DEV307 - Principles and Patterns of Performance & Scalability for Architects - DevAcademy2

Hi,

As promised here are links to download the presentation and the demo files from my Session at MS Developers Academy II:

Presentation + Demos

Demos Only

Enjoy,

Vladi

P.S.

What did you like on the session?
What didn't you like?

All comments and remarks on the session are appreciated.

DEV307 - Principles and Patterns of Performance & Scalability

Hi,

Tomorrow is gonna be a great day!
The Developers Academy Strikes Again!

Great speakers, great content - and Great Audience (you)!

I am honored to speak again at DevAcademy conference.
This time I choose a tough topic to talk about, but I promise: It's going to be super interesting.

How do you manage to talk about "Principles and Patterns of Performance & Scalability", cover most necessary issues, don't talk about too much issues, show several demos, keep the audience alert - and manage to do all this in 75 minutes?

I hope I  found the principle to do that. So far, the reviews from rehearsals were great, I got excellent feedbacks from guys at Microsoft.

In 75 minutes we will cover all these topics and more:

1. Performance vs. Scalability -how do they interact
   
2. Output Caching
3. Data Caching
4. Reducing Database Round Trips
5. Asynchronous Programming with MSMQ & WCF
6. Distributed Cache
7. Communication & Latency – Serialization, Http Compression, Content Expiration
8. and some more surprises

I believe that it is going to be GREAT!

Everyone of you that will come will learn at least 1-2 new things or perspectives.

So,

When?    13:15 (promptly after lunch)
Where?   Arava hall (ערבה), entrance level

Come soon - there are only 200 seats available!

I will be also available for all your questions before and after the session. Feel absolutely free to come and ask me whatever you like!

See you there,

Vladi
 

Developers Academy II - online bloging

"D" day is close. And it is getting more close day by day.

Today, right now, lecturers, me omong them, are meeting and learn on the logistics.
I am very excited.
It will be even greater then last year!

And those of you that want to ask but don"t know who to ask or if it is "bad manners" - this year the FOOD WILL BE GOOD.

I will keep posting more details later

bye

Signup for the MS Developer Academy || !!!

Register now, before it's too late!

27/11/2007 - The second Developers Academy 2007 event!

Link to registration: click me 

Following last years great and successful event, the Developers Academy Strikes Again!

I am proud to be one of the lectures once again.
This year, I will speak about Scalability and Performance as two important goals of System/Application architecture and design.
The session title is:

Principles and Patterns of Performance & Scalability for Architects

The session will take place at Hall Arava, at 13:15.

I decided to give it this name, but actually we will cover so many principles and even tips that it is targeted for Developers, Team Leader, even CTOs as well as the Architects.

This year Microsoft guys don't want to repeat last year's logistics problems - So they will limit the number of people that can attend.
This means -

1. HURRY UP! Sign up today!
2. Be there on time! The gathering starts at 8:30, and at 9:30 first sessions are starting.
   Last time was over demand for many sessions (mine too). So you better come earlier.
3. Attend at Hall Arava, at 13:15, for my session (Vladimir Vexler)

Later, I will post more details about the contents, and maybe even do as I did last year, and post the presentation it self.

Later guys,

Vladi

The importance of Great Team

It's been quite a while, since I posted something.
I have been busy a lot with my startup DCF Technologies. But, since I promised to keep update and share my experiences and knowledge - I have to keep my promises.

Today I'll tell you about the importance of having a Great Team when creating a startup.

The life of a startup-ist is very tough and actually unstable. In the early stages there are lot's uncertainities. Things keep on changing, not progressing as you planned, strategy changes often, technology progress can run for weeks but can also go to a dead end - And then new opportunity arrives.

Most important thing is that not everything can be predicted!
I think of my self as a very skilled manager that always plan my steps very far ahead, also trying to predict what can go wrong and how can I prevent or react to that.
But I found out that in real startup life the number of uncertainities should be tripled and many things can not be predicted.

What all this basically means is that the early stages are very unpredictable, and having the ability to share this with a colleagues helps a lot.

But even without this I discovered an interesting truth about Capital Raising process from VC's (Venture Capital firms) and even Angels.

Here is how they estimate your ability to deliver and decide whether to give you money or not:

1. Great team = 70% of decision
2. Very large market = 25% of decision
3. Technology = 5% of decision

This means that if you have an excellent team - 70% chances that I can get funding.
The technology, the market, prototype, some clients - these items are important. But not as important as the Team.

So If you are planning on founding a startup company - start with understanding of importance of the Team!

Vladi

Head Hunting and me

Today I was aproached by a Head Hunting company.
It is the first time it happens to me and it's a very nice feeling...

Since I have founded a startup company and I am working very hard to raise to what it meant to be - it was not relevant to me.

But the idea it self makes me smile :)

75% Megatron

Just saw Guy Burstein has taken the Transformers quiz and decided to check it too. I am 75% Megatron!

Take the Transformers Quiz

Which transformer are you?


P.S.
this is a following of Mike's example...

Predicting the Next Decade of Enterprise Software

Using my Google Reader I am connected to many blogs. One of them is Tim O'Reilly. (Yes the one that wrote some of the programmers books your read...)
O'Reilly writes so much that I can not read him often. In on month he wrote about 80 posts. I guess he takes it very seriously, and it is part of his job...

Anyway, couple of days ago he published an interesting post titled: "Predicting the Next Decade of Enterprise Software". It is about a survey results that was done by Sandhill.com. These are some of their results that I find more interesting:

• Individuals that influenced the most on the last decade: Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux, see wiki-link)  and  Marc Benioff (salesforce.com - CRM on demand... see wiki-link). Bill Gates got only 17%.
• Not surprising - 62% thought that Google was the company with the greatest likelihood of affecting enterprise software in the next ten years.
  But surprising - IBM wasn't even one of the choices ?!
• 73% think SaaS (Software as a Service, see wiki-link) will be viewed as a success in ten years, while only 7% think that of Web 2.0. Tim disagrees with the second part, because He says that "SaaS is part of Web2.0 concept".

Personally, I think that it is only an illusion that "SaaS is part of Web2.0 concept". I believe the opposite: "Web2.0 is part of SaaS concept", because talking about Web2.0 is like talking about The New Economy - it is quite meaningless but very risky (I talked about it in my previous post - Internet 2.0? Internet 20.0!). But SaaS is a real business model that can, and in some places do, actually work.

Here is a link to the original post with some additional info: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/08/predicting_the.html.

Funny thing, Tim calls this survey an "info-porn" but with still interesting results..

Vladi

Internet 2.0? Internet 20.0!

"Japan working to replace the Internet"

For a long time I have been hearing some talks about the next generation of the Internet. And I don't count a movement from asp to .net, from standard to Ajax'd web-sites as a real generation step. All this cool technologies, like Flesh, Flex, Silverlight, Ajax, Asp.Net 1/2/3.. - all of them a really part of this current generation. This time I heard something tangible. But first of all, I have to explain myself about this generation thing.

Opposing to all customary belief, I believe that the lifetime of a internet generation is 20+- years, like in everything else in life. Of course, in the internet age there are so many changes in life that it is hard for us to compare it to what was before. Still, in my opinion, the belief that an internet generation lasts 2-3 years is wrong for the same reasons it was wrong to think that "The Old economy is Dead. Long live the New Economy" (a term that was invented in the mid 90's and caused a bankruptcy of millions - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_economy). Yes, it looks that the world is changing much faster then before - and it really does. But what it is changing into - we will know only after a couple of decades.

Back to the next generation of the internet, every couple of months i hear about some new developments on Http-NG (Next generation), IPv6 and some other stuff. But today is the first time I read about a real government (Japan) plan for the next generation of the internet, that should be activated in the year 2020. Here it is in a couple of words:

The Japan Minister of Communication announced, that an organization for developing and promoting the next generation network will be set up this fall with cooperation from businesses, academia and government offices. The envisaged network is expected to ensure faster and more reliable data transmission, and have more resilience against computer virus attacks and breakdowns.

I like science and science-fiction a lot! The common denominator between them is the imagination of the future. And when I see a stable government like Japan begin to plan the future I get excited. It is the same as when Pr. Bush announced 2 years ago about creating a permanent base on the Moon in 2020(see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6208456.stm).

so cool... I realy wonder, How will the world look like in 2020? 2040? 2100?
Hope to be there to see it...

Here is a link to the full story: http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/japan_working_to_replace_the_internet.php

Turn a flashlight into a handheld burning laser

If you have an extra CD-Rom that you don't really nead  you can do something useful of it:

Turn a flashlight into a handheld burning laser

Here is how you do it:

Hope this helps ... :)

Capital Rising - Tnufa fund from Bureau of Chief Scientist

The first question a new, green, entrepreneur thould think of is this:
    Is there any chance for me and my startup to get money grant from the government?
    Wouldn't that be the coolest? To get some money so the startup can takeoff more easily?
    Yeaa.. But if there is such thing the chances to get the money are probably so small so maybe I should not bother..

That answer is not the right one. The right one is: Yes there is, it's called Tnufa and you should bother!

Under the Ministry of Industry, Trade & Labour, the Bureau of Chief Scientist, there are these options of funding/grant:

1. Tnufa
2. Technological Incubators
3. Seed Fund - Heznek Program

http://www.moit.gov.il/NR/exeres/52CCC0D9-98A0-4A31-A3C4-0A7CEDF5944C.htm
http://www.moital.gov.il/NR/exeres/2F9931BD-7695-4FAD-9A54-950A1E99B3F8.htm

Today I'll give some details about "Tnufa".
Tnufa is a great program that is designed to give the opportunity for a new entrepreneur (or a new company) to get started.
The grant for this program is 85% of the approved costs up to a maximum of 210,000 NIS (Approx. $47,000).
It has to be in the initial stage of the company:

• For entrepreneur that has not even started a company
• For company that was just founded

This money supposed to go to:

• Patenting (ususaly this costs 10,000$)
• Creating a business plan
• Creating the product prototype
• Some marketing maybe
• An Exhibition

The cool thing about it that (besides the fact that there is a good chance to get it) is that It is pretty easy to apply and they should return their answer in 60 days!
They say, it is the easiest money a startup can get. I don't know about that, but the first thing I done was to applying for this grant.

It took me quite a while to fill the forms - about 2.5 months (by the way, here they are: link).
Tip: To fill the forms in the best way you can is extremely important: they will probably be the primary factor for the decision. Use advisors from MATI, they know what they are doing.
A week after dropping the documents in their office I have already got an invitation for an interview with a professional inspector. So last Tuesday I attended a meeting with this inspector. We talked about 2 hours. At the end I got a homework to do: some questions to answer. It took me another week to write a proper answer and now it is, as some say, in gods hands...

A small tip: They don't write it, but when they approve your request they usually give you only at start 100,000 NIS. After you spend the 85% of it you can apply for the rest. There are 2 key factors:

1. You should show and prove your progress according to the road map you gave the Tnufa committee.
2. You have to prove them that their money is crucial for the firm's success.

Hope this helps,
Vladi

Moving to FeedBurner

Hi

I decide to move my RSS feed to FeedBurner.
If you're reading this blog, please update your feeds to the my new RSS - http://feeds.feedburner.com/VladimirVexlersBlog

Enjoy.

Asynchronous Programming with MSMQ: and it's installation issues.

MSMQ has already been there for while. Actually it has been here at least 5-6 years (that is only the time I am familiar with it).
The Idea of it is pretty simple:

1. You have an application with some logic.
2. Part of this logic is to perform asynchronous calls to some other application logic.
3. You do not wish that it will affect your performance.
4. The order of handling those calls has to preserve - the FIFO method.

So, back in the begging of the millennium Microsoft released a nice, free of charge, comes with Windows (PC & server), service called MSMQ - Microsoft Message Queuing. It was not the first attempt but it was stable, free, already inside solution.
This is the idea how it works:

1. Your main application during it's work can send Messages to some queue (in this case, one of queues inside MSMQ,). This is done by using the System.Messages library.
2. Some other application, a Windows Service for example, listens to this queue.
3. Each time a new message arrives it reads it and executes some logic.
4. After reading the message the message is automatically deleted from the Queue.

This is how it looks :

Here are some links of Basic and advanced programming:

1. Good starting review and examples : Programming MSMQ in .NET : http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/mgrmsmq.asp
2. Some more advanced stuff: MSMQ for .NET Developers (Part 1): http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/27560/0/page/1
3. Some more advanced-advanced stuff :-) : MSMQ for .NET Developers, Part 2: http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/27922

How to install MSMQ?

Installation process is quite easy (you might need your Windows installation disk):

1. Control Panel
2. Add or Remove Programs
3. Add/Remove Windows Components (on the left sidebar)
4. Select "Message Queuing"
5. Next, Finish

Sometimes happens this installation issue/problem :
This issue happened to me yesterday, when I was trying to install the MSMQ on my newly formatted computer:
"
The MSMQ Service cannot be started.

Error Code: 0x42C
Error Description: The dependency service or group failed to start.
"

This is what you need to do:

1. Start button
2. Run
3. services.msc - Open the services console
4. Enable this service "NT LM Security Support Provider". In addition, set it to Manual mode
5. Install MSMQ again

Hope this helps,
Vladi

Capital Raising - Do your homework

Part of the strategy of my company is to raise a capital from VCs (Venture Capital Funds), Incubators or Angels.
Since I believe in "If you fail to plan you plan to fail", I am planning very carefully everything and, in this case, my approach to the fund raising procedure.

On last weeked I worked for 2 days and reviewed all VCs in Israel.
What did I do and what was I looking for?

1. Investing strategy: What is their investing strategy? Do they invest in pre-seed, seed, or later stage only? Maybe they are inveting only in well financed companies that wish to expand?
2. The Portfolio - Your Niche: It is very important to know in what kind of companies this particular VC has invested in the past. It can learn you things like:
1. Does this VC like and understand the niche your startup is working at? When I say like I mean they believe that there is big money in it.
2. Are there too many companies like yours, maybe your direct competitors? If there is a direct competitor maybe this VC will not invest in you because you are jeopardizing other VC's portofolio companies.
3. The Portfolio - Your Competitors: Are there any competitors to my startup that I don't know about yet?
4. How does this VC work: What is the standard process in this VC? What are they looking for?

It was a very intense work but I learned many things from it.

Here are the full complete list of Venture Capital Funds that work in Israel: http://www.science.co.il/Venture-Capital-Funds.asp
and this is the Incubators list: http://www.science.co.il/Technology-Incubators.asp

Hope this helps,

Vladi

How to raise money from VCs

Some of you already know that I have founded a new startup company.
It is called DCF Technologies.
What it is about - It is still a secret, but I promiss to reveal details soon.

I will do something even better:
I will try to post my experiences of starting a new company and all the things that comes with it...

In a mean while, Here is a nice, funny, clip with some advices about raising money from VC funds: How-to-raise-money-from-VCs

Enjoy