXECOD.A ; Symantec calls it Trojan.Vimalov , reflecting its probable Russian origin. SecurityFocus assigns it a Bugtraq ID of 20096 . Which programs and versions are affected? Internet Security Systems reports that the flaw affects all versions of IE that include support for VML, which means Versions 5 and 6, though tests so far have generally looked at Version 6. There have been no reports of the attack working on IE 7. Recent versions of Outlook and Outlook Express are also vulnerable, as are all versions and service packs for Windows...

Q: I was wondering if document libraries in SharePoint 2007 support folders within them. Does MOSS 2007 support folders? A: Yes, MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) does support folders within a document library (see screen caption below). To create a folder, simply click "New" and select "New Folder".

As discussed during our last meeting, SharePoint 2007 has many new features. And as with any new feature, some confusion is bound to be included. Two of those new features are ODC and BDC. To help clear some of the confusion around these 2 items, here's a brief explanation of the two. ODC (Office Data Connection) is used to connect Excel Services to a specific database, without making the user remember userID, password, DB Name, server name, etc. Instead, all these items are stored in an XML format file with the extension name .ODC. The .ODC file can be created by using the Excel client to create the file, then upload the file to a Data Connection Library. Once uploaded, a user simply refers to the ODC file, where all connection string parameters are stored. The data connection can then be used by various Excel Web Parts to display the data and KPIs. To read more about the ODC, go to http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2006/02/16/533865.aspx BDC (Business Data Catalog) is a...

During our last meeting we discussed SharePoint 2007 and how Excel Services is one of it's big features. I recenly found a web part that enables the use of Excel 2003 with Windows SharePoint Services. The Spreadsheet Web Part Add-In for Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 makes it easy to design your own Spreadsheet Web Parts and save them to a site based on Microsoft Windows® SharePoint™ Services. For more information or to download the Excel web part, click here .

Q: What is WinFX? A: WinFX is an Object Oriented set of APIs that leverage the .Net Framework and expose that breadth of the Longhorn OS to developers. WinFX contains .Net Framework(FW) and is available in managed code. It builds on and extends the .Net FW As the name may suggest, WinFX consists of 2 major parts: 1. WIN (Windows): Win32 APIs. 2. FX (Framework): speaks to .Net Framework There are 4 Portions of WinFX 1. Presentation 2. Data 3. Communications 4. Fundamentals In addition, WinFX offers functionality from other systems: Avalon fucntionality is in the System.Windows namespace. This is the new presentation SubSystem for Longhorn. ASP.Net and Indigo functionality are both in the System.Web namespace. Indigo is the new technology for web services. WinFS functionality is in the System.Storage namespace. It contains relational aspects of the file system. Yukon Functionality for database access is in System.Data.SQL Server namespace